Thursday, May 31, 2018
The bigger scandal
BY JOJO ROBLES ON
It would be extremely difficult to find an alleged anomaly bigger than the P3.5-billion Dengvaxia scandal. But the same people in the Department of Health who used 830,000 children as guinea pigs for an unproven vaccine under the previous administration could have done just that, in peso terms at least, with the diversion of P10.6 billion intended for the health insurance premiums and benefits of senior citizens to a questionable health center building program.
The alleged massive diversion of Philippine Health Insurance (PhilHealth) funds, by the way, took place at around the same time as the Dengvaxia purchase. And it appears that the same top officials of the administration of then President Noynoy Aquino who pulled off the reported vaccine scam were also behind the siphoning of PhilHealth contributions.
But there was a glitch in the plan: the new PhilHealth board, which found out about the diverted funds after the Aquino administration stepped down, would not just play dead simply because Noynoy, his health secretary, the scandal-prone Janette Garin, and his top two lieutenants were involved. In this week’s joint congressional hearing on the missing funds, they declared that their predecessors in the PhilHealth board were remiss in their duties when they allowed the diversion without the requisite approval of the agency’s board.
The previous board, which included current Sen. Risa Hontiveros, apparently decided that they could not fight Malacañang’s approval of the fund diversion, which Garin had recommended. After all, it was requested in a memorandum from no less than Noynoy’s powerful executive secretary, Paquito Ochoa, and approved by the president’s “financial genius,” Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, before Aquino himself signed off on it.
And so it was that the PhilHealth fund diversion, according to records submitted to the Congress hearing, were approved and given official funding on the same day that the Dengvaxia program was greenlighted. That was on the December 29, 2015, the last working day for which such programs were allowed before they were banned because of the approaching May 2016 elections.
As bad as the Dengvaxia scandal was, some people believe that the PhilHealth scandal was worse. Several times worse, according to Senator Joseph Victor Ejercito.
“The diversion of the PhilHealth fund intended for the benefits of senior citizens, for me, is a heinous act three times more cruel than the Dengvaxia fiasco,” said Ejercito, chairman of the joint oversight panel. “I can only describe this act as heartless and insensitive to the condition of our senior citizens,” Ejercito added.
But how did the PhilHealth scandal happen? And when will the perpetrators land in jail for this execrable crime?
It all started, according to Ruben John Basa, PhilHealth chief operating officer, when Congress in 2015 approved the allocation of P37 billion in the national budget to pay for premiums of indigents, low-income earners, barangay workers and senior citizens after the agency lobbied to replenish its dwindling reserve fund. However, Aquino vetoed the allocation and declared that premiums and benefits for senior citizens shall be funded through unprogrammed funds of the 2015 national budget, amounting P10.6 billion.
Basa told Ejercito’s committee that soon afterwards, Garin and the then president of PhilHealth, Alexander Padilla, wrote Abad requesting the transfer of P10.6 billion “parked” in the Miscellaneous Personnel and Benefits Fund of the 2015 national budget and intended for the senior citizens’ benefits and premiums. Garin and Padilla, in a joint letter, requested Abad to immediately release the fund to augment a health facilities enhancement program that principally involved building health centers.
Basa said the PhilHealth board was not aware of the request to transfer the fund. “The matter was not presented nor approved by the Philhealth board of directors,” he said.
That was in August 2015. Incumbent Health Secretary Francisco Duque confirmed that Garin and Padilla’s request was made without the approval of the PhilHealth board of directors. He added that the proposal to divert the funds was made without considering the actuarial life of PhilHealth, which was already reeling from charges that it could not pay the health benefits of members seeking treatment in private hospitals.
In fact, according to Duque, the diversion caused the reduction of the life of PhilHealth’s reserve fund to 10 months, way below the 24 months reserve mandated by law. And to make matters even worse, Duque told the joint committee that the health center building program was an unqualified failure, with only 217 of 3,200 rural health centers supposed to be built given certificates of completion.
