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Friday, March 29, 2024

Sometimes, it pays to be blasé

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Following my posts on the quo warranto case against Madame Meilou Sereno on my own Facebook wall, interviews and columns in this paper, I was shamed and viciously maligned.  But frankly, I was amused rather than perturbed, and never did I retract anything I had written or said.  In fact, I wrote and continued to post—insisting that quo warranto could be correctly used to impugn the title to office even of an impeachable official.  It is and has always been for me an exciting and challenging academic question.  It is on that level that I have kept my thoughts and comments.  I shall keep it there, no matter that slime into which the exchange can sometimes be dragged.  I was convinced that I was right, and still am, and the more I read on quo warranto from other sources beyond Philippine jurisprudence, the more firmly I stand by the Supreme Court’s position that quo warranto will lie to test title to office, no matter that the official may be impeachable.

What really fascinated—but frankly, also disturbed—me was the intolerance of the self-righteous.  So many, including clerics and religious who were barely acquainted with the concept of quo warranto chimed in, holding themselves out as advocates and guardians of an independent judiciary.  And so, the majority of the Supreme Court that voted in favor of the Solicitor General’s petition, on behalf of the Republic, were not as jealous about judicial independence?  Is that not patently absurd?  And it is the absurdity of that brand of self-righteousness often seen not too long ago that amused me, even as it left me perturbed.  Why, in the twinkling of an eye, did the focus of discussion shift from the availability of quo warranto to the fact that I am not a lawyer?  Why did those who took issue with my position go so far as to claim that I had something personal against Meilou because she did not reappoint me as a professor of the Philippine Judicial Academy?  This last point was particularly interesting because a quick check with the web-page of the Philippine Judicial Academy will show that I am not only a professorial lecturer of the Academy but a department chair.  What was very clear though was that on the part of the Sereno supporters (were they in fact Sereno supporters or really Duterte opponents?) opposition was not only to be refuted and rebutted.  It was to be destroyed.  

We really lack an “agora” in the Philippines.  The marketplace of ideas so easily becomes a bloody battlefield or a blood-stained boxing ring.  That is how far gone we are insofar as rationality goes.  And that is probably the reason that for all our posturing about being lovers and champions of democracy, we in fact are not.  We are the greatest threat to our own freedoms.  A democracy rests on the fundamental openness of the agora—and the entitlement of each to participate in public discussion.  It assumes the responsibility by which a speaker undertakes to defend with the most convincing arguments he can muster and the facts available the positions he advances.  It calls on all others to question to the extent that they reasonably can: to demand that the postulator advance his grounds, establish his warrants and provide backing.  It forbids disqualifying anyone at the very outset from any meaningful participation.  And finally, it calls on all to abide by the more convincing argument.  Really, none of this was present in the quo warranto discussions.

The attacks on my qualifications were attempts to silence me.  I had no right to participate in the discourse because I am not a lawyer (no matter how fallacious such a position was).  I was eager to answer questions of law.  Some, like Carlos Hernandez Jr. did engage me very constructively, very intelligently and very respectfully—and I was flattered and honored by the exchange with him.  But most were merely visceral attacks.  Only noise, and nothing more.  

And so, we had Senator Panfilo Lacson taking to the Senate floor and making mince meat of the specious posturing of stalwarts of the Liberal Party.  I am glad that there is an opposition party, but I do not like it when it lends itself to the ways of irrationality, when it takes part in drowning out the useful noise of the agora with the steady beat of a partisan drum.  While he be subject to vituperation now against his person, in much the same way that the Solicitor General’s business interests have, all of a sudden, become the new national passion?

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In the face of protuberant self-righteousness, it does pay to be blasé.

rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph

rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph

rannie_aquino@outlook.com

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