If the International Criminal Court (ICC) withdrawal hearings on Aug.
28 and Sept. 4 were “Infinity War,” Centerlaw veterans Romel Bagares
and Gilbert Andres were Captain America and Black Panther, fighting on
after teammate Ray Paolo Santiago completely surrendered to Justice
Marvic Leonen’s Thanos-like opening punch.
Former Akbayan Rep. Barry Gutierrez was Thor, arriving in the nick of time with bolts of lightning to even the odds.
This is not a human rights case. It is a highly technical,
sleep-inducing structure-of-government case about who authorizes
termination of a treaty, whether ICC, military defense or double tax.
The president must sign a treaty, then two-thirds of the Senate must concur.
The Avengers argue that Senate concurrence is necessarily required to
terminate. A president should not be able to single-handedly terminate
the ICC treaty, subjected to 11 years of political debate. If a new
president could after an election, it would undermine the Senate as a
check-and-balance institution.
The rebuttal is, if the Constitution is silent, we should not infer new powers for the Senate.
Detained Sen. Leila de Lima could not argue for petitioning senators.
They drafted Gutierrez only after the first hearing, frustratingly
leaving Thor out of half the movie.
Leonen pounced on this. He spent the first belabored hour asking
Santiago whether his clients (cause-oriented groups, not senators) could
prove “direct injury.”
This is a standard freshman midterm question.
Direct injury must be shown in a constitutional case. Senators could,
since they were given no chance to vote on the ICC withdrawal.
As an exception, ordinary citizens may question lack of authority as
“public right.” In the 2003 Francisco case, citizens blocked Chief
Justice Hilario Davide Jr.’s impeachment when Davide refused to sue in
his own court.
Astoundingly, Santiago repeatedly but unqualifiedly conceded there
was no direct injury. He then reframed the issue as a loss of citizens’
ICC remedies, not the narrow question of who authorizes treaty
termination.
Santiago went so far out of bounds that he argued to Justice Andres Reyes that the United States, Russia and China must join the ICC.
Leonen devastatingly asked if he compels the Supreme Court to uphold
his politics. When Santiago backpedaled, Leonen accused him of changing
theories midway.
Sympathetic justices spoke as the experienced Bagares and Andres held their ground.
Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio argued that a treaty has a
law’s status, and the president alone may not repeal laws. Justice
Francis Jardeleza posited that the loss of ICC remedies amounts to a
loss of the constitutional right to liberty. Justice Alfredo Caguioa
argued that this loss amounts to direct injury for any citizen (the
public right exception).
Bagares impressively rode Jardeleza’s US Youngstown Steel vs
Curtiss-Wright framework. Caguioa commended him as petitioner in the
2005 Pimentel Jr. case to compel ICC ratification.
Gutierrez opened strong in the second hearing, discarding Santiago’s
tangents. His argument was that if a mere executive agreement cannot
amend a treaty, surely a president cannot terminate one alone.
Leonen pounded on procedure for half the hearing, with Justice Noel
Tijam. They argued that the Senate never formally adopted a resolution
asserting a need to concur, even if 14 out of 23 senators signed.
This dangerously alluded to the US Goldwater case, where one justice
argued to dismiss because Congress as a body never officially opposed a
termination. Gutierrez countered with Philippine cases where the
senators’ right to sue is individual.
Jardeleza added that we do not follow US tolerance of unilateral
termination. More recent concurrences now state a need to concur in
terminations.
Will the Avengers fall before Leonen? Despite other receptive
justices, he did cosmic damage, outlining how to dismiss purely on
procedure. Leonen would even cut off Gutierrez and Bagares when they
replied beyond his narrow, leading questions.
The show resumes on Oct. 9.
React: oscarfranklin.tan@yahoo.com.ph, Twitter @oscarfbtan,
facebook.com/OscarFranklinTan. This column does not represent the
opinion of organizations with which the author is affiliated.
source: Philippine Daily Inquirer Column
By: Oscar Franklin Tan
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Meanness of spirit
In the dark days of apartheid in South Africa, detainees who, despite
being white, resolutely opposed the white supremacist regime, were
often subjected to mean punishment. The scholar and writer Ruth First,
charged with treason, was the first white woman to be jailed under the
so-called 90-Day Detention Law.
In her memoir, “117 Days,” she recalls how, after being held in solitary confinement for 90 days, she was told she was free to go. Her jailers let her make a phone call to her family so she could be fetched. Then, as she prepared to leave, all dressed up for that joyous day, she was told she was being rearrested.
