I’m sorry, but yesterday’s headlines fail the no-spin test. Unfortunately for the people opposed to the declaration of martial law in Mindanao, President Rodrigo Duterte did not say he was going to ignore both Congress and the Supreme Court on the matter of the imposition’s legality or even its propriety.
Duterte’s extemporaneous declaration last Saturday, made before the soldiers belonging to the Second Mechanized Brigade of the Philippine Army in Iligan City, had nothing to do with the appreciation of Congress or the high court of the martial law proclamation. What he said was that he will believe what the soldiers and the police involved in fighting the terrorist Maute Group told him about whether or not it was safe to lift the declaration.
Why, after all, would Duterte listen to lawmakers and justices ensconced in the safe confines of Manila about lifting military rule in Mindanao? That’s even worse than a rape joke—that’s just plain stupid.
This is what Duterte said:
“Until the police and the armed forces say the Philippines is safe, this martial law will continue. I will not listen to others. The Supreme Court, Congress, they are not here. Are they the ones dying and losing blood, bleeding, hemorrhaging because there is no help, no reinforcement? It’s not them.”
First of all, Duterte was talking to soldiers, whose morale he was very concerned about lifting in the face of what now appears to be a protracted siege operation in order to liberate Marawi City from the Maute terrorists. Second of all, he certainly did not say that he will ignore either Congress or the Supreme Court if they do decide to revoke his martial law declaration.
Right now, there is no vote in Congress that shuts down Duterte’s martial law declaration. Despite the noises made by the usual Yellow suspects among the ranks of the lawmakers in either chamber, that constitutional provision calling for a vote that may revoke martial law hasn’t even been started by a formal demand.
Meanwhile, despite how easy the 1987 Constitution made it for any citizen (not just members of Congress) to go to the Supreme Court to challenge the legality of the imposition, that hasn’t happened yet, either. Not even the human rights crowd, which has been sounding like it has already decided that the terrorists’ rights should be the paramount consideration in Marawi, have gone to the court to start the process of nullifying Duterte’s declaration there.
So what’s to ignore? The spin, that’s what.
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Of course, all this doesn’t mean that Congress will not vote on the matter of Duterte’s martial law declaration as soon as some lawmaker calls for it. Neither does this mean that the high court will never rule on a citizen’s challenge, especially since the charter expressly states that a ruling should be issued within a fixed time after it is brought to the court formally.
All I’m saying is that the President never said that he will ignore the two institutions once they act on the matter. But for now, what the President is saying is that he will not listen to those lawmakers or Supreme Court justices who criticize the imposition—but who have not even started the process of revoking it.
Mind you, Duterte’s usual critics in the Senate and the House have already expressed their opposition to the declaration. And no less than Supreme Court Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno has declared her own misgivings about martial law, in a speech last Friday.
Personally, I don’t think any lawmaker who knows what he is doing is going to challenge martial law for a variety of reasons, but I’ll just cite two: 1) The possibility of being voted out of office for being perceived to be in league with (or at least sympathetic to) terrorists is too great and 2) the near-certainty of losing the vote in such a one-sided manner will preclude it.
As for the Supreme Court, I think it will steer clear of issuing any ruling that it knows it is not competent to make, assuming a citizen or a group of citizens comes before it to file a complaint. The justices—or most of them, anyway—understand that they do not have the same information on the terrorist threat in Mindanao that Duterte has, nor can it acquire that information.
The Manila media, of course, have no such problems. The spin most of them placed on Duterte’s statement before the troops who were going to be deployed in the bloody expulsion of the Maute in Marawi showed that they have no qualms about hectoring Congress and the Court in order to make them hit back at Duterte by revoking his martial law declaration.
I can understand if the media feel that martial law is such a threat to them that they would do anything, including twist Duterte’s statements, in order to stop it. But the mere fact that Duterte has been doing all he can to comply with constitutional prescriptions on the current parameters for declaring martial law, including signing the order in Russia in order to make the 48-hour deadline for informing Congress, belie the image of a president who will “ignore” the institutions that act as safeguards for abuse of martial law.
I wish this was all just about an inappropriate rape joke, which Duterte, in his usual manner, made. But the spin is inescapably present—and ultimately hurts the first real effort to be rid of the terrorism that has kept Mindanao from fulfilling its long-held promise.