Conscience over law

With so many canaries singing at the Senate hearings, there is now very little doubt left in the public mind that former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo stole the presidency in 2004. Only her shameless and mindless loyalists maintain otherwise. That issue may already be moot and academic as she brazened it out and enjoyed the full term of her illegitimate presidency, but the institutions she corrupted beyond our imagination remain and continue to be run by the lowlife appointed by her. What to do then?

The most conspicuous and repulsive symbol of that scandalous regime is a very high government official who for the longest time served as GMA’s chief legal adviser and presumably legal mastermind of her major shenanigans. He is perceived as nothing more than her insurance against any future conviction for her crimes. As all legal paths lead eventually to his branch of government, GMA and her cohorts can just laugh at all the probes currently conducted to determine their culpability for pillage and plunder.

What gall then that this official should now be ranting and raving about judicial propriety and decorum! Former Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri Jr., by voluntarily resigning on learning that so much fraud had attended his election to the Senate despite all legal presumptions in his favor, had more delicadeza than he and his peers have who unabashedly rely on the legal presumption that GMA had “legally appointed” them despite that presumption being now rebutted by overwhelming and compelling evidence that she had hijacked the presidency. Here’s a flash! There is something more important than the law: conscience!

—GEORGE DEL MAR,

gdmlaw111@gmail.com