And yet, Abad and Ochoa both approved the request for the fund diversion, which was made, Duque said, at around the same time that Garin proposed the approval of the Dengvaxia vaccination program. Needless to say, Aquino himself approved both the dengue vaccine and the health center construction schemes.
Last March, PhilHealth filed graft charges against both Garin and Padilla in connection with the alleged fund diversion scandal; the two have stridently denied the allegations. No such charges have been lodged against Ochoa, Abad and Aquino, although the latest revelations will probably result in them being filed soon.
In the meantime, I suggest that Aquino check on the structural strength of the steel gates he had put up along Times Street to barricade his home. Because they have to be strong enough to protect him not only from the families of the children who got sick or died after being injected with Dengvaxia, but also from hordes of senior citizens who lost their medical benefits because of the diversion of funds intended to pay their insurance premiums.
http://www.manilatimes.net/the-bigger-scandal/402742/
May 31, 2018 - Pentecost Anticipated
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Wednesday, May 30, 2018
VP Robredo won’t confirm or deny if she is Congressman Banal’s mistress
BY RIGOBERTO D. TIGLAO ON
Says not covered by FOI order
VICE President Maria Leonor Robredo refuses to confirm or deny persistent reports, especially in numerous Facebook posts, that she has since 2016 been having a romantic relationship with the representative of Quezon City’s third district, Jorge (“Bolet”) Banal, a married man. “It’s common knowledge in the third district, “a well-known former politician from the area claims, “and the relationship started in the 2016 election campaign.”:
Representative Banal likewise refused comment on the reports, according to our reporter who asked him on this. This paper’s reporter claimed that Robredo dismissed the report as gossip, but only as an off-the-record claim.
In media convention, or simply out of sheer rationality, a refusal to confirm or deny a report is interpreted as a confirmation, unless it is preposterously baseless, or is predicated on a falsehood.
Her refusal to comment can only bolster the allegations of her relationship with Banal. If true, he would arguably be—if President Duterte were to step down before his term expired in 2022— the most powerful man in the country, as he would be the last person Robredo would talk to at the end of each day. We do have the right to that information, don’t we?
The Vice President and the congressman; photo from Google images.
However, I haven’t received any such denial from you nor from Congressman Banal, for me to write that this is fake news.
I hope you can deny it as soon as possible so I can bury this issue finally and request FB fact-checkers to delete such falsehoods.”
Instead of replying though, she lashed out at me in a tweet, claiming that I was a “purveyor of fake news” and “had threatened her with another fake news.” She didn’t even mention, though, what exactly was the “fake news” I “threatened her” with.
On May 11, though, I received an email from info@ovp.gov.ph by “FOI Receiving Officer,” acknowledging receipt of my two emails, and asking me to pick up that office’s reply in its Quezon City office. I suspect Robredo’s lawyers were just being careful for her not to be accused of violating Republic Act 6713, which requires officials to reply within 15 working days of receipt of a query.
I requested the “FOI Receiving Officer” to send me that reply by email, but my request got no response.
FOI reply
After two hours of waiting on a very hot day for the “FOI Receiving Officer” who came back from lunch only at 3 p.m., I got the reply, signed by Assistant Secretary Sofia Yanto-Abad. While I did not invoke the Freedom of Information Executive Order in my query to Robredo, the letter said that, “a simple reading of EO No. 2 will show that your request is not the property subject of the right to information… and cannot be processed through our FOI.”
The letter, however, advised me to check Robredo’s statements in an interview with Karen Davila on February 15, 2017.
In the one-and-a-half minute interview, Robredo evaded the question by claiming that she has “been linked to so many people” and that the latest was with a “gay supporter from Naga.”
Her response was strange. I haven’t heard or read of any report claiming she was having an affair with somebody who turns out to be merely a “gay supporter from Naga.” That Davila was simply doing PR for Robredo—the video clip was posted by ABS-CBN with the title “Leni Robredo shuts down dating rumors”—is obvious in that she didn’t tell Robredo that she wasn’t asking about alleged relationships with anybody else but with representative Banal, who is not from Naga but from Quezon City.
