Rule of law

The two Edsas had to do with a vote.

Edsa II, as Miriam Santiago pointed out at the beginning of Renato Corona’s impeachment trial, before she went on her high horse and tried to underwhelm the world with her presumed legal brilliance, arose because they voted not to open the second envelope. As it turned out, she said, there was really nothing to compromise Erap about the contents of the second envelope. But the public, suspecting that the truth was being withheld from them, if not in fact being trampled underfoot, went ballistic, and the rest was history.

The Erap camp of course itself arose to call that history a history of mob rule. They had the rule of law, they said. The impeachment was underway, which was the surest sign that democracy was thriving, notwithstanding that the law was being used at every turn to block the truth from coming out. Edsa II itself, the Erap camp claimed, was nothing more than mob rule, a conspiracy by the elite to oust Erap because of his pro-poor policies.

Edsa I took place because of a vote too. That was the snap elections of early February 1986 which pitted Ferdinand Marcos and Cory Aquino, “Chariots of Fire” and “Bayan Ko.” “Bayan Ko” trumped “Chariots of Fire,” more people going to Sto. Domingo to listen to Cory (despite a flood of Marcos’ goons to block their path) than to Luneta to listen to Marcos (despite a flood of canned goods to sweeten their way).

But at the end of the day, Marcos won. The count proclaimed so, the Comelec proclaimed so, the law proclaimed so. But the people refused to accept so. Tama na, sobra na, palitan na, they cried, and took to the streets. The rest was history.

The Marcos camp has also now arisen to call that history a history of mob rule. They had the rule of law, they say. Marcos had submitted to the democratic process and had won fair and square, given an Evelio Javier or two. Edsa itself, the camp claims, was nothing more than mob rule, a plot by the oligarchs to rid the land of Marcos because of his pro-poor policies.

The past flows into the present. Impatient at the pace the Corona trial is going—Corona is merely a roadblock on the path to Arroyo, by rights it should already have been swept away—P-Noy is calling on the people to reclaim their power again. They are the ultimate arbiters of impeachments anyway, and reason, common sense, and a sense of realism must make them ask if a Chief Justice who earns hundreds of millions of pesos—and probably dollars—but declares only less than a million pesos a year in income deserves to remain chief justice.

And Corona and Gloria, the crowning glory of infamy, and their friends now say P-Noy is transgressing the rule of law, he is fomenting mob rule.

In fact what do rule of law and mob rule really mean?

“Mob rule” typically connotes a lynching party, a crowd stoked to fires of unthinking fury it will do anything a rabble-rouser bids them do. But there’s another meaning to it, which is the one that made American law enforcers refer to the Mafia as “the Mob.” That is the rule of a clique, a syndicate, a cabal that is free to impose its will on the public. That is the rule of a few who are able to stamp their whim on the populace. “Mob rule” is the rule of the Mob.

Nowhere is mob rule at its most thuggish than when a Mob is able to take on the robes of the law and decree what is law, what is truth, what is right and what is wrong. Nowhere is mob rule at its most vicious than when it takes on the voice of the law and uses it to alienate law from justice, to make black white and white black, to turn the law, like the guns of the soldiers, against those it is meant to serve: the People.

That was the kind of rule we had during Marcos’ time. That was the kind of rule we had during Erap’s time. And that was the kind of rule we had during Arroyo’s time. That was a clique, a syndicate, a cabal, stamping their will and whim on the populace, using the law to punish the innocent and reward the guilty, aiming the law, like the guns of soldiers, at the very people it is meant to serve. Arroyo’s case in particular is worth noting in that she was able to booby-trap government, appointing a lackey at the midnight hour to head the Supreme Court to make sure she would still be able to bend the law to her will long after she was out of Malacañang. That is what Corona is there for, that is the culture he represents, that is the rule he continues to carry out.

That is mob rule, that is the rule of the Mob.

That is the rule P-Noy is impatient to end. That is the rule P-Noy means to end. And he carries with him in that undertaking the very thing Marcos called mob rule, Erap called mob rule, and Arroyo called mob rule, the very thing Arroyo’s lackeys now call mob rule:

People Power.

The thing whose memory we rekindle again this Saturday. The thing whose living power we unleash again today.

Vox populi,  vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God. That is the wellspring of democracy, a system that proposes a government by the people, of the people, and for the people and not one by a Marcos, of an Erap, and for an Arroyo. That is the underpinning of the separation of powers, a principle that proposes that the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary are not like the five families of New York which may rule ruthlessly without muscling from each other but three branches of government that may exercise powers responsibly as demanded by the people. That is the foundation of law, which says that law is nothing if it does not flow from reason, if it does not quest for truth, if it does not thirst for justice.

That is what P-Noy is calling for, that is the culture he represents, that is the rule he means to carry out. It is the rule of the people.

It is the rule of law.