With due respect to retired chief justice Artemio Panganiban regarding his suggestion in his Aug. 19 column (“Judicial brinkmanship”), “public vigilance” has never worked when it comes to the Supreme Court justices who always flaunt their “supremacy” (i.e., infallibility) in decision-making.
This is all too evident from their adamant refusal to reconsider their decision in almost all cases, even in the face of impeccable logic and reasoning. Thinking they alone have the monopoly of wisdom, they are simply averse to the notion that they could be wrong.
Yet, the best debunker of that myth was the high court’s own decision to junk, for being utterly ridiculous, the “doctrine” it held on for more than half a century that a politician’s reelection erases all his misdeeds in the past.
The most recent show of such hubris was its majority decision to entertain the quo warranto petition to oust Maria Lourdes Sereno as chief justice, despite overwhelming opinions expressed by law deans, professors and practitioners (not to mention the Integrated Bar of the Philippines and all other law associations in the country) that, under the Constitution, only impeachment by the Senate could remove her from the high court.
“Judicial villains,” as Panganiban put it, are here to stay, unless the Judicial and Bar Council stands up to the pernicious importunings of the powers-that-be and asserts its constitutional duty to nominate only applicants with “proven competence, integrity, probity and independence.” Obviously, it has failed the people so miserably.
ROGELIO S. CANDELARIO, rodscan888@gmail.com