For Robredo and Davila, “Banal” was the name that could not be mentioned.
Liberal Party operative
Who is Bolet Banal? A Liberal Party operative, his main claim to fame was being discovered – during the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona in early 2012 – that he was the source of the media reports on the chief justice’s bank records, which by law are strictly confidential. When called by the Senate to explain how he happened to have the records in his possession, he made the mind-boggling claim that he found them stuck in the grills of his house’s gate.
What made it puzzling was that there were even posters in a few of Robredo’s public events that showed Banal as host, being the “OVP Representative.”
One of many Facebook collages alleging Robredo and Banal are lovers.
Robredo’s adamant refusal to confirm or deny the reports is baffling. This column would not have existed at all if she simply responded: “No, I am not having, and never ever had, a romantic relationship with congressman Banal or any other man.”
Email April 27
I officially asked her to comment on the allegation in two emails on April 24 and 27 to her office, the latter of which reads:
“Dear Madame Vice President,
I abhor fake news as much as you also seem to be, based on your recent tweet. Sadly, I continue to get Facebook posts alleging your affair with Congressman Jorge (“Bolet”) Banal. If these are fake news, I would like to expose these as such.
The topic of high government officials having illicit relationships is a legitimate subject for news reporting, because of such liaisons’ potential impact on their actions and policies. The press would be betraying its role if it does not investigate such relationships.
It is a testament to former President Fidel Ramos’ power over media that he managed to mostly keep out of the public eye the story about his mistress, Rosemarie (“Baby”) Arenas, although that was an open secret among the political and economic elite, as she was a wealthy Forbes Park socialite.
Surprisingly, Ramos’ National Security Adviser Jose Almonte in his biography, Endless Journey, boasted that he was Arenas’ “babysitter,” which meant that the President assigned him to handle his rather feisty mistress. Almonte described her as “a personal friend of Ramos’.” He heaped praise on Arenas: “She was key in the (election) campaign, a big contributor, a terrific fund raiser and a gracious and tireless campaigner. She had many friends, contacts in the private sector among the old elite families, and in the media.” I wonder, though, if this was due to her own charm or to the fact she was seen as a having a hot line to Ramos.
With Ramos as her lover, Arenas would even try – unsuccessfully – for a run for a Senate seat in 1995. She successfully ran in 1998 as representative of the third district of Pangasinan, Ramos’ home province, and served three consecutive terms, after which her daughter Rachel succeeded her. She won again as Pangasinan congressman in the last elections and is an ardent supporter of Duterte.
At least Ramos didn’t evade the issue. When asked in a big forum, ironically by a media crackpot, who Arenas was “in his life,” Ramos answered, “She is special.” He then moved on to answer another question.
In the case of Robredo, she obdurately wouldn’t confirm or deny the reports, and I would leave to you, Dear Reader, to hypothesize why.
I will not belabor the point that if she does have a romantic relationship with Banal, who is a married man, her image as being the new version of Cory Aquino, a crusading widow for good govenrment, supported by moralistic churchmen, completely collapses.
What I as a journalist, personally find obnoxious, if the allegations are true, is her sense of entitlement that journalists have no right to probe the personal life of a public figure, even as photos abound in social media, of her and Banal, in poses and gestures most people would interpret as those of two people being a couple.
Does she think we can pretend we are seeing nothing, or would be afraid of tackling the issue?
Email: tiglao.manilatimes@gmail.com
Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao
Twitter: @bobitiglao
http://www.manilatimes.net/vp-robredo-wont-confirm-or-deny-if-she-is-congressman-banals-mistress/400128/
Why removing the Aquino name from the Manila International Airport should be seriously considered
The clamour for the purging of the Aquino name from the Philippines’ premiere international airport persists. This, to be fair, is baffling to an entire generation raised on the notional “heroism” of the late Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr who was murdered on the tarmac of the then-named Manila International Airport in 1983. The trouble with this notion is that it was propagated and embedded in the Filipino psyche not by objective scholars of history but by groups with political agendas — political parties and clans that enjoy lucrative relationships with the Aquinos and Cojuangcos and business interests that profit from these connections.