She writes: “Left to face my second round of ninety days, I was filled with loathing and bitterness against the Security Branch detectives who had stage-managed my humiliating phony release and then rearrest; but I was also overcome, for perhaps the first time since my initial arrest, by a wave of self-pity… I sat on the edge of the bed, still in my navy outfit, and shook with sobs.”
One can only suppose that this is more or less how President Duterte wants Sen. Antonio Trillanes to feel after invalidating the amnesty the previous administration had granted to the young senator, and ordering his immediate rearrest. He probably expects to see this angry rebel, who has minced no words in his attacks against him, lower his head, helpless in his loathing and bitterness.
If so, Mr. Duterte and his willing band of enablers and implementers do not know a thing about the spirit of defiant heroism. Ruth First never gave her captors “the satisfaction of an outburst that would reveal my feelings.” She struggled to keep a “tight hold on my emotions and to let no sound of them escape me,” until she knew she was completely by herself.
One expects no less from Sonny Trillanes or, for that matter, from another jailed senator, Leila de Lima. They may occasionally cry or feel depressed. But they have proven themselves to be brave souls beyond intimidation. Trillanes, a veteran of prison life and an irrepressible rebel against all injustice and corruption, seems to flourish even more when he is targeted. Bolstered by her unshakable faith in God and by the steady support of family and friends, De Lima keeps busy in detention issuing her own critical analysis of the nation’s situation, and shows no signs of despair, exhaustion or regret.
If an assassin’s bullet or poison does not stop them, they will surely outlive Mr. Duterte.
In contrast, by allowing his primal thirst for vengeance to define his presidency, and by finding common cause with those who seek to regain public esteem after the people had rejected them for betraying the public’s trust, Mr. Duterte has hardly any time left for the urgent matters that demand the singular attention of the nation’s highest office. Rushing back from another overseas trip, he is no doubt haunted by the thought that some of history’s tyrants lost their positions while they were abroad.
He comes home to a country reeling from the effects of rapid inflation, the sharp depreciation of the peso, and, amid a sustained decline in the value of stock market shares, a growing skepticism about the nation’s future. The people may care little for what happens to De Lima and Trillanes, perhaps even seeing in their travails a warranted comeuppance. But, they will not keep quiet when the prices of food and other basic necessities begin to rise way beyond their earning capacities, when the purchasing power of their money is depleted daily, when they lose their jobs, and when they see their children die from lack of medicines and medical care. That is when they begin to ask where the President is, or whether he knows what he is doing.
For many people, the economy, the law, and politics itself, are complex things that only a few can really fathom. But, they can quickly sense when their leaders are being honest with them, or when they are feeding them nonsense.
Revoking the amnesty that freed Senator Trillanes in 2010 on the ground that he never filed an application for amnesty and never admitted guilt is utter nonsense. Ignoring news videos showing him swearing to the truthfulness of the information he wrote in his amnesty application, the government insists he must produce a certified true copy of his application for amnesty because the original allegedly could not be found in the government’s files. Unless there is valid reason to think that Trillanes’ amnesty had been fraudulently obtained, to demand to see the application form is sheer persecution and harassment.
We apply for all kinds of documents during our lifetime—passport, a driver’s license, a clearance, a marriage license, etc.—knowing fully well that we are not expected to keep a certified true copy of the application itself. We make sure we have the passport, license, permit or certificate at hand when demanded by persons in authority. But, the duty to keep the various forms that have to be accomplished in the course of the application process lies solely with the government office or agency concerned.
The primary function of the law in any society is to stabilize expectations about what is allowed and what is not. Without law, behavior would be subject to the whims of the powerful. All contracts, licenses, passports and government-issued permits would be treated as fake, unless the bearer could prove that he or she went through the entire process of applying. There is no apt word to describe this Kafkaesque attitude but meanness of spirit.
public.lives@gmail.com
source: Philippine Daily Inquirer Column By: Randy David
In her memoir, “117 Days,” she recalls how, after being held in solitary confinement for 90 days, she was told she was free to go. Her jailers let her make a phone call to her family so she could be fetched. Then, as she prepared to leave, all dressed up for that joyous day, she was told she was being rearrested.
She writes: “Left to face my second round of ninety days, I was filled with loathing and bitterness against the Security Branch detectives who had stage-managed my humiliating phony release and then rearrest; but I was also overcome, for perhaps the first time since my initial arrest, by a wave of self-pity… I sat on the edge of the bed, still in my navy outfit, and shook with sobs.”
