Rina Jimenez-David wrote in “A silver lining” (7/29/18): “The Vice President’s camp had argued it is ‘highly confident’ that the Comelec’s position would finally resolve the threshold issue, which it said was ‘clearly a very simple issue but made very complicated and confusing just because of the personal and political interests of such parties who are out to win the protest by all means.’”
That issue has been bugging the Supreme Court, acting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), which has been bent on using the 50-percent shading metric in the absence, according to it, of any definite rule emanating from the Comelec. Hence, it has deemed itself called upon to make its own ruling on the election protest filed by Bongbong Marcos against Vice President Leni Robredo.
Evidently, the highest court in the land got it all wrong. There was such a rule promulgated by the Comelec to govern the 2016 elections, setting the validity of the shading at 25 percent. Its existence has thus made several justices of the PET fall flat on their faces for insisting on their preeminence to adopt a game-changing rule that would have favored Marcos. How could such “brilliant men” and their staff of pampered researchers have missed that?
But it’s too early for Robredo’s camp to celebrate. It ain’t over until the PET says it’s over. Much like the brazenness the same dominant majority of the Supreme Court had demonstrated in allowing a “hero’s burial” for the most hated president this country ever had, they will have no problem ignoring the Comelec resolution altogether.
Robredo had better be prepared for the worst. There is simply no more telling how the current bunch of “Supremes” will rule on anything. That’s the saddest fact about our justice system: It has become so unpredictable.
ULYSSES BERMUDEZ UY, uberutoo@gmail.com