These groups and the people who lead them now lament how the name of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) had become a sad political issue. What they fail to realise is that it had always been a political issue because, clearly, it was politics that decided on this naming to begin with. Indeed, the airport was renamed the NAIA, replacing its former name “Manila International Airport”, following approval of Republic Act 6639 in 1987 — just a year after Aquino’s widow, the late Cory Aquino, seized power in a coup d’état in 1986 and in the year the current Constitution was enacted to legitimise her government. The quickness of the renaming is seen by many as the handiwork of legislators eager to put themselves within the good graces of what was then a widely-popular political bloc.
Therein lies the issue of the NAIA name. The airport was renamed too quickly at the height of a national euphoria. True enough, like most important life-changing decisions made in the heat of romantic passion, the legacy of this decision has failed to stand the test of time. The NAIA name suffers as a result of the decline in equity of the brand upon which its legitimacy rested — the Yellow brand of the Aquino-Cojuangco clan. Over the 30 years that the Yellowtards — in tandem with the Roman Catholic Church — dominated the Philippine political discourse, the once potent passion surrounding the “martyrdom” of the Aquinos waned and cynicism took over.
The problem with the Yellowtards and the nature of how they ruled the Philippines for 30 years is that the approach they took to sustaining their political potency was to keep the “fire” of revolutionary sentiment burning. They overused the “Laban” (“fight”) rhetoric that was immensely effective in the mid-1980s and wore it down to the blunted and dulled propaganda relic that it is today. Unlike a healthy marriage that evolved into a mature and stable relationship way past the bliss of the wedding and subsequent honeymoon, the Yellowtard mystique succumbed under the weight of a surgically propped up patchwork of cosmetic political alliances and was scarred by various hookups with opportunistic hangers on.
The NAIA name today stands as a quaintly sad legacy of a once-massive now-failed political brand. Filipino balikbayans (returning expats) now all but choke on the words whenever they need to mention their destination airport. It is high time that the airport be renamed back to its original and more sensible name. Perhaps sometime in the future, giving the Manila International Airport the Aquino name may again be considered — this time by more objective scholars of history. For now there are only politicians and the quack “thought leaders” who schmooze with them that push stupid agendas like these.
‘Five Breeds of Duterte Haters and Why They Are All Equally Ridiculous’
I couldn’t have written better his description of “Duterte haters,” especially that breed he describes as “those without a sense of humor.” One breed he missed though are the Clerics, who are aghast that Duterte doesn’t represent the elites they have always served, and in turn served by, since the birth of the nation. I’ll devote a future column to that breed of hypocrites.
GARRIE PIECE STARTS HERE:
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is subject to many varieties of slander from all sides of international media and from various political/ideological groups. What all of these otherwise disparate groups have in common is that they universally ignore the fact that Duterte won a fair and democratic election in 2016 and remains not only incredibly popular but far more popular than most elected leaders, including the Presidents of the United States and France, as well as the German and British heads of government.
In this sense, one is witnessing a perverse experiment in the colonial mentality wherein most Filipinos both in the Philippines and the millions of Filipinos who live abroad support Duterte while his mostly non-Filipino detractors have crowned themselves neo-colonial masters who will “save” the country from a President that most Filipinos either approve or support or love.
The sanctimonious left
One of the biggest myths proffered both by liberals and the sanctimoniously alt-media far left is that Duterte is a “fascist.” Not only is this outright slander of the Filipino people and of Duterte himself, but it is slander of the real victims of real fascism, including those in the Donbass republics who are being slaughtered by those who have openly pledged loyalty to fascist leaders.
In actual fact, Duterte is a man whose primary goal is to reduce his own power and those around him. Duterte’s proposals for a federal republic would reduce the power of the central government/imperial Manila and give more democratic control to local people over their own political future.