One can only suppose that this is more or less how President Duterte wants Sen. Antonio Trillanes to feel after invalidating the amnesty the previous administration had granted to the young senator, and ordering his immediate rearrest. He probably expects to see this angry rebel, who has minced no words in his attacks against him, lower his head, helpless in his loathing and bitterness.
If so, Mr. Duterte and his willing band of enablers and implementers do not know a thing about the spirit of defiant heroism. Ruth First never gave her captors “the satisfaction of an outburst that would reveal my feelings.” She struggled to keep a “tight hold on my emotions and to let no sound of them escape me,” until she knew she was completely by herself.
One expects no less from Sonny Trillanes or, for that matter, from another jailed senator, Leila de Lima. They may occasionally cry or feel depressed. But they have proven themselves to be brave souls beyond intimidation. Trillanes, a veteran of prison life and an irrepressible rebel against all injustice and corruption, seems to flourish even more when he is targeted. Bolstered by her unshakable faith in God and by the steady support of family and friends, De Lima keeps busy in detention issuing her own critical analysis of the nation’s situation, and shows no signs of despair, exhaustion or regret.
If an assassin’s bullet or poison does not stop them, they will surely outlive Mr. Duterte.
In contrast, by allowing his primal thirst for vengeance to define his presidency, and by finding common cause with those who seek to regain public esteem after the people had rejected them for betraying the public’s trust, Mr. Duterte has hardly any time left for the urgent matters that demand the singular attention of the nation’s highest office. Rushing back from another overseas trip, he is no doubt haunted by the thought that some of history’s tyrants lost their positions while they were abroad.
He comes home to a country reeling from the effects of rapid inflation, the sharp depreciation of the peso, and, amid a sustained decline in the value of stock market shares, a growing skepticism about the nation’s future. The people may care little for what happens to De Lima and Trillanes, perhaps even seeing in their travails a warranted comeuppance. But, they will not keep quiet when the prices of food and other basic necessities begin to rise way beyond their earning capacities, when the purchasing power of their money is depleted daily, when they lose their jobs, and when they see their children die from lack of medicines and medical care. That is when they begin to ask where the President is, or whether he knows what he is doing.
For many people, the economy, the law, and politics itself, are complex things that only a few can really fathom. But, they can quickly sense when their leaders are being honest with them, or when they are feeding them nonsense.
Revoking the amnesty that freed Senator Trillanes in 2010 on the ground that he never filed an application for amnesty and never admitted guilt is utter nonsense. Ignoring news videos showing him swearing to the truthfulness of the information he wrote in his amnesty application, the government insists he must produce a certified true copy of his application for amnesty because the original allegedly could not be found in the government’s files. Unless there is valid reason to think that Trillanes’ amnesty had been fraudulently obtained, to demand to see the application form is sheer persecution and harassment.
We apply for all kinds of documents during our lifetime—passport, a driver’s license, a clearance, a marriage license, etc.—knowing fully well that we are not expected to keep a certified true copy of the application itself. We make sure we have the passport, license, permit or certificate at hand when demanded by persons in authority. But, the duty to keep the various forms that have to be accomplished in the course of the application process lies solely with the government office or agency concerned.
The primary function of the law in any society is to stabilize expectations about what is allowed and what is not. Without law, behavior would be subject to the whims of the powerful. All contracts, licenses, passports and government-issued permits would be treated as fake, unless the bearer could prove that he or she went through the entire process of applying. There is no apt word to describe this Kafkaesque attitude but meanness of spirit.
public.lives@gmail.com
source: Philippine Daily Inquirer Column By: Randy David
The Great Inflation
Of expectations, that is. When it was announced that the President
would address the nation on Sept. 11, the generation of martial law
babies and those older immediately (and ominously) connected it with the
great dictator’s birth anniversary. By the next day, the Armed Forces
had to issue the kind of statement that triggers panic — don’t panic, it
said.
Reacting to social media chatter and reporters picking up on the buzz and asking the AFP if, indeed, there was an ongoing movement of armored military vehicles, the Armed Forces replied, no; but even if there were — and there are, and have been, and will be — movements of armored vehicles, that’s to be expected in the vicinity of armed camps, so stay calm, don’t panic, do not fall prey to the evil designs of rumor-mongers.
But that can be explained away as an excess of zeal on the part of the military. What really put the current state of the ruling Noob Society on full display was when the Palace made an announcement early yesterday afternoon. The next 20 minutes or so that gripped the nation can be summarized as follows:
Presidential Communications Operations Office: No presidential presser anymore, we can’t say why.
Bong Go: No presser but speech to proceed at 3:15.
