From wrong, no right is ever engendered. That is a basic principle of law. It is, more fundamentally, an imperative of practical reasonableness. One can never do wrong and expect transgression to mature into a moral or a legal claim. That is the principle that has been foremost in my thoughts ever since Kadamay’s members commenced occupancy of the units of a housing project intended, I am informed, for armed forces personnel. It was bad enough that they defied all law and entered into occupation of that over which they absolutely had no title. It was even worse when government appeared to have acquiesced, promising to build better units for the intended beneficiaries—as if that cured the basic iniquity!
It is not the obligation of the State to provide decent housing that is in issue here—and even that is good subject matter for debate. Either the State is obliged to provide housing for all—as absurd as it is impracticable a proposition—or it is obliged to provide housing to none—which does not seem consonant with our Constitution—or it is its bounden duty to provide housing for some. And that, of course, is where the knotty problem lies: To determine who should be beneficiaries. It is well known that those who had “homes along the riles” were provided with government housing, but many of these units were eventually transferred—“sold”—surreptitiously to others—with the grantees stealthily returning to their old haunts! Should they be given housing again? And should shelter be provided without cost? If government constructs homes for the homeless without cost to them, it can do so only at taxpayers’ expense. Is that distributively just? Would that be tolerable by the standards of Rawls’ dual principles of distributive justice?
From what we have been told—unless all the reports we got were more instances of “false news”—Kadamay is not espousing an ideology that rejects private ownership, one that maintains that housing and such other necessities must be socialized. In fact, by occupying housing units, they were usurping possession and claiming title—except that it is a claim that causes the whole edifice of the law on property to shudder ominously: Need. We need it, therefore we have a right to it. There are indeed some instances when reasoning in this fashion makes for a good moral argument. When a father’s very ill son has need of a life-saving drug that is beyond his means, morally, he has a right to it, although were he to spirit away the item, he may be prosecuted for theft. But this certainly was not the case here. Many of Kadamay’s members—from the pictures we have of them—appear fit to work and capable of gainful employment. Can they then be said to be in such a “need” as to justify their usurpation of what which is not theirs?
We can, of course, radically alter our concepts of ownership—and perhaps even abolish the whole legal regime altogether, although there seems to be something about the “economical ego” that makes owning an “incident” of subjectivity. Until we do that, however, and our Constitution continues to ordain a capitalist regime (albeit qualified by social justice provisions) and our Civil Code lays down the requisites of ownership as well as the requirements for the acquisition of title, it does not serve our purposes as an organized society to tolerate that brand of populism that, quite frankly, makes a mockery of law. Persons submit to law because they want to be secure in what they can expect. I submit to the authority of the police and obey the provisions of the penal code because I want to be secure in the expectation that while I await public conveyance at the road curb, It will not be fair game for anyone who wants to practice his firing skills on me!
If Kadamay’s members are not asked to pay for the units they have occupied, they should in the very least be required to perform some form of service that will make housing for other homeless Filipinos possible as well, and then let us firmly decide too whether or not usurpation of real property is still an offense and whether forcible entry or unlawful detainer remain actionable wrongs. Our laws are imperfect—and that belabors the obvious, because it is merely a restatement of the ontological principle that human persons are fallible! But the rule of law protects against two things: The instability and uncertainty of life in a state where laws have cased to bind, and the pretensions of an autocrat who promises a people respite from the vexations of life in a lawless society. Both are evil! There is an argument in logic called “reductio ad absurdum,” and it consists in showing that when not-p is absurd, then p must be true. That is a good argument for adherence to law!
rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@yahoo.com