Duterte has further stated that if anything he’d like to retire early, so long as his major reforms get implemented. Duterte views on issues ranging from taxation and labor regulations to health and safety, the environment and infrastructural investment are neither left nor right. They are rational problem-solving policies based on the logical needs of a developing country with immense potential that has been held back through decades of ineffective rulers.
There is simply nothing remotely extreme, let alone fascistic about this. If one is in any doubt about this, one need only examine the communist government of China which unlike the corrupt, blood-soaked and malicious Communist Party of The Philippines, is more like Duterte when it comes to finding successful solutions to real-life problems.
Those without a sense of humor
The other thing that binds Duterte detractors together is a total lack of any sense of humor. Duterte is not only a prolific President but an expert at trolling his opponents. He often repeats the insults he has to deal with and jokingly turns these insults into positive attributes as a rhetorical device to expose the absurdity of the original accusations. Those who do not understand this are guilty either of having no sense of humor, being objectively stupid or people from the West who can only understand an English speaker if their accent resembles that of Orson Welles or the Queen of England.
Snobs are the other big group of people who are professional non-Filipino Duterte haters. To such people who have never had a family member raped, tortured, murdered and then mutilated by a monster in human form who has taken the drug commonly known as shabu, Duterte is somehow evil because they associate him with a threat to their own perverse drug-fixated lifestyles. Because even in the West where drug dealing and consuming is largely normalized, few people who want to be taken seriously will stand up and support drug dealing, they instead attack Duterte using long-winded criticisms that are unrelated to anything in the real world.
Instead of saying what they mean, such snobs engage in a feat of pseudo-intellectual acrobatics in order to say that somehow it would be better for Filipinos to live in a country where druggies kill normal people than in a country where police officers arrest and if necessary shoot resisting offenders in order to protect normal people from criminals.
To these people, the abstract concept of drugs being normal while law enforcement against drugs is somehow wrong, is at odds with the reality of those whose lives consist of something other than trips to liberal art museums and long nights of drug purchasing from the safety of their rich father’s home in New York, Berlin, Paris, London or San Francisco.
The neo-colonial right
Then there are the sanctimonious right-wingers who cannot accept the fact that the Philippines is no longer a country that is willing to serve America’s interests in Southeast Asia.
Under Duterte, the country has engaged a radical new foreign policy designed to put the interests of the Philippines first, while maintaining an official stance of neutrality in any global conflicts that could only harm the country if the Philippines were to choose a side. This is called rational multi-polar thinking in the pursuit of win-win geopolitical outcomes. It is the wave of the future, but for many who are stuck in the past, it amounts to a kind of treason.
Duterte’s domestic opponents who speak freely about why he’s ‘killing free speech’
Finally, there are a minority of Filipinos, usually those in elite circles or extremist political circles who dislike Duterte. They are in some ways Duterte’s best friends as their very presence nullifies their only argument. They claim Duterte is shutting down free speech and yet Duterte’s opponents in the Philippines are among the loudest people you will ever come across. Thus, if you are freely speaking out against a man you accuse of ending free speech, your very actions have defeated your argument.
In summary, right wingers see Duterte as a kind of Asian Che Guevara out to ‘harm America’ and left wingers see him as a king of far-right dictator simply because he is turning a lawless system into one based on normal laws, many of which long predate Duterte but have simply never been enforced by his corrupt predecessors.
Then there are the snobs for whom Duterte reminds them of the fact that one needn’t be upper class in order to have morality while hammering home the message that many so-called upper- class Westerns live like pigs or even criminals who think they are above the law.
Finally, there are there screaming Yellows and communists who claim they have no rights….all the while exercising their rights. Thus far, it has been impossible to identify any rational voices among Duterte’s detractors.