Salvador Panelo: No presser was scheduled in the first place.
Harry Roque: No cancellation happened; what was scheduled will push through but under modified format.
Indeed, what there would be, Roque purred, was a “tête-à-tête.” Panelo would read questions from the media, which, however, would be barred from the actual tête-à-tête. The Malacañang Press Corps had been biding its time, literally kept in the dark — someone, somewhere, didn’t think it was necessary to switch on the lights in the media briefing room. But rumblings of discontent, shared by foreign and domestic media practitioners alike, provoked a withdrawal of questions from the forthcoming tête-à-tête.
In the end, the tête-à-tête proved a test of patience, as the President’s complexion bore a startling — and distracting — resemblance to Among Ed Panlilio (hopefully, a makeup artist somewhere is going to take the blame). A foreign journalist from abroad commented online that it was a scene straight out of the Vladimir Putin playbook. For the domestic crowd, the only thing missing was the late Ronnie Nathanielsz, though Panelo proved an equally obliging substitute — exclaiming, at one point, with pointed enthusiasm, that the President looked very healthy, indeed.
The President ended up revealing what had been clear since his particularly ill-tempered press conference when he returned earlier than expected from Jordan: The scheme of the Solicitor General to pin down Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV has caused unforeseen complications, not just in terms of a debate within the Armed Forces and general contempt over the move’s legal reasoning on the part of the legal community, but also the continuation of the erosion of the perception that the President’s word is, literally, the law.
Judges dug in their heels — or, to be precise, shuffled their papers — saying they had to hold hearings and study the case. This led to the military and police taking on a more neutral stance, subordinating their actions to the courts, leading, in the end, to a swift, surprising consensus to let the courts handle matters without rushing to an actual arrest.
If the past two months have seen the startling transformation of the President from a strongman whom no one dared oppose, to a tired, cantankerous senior citizen overwhelmed by events, then the Trillanes saga offered the chance to prove who’s boss. It’s turning out that there remains residual self-respect among legal practitioners to resist the Executive’s whims—gently, but firmly enough (so far).
The President’s bullying and hectoring has found its match in Trillanes, who has never been subtle and whose lack of subtlety is apparently tailor-made for confronting the current Chief Executive. Indeed, the whole message in the presidential tête-à-tête, if there was one to be found, was that the President has discovered the limits to his power and charisma. There are lines more and more of his subordinates won’t cross. He needed to save face, and so he had a chat on TV.
mlquezon3@gmail.com
source: Philippine Daily Inquirer Column By: Manuel L. Quezon III
Reacting to social media chatter and reporters picking up on the buzz and asking the AFP if, indeed, there was an ongoing movement of armored military vehicles, the Armed Forces replied, no; but even if there were — and there are, and have been, and will be — movements of armored vehicles, that’s to be expected in the vicinity of armed camps, so stay calm, don’t panic, do not fall prey to the evil designs of rumor-mongers.
But that can be explained away as an excess of zeal on the part of the military. What really put the current state of the ruling Noob Society on full display was when the Palace made an announcement early yesterday afternoon. The next 20 minutes or so that gripped the nation can be summarized as follows:
Presidential Communications Operations Office: No presidential presser anymore, we can’t say why.
Bong Go: No presser but speech to proceed at 3:15.
Salvador Panelo: No presser was scheduled in the first place.
Harry Roque: No cancellation happened; what was scheduled will push through but under modified format.
Indeed, what there would be, Roque purred, was a “tête-à-tête.” Panelo would read questions from the media, which, however, would be barred from the actual tête-à-tête. The Malacañang Press Corps had been biding its time, literally kept in the dark — someone, somewhere, didn’t think it was necessary to switch on the lights in the media briefing room. But rumblings of discontent, shared by foreign and domestic media practitioners alike, provoked a withdrawal of questions from the forthcoming tête-à-tête.
In the end, the tête-à-tête proved a test of patience, as the President’s complexion bore a startling — and distracting — resemblance to Among Ed Panlilio (hopefully, a makeup artist somewhere is going to take the blame). A foreign journalist from abroad commented online that it was a scene straight out of the Vladimir Putin playbook. For the domestic crowd, the only thing missing was the late Ronnie Nathanielsz, though Panelo proved an equally obliging substitute — exclaiming, at one point, with pointed enthusiasm, that the President looked very healthy, indeed.
The President ended up revealing what had been clear since his particularly ill-tempered press conference when he returned earlier than expected from Jordan: The scheme of the Solicitor General to pin down Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV has caused unforeseen complications, not just in terms of a debate within the Armed Forces and general contempt over the move’s legal reasoning on the part of the legal community, but also the continuation of the erosion of the perception that the President’s word is, literally, the law.
