P-Noy’s curious push for RH bill

That President Aquino is getting impatient over the slow pace of the passage of the Reproductive Health bill (Inquirer, 12/9/11) surprises and confuses me endlessly, indeed! Alack, who will not be surprised, knowing pretty well that the RH bill was not among the urgent legislative measures the President had wanted Congress to pass this year? And who will not be confused, given that the President’s suddenly very keen interest in the bill’s passage—he even told House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte to “Please do your best!”—was bared just after the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines had made known its openness to mediate a dialogue between the President and Chief Justice Renato Corona if only to end their much-ballyhooed rift?

I do not profess to be a political analyst because I am not. It just so happens, setting modesty aside, that throughout my long years of reading, hearing, analyzing, sometimes commenting on, controversial public issues in our midst and times, I have learned to decipher that which somewhat lies hidden between the lines of what people in the news are saying.

With all due respect, I think the President was sending a strong message to the bishops, who remain steadfast against the RH bill, to the effect that the controversial bill’s life and death precariously rest upon his hands. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, for as long as the President does not use it as a convenient tool or leverage to win over the bishops to his side of the rift between him and the Chief Justice, and providing further that the bishops will in turn remain absolutely neutral on the issue, regardless of whatever fate awaits the RH bill—that is, in the rather remote happenstance that the proposed

dialogue would push through.

I say remote because I agree with Sen. Franklin Drilon’s objection to the dialogue. Under the seemingly irreconcilable situation where the Chief Justice may not be expected to surrender his position that the Supreme Court decisions are always in accordance with law, while the President and his allies keep shouting to the four winds that they are not, it would indeed be extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible—even for bishops who aren’t lawyers—to establish a middle ground. Not being a lawyer, I will not venture to side with either in such a question of law, lest ANC Teditorialist, lawyer Teddy Locsin Jr. reprimands me, saying, “If you didn’t study law, don’t speak of the law!”

At the very least, even so, I should surely be within my rights in saying, though a bit reluctantly, that the uncalled-for tantrums of the President vis-à-vis the admirable civility of the Chief Justice during a recent conference, where both were present, very sadly call to mind the familiar saying, “Sa away man o sa laro, ’yang pikon laging talo!”

—RUDY L. CORONEL,

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