The moves to persecute Supreme Court Administrator Midas Marquez will surely backfire. The President’s popularity rating is still very high but has been going down, albeit slightly. Making a martyr of Mr. Marquez will cause the President’s approval rating to drastically fall.

For the people will find the drive to hound Mr. Marquez out of the Supreme Court, or at least to clip his legally invested powers, as nothing but terrorism and vindictiveness.

At the height of the Malacañang campaign to have then Chief Justice Renato Corona found guilty by the Senate sitting as an impeachment court, Palace officials tried to pin alleged irregularities in the handling of some funds in the Supreme Court. Malacañang’s Secretary Edwin Lacierda, with whom Mr. Marquez had an exchange at the height of the passions raised by the impeachment trial, demanded that Mr. Marquez explain alleged irregularities in the use of a US$21-million loan to the judiciary from the World Bank.

In the end, it was found that Atty. Marquez’s hands were clean. His superiors were the ones who had the power over the funds. Whatever role he played in the disbursement was purely ministerial, done on his superiors’ orders.

Persecution is a crime that cries out to heaven.