Judges dug in their heels — or, to be precise, shuffled their papers — saying they had to hold hearings and study the case. This led to the military and police taking on a more neutral stance, subordinating their actions to the courts, leading, in the end, to a swift, surprising consensus to let the courts handle matters without rushing to an actual arrest.
If the past two months have seen the startling transformation of the President from a strongman whom no one dared oppose, to a tired, cantankerous senior citizen overwhelmed by events, then the Trillanes saga offered the chance to prove who’s boss. It’s turning out that there remains residual self-respect among legal practitioners to resist the Executive’s whims—gently, but firmly enough (so far).
The President’s bullying and hectoring has found its match in Trillanes, who has never been subtle and whose lack of subtlety is apparently tailor-made for confronting the current Chief Executive. Indeed, the whole message in the presidential tête-à-tête, if there was one to be found, was that the President has discovered the limits to his power and charisma. There are lines more and more of his subordinates won’t cross. He needed to save face, and so he had a chat on TV.
mlquezon3@gmail.com
source: Philippine Daily Inquirer Column By: Manuel L. Quezon III
DU30’s prerogative?
AS this is written, President Rodrigo Duterte is about to address the
nation in a live TV broadcast. Malacañang has given no indication what
exactly he intends to talk about. He arrived last Saturday from a
week-long arms-shopping trip to Israel and Jordan, which did not bear
much fruit. The news cycle has since been dominated by his controversial
attempt to revoke a 2010 presidential amnesty granted by then President
Benigno S. Aquino 3rd, with the full concurrence of Congress, to former
Navy lieutenant-turned-senator Antonio Trillanes 4th for his
participation in three destabilization efforts in 2003, 2006 and 2007
against the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo government.
This is now the subject of a raging debate, and no one has accused DU30 of winning it.
It is not for me or anybody else to tell him what to talk about. But he has a vast field to cover if he wants to be informative and forthright. He could begin by talking about his Israeli and Jordanian trips: what happened in those visits? He traveled with a planeload of 400 people, according to the news reports; the taxpayers would like to know if they were all freeloaders who may be part of the reasons why we now have Southeast Asia’s highest inflation rate of 6.4 percent.
What happened in Israel
In Jerusalem, a number of good things happened. DU30 discovered the God of Abraham is real, all-wise and all-powerful, and not in the least “stupid”; that Hitler was absolutely insane for ordering the Holocaust which killed 6 million Jews; and that he owed former US President Barack Obama (who is incidentally not a Jew) an apology for calling him a “son of a whore” in 2016. It would be good to hear DU30 say something about all these. But more importantly, it would be good for him to tell us what happened to his well-announced plan to acquire the most modern military arms and equipment from the Jewish state.
By this, he had intended to show his “independence” from the US, the country’s historic ally, which he accused of giving the Philippines only hand-me-down arms and equipment. Since then, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross have written DU30, presumably on behalf of President Donald Trump, a letter offering the Philippines a range of modern military equipment. Is it true Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed no interest whatsoever in selling DU30 any Israeli arms and equipment?
What happened in Jordan
It was in Amman, Jordan where DU30 finally got some discussions on military purchases going. Jordan agreed to transfer two refurbished Bell A-HI Cobra attack helicopters to the DU30 government by July. Unless I am completely mistaken, these are slightly used US-made helicopters. But the more interesting question about the Jordanian visit was that it was cut short by one day without any official explanation for it. Was there anything Malacañang failed to tell us? Perhaps there was.
Earlier in March, DU30 had a lively exchange with Jordanian Prince Zeid Raad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2014 to 2018, who once played a central role in organizing the International Criminal Court at the Hague, where a private party has brought allegations of crimes against humanity against DU30.
Zeid said DU30 needed to be psychiatrically evaluated after he threatened to go after Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, who has been trying to inquire into the drug killings in the Philippines. DU30 said Zeid, coming from a monarchy, was unfamiliar with the ways of constitutional government. Having apologized to Obama while he was in Israel, people expected DU30 to apologize to Zeid, a blood relative of King Abdullah 2nd, before or during his visit to Amman. But he did not, so people are asking whether that had anything to do with his decision to shorten his four-day visit. It would be good to hear from DU30 on this.
