There is that generalization arising from the fixity of our intellectual habits that deems the recurring characteristic trait of a segment of one species as representative of that species, if not of the whole genus. Thus, taken on the whole, politicians are “…the vilest and the narrowest of sycophants and courtiers that humanity has ever known; their sole end basely to flatter and develop all popular prejudices, which, for the rest, they but vaguely share, never having consecrated one minute of their lives to reflection and observation.”
And, Monsieur Leroy Beaullieu did not even live long enough to read of the Filipino politician, writing as he was of the French kind in the 1890s. So, what’s the difference between a Filipino politician and dalag? One is a voracious fi lth-feeding bottom dweller. The other is a fish.
Expediency and convention, utility and interests – self-serving, vested interests, are the fundamental matters – I could not dare write principles here and desecrate the word – whence politics breeds.
In no single recent issue – political, naturally – are all the above “matters” instanced than in the House of Representatives allotting the Commission on Human Rights the princely sum of P1,000 as budget for 2018. Need I elaborate?
Okay, Simplicio Simon: It is expedient – highly utilitarian too – to the embattled administration as it acts as a lightning rod to deflect the more pressing issues of colossal corruption, pervasive poverty and the question of creeping despotism; convention – the wellworn ejaculation of “ the rule of law” – the House exercising its function as purse keeper – at play here palliates, aye “legitimizes” the oftrepeated vow of the President to abolish CHR; and best of all, serving the President’s bid, the assurance of continuing pelf and power of the sitting politicians.
The rule of law. How many crimes have been inflicted upon the people in its name? To prevent anarchy in the streets and restore the rule of law, so Marcos’ proclaimed Martial Law.
In the context of the CHR’s P1,000-budget, the legitimate exercise of the rule of law that was invoked by House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and his ilk was no rule of law but a (mis) rule of numbers.
Consider these universal givens:
Stripped to its essentials, Law is a “function of Reason,” as Aquinas put it. Kant furthered: “the expression of the Reason common to all.”
Law is “the rational or ethical will” of the body politic; “…the principal and most perfect branch of ethics,” as the British jurist Sir William Blackstone wrote in his Commentaries.
Thus, in the P1,000 CHR budget, the subsumption of a moral plane, nay, its nullification by “rightful exercise of congressional mandate,” no matter how “legal,” is a travesty of Law. The very function of unreason. Dysfunction by unreason, to be more precise. As factored in the above-given “truths.”
Aquinas, still in Summa Theologica: “Laws enacted by men are either just or unjust. If they are just, they have a binding force in the court of conscience from the Eternal Law, whence they are derived…Unjust laws are not binding in the court of conscience, except, perhaps, for the avoiding of scandal and turmoil.” Touche. But, really now, has conscience a place in Philippine political praxis?
The “rule of law” in its application hereabouts takes primary place among those that a forgotten jurist said were “…laws of comfort adopted by free agents in pursuit of their advantage.”
Time for us all to reflect on “the doctrine that the universe is governed in all things by Law, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.”
And to those misnomered solons: “To interpret the Law, and to bring it into harmony with the varying conditions of human society is the highest task of the legislator.” Not giving P1,000 budget to the CHR.
Shame.