Email: tiglao.manilatimes@gmail.com
Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao
Twitter: @bobitiglao
http://www.manilatimes.net/five-breeds-of-duterte-haters-and-why-they-are-all-equally-ridiculous/400509/
Shady
BY ANTONIO P. CONTRERAS ON
SIXTO Brillantes Jr. has opened a Pandora’s box with his comments posted in Facebook, that could further taint the already shady reputation of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) of which he was a former chairman.
Brillantes has claimed that the minimum shading threshold that was used by the Comelec in the May 2016 elections was indeed 25 percent. Brillantes also admitted that while a 50 percent minimum threshold was used in the 2010 elections, this was reduced to only 20 percent in the 2013 mid-term elections. But the most intriguing, and perhaps the most damaging, revelation of Brillantes was when he made it appear that for the 2013 and 2016 elections, these changes were deliberately concealed from the public. The reason, according to Brillantes, is that it would have been for the Comelec to disclose to the public the actual thresholds as this would contradict its instructions to the voters to fully shade the ovals. He said that it was only after the elections that such threshold was publicly announced.
This is a disturbing argument coming from a former Comelec chair, for it reveals a practice, if true, where the transparency of the election system has been compromised by the very institution that is tasked to protect its integrity. Brillantes has painted the Comelec as being in the habit of deceiving the public, in that it failed to exercise fidelity to the electorate. It is even more appalling that an important piece of information, no less than the shading threshold that will be programmed into the vote counting machines (VCMs), would be withheld from the public, including not only the voters but more importantly, the candidates and the political parties.
But what is bizarre vis-à-vis Brillantes’ audacious claim is that in the 2010 elections, the Comelec issued Resolution 8804 which publicly disclosed the 50 percent threshold. This is contained in Rule 15, Section 6, Letter l, where it is clearly provided that “marks or shades which are less than 50 percent of the oval shall not be considered as valid votes.” And contrary to Brillantes’ claim, the resolution containing the specification of the minimum shading threshold was issued in March, which was two months before the May 2010 elections.
Granting, without admitting, that the practice was changed, and that resolutions governing the rules of procedure on disputes in an automated election system like Resolution 8804, were withheld from the public in the succeeding elections for 2013 and 2016, as Brillantes now claims, there is no record that similar resolutions where publicly disclosed after the conduct of the elections. No less than the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) has found that except for Resolution 8804, there is no other similar resolution which Comelec has issued for the 2013 and 2016 elections.
What Comelec has issued, and which is now being used by the camp of Leni Robredo as proof that the minimum shading threshold for the 2016 elections was 25 percent, is not even a numbered resolution, but the minutes of the regular en banc meeting of the Comelec held on September 6, 2016, which was four months after the May elections. The issue concerned the request of the PET for a copy of the Comelec guidelines used in the manual counting of ballots, specifically on the types of shadings read by the VCM for the tribunal’s reference in relation to the electoral protest of Bongbong Marcos against Leni Robredo.
The minutes clearly revealed that such guidelines were non-existent. Comelec Executive Director Tolentino’s memorandum, which was quoted in the minutes, admitted this when he said that “the Project Management Office for the 2016 automated election system has not provided guidelines on manual counting since its focus was on the automated counting of ballots by the VCM. Neither has the electoral contests adjudication department finalized its guidelines as of the moment.”
What was in existence was the guidelines for conducting random manual audits, and not manual recounts, which is what Commissioner Louie Guia, who is the head of the random manual audit committee, submitted in a letter to the PET also dated September 6, and which was adopted by the Comelec en banc. The PET obviously did not consider this as equivalent to a resolution that can be equivalent to Resolution 8804 considering that it is not in the form of a formal guideline passed before the elections, and more importantly, it was applied not on actual manual recounts in relation to electoral protests, but only in the conduct of random manual audits which is totally different from a manual recount.
What is insidious about this entire affair on the minimum shading threshold, which now unraveled owing to Brillantes’ admission, is that there is reason to believe that there is a deliberate attempt to game the elections by concealing crucial election-related information which was committed no less than by Comelec itself. Brillantes, in his earnest attempt to support Robredo’s position that what should be used is the 25 percent minimum shading threshold, may have inadvertently revealed a clue pointing to a commission of electoral fraud.