The Trillanes amnesty
Or he could explain more comprehensively his attempt to cancel Aquino’s final and irrevocable amnesty in favor of Trillanes. This has been lengthily discussed in the press, but his latest statement seems to provide a definitive proof of how he completely misunderstands the constitutional powers and prerogatives of the President. He says his attempt to cancel Aquino’s Proclamation 75 of November 24, 2010 by his own Proclamation 572 on August 31, 2018 is an exercise of “presidential prerogative.”
This is a complete misreading of the Constitution. The president’s power and prerogative, under Article VII, Section 19 of the Constitution is “to grant amnesty with the concurrence of a majority of all the members of the Congress.” It is not the opposite. The Constitution does not grant the president the power to revoke or cancel any amnesty previously granted by another president under the same provision, even with the concurrence of all the members of Congress.
Least of all does it grant him the power to revoke any such amnesty without the concurrence of any member of Congress. Some propagandists have tried to advance the view that while the consent of Congress is necessary and essential to give validity to the president’s amnesty, it does not share the president’s power to issue such amnesty. This is probably the last word in sophistry, but you don’t need to have studied Aristotelian logic to show this is bunk. The power to grant amnesty is defined by the Constitution as a shared power of the president and the Congress.
Gazmin’s intervention
The only pro-government argument that seems worth exploring is the one advanced by the most unlikely source, the presidential counsel Salvador Panelo, which claims that the official who granted Trillanes and company their amnesty was not Aquino himself but only his Secretary of National Defense, Voltaire Gazmin, who had no constitutional authority to do so. Since Aquino could not delegate his power to Gazmin, if it were shown beyond doubt that the amnesty was granted by Gazmin rather than Aquino, then it would be void ab initio.
But was that, in fact, the case?
It appears there is no dispute on the authenticity of Aquino’s signature on Proclamation 75; Gazmin intervened solely as processing officer, pursuant to the rules of procedure in the processing of amnesty applications. His participation could not invalidate the amnesty unless it was shown that he, rather than Aquino, granted amnesty to the applicants without legitimate constitutional authority. If DU30 can show this to have been the case, then he could question not Trillanes’s amnesty alone, but that of 38 other officers and 53 enlisted men as well. But can he?
Ousting DU30
This is also a good time for the President to talk with some coherence about his claim that certain groups are out to oust him in October. He has identified three groups, but Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has confirmed the alleged threat from only one group — the Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army/National Democratic Front. The communists reportedly started planning their move against DU30 in 2016, then finalized it in 2018. As an old student of Philippine politics, I have serious reservations about it. Most, if not all, of DU30’s problems are self-inflicted.
But assuming Lorenzana is correct, DU30 should have been the first one to know about it. Why then did he have to appoint seasoned members of the CPP/NPA/NDF to the Cabinet, give imprimatur to the idea of a coalition government, and allow his Cabinet secretary, the rebel ex-priest and vice chairman of the NDF, Leon Evasco Jr., to conduct his grassroots campaign for the development of a Philippine socialist state?
Why did he make a big show of separating economically and militarily from the US and aligning himself with China and Russia against the world? And how does this explain his latest public statements that the CIA is out to kill him? Will he care to tell the nation whether he sees an active alliance between the CIA and the communists? Or will he care to remind the nation that he had long warned us that only two out of his five statements are to be taken seriously?
The economic crisis
Did DU30 decide to speak to the nation because the looming economic crisis threatens to go out of control? If so, it will not be enough to blame Donald Trump’s “tariffs” for the skyrocketing consumer prices that have given us the highest inflation rate of 6.4 percent nationwide (9 percent in Bicol) in all of Southeast Asia. The people must have enough food on their table and must not be made to choose between “rice with bukbok” (weevils) and “bukbok with some rice,” and imported galunggong.
Faced with the massive complaints against all the negative effects of the TRAIN (Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion) Law, DU30 should decide whether the problem could be solved by scrapping the said law, or simply by renaming it TRABAHO (for Tax Reform for Attracting Better and High-quality Opportunities). Propaganda allows the government to tell the starving masses how much they are enjoying the bounties of good government.
DU30 will have to decide whether Davao should carve the biggest share of the national budget while the other regions get nothing. He will also have to decide whether the family of his special assistant Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go, whom he had long described as a “billionaire,” should have all the infrastructure contracts denied to more deserving competitors. Finally, he will have to decide whether or not to keep the large number of incompetent and corrupt officials who have become an albatross around the neck of his administration.
I do not expect DU30 to have the courage to fire any of these scoundrels right now, but never before have I felt any desire to be wrong about this ex-mayor of Davao.
