Confusion

This is a re-posted opinion piece.

According to the dissenting opinion of Supreme Court Associate Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, the bone of contention when the SC deliberated last Tuesday on the watchlist order (WLO) on the Arroyos was not the constitutional right to travel, but whether the government should be given the right to comment, within a non-extendible period of five days, on the petition for a temporary restraining order (TRO).

Sereno, citing documents to support the Arroyos’ petition to lift the WLO, argued that a petition containing “false verifications” or “untruthful statements” could warrant its dismissal. Noting such “untruthful statements” in the petition of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, including statements from GMA’s own doctors, Sereno proposed to give the government a chance to comment on the petition.

That was what the SC justices voted upon, 8-5, with the majority against giving the government that chance. So the TRO was issued ex parte, or without the state being given a chance to challenge it.

From my uneducated layman’s point of view, I see the ex parte TRO as having the effect of a final decision – minus the detailed explanations – on the main issue in the case, which is whether GMA should be allowed to leave the country. The TRO goes around the need for arguments from both sides on the principal issue, depriving one party of the chance for a fair hearing. It smacks of putting one over another, of unfairness and dayaan.

What’s five days – until Nov. 22, as the SC dissenters pointed out – when debating a contentious, divisive constitutional issue?

Sereno pointed out that the SC itself imposes restrictions on the right to travel of all members of the judiciary, and has imposed sanctions on violators of those restrictions.

In fairness to the eight justices, they probably didn’t expect GMA and her husband to try to head for the exit with impressive haste.

The haste raised suspicions in this cynical nation that the Arroyos had expected the outcome of their petition even before it was filed. It fanned rumors of signed promissory notes of loyalty being pulled out of camphor chests.

* * *
If it’s any comfort to GMA, the buzz in legal circles from the start was that she had a strong case in her petition to go abroad. Former first gentleman Mike Arroyo is right when he says that they have always returned from their trips overseas, despite all the ongoing investigations.

Even lawyers critical of GMA told me that if the government wanted to prevent her from leaving, the best way was to file charges in court, and let the courts issue a hold-departure order.

Those lawyers noted that GMA and her husband are suffering from a serious credibility problem, similar to the fate of the boy who cried wolf. They have checked into a hospital too often when invited to congressional inquiries and other probes, although they are not the first VIPs in this country to do this, and they won’t be the last.

According to reports reaching us yesterday, formal charges are expected to be filed in court today against GMA in connection with vote rigging in 2007. If the charge is the serious offense of electoral sabotage, she could be denied bail.

In this rumor-mad town, such reports surely reached the GMA camp even ahead of our newsroom. But her camp didn’t need rumors. The P-Noy administration raised the stakes for her timely departure from the Philippines after government officials announced that she would be in jail before Christmas 2011. Really, there’s an epidemic of foot-in-mouth disease in this country.

GMA looks haggard and she clearly has lost a lot of weight. Her affliction, with bone healing slowed down by hypoparathyroidism, is not so exotic that you can’t find a slew of information about it on the Internet. It’s supposed to be debilitating and painful, with the cure uncertain.

But both her doctors and Health Secretary Enrique Ona have said she is recovering and the ailment is not life-threatening. In Arroyo’s petition to get her out of the travel watch list, her doctors declared that she is expected to recover in six to eight months.

The perceived haste in her preparations for departure reinforced perceptions that she plans to avoid prosecution. Even before the TRO was actually issued at past 5 p.m. on Tuesday, GMA and her husband had booked reservations on five different flights to different destinations, with departures between that afternoon and evening, and they had P2 million in cash ready for posting as bond before the SC docket closed. Sure, GMA has always been a micromanager, leaving nothing to chance, but that kind of travel preparation could unfairly put the SC majority on the spot.

On the other hand, what can the government do if the law actually gives the Arroyos the opportunity – and the right – to evade a possible indictment for non-bailable offenses?

* * *
And so here we go again, trying to resolve a crisis in our messy, dysfunctional, distinctively Pinoy way.

We have to remember that all these creative legal ways of resolving controversies will be with us for keeps, part of jurisprudence and our history.

GMA is no stranger to such creative ways, having been a beneficiary of the “constructive resignation,” as declared by the Supreme Court, of her predecessor Joseph Estrada.

The watchlist order that she is now challenging is based on a circular she herself issued as president. If it was a flawed or unconstitutional order, Sereno asked in her dissenting opinion, should the one who issued it benefit from its invalidation?

The law is what the Supreme Court says it is. Non-lawyers like me can only hope that the SC decision on this case will clarify the issues and strengthen the rule of law.

Perhaps Congress can do its part, not by adding to the confusion through a congressional probe of the Tuesday night drama at the NAIA, but by crafting legislation that will define the parameters of the constitutional right to travel.

There are several provisions in the Constitution that are still waiting for clarity – as may be defined or provided for by law – so legislators should make themselves useful and do their job.

Filipinos must emerge from this latest crisis less confused, with legal precedents that will make our democracy strong.
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By: Ana Marie Pamintuan – Sketches
Source: The Philippine Star, Nov. 18, 2011
To view the original article, click here.

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