Flawed logic

FRONTLINE
Flawed logic
By Ninez Cacho-Olivares

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is not the judiciary nor the SC, says lead prosecutor Niel Tupas Jr.

That is true, but the CJ never said he is the SC or the judiciary. Yet, even as the prosecutors say the CJ is not the SC, why then are they questioning only his opinion — which is only one voice — based on the SC collegial decisions, that would comprise the majority vote?

But the prosecutors, especially Tupas, even admit that the move to unseat CJ Renato Corona is not about the law, or the rule of law, but due to his close ties toNoynoy’s predecessor, Gloria Arroyo, as Tupas claims that Corona is the biggest Gloria “coddler” and that removing him would remove Gloria’s influence, which would strengthen the high court.

This is why the prosecutors are highlighting the so-called 19 opinions issued by Corona, which apparently hardly made a dent in SC decisions.

The logic of Tupas and his prosecutors escapes me, as it would the more independent senator-jurors who would be going by the book, instead of the Noynoy senators who would be voting for conviction, despite the obvious paucity of evidence from the prosecutors and a flawed complaint.

Still, Tupas admits that it is not about the law in ousting Corona, but surely he knows that even in a Senate impeachment court, the prosecutors — including himself — have to prove their case, and the charge of bias, merely based on either dissenting or concurring opinions on just Corona’s vote as against the SC majority vote cannot be equated with bias, as the decisions of the high court are collegial in nature, on the principle of one justice, one vote.

Isn’t it then logical — if the logic of Tupas is followed — to assume that the other justices in the majority who also favored the Arroyo administration in the SC rulings are also guilty of bias and should therefore be removed through impeachment?

Given the same Tupas logic then, Justices Antonio Carpio and Lourdes Sereno, who have consistently favored, through their dissenting opinions, the Noynoy administration, are equally guilty of bias, in favor of Noynoy and against Gloria. If bias is the issue — which incidentally is not a ground for impeachment — then Carpio and Sereno too, should be impeached, and held accountable for their pro-Noynoy bias through their dissenting opinions.

Carpio’s decisions, from the start of his stint as SC justice, always favored then sitting President Gloria Arroyo. He just started to go against Gloria after a fall out between The Firm, where he used to be a partner and the Arroyos.

This is the same Carpio who ghost wrote Gloria’s letter to Hilario Davide and the SC justices to be at Edsa to swear her in as president, since the letter claimed that the military, the Cabinet and civil society had already withdrawn support from Erap Estrad, which wasn’t quite true. That letter is proof enough that Davide and Artemio Panganiban and Carpio were in on the coup d’etat against Estrada and they--including Carpio embraced mob rule instead of the rule of law. And to think he became an SC justice and aims to be CJ through Corona’s ouster!

But as Tupas admits, the real issue to them, and of course their patron, Noynoy, is that of removing Corona to remove the influence of Gloria in the high court.

This being the case, why then should it be a case of taking away Gloria influence and replacing this with Noynoy’s dominant influence in the high court, with his appointees? What Tupas, and of course Noynoy, want is to control the high court to ensure that it favors him in its rulings through threats of their being impeached, which is what he and his prostitutes in the House have been doing. What he wants then is a subservient SC, not an independent one and they don’t care about the rule of law, only the rule of Noynoy, the emerging dictator.

How then does that strengthen the judiciary, when it is the executive branch that wants to control the high court and transform it into a rubber stamp SC?

It is not a strenghtening of the SC that they seek, but the control of the court. That much is clear.