IN MEMORIAM. It is with the deepest sorrow that I share with friends and readers the news about the passing of Ambassador Jose V. Romero Jr., 84, in Baltimore, Maryland. The information is sketchy, but everything is being done by his bereaved family to make sure his remains are brought to Manila as soon as possible. Joe served as Philippine ambassador to Rome, and as permanent representative to the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Until his passing, he chaired the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations, and was a professorial lecturer in political economy at the University of Asia and the Pacific, where he earned a doctorate in development management. A product of Trinity College, Cambridge, he took graduate studies in economics at Georgetown University later. One of his enduring causes was to fight for the coconut farmers. A mutual friend Charlie Avila was able to pay him his last respects before he passed. “Finish the fight,” he told Charlie before he expired.
Joe contributed occasional pieces of substance to the Manila Times. He had a passion for excellence and he lived the life of a devoted Catholic Christian gentleman. I ask the pious reader to offer a prayer for the repose of his soul.
fstatad@gmail.com
source: Manila Times Column By FRANCISCO S. TATAD
This is now the subject of a raging debate, and no one has accused DU30 of winning it.
It is not for me or anybody else to tell him what to talk about. But he has a vast field to cover if he wants to be informative and forthright. He could begin by talking about his Israeli and Jordanian trips: what happened in those visits? He traveled with a planeload of 400 people, according to the news reports; the taxpayers would like to know if they were all freeloaders who may be part of the reasons why we now have Southeast Asia’s highest inflation rate of 6.4 percent.
What happened in Israel
In Jerusalem, a number of good things happened. DU30 discovered the God of Abraham is real, all-wise and all-powerful, and not in the least “stupid”; that Hitler was absolutely insane for ordering the Holocaust which killed 6 million Jews; and that he owed former US President Barack Obama (who is incidentally not a Jew) an apology for calling him a “son of a whore” in 2016. It would be good to hear DU30 say something about all these. But more importantly, it would be good for him to tell us what happened to his well-announced plan to acquire the most modern military arms and equipment from the Jewish state.
By this, he had intended to show his “independence” from the US, the country’s historic ally, which he accused of giving the Philippines only hand-me-down arms and equipment. Since then, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross have written DU30, presumably on behalf of President Donald Trump, a letter offering the Philippines a range of modern military equipment. Is it true Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed no interest whatsoever in selling DU30 any Israeli arms and equipment?
What happened in Jordan
It was in Amman, Jordan where DU30 finally got some discussions on military purchases going. Jordan agreed to transfer two refurbished Bell A-HI Cobra attack helicopters to the DU30 government by July. Unless I am completely mistaken, these are slightly used US-made helicopters. But the more interesting question about the Jordanian visit was that it was cut short by one day without any official explanation for it. Was there anything Malacañang failed to tell us? Perhaps there was.
Earlier in March, DU30 had a lively exchange with Jordanian Prince Zeid Raad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2014 to 2018, who once played a central role in organizing the International Criminal Court at the Hague, where a private party has brought allegations of crimes against humanity against DU30.
Zeid said DU30 needed to be psychiatrically evaluated after he threatened to go after Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, who has been trying to inquire into the drug killings in the Philippines. DU30 said Zeid, coming from a monarchy, was unfamiliar with the ways of constitutional government. Having apologized to Obama while he was in Israel, people expected DU30 to apologize to Zeid, a blood relative of King Abdullah 2nd, before or during his visit to Amman. But he did not, so people are asking whether that had anything to do with his decision to shorten his four-day visit. It would be good to hear from DU30 on this.
The Trillanes amnesty
Or he could explain more comprehensively his attempt to cancel Aquino’s final and irrevocable amnesty in favor of Trillanes. This has been lengthily discussed in the press, but his latest statement seems to provide a definitive proof of how he completely misunderstands the constitutional powers and prerogatives of the President. He says his attempt to cancel Aquino’s Proclamation 75 of November 24, 2010 by his own Proclamation 572 on August 31, 2018 is an exercise of “presidential prerogative.”
This is a complete misreading of the Constitution. The president’s power and prerogative, under Article VII, Section 19 of the Constitution is “to grant amnesty with the concurrence of a majority of all the members of the Congress.” It is not the opposite. The Constitution does not grant the president the power to revoke or cancel any amnesty previously granted by another president under the same provision, even with the concurrence of all the members of Congress.
Least of all does it grant him the power to revoke any such amnesty without the concurrence of any member of Congress. Some propagandists have tried to advance the view that while the consent of Congress is necessary and essential to give validity to the president’s amnesty, it does not share the president’s power to issue such amnesty. This is probably the last word in sophistry, but you don’t need to have studied Aristotelian logic to show this is bunk. The power to grant amnesty is defined by the Constitution as a shared power of the president and the Congress.