It behooves us to ask why the shading thresholds used for electoral protests which PET was asking in its letter to the Comelec would be a secretly held information that there is no resolution stating such was issued before the elections, if Brillantes’ version of the story should be believed, even after the elections. Why would the Executive Director of Comelec be totally unaware of such information for him to admit that there were no such guidelines as of September 2016, which was already four months after the elections.
But the most important question to ask is why is it that only Robredo votes are sensitive to changes in shading thresholds, that when the PET upheld the 50 percent threshold set by Comelec in Resolution 8804, her lead over Marcos was reduced. If it is indeed true that the minimum shading threshold of 25 percent was concealed from the public and from all candidates, as Brillantes claims, why should it happen that only Robredo voters would have benefited from such concealment that they now have to appeal to the PET not to disenfranchise them.
These are questions that Brillantes’ revelations have raised.
And while answers have yet to be offered, what has already been fairly established is the shady nature of the 2016 elections.
http://www.manilatimes.net/shady/400736/
Bullies in the House
BY ANTONIO P. CONTRERAS ON
IF there are people who should be found guilty for culpable violation of the Constitution, it should be Edsel Lagman and his gang of minority members of the House of Representatives. In fact, they are guilty of an even worse offense when they threatened with impeachment the eight Supreme Court justices who voted to oust Chief Justice Maria Lourdes P.A. Sereno from the post she illegally occupied for six years, unless they reversed their decision. Lagman and his gang are guilty of betraying their nature as thinking and rational human beings.
In their partisan desire to defend Sereno, they have transgressed one of the pillars of constitutional democracy, which is the separation of powers of the three branches of government. It is ironic that Lagman and the rest of the defenders and apologists of Sereno are accusing the eight justices of the very offense that they themselves are unabashedly committing. They publicly lamented the alleged politicization and loss of independence of the high court, and yet they themselves are arm-twisting the court to toe their partisan political line. This tendency to contradict themselves is apparently a trait that is common to many Sereno defenders. Former solicitor general Florin Hilbay, for example, even raised the possibility that Sereno might file a quo warranto petition against her successor when the political climate becomes favorable, thereby insinuating and anticipating a court that is compliant to political expediency.
Lagman’s gang is bullying the entire court, and not only the eight justices. After all, there is only one Supreme Court, and while there are dissenting opinions, every decision of the court becomes law, and is no longer just the work of the majority. It becomes a ruling of the court as one constitutional body, and not just of the ponente and the concurring justices. It cannot be atomized and divided into separable entities.
Certainly, every member of the Supreme Court can be impeached. However, the court cannot be subjected to an impeachment complaint for decisions it renders collegially, more so if it followed the established procedures and its decision stands squarely on solid jurisprudence. The members can only be hauled to the impeachment court individually for acts they have committed that rise to the level of an impeachable offense, which include bribery, graft and corruption, treason, high crime, betrayal of public trust and culpable violation of the Constitution. But here, Lagman’s gang will have to prove that the justices accepted material or monetary favors in order for bribery and graft and corruption to attach. Issuing an unfavorable decision is not a high crime. There were also no foreign enemy interests served or a government overthrow attempted when Sereno was ousted for the justices to be found guilty of treason.
The only possible ground for Lagman and his gang to anchor their case is to accuse the eight justices who voted to unseat Sereno as having committed a culpable violation of the Constitution and therefore having betrayed public trust. But even on this, their case doesn’t stand on solid ground. This is because they are taking the irrational and illogical stance of accusing the eight justices of violating the Constitution on the basis of how the latter interpreted it in the Sereno case. This is a ridiculous position to take, considering that the Supreme Court’s job is precisely to interpret the Constitution, and while one can disagree with its interpretation, one cannot use that to accuse the court or any of its member as having violated the Constitution. This is unlike the case when Sereno failed to submit her statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN), or when former Chief Justice Renato Corona misdeclared his SALN. These acts rose to the level of culpable violations of the Constitution because they are transgressions of its specific provisions.
