Save the Supreme Court

The Courts’ decision to mount their boycott of sorts last Wednesday reminded me of something I proposed some time ago. That was scrapping the Philippine National Police.

Cops then had been figuring pretty much in every crime in the country, making life imitate joke. The joke was that the Philippines had the fastest response time to crime in the world. The French police took 10 minutes, the American one seven, and the British one five. Our cops took zero. A crime happens, they’re already there.

Someone was aghast at my proposal and asked: “Do you have any idea what would happen if cops suddenly disappeared from us?” Oh, yes, I replied. There would be fewer bank robberies, extortions and murders. Jeepney drivers would not have to part with hard-earned money in tong but would have to obey traffic rules instead. There would be a sharp decrease in jueteng, drug smuggling and “salvaging.” All in all, there would be a dramatic improvement in peace and order.

Someone asked me a similar question last week. “Won’t it get scary if the courts decided to grind everything to a halt?” Not at all, I replied. The courts suspend all their activities, there would be no judges to bribe, no litigants to get screwed, no people to win cases with finality until such time as an Estelito Mendoza gets the justices to reopen them again. There will be a sharp decrease in corruption, hypocrisy and outright lies. All in all there would be a dramatic increase in law and justice.

The justices may not know it, or refuse to, but the public has long ago regarded them like military intelligence—a contradiction in terms. They are to law and justice the way Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is to truth and beauty. They are to the Supreme Court as Arroyo is to the presidency. A threat by them to stop working is not a threat, it is welcome news.

That of course is an exaggeration, as well indeed as scrapping the PNP, but it dramatizes the point. The depths to which the Judiciary has sunk, led by Corona, who has managed only to be the crowning glory of Gloria, have given credence to the caricature. Over the last several years, justices have become the persons to avoid and not to seek out if you want justice.

Corona’s ululations last week did not make him heroic, it made him pathetic. He did not cut the figure of a Thomas More giving up his head to defend his faith, he cut the figure of an Arroyo giving up his face to cling to his office. Of all the things he said last week, you can sympathize only with one thing. That was his reference to some people in P-Noy’s administration, making a mom-and-pop thing out of it, a reference to the Abads. It takes a thief to catch a thief, it takes shameless to catch shameless. Hoy, bigyan n’yo naman ng kahihiyan si P-Noy.

Corona complains that P-Noy wants to scuttle the independence of the Supreme Court for tyrannical ends.

To begin with, he wouldn’t know tyranny if it fell on his head. It fell on his head every day over the last decade and he never saw it. He thought then Arroyo was God’s gift to democracy. As he does now.

You get sneaked into the post of chief justice, a position that carries with it the weight of supreme wisdom, in the witching hour, in the midnight hour, you have no business bandying lofty words like democracy, independence and justice. You should be thankful those words do not burn your mouth like garlic does to Dracula’s. The people are not fools. No legal gobbledygook will make you smell better getting your mandate in that light, or lack of light. That’s not to speak of the decisions you’ve made since then, 19 for Gloria, zero for Juan, to speak for your sense of independence. At least Angelo Reyes had the decency to be ashamed and submit the ultimate resignation. And he was just a general, he wasn’t a chief justice.

Independence is the last thing Corona’s Court represents. The only independence it has shown itself capable of, or resolutely dedicated to, is independence from shame, independence from decency, independence from the people from whom its power emanates. Its concept of separation of powers has nothing to do with the democratic one of each branch of government checking the others to make sure they do not screw the people. It has to do only with the Mafiosi one protecting turf to screw everyone that poaches on it.

How things have fallen from 11 years ago when law sallied forth in all its furious luminosity, in all its crowning glory, at the height of the Erap impeachment trial. Then you had everyone talking like lawyers again, then you had the kids wanting to become lawyers again. Finally, there was the chief justice, Hilario Davide, acting like the towering Solomonic figure chief justices are supposed to be. Finally there was law as God and man intended it to be, a fiery sword like the one held by the angel in the gin bottle striking down in the name of justice.

Today? Well, Arroyo’s justices talk of rule of law and you hear only the rule of lokohan.

You want to see tyranny, look at Corona’s pretensions to “L’etat c’est moi,” I am the state, or his own variation of it, which is “I am the Court.” That’s a tyrant’s favorite conceit. That was Marcos’ and Arroyo’s favorite mantra. They are the state, they are the institution, they are the titles they hold. To damn them is to damn the state, to damn the institution, to damn the office they occupy. When in fact it is merely to damn them for being what they are. When in fact it is merely to damn them for using their offices the way you do a toilet bowl. When in fact you just want them out of where they are so you can save the very institutions they are in.

When in fact you just want Corona and ilk out of the Supreme Court so you can:

Save the Supreme Court.