Gazmin’s intervention
The only pro-government argument that seems worth exploring is the one advanced by the most unlikely source, the presidential counsel Salvador Panelo, which claims that the official who granted Trillanes and company their amnesty was not Aquino himself but only his Secretary of National Defense, Voltaire Gazmin, who had no constitutional authority to do so. Since Aquino could not delegate his power to Gazmin, if it were shown beyond doubt that the amnesty was granted by Gazmin rather than Aquino, then it would be void ab initio.
But was that, in fact, the case?
It appears there is no dispute on the authenticity of Aquino’s signature on Proclamation 75; Gazmin intervened solely as processing officer, pursuant to the rules of procedure in the processing of amnesty applications. His participation could not invalidate the amnesty unless it was shown that he, rather than Aquino, granted amnesty to the applicants without legitimate constitutional authority. If DU30 can show this to have been the case, then he could question not Trillanes’s amnesty alone, but that of 38 other officers and 53 enlisted men as well. But can he?
Ousting DU30
This is also a good time for the President to talk with some coherence about his claim that certain groups are out to oust him in October. He has identified three groups, but Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has confirmed the alleged threat from only one group — the Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army/National Democratic Front. The communists reportedly started planning their move against DU30 in 2016, then finalized it in 2018. As an old student of Philippine politics, I have serious reservations about it. Most, if not all, of DU30’s problems are self-inflicted.
But assuming Lorenzana is correct, DU30 should have been the first one to know about it. Why then did he have to appoint seasoned members of the CPP/NPA/NDF to the Cabinet, give imprimatur to the idea of a coalition government, and allow his Cabinet secretary, the rebel ex-priest and vice chairman of the NDF, Leon Evasco Jr., to conduct his grassroots campaign for the development of a Philippine socialist state?
Why did he make a big show of separating economically and militarily from the US and aligning himself with China and Russia against the world? And how does this explain his latest public statements that the CIA is out to kill him? Will he care to tell the nation whether he sees an active alliance between the CIA and the communists? Or will he care to remind the nation that he had long warned us that only two out of his five statements are to be taken seriously?
The economic crisis
Did DU30 decide to speak to the nation because the looming economic crisis threatens to go out of control? If so, it will not be enough to blame Donald Trump’s “tariffs” for the skyrocketing consumer prices that have given us the highest inflation rate of 6.4 percent nationwide (9 percent in Bicol) in all of Southeast Asia. The people must have enough food on their table and must not be made to choose between “rice with bukbok” (weevils) and “bukbok with some rice,” and imported galunggong.
Faced with the massive complaints against all the negative effects of the TRAIN (Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion) Law, DU30 should decide whether the problem could be solved by scrapping the said law, or simply by renaming it TRABAHO (for Tax Reform for Attracting Better and High-quality Opportunities). Propaganda allows the government to tell the starving masses how much they are enjoying the bounties of good government.
DU30 will have to decide whether Davao should carve the biggest share of the national budget while the other regions get nothing. He will also have to decide whether the family of his special assistant Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go, whom he had long described as a “billionaire,” should have all the infrastructure contracts denied to more deserving competitors. Finally, he will have to decide whether or not to keep the large number of incompetent and corrupt officials who have become an albatross around the neck of his administration.
I do not expect DU30 to have the courage to fire any of these scoundrels right now, but never before have I felt any desire to be wrong about this ex-mayor of Davao.
IN MEMORIAM. It is with the deepest sorrow that I share with friends and readers the news about the passing of Ambassador Jose V. Romero Jr., 84, in Baltimore, Maryland. The information is sketchy, but everything is being done by his bereaved family to make sure his remains are brought to Manila as soon as possible. Joe served as Philippine ambassador to Rome, and as permanent representative to the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Until his passing, he chaired the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations, and was a professorial lecturer in political economy at the University of Asia and the Pacific, where he earned a doctorate in development management. A product of Trinity College, Cambridge, he took graduate studies in economics at Georgetown University later. One of his enduring causes was to fight for the coconut farmers. A mutual friend Charlie Avila was able to pay him his last respects before he passed. “Finish the fight,” he told Charlie before he expired.
Joe contributed occasional pieces of substance to the Manila Times. He had a passion for excellence and he lived the life of a devoted Catholic Christian gentleman. I ask the pious reader to offer a prayer for the repose of his soul.
fstatad@gmail.com
source: Manila Times Column By FRANCISCO S. TATAD
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