Triumph of the Constitution

Nestor Mata

‘Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and 12 senators nipped in the bud a clash with the Supreme Court and prevented a constitutional crisis.’

THANKS to the wisdom of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and 12 other senators, sitting as presiding judge and judges of the impeachment court, a clash between the Senate and the Supreme Court that could have led to a disastrous constitutional crisis was nipped in the bud by them last Monday.

All thirteen of them, except for ten defiant senator-judges, decided to respect and heed the high tribunal’s order stopping the opening of Chief Justice Renato Corona’s foreign currency accounts in the Philippine Savings Bank (PSB).

"The Supreme Court, being the highest court of the land," Enrile, speaking as Presiding Judge of the Senate impeachment court, acknowledged, "is the final arbiter and interpreter of the Constitution."

The unprecedented act of Enrile and the twelve senator-judges was a triumph of the Constitution, the rule of law, and the constitutionally-vested power of the Supreme Court to decide on the final meaning of the laws of the land.

In Corona’s case, those laws are the Bank Secrecy Act and Foreign Currency Deposit Units (FCDUs). And, incontemplation of the Supreme Court, opening his supposed bank accounts would violate these laws on the confidentiality of bank accounts. So it issued the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that effectively stopped the infringement of those laws by the PSA, the senator-judges and the congressmen-prosecutors.

The lawmakers, as Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who voted to uphold the SC’s TRO, reminded them, should follow those laws that they themselves had enacted.

But, the lady solon who’s a respected constitutionalist, assured them that in so obeying the SC’s TRO "…this does not mean that one is superior over the other. It merely means that the Constitution is supreme over the three branches of government."

The same views were voiced earlier by two other experts on constitutional law, namely, Jesuit Fr. Joaquin Bernas, dean emeritus of the Ateneo Law School, and Fr. Rhanhillo Aquino, dean of the San Beda Graduate School of Law, who disputed the view of some senator-judges (who voted to ignore the TRO) that the Supreme Court over acts of the Senate impeachment court.

On the contrary, both deans declared, the impeachment court’s actions are subject to the Supreme Court’s constitutionally vested power to determine the final meaning of laws in case there is a conflict of interpretations, and to review any acts inthe Senate impeachment court that might have been a grave of discretion.

In layman’s terms, what all this legal gobbledegook means is that the Supreme Court can come in when needed to determine the meaning of the law, that it does not mean superiority of the Supreme court over the Executive or the Legislative branches of government, that the Constitution has placed in the Supreme Court the power to determine with finality the meaning of the law, and that it means the superiority of the Constitution.

Indeed, in the wise words of Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, "we are all under the Constitution, and the Constitution is what the justices say it is!"

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Oh yes, the way all the senators, sitting as judges of the Senate impeachment court, voted – 13 for upholding the Supreme Court’s TRO and 10 for defying the TRO – may not be, as some fear, anindication of how they would eventually vote either for conviction or for acquittal of the impeached Chief Justice Corona.

What it really shows is the "mushrooming of political cliques (a group of persons united by commoninterest or purpose) and claques" (a group of political followers ever ready to applaud their leader).

This matter was discussed by Fr. Rolando V. de la Rosa, O.P., Rector of the University of Santo Tomas,in a recent article in which he commented that these groups are "symptoms of the lethal factionalism that continues to afflict our society."

"The intense vindictiveness that accompanies the maneuverings of these pressure groups," Fr. De la Rosa went on, "is frightening because they seem to stop at nothing to get back at their perceived enemy. Like fanatics, they are averse to conciliation or compromise. They paint themselves as champions of truth, justice and good government, but scratch the surface and you will see mostly self-interest and self-service…

"This is perhaps why many political analysts consider the lynching of the Chief Justice as a degrading parody of our democratic system… What they cannot get by law, they are bent on getting by defiance…

"How can they call themselves crusaders for justice and truth when the moral demands they impose on others do not apply to them? They seem to belong to a higher realm that exempts them from the scrutiny of their own conscience…

"When the noisy cliques and claques begin to say: ‘We already made up our mind. We are morally upright and everybody believes that,’ their illusory self has taken charge; they have become thoroughly shameless."

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Quote of the Day: "If you want to annoy politicians, tell the truth about them." – Pietro Aretino