BY his words and deeds, House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez seems to believe that he is the most powerful man in the country.
While President Rodrigo Duterte pays lip service, at least, to the Supreme Court’s role as the final arbiter in all legal matters brought before it, Speaker Alvarez observes no such niceties. When petitioners asked the Supreme Court to compel Congress to convene a joint session to debate the President’s declaration of martial law in Mindanao, the Speaker declared he would tear up any such order from the tribunal.
The Speaker correctly observes that the legislature and the judiciary are co-equal branches of government, and that the Court cannot dictate upon Congress what it may or may not do. But like the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Speaker Alvarez apparently believes that some animals are more equal than others.
In the latest manifestation of this superior attitude, Alvarez has threatened to cite three Court of Appeals justices for contempt for ordering the House to free six employees of the Ilocos Norte provincial government, who have been detained since May 29, purportedly for refusing to tell the truth over the alleged misuse of tobacco excise tax funds some five years ago. In his remarks to the press, the Speaker has also threatened to dissolve the Court of Appeals, which he says is not even a co-equal body, and move to have the three justices disbarred for “ignorance of the law.”
“They are merely a creation of Congress. We can dissolve them any time,” Alvarez declared.
In ordering the release of the six Ilocos Norte employees, the Court of Appeals special fourth division was merely responding to their petition for the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus, a basic human right that protects citizens against arbitrary detention.
Not content with bullying the appellate court justices, the House is also threatening to detain Ilocos Notre Gov. Imee Marcos, along with her brother, former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr., if she snubs the July 25 meeting of the House committee on good government and public accountability.
To drive home the point, the chairman of that committee, Surigao del Sur Rep. Johnny Pimentel, even showed journalists the “detention chamber” to hold those who defy his panel—including Marcos and the three justices of the Court of Appeals.
Playing at being magnanimous, Pimentel added that Marcos would not be treated like a prisoner, as she would be allowed to go around hin her detention cell at the Batasan Complex, could use her cell phone and access the internet.
But the real message was not lost on those who saw Pimentel and the House sergeant-at-arms, smiling at the cameras while standing over a cot where they would detain anyone who had the temerity to defy their will.
This Congress, more than any before it perhaps, seems mad with power. But in their hubris, they should remember that those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.