Face of tyranny

The justices, says Midas (In Reverse) Marquez, almost walked off the stage when P-Noy was delivering a stinging rebuke of them at the Justice Summit. But they judiciously held their peace. “It’s not very difficult to do that (rise in protest), but then we don’t want the people to suffer.”

Later, though, the justices issued their own rebuke of P-Noy. While it is the prerogative of the President to speak his mind, they said, “we find it quite disturbing (that he should do so) at an event that was meant to foster cooperation and coordination. It is not at all unusual for the executive branch to disagree with the judicial branch. But what is considerably unusual is for the Chief Executive to look down on members of the judiciary in public … and to their faces denounce the court’s independent actions.”

Marquez added the Court’s favorite mantra: While the Aquino administration was popular, “no one branch of government has an overruling influence over the other. The accumulation of all the powers in the same hands, whether one, a few or many, and whether appointed or elected, may justly be the very definition of tyranny.”

Well, to begin with, if they had walked out of P-Noy’s speech, the people would not have suffered, the justices would. The people would have cheered lustily—not their gesture of protest but their disappearance from their sight. Which they probably knew anyway, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s justices, in particular. They are not liked, they are not wanted. They may show their faces before the public only at the public’s sufferance, not at their pleasure. You truly wish they had done as they had plotted. Then would they have known exactly in what esteem they are held by us.

But of course a branch of government that arrogates all the powers of government poses a tyranny. But Marquez misses his target by a mile. That is not true of P-Noy, that is true of Renato Corona. That is not true of Malacañang, that is true of the Supreme Court.

At the very least that is so because there is no institution in society today, let alone branch of government, that is utterly without accountability more than the Supreme Court. Or at least utterly without accountability to the people, Arroyo’s justices are perfectly accountable to her, being the hand that anointed them, being the hand that feeds them. P-Noy is an elected official, one who won the elections in ways that were not unlike the people exercising People Power all over again. Corona is a midnight appointee, one who got to where he is by imitating his appointer’s capacity for shamelessly, and illegitimately, clinging to power. Between the two of them, who has the right to wield power to begin with?

When government issues a patently unjust decree, the people may challenge it and bring the case to court. When the Supreme Court makes a patently unjust ruling, what can anyone do about it? What can the flight attendants do after the Supreme Court decided to reopen a case it had ruled upon with finality three times in their favor because of a letter from Estelito Mendoza importuning it to do so? Legally at least, the flight attendants know that the resolution of their case—if it ever comes to that—rests on the same Court that has been screwing them.

Indeed, when the president issues an unjust decree, the justices may rebuke him by decreeing it unconstitutional. When the Supreme Court makes an unjust ruling, what can the president do about it? Ultimately he has to bring it before the court of last resort, the Supreme Court, which is the same Court that has been screwing everyone. It’s a Catch-22. Or a Gordian knot, a puzzle seemingly without a solution. Well, Alexander showed us how to solve a Gordian knot: slice it with a sword.

And P-Noy shows us how to deal with Arroyo’s justices: insult them to their faces. They complain that they have been humiliated before the public because of their independent actions? There is nothing independent about their actions. Being berated like truant schoolboys is the least they deserve.

But far more than that, the Supreme Court hasn’t just banished accountability from its office, it has banished fallibility from its utterances. The Supreme Court is the new priesthood, a near-mirror-image of the religious one.

Until Martin Luther came along, the Church saw itself as the ultimate diviner of God’s will, the sole interpreter of God’s word, as contained in the Bible. Its divinations and interpretations were beyond question. Those divinations and interpretations might little reflect the way people normally saw right and wrong and justice, but it didn’t matter. The Church officials themselves might be corrupt to the core, but it didn’t matter. Their word was, quite literally, law.

Until P-Noy came along, the Supreme Court saw itself as the ultimate diviner of the people’s will, the sole interpreter of the people’s word, as contained in the Constitution. Its divinations and interpretations were beyond question. Those divinations and interpretations might little reflect the way people normally saw right and wrong and justice—which was the case during Arroyo’s time, and which is the case up to this time, decreeing as they did the justness of executive privilege and the unreality of Edsa. But it didn’t matter. Arroyo’s justices themselves might be corrupt to the marrow of their bones—which was the case then and which is the case now, the poisoned tree bears poisonous fruits. But it didn’t matter. Their word was, quite literally, law.

But of course a branch of government that arrogates all the powers of government practices tyranny. But of course a cabal that usurps the powers of heaven and earth mounts tyranny.  Look at Renato Corona’s Supreme Court, and know:

That is the face of it.