It was a gathering on the UN Convention on Corruption. In attendance were the top corruption-busters of the country, at least as ordained by the Constitution: Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales and Presiding Justice Amparo Cabotaje-Tang of the Sandiganbayan. Other members of the Cabinet were in attendance as were other government functionaries. President Digong delivered a trademark speech, only this time with less expletives, but once more, the drug menace was what took most of his time. I listenedto the telecast, but it was obvious that some in the audience at Malacanang were not. The President endeavored to impress on his listeners the gravity of the problem citing statistics he had cited repeatedly in earlier speeches. He riled against those who had taken issue with him on the aggressiveness of the campaign that, it seems to many, included extrajudicial killings and summary executions. More disturbingly, he made clear that he would not leave the CIDG personnel implicated in what NBI has announced to be a “rub-out” resulting in the murder of Albuera Mayor Rolando Espinosa to their devices. He promised to stand by them. And that, of course, is troubling. And he knows the risks he courts. He talked of prosecution before the International Criminal Court, possible impeachment and the intriguing and scheming of the Yellows. But he is a believer in what he calls “destiny”: whatever happens to him and his presidency has been foreordained.
Obviously aware that the Rule of Law is an issue raised because of the rising daily body count and the unequivocal statements he has made in favor of police officers killing suspects who violently resist apprehension (and police claim that all their victims did fight back!), he challenged his audience with the question: Under these dire circumstances, what is the role of the rule of law?
Of course, there is an answer to that question and it is the most obvious one. The role of the rule of law is to guarantee that everything, no matter the exigency or the urgency, is done according to law, unless the law itself provides for the exercise of discretion—and even this is subject to judicial scrutiny. The Rule of Law cannot provide for its own eclipse. Although we have been disillusioned by the promises of the Enlightenment, we not lost faith in reason. In fact, at a time that the unexamined assumptions by which we orientated our lives, the uncriticized norms by which we established order, the common world views that allowed us to agree on most things have all but been torn to smithereens by unrelenting pluralism, reason alone remains as the last court of appeal, since we cannot even agree that appeal to God and his designs is available. And while our laws are far from perfect and courts occasionally arrive at absurd results, law remains a reliable reflection of human reason and the distillation of rational experience. That is why the rule of law matters a lot.
The Rule of Law is the rule of coherence, although, it should be readily admitted that there are some parts of the law that are incoherent. The Rule of Law is institutionalized critiquing insofar as evidence is demanded and stringently evaluated.
And the Rule of Law creates the necessary distance between events and their resolution. The institutions of law are institutions of distanciation—so that one does not gun down a drug peddler when one sees one, no matter one’s dislike for peddlers, but observes that space that is to be filled by evidence and the resolution of issues, factual and legal. Investigation by prosecutors, trials and appeals separate the crime from the punishment to forestall the rashness of vengeance and the disorder it breeds.
The Rule of Law is the best argument against the criminality of the offender! No, the question is not rhetorical, and the answer is neither trite nor well-worn! To sacrifice the rule of law is to sacrifice one of the most important gains of rationality!