After her highly visible role in both the impeachment and quo warranto proceedings against Atty. Meilou Sereno, it wasn’t entirely surprising that the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court would turn out to be Teresita Leonardo-De Castro.
The opposition is predictably up in arms against her. The most polite criticism from them is that she’ll only serve less than two months before her mandatory retirement. Which of course begs the question: If she’s so unpopular with the opposition, would they be happier if she’s CJ for two years? Or two decades?
De Castro is the second most senior on the bench, after Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio. She’s served in government for 45 years, starting in fact as a Supreme Court clerk, and was presiding justice of the Sandiganbayan before being appointed by President Arroyo to the High Court.
Among other positions, De Castro was president-elect of the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ). She’s a UP product for both her pre-law (cum laude) and law degrees. That is also where she joined the Sigma Alpha sorority, making me a proud brod of hers from their affiliated Alpha Sigma fraternity.
When the new CJ takes her oath of office today, she becomes the first-ever woman to lead the Supreme Court. When she leaves office in October, she will do so at the same time that the late Renato Corona would have also retired, had he been allowed to finish his term. And after she leaves, she will be replaced by another Duterte appointee, as will every other justice retiring up to 2022, until the High Court is well and truly yellow-proofed.
I’m sure CJ Corona is grinning from ear to ear as he looks down on all of this. As the vulgar saying goes, karma can be a bitch sometimes.
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At the weekly Nanka media forum in QC which I co-host, our special guest last Friday was former Senator Bongbong Marcos, whose celebrity status guaranteed a full media turnout as well as over 2 million FB page views afterwards—and still counting.
The senator spoke mainly about the current status of his electoral protest against VP Robredo, where he accused Smartmatic outright of selling us a system for cheating, not for vote-counting. And he responded cerebrally to my questions about federalism (he’s supportive but cautious, especially about transition issues) and inflation (he mainly blames too much government money running after too few or too slow projects, a view that might be loosely labeled “fiscal liquidity preference,” which of course more aptly describes the PNoy years).
As usual, it was during the media Q&A that things got really interesting. That’s when Marcos came out with his widely covered statements: that his sister was right to ask people to “move on”; that martial law is over and history’s verdict was rendered at Edsa; that the courts have already decided definitively on the cases filed against his family; and, somewhat plaintively, “what else do you want us to do?”
“Admit and apologize!” would be the stock answer of his critics. I suspect though that it will be a very long time before we hear anything like that from his family, not with at least two of the children, and maybe grandchildren down the road as well, legitimately positioned to seek high political office in coming years.
“Legitimately” is a word I don’t use lightly here, because I don’t excuse an errant son like PNoy on account of his father’s merits, just as I wouldn’t judge Bongbong on his father’s demerits. The young man acquitted himself well during his Senate votes against DAP/PDAF and for Corona. He’s earned my respect for that.
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People are still griping about the cluster-f__k that followed last week’s mishap at Naia, when a Xiamen Air plane ended up in muddy ground minus its tires and an engine. Luckily nobody was hurt, but as many as 61 other scheduled flights were reportedly diverted or canceled, stranding thousands of passengers.
Just as with typhoons, it seems that it takes a disaster to wake us up to what needs to be done. In this case, people are once again talking about the need for expanding Naia and/or, more importantly, building out additional airports in the Greater Manila area.
Much of the business community wants an immediate fix—don’t they always?—by adding an emergency “runway/taxiway” at Naia just a hundred meters away from the current one. The space is so cramped that they’ll even have to dismantle some airport structures to make way for it. You’ve got to wonder how we ever got into the habit of thinking so small. Most likely it’s because we’ve been disappointed so often every time we got our hopes up.
One exception, the biggest big-thinker in town, has gone the other way and offered what seems like the entire province of Bulacan to build out a huge “aerotropolis” with up to eight—yes, eight—runways. The unsolicited proposal from San Miguel’s Ramon Ang—already greenlighted in principle by government—will even include a coastal highway connecting to Naia. Best of all, it’s an entirely private-sector undertaking, with no government funding or guarantees that we can see so far.
For her part, our favorite congresswoman from Pampanga continues to plump for Clark, where US military-grade facilities already exist. We were a bit surprised to find out that, yes, construction has in fact already started there. The boys from Clark do need to do a better job of keeping the outside world updated on what they’re doing.
Clark continues to make the most sense for all the obvious reasons. The biggest drawback—lack of express connectivity to Naia for passengers on connecting flights—may not be that big after all once we find out how much of the passenger traffic is connecting (versus terminating) AND unwilling or unable to allow for more connecting time in their flight plans, or in the worst case to stay overnight at a hotel. Once the numbers are crunched, I suspect we’ll find that the problem isn’t that big after all.
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On a more lugubrious note, the President has disclosed that he’s in “perpetual pain,” not in the coma that his more imaginative critics have been gossiping about. He ranks the pain as a seven on a scale of 1 to 10, caused by a spinal injury he suffered from a motorcycle accident long ago. He says his doctor wants him to stop taking painkillers, but his partner Honeylet Avanceña, a nurse, won’t let him undergo an operation.
It’s a painful spot for a 72-year-old man to find himself in, caught between a rock and a hard place. It’s even worse if that man is obligated to carry the cares of an entire country on his shoulders. We can only hope that Duterte will be allowed the privacy of his pain and judged only by his performance on the job, with or without that pain around.
Readers can write me at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com.