Our nation has practically lost its sense of direction, and maybe sanity, for practically we could no longer distinguish our status as a sovereign state. We could not even determine the parameters to distinguish our status as an independent state, free to chart our own destiny. We no longer speak as a nation through our Constitution or treat it as sacred, omniscient and infallible. If there are disagreements or shortcomings in our fundamental law, we do not have the guts to set it aside until after we go through the process of amending it to rectify the inequities borne out of any questionable provision.
This column is saying this because it seems the very institution we entrusted to enforce our Basic Law is the one that is spearheading in vandalizing it with all the fervor of distorting, misinterpreting and even rendering a provision dysfunctional. The magistrates whom we distinctly classify as our most learned specimen in the field of law, instead of coming out with their wisdom and philosophy behind that specific provision to rhyme it to our aspirations, are the ones giving most abominable interpretation often coming out their illogical explanation to make what is strictly prohibited constitutional and legal.
Such sham interpretation transcends the issue of what is in fact constitutional or unconstitutional, but more of an insult to our people, for even an ordinary layman who knows how to read and write could well say that those miserable justices have decided on a terminology and gave meaning to it which is not found in the provision or even thought of by the framers of the constitution. To evade the wrath of public opinion, the miserable justices always casually call their decision a “political issue,” than in squarely deciding that it is against the Constitution. Their casual referral in judging important issues as a “political question” has become their easy way to abnegate their responsibility and to soothe the insult they made to our people.
The Constitution is presumed to be infallible, as constitutionalists would insist. If one disagrees with some of its provisions, the door remains open for them to go through the process of seeking an amendment because the rule of law, and not the rule of the jungle, is what we observe here. We cannot interpret the Constitution the way we would want it to be, or bend it just to accommodate the wishes of one party. Moreover, while those justices possess the exclusive right to interpret a provision in the Constitution as final, that should not go beyond by amending the fundamental law or worse, give it a different interpretation when the word upon which they based their interpretation is not even found in the provision in question.
The act committed by those miserable justices constitutes a culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of the public trust (Section 3[2] Article XI of the Constitution). To misinterpret the Constitution for the purpose, giving it a different meaning or to render it dysfunctional constitutes a grave offense, for it appears that they purposely and maliciously did it with the intent of misleading our people.
Their act of despoliation and destruction of the Constitution constitutes an open invitation for our people to rebel. Constitutional vandalism is the highest form of injustice because it affects all of us and the future direction of this country that trots itself to the world as independent and sovereign. Thus, if people rebel, they do so because they feel the rules for which they have sworn their oath of allegiance has become selective or is wrongly being interpreted in favor of one class or party.
The people see the decision of the magistrates as a spectacle of stupidity in a manner that when they dissected such terminology as “foundlings,” “visiting forces agreement,” and “enhanced defense cooperation agreement,” they knew it was nowhere to be found in the 1987 Constitution or that to insert them is to misrepresent what it means. For one, the candidate is insulting the intelligence of all Filipinos because after renouncing her citizenship, she wants it back claiming to be a “foundling” just to fulfill her aching ambition of becoming president, which is reserved only to natural-born Filipino citizens, and the Supreme Court is now acting as her accomplice with some shameless retired justices sponsoring her claim of being a natural born.
It is no longer a question of whether one is for or against the candidacy of this overtly ambitious woman who once renounced her citizenship for greener pasture and is back because the oligarchy is brokering her candidacy, but on the more basic issue why our lamentable justices came out with an idiotic decision when it is clear that Poe is not qualified for the office (Section 1, Section 2, Section 5,Article IV and Section 2, Article VII). The same is true on why the magistrates came out with a stupid decision when it is clear that foreign military base is prohibited, and ships and aircrafts armed with nuclear weapons are banned from entering the country (Section 25, Article XVIII, and Section 8, Article II). It is no longer a question of whether one is in favor of restoring the US military bases using the military facilities we have built for our own soldiers and free from all expenses because they are needed for our defense against China.
If this subservient government desires for this country to be ruled by a former alien or recolonized again by the same conqueror, it can go ahead, but our Supreme Court should be brave enough to stand up and tell this good-for-nothing hypocritical government that we have first to amend the Constitution and have it ratified by the people. That way, there would be no clamor for agitation, unrest, name-calling. We would possibly avoid inviting a rebellion because the people already ratified a provision that would allow their leader to sell their country down the river. The justices would also be spared the time coming out with ludicrous decisions that would only make them look more like stupid political sycophants breaking their neck just to give their shoddy decision a semblance of constitutionality.
Those lousy decisions have a far-ranging effect on the future of this country. The justices can never assert that their decisions as political questions for no matter how one would look at the provisions because they are required by law to do their duty of interpreting the constitution diligently in consonance with the aspiration of our people. It cannot even be said they committed an act of judicial legislation, for as one lawyer would put it, the issue is not about the lack or absence of a clear provision. Rather, their rotten and unpalatable decisions now become jurisprudence, that no matter how stupid and illogical they might be will be swallowed by lawyers in this land of the gentile. In other words, the disfigurement in our Constitution now becomes a permanent fixture, all because some pathetic justices came out with decisions designed to please their appointing power, and from which, all must suffer the consequence of their stupidity.