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In our country’s history some events are clear acts of treason
against the best interests of the people and the nation. These acts
caused ours to be an “Unfinished Revolution.”
One of these was the decision of that segment of
the Philippine Revolution’s leadership to untruthfully implicate
the respected Jose Rizal in the armed struggle, which he opposed.
The reason behind the mendacity was to convince those among the
masses and the intelligentsia who were still fence-sitting that
Rizal himself was the man behind the rising in revolt against the
Spanish colonial government. “Viva Rizal! Viva la Revolucion”
thus became a battlecry. And this was used by the court martial that
tried our national hero to unjustly convict him and sentence him to
death.
Rizal could have been an earlier Nelson Mandela.
Based on the ideas he presented in his later works and letters, he
could have helped us Filipinos to achieve an unprecedented level of
modern development in Asia following a more correct and realistic
roadmap.
Instead the ambition, impatience and misplaced
and dubious zeal of those who were running the revolutionary
movement in effect killed the greatest Filipino of the time.
Earlier, in the Ilocos, the assassination of
Diego Silang by Moiguel Vicos and Pedro Buecbuec, his friend and
confidant, was also a horrible act of treason. With Diego Silang
alive, Philippine history could have turned for the better among the
Ilokanos.
Another supreme act of treason, which began the
actual betrayal of the Philippine Revolution, was that committed by
the bunch of politician-revolutionaries at the Tejeros Convention.
That bad bunch were made up of people not unlike today’s
congressmen who are pushing their desired Charter change agenda at
the expense of moral, legal and constitutional principles. They took
over the leadership of the revolution, by subterfuge and intrigue,
and created a course of Philippine development marked by elitist
control, immorality and corruption.
These are only three out of dozens of examples,
showing how Filipinos of the elite—now personified by congressmen,
Malacañang-blessed local officials and unethical lawyers—have
used their powers to promote their own interests no matter if doing
so works against the common good and serves to destroy the Republic.
Their treason by corruption, self-aggrandizement
and reckless disregard of the common good is not punishable under
our laws. It should be.
Moves against the Chief Justice
The moves to impeach Chief Justice Reynato Puno,
who many persons of integrity and patriotism recognize as the most
credible and trustworthy Filipino on the national scene, fall under
this category of treason against the common good.
Those who are suspected of being behind these
impeachment moves have all denied their involvement—or even the
existence of such designs against the Chief Justice. But most of
these people are also the very ones who several –or many—times
before have said one thing and done another.
The people cannot be blamed for considering
these people (as seen in SWS surveys) unworthy of trust.
The persons who accuse the Chief Justice of
having worked to prevent the promulgation of a decision to unseat
Negros Oriental Representative Jocelyn Limkaichong—distributing to
the public the copy of the decision signed by 14 SC justices and
claiming that Chief Justice Puno should be held accountable for the
nonpromulgation—lied to the press and the people when they made it
appear that this was a final decision.
As it turned out, the ponencia by Justice Ruben
Reyes, was—still is— under question by his peers. Nine out of
the 14 justices who signed the draft decision authored by Justice
Reyes said they did not agree with the reasoning behind the
decision.
The Chief Justice did not sign the draft
decision, as is proper in the case of questionable decisions,
because the High Court justices wanted to ascertain the correctness
of the facts. And it turned out that Justice Reyes had in fact
omitted a vital fact that the Solicitor-General had noted that the
Commission on Elections had actually ruled that Congresswoman’s
proclamation was valid.
A bigger issue against the Reyes decision is
that it does not have the doctrinal value that the Constitution
requires. Every High Court decision must clearly tell the
people—and the entire judiciary—why the decision was taken. This
ponencia by Justice Reyes was flawed by this serious omission. That
was why nine of those who signed the draft qualified their
signatures. They were concurring only with the result but not the
reason. The flaw first had to be corrected before the decision could
be promulgated.
Our point is that once more, the persons who
tried to make Chief Justice Puno appear as a villain knew that he
was not.
But they acted the way they did—called a press
conference and presented and mischaracterized copies of High Court
documents—in pursuit of their own interests. It did not matter to
them if they were besmirching a person, one of the very few left
standing out of 90 million Filipinos, who give us ordinary citizens
a reason to hope that our nation still has a chance to rise out of
the moral morass we have fallen into.
It did not deter them that their act of treason
against the best interest of the people and our Republic would serve
the need of those in the House of Representatives to find a reason
to remove Chief Justice Puno by impeachment.
Removal of the Chief Justice—The Times’
Person of the Year—would weaken the independence of the Supreme
Court from the overwhelming power of Malacañang and its allies in
the House of Representatives.
Another act of treason against the common good.
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