Unrule of Law

    366
    0
    SHARE

    “THE SENATE impeachment court’s guilty verdict on Chief Justice Renato Corona and the subsequent punishment of removal from office for his failure to declare his true worth of assets was a “major victory” of the people, accountability, transparency and the rule of law, according to prosecutors from the House of Representatives.”

    So carried a banner story of one Metro Manila daily the morning after Judgment Day.

    Accountability, cow dung! Transparency, bovine ordure!

    So how many of the prosecutors and their House peers, how many of the senator-judges have included in their statement of assets, liabilities and net worth their dollar deposits, a complete list of their properties?

    Come to think of it, one Mister Cruz of Angeles City asked, are the $50,000 intercepted from Mrs. Marissa Lapid at the Las Vegas airport reflected in Senator Lito Lapid’s SALN?

    Indeed, how many of the senators, the Honorable Franklin Drilon, foremost, congressmen, the Honorable Neil Tupas, Jr., notably, have taken the challenge of the unseated Corona to sign a waiver of their bank secrecy rights?

    Yeah, so what had Corona’s principal persecutor, President Aquino had to say on such waiver?

    No way, Aquino’s spokesman Edwin Lacierda said, in so many words: “It is incumbent on all to recognize that it is Mr. Corona who is on trial…

    To seek a waiver from the President at this time is to absolve those being held to account while those who comply are lumped together with those who are before the bar of justice.”

    Yeah, right. So what happened now to the 2010 campaign promise of  Aquino to waive his rights under the bank secrecy laws and open his bank accounts to the public, if only to lead by example in the matters of public accountability and transparency?

    One can only agree with what Monsieur Leroy Beaullieu wrote about politicians in the 1890s yet: “…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.”

    Indeed, “no one acts on principles or reasons from them.” Among politicians, that is. 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.

    And then, the rule of law. So 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. To prevent disruptive rallies and restore the rule of law, so Macapagal-Arroyo issued those suppressive EOs.

    It was not the rule of law – the law on evidence for one – that warranted the acceptance by the impeachment court like gospel truth the documents from spurious sources as the “small lady,” and Mister Anonymous.

    The rule of law – the sub judice law – was blatantly violated, to the acquiescence of the impeachment court, in the publication of documents even prior to their presentation before the court, in the non-stop commentaries in media of the merits of the case against Corona, in speculations and prognostications of its conclusion even before the trial started.

    What rule of law indeed obtained at the Corona trial?

    Finding no immediate answers, I took solace in some readings on the Law.

    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.

    Now, now, something’s promising here.

    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.”

    Most apropos the Corona case now.

    And then, hitting the bullseye: “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 still more: “To interpret the Law, and to bring it into harmony with the varying conditions of human society is the highest task of the legislator.”

    No acquittal there.

    LEAVE A REPLY

    Please enter your comment!
    Please enter your name here