In fact, if one goes back to the intent of the framers of the 1987 Constitution, one can find that in order for an act to become a culpable violation of the Constitution, it has to be done with deliberate intent and a certain degree of perversity. Commissioner Regalado Maambong, a member of the Constitutional Commission that framed the 1987 Charter, quoted a document pertaining to the impeachment of President Elpidio Quirino, which stated that “culpable violation of the Constitution means willful and intentional violation of the Constitution and not violation committed unintentionally or involuntarily or in good faith or thru an honest mistake of judgment.”
Thus, Lagman and his gang will have to prove that the majority of the court in the Sereno case willfully and with deliberate intent misinterpreted the Constitution. However, the facts of the matter strongly contravene this. The Constitution gives the court original jurisdiction over quo warranto petitions. The court did not infringe into the constitutional duty of the House of Representatives to initiate impeachment proceedings and of the Senate to hear and decide the case, considering that what the court addressed was a different proceeding with a different complainant, issues, cause of action and penalty. Whatever debate on whether impeachable officials are removable only through impeachment is not for Congress to decide, but for the court to determine, which is exactly what it did and for which its members could not be impeached for culpably violating the Constitution.
In fact, granting without admitting that the justices were wrong, such could not be considered as an impeachable offense when it emanates from an honest mistake of judgment. Unfortunately for Lagman and his gang, while every citizen can take part in interpreting the Constitution and the laws, it is only the Supreme Court that is given the final authority to do so. The adage that when the court is wrong, it is still right still resonates with clarity. And while the court is not infallible, it is still supreme on all constitutional matters.
Indeed, while Congress, as representatives of the people, is entrusted with the power to impeach, such is limited to the enumeration of impeachable offenses provided in the Constitution. Certainly, the justices could not be impeached simply because Congress disagrees with their decisions.
In the absence of clear evidence that one or several of the justices were bribed, or that their decision was arbitrary and not based on jurisprudence, and that it violated their own rules, then the threat of Lagman’s gang amounts to a partisan assault on the independence of the judiciary. In doing so, they behave like defeated bullies throwing a tantrum and miserably contradicting themselves.
http://www.manilatimes.net/bullies-in-the-house/401171/
THE OSTRICH !
To get some humor life,
And pass it on to other folk.!!Life is short! Try to laugh at least once a day!!
A man walks into a restaurant with a full-grown ostrich behind him. The waitress asks them for their orders. The man says, "A hamburger, fries and a coke," and turns to the ostrich, "What's yours?" "I'll have the same," says the ostrich.
A short time later the waitress returns with the order. "That will Be $9.40 please" The man reaches into his pocket and pulls out the exact change for payment.
The next day, the man and the ostrich come again and the man says, "A hamburger, fries and a coke."
The ostrich says, "I'll have the same."
Again the man reaches into his pocket and pays with exact change.
This becomes routine until the two enter again. "The usual?" Asks the waitress. "No, this is Friday night, so I will have a steak, baked potato and a salad," says the man. "Same," says the ostrich. Shortly the waitress brings the order and says, "That will be $32.62." Once again the man pulls the exact change out of his pocket and places it on the table.
The waitress cannot hold back her curiosity any longer. "Excuse me, Sir. How do you manage to always come up with the exact change in your pocket every time?"
"Well," says the man, "several years ago I was cleaning the attic and Found an old lamp. When I rubbed it, a Genie appeared and offered me two wishes. My first wish was that if I ever had to pay for anything, I would just put my hand in my pocket and the right amount of money would always be there."
"That's brilliant!" says the waitress. "Most people would ask for a Million Dollars or something, but you'll always be as rich as you want for as long as you live!"
"That's right..Whether it's a gallon of milk or a Rolls Royce, the exact money is always there," says the man.
The waitress asks, "What's with the ostrich?"
The man sighs, pauses and answers, "My second wish was for a tall chick with long legs who agrees with everything I say.."
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