Dissenting voices, flooding the right message, and Leonen

“We don’t believe he’s a rapist… he’s kind and religious.” “Our mayor is not corrupt; in fact, he uses his own money to help most of the time.” “It’s only right that this happens to him because the death penalty is in our law.” With every Supreme Court decision, there is controversy. It is a natural thing because there are winning and losing parties. Others are cheated, some might say.

Where do we stand when we do not agree with the Supreme Court? Is it possible to respect their decision despite our disagreement? Where should our insistence end? “Those who easily believe in gossip are not in their right minds,” but are they really gossips as alluded to above?

The death penalty imposed upon a rapist two decades ago proved that the magistrates also err. We say this because all other rapists after that got “mere” life sentences. A mayor got numerous terms of office as he was seen by voters as town hero and pride, but later the SC would prove his constituents wrong when he was meted with perpetual disqualification from any public office due to a prior conviction in graft and corrupt practices. That only goes to show legal battle results are too unpredictable in the Philippines.

It is said that legal standards are applied with reasonableness and due diligence but since they can be subjective, that might lead to various outcomes according to court interpretation. Politics and socioeconomic aspects might influence verdicts at times, conflicting with legal principles.

Now the latest: Who would have thought—not among his professors in UP—that the gross misinterpretation of Senate President Chiz Escudero’s “forthwith” would continue until the SC would say that even the House of Representatives had shortcomings in following technicalities at the expense of accountability to the impeached official? “Forthwith” means immediately, without delay, agad-agad in Filipino, but Escudero clearly has his own dictionary. Making matters worse is when the ponencia of the SC senior associate justice followed suit and wrote a decision that, in effect, favors further delay in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.

Faculty members of the UP College of Law said they saw fundamental errors needing immediate remedy. Their August 1 statement read: “We have carefully studied the (SC’s) decision in Duterte v. House of Representatives and the unprecedented actions that have been taken by Congress that have led us to this point. We acknowledge the anxiety, confusion, and fears of a constitutional crisis that have arisen among the general public… informed by the law and the constitutional and political history that we teach and study, we stand by bedrock principles of our constitutional system and warn that these recent developments undermine impeachment as an indispensable instrument of political accountability for our highest public officials.” (https://law.upd.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Statement-by-Individual-Members-of-the-UPCL-Faculty-on-Developments-in-the-Impeachment-of-VP-Sara-Z-Duterte.pdf)

Benches outside the country also decide defectively like that of https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/supreme-court/13-worst-supreme-court-decisions-of-all-time/.

Our very own Leonen even has this to say with reference to past, present, future judicial gods at the Mt. Olympus in Padre Faura, Ermita: “If you knew who we are, you will cease calling us gods of the Judiciary …The SC is not perfect …Citizens and academics certainly have the right to call attention to the fallibility of the courts.”

Iyon naman pala (take those very words for it)!

The right message: for and from flood victims

Take two: Mahiya naman kayo! This wildly cheered remark in last week’s SONA was about Marcos Jr.’s (how genuine?) desire to curb shady flood control projects.

Perennial flood victims think such shaming in word is simply not enough. While procurement reforms are said to be instituted, the right message is that corrupt contractors and public officials in cahoots with each other have to be named and face strong deterrents ranging from prompt jail terms to returning public funds with interest.

Ilan sa mga pumalakpak ang kabilang sa mga walang-hiya? Marami, sabi ng marami.

A Paulinian reminder is in the offing: “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. (Ephesians 5:11-14)

Ninoy Aquino repeatedly remarked, “Without criticism, no government can survive, and without dissent no government can effectively govern.” It has been carried in this space at https://tutubi.ph/oposisyon-sa-panahon-ng-krisis/ in 2023, but because of its unflinching timelessness, it was also shared by scholarly publications and book authors like https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-137-11726-7_10; https://www.google.com.ph/books/edition/The_Philippines/6NFMDwAAQBAJ?hl; and https://www.google.com.ph/books/edition/Cory_of_a_Thousand_Days/tidxAAAAMAAJ?hl.

Still, dissenting

Voices are like that. And with the dissenting ones, they add decency to the unperturbed. Leonen “The Great Dissenter” knows them better and will thank the dissenting voices for a lot of good reasons, chief of which is that he is being given the opportunity to be a chief justice soon. (https://medium.com/the-new-legal/will-leonen-the-great-dissenter-be-the-next-chief-justice-the-new-legal-d69fc6b22650)

Kaya lang, baka raw nagbago na siya.

“The Leonen ponencia opens the door to bogus complaints, endorsed by a political ally of the impeachable officer at the HOR, to be ‘mandatorily calendared’ and even without being referred to the Committee on Justice – considered initiated already!” said Atty. Arvin Dexter Lopoz, spokesperson of the Union of Peoples’ Lawyers in Mindanao (UPLM). “So now, whoever files first, no matter how weak and bogus the ‘verified’ complaint is, as long as it is endorsed by a member (it can be done).”