Comelec chief acted more as manager than as lawyer

The proclamation by the Commission on Elections of the winners in the recently concluded senatorial elections was indeed premature and illegal, as noted by former Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban in his May 19 column. Premature, alongside the time-honored practice of proclaiming winners in an election only after the votes have been completely and officially canvassed; and illegal, given a 1968 Supreme Court decision previously quoted by prominent election lawyer Romulo Macalintal that an incomplete canvass cannot be the basis of subsequent proclamation.

But imprudent? Excuse me, with all due respect, I don’t think so!

The English dictionary defines “prudence” as the ability to govern and discipline oneself through the use of reason, sagacity or shrewdness, good judgment and relevant resources in the management of affairs.  Methinks Comelec Chair Sixto Brillantes had amply exercised and gone through all of these to be regarded “imprudent.”

Let’s get real: Practically everybody’s crystal balls—from the President of the republic down to the lowliest man in the streets—had clearly seen and known that the more or less complete, though unofficial, election results gathered and reported by the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting as of May 14 would no longer vary much from that which the Comelec was eventually expected to announce in due course.  The latter may not be the legal, but it is certainly a factual, basis of a proclamation. What was indeed so grievously wrong—such as to create so much noise among lawyers—with the Comelec undertaking a rather unorthodox decision?

As I see it, Brillantes had merely acted more as a manager—the relative prudence or imprudence of whose judgments depends not as much on the means employed as on the end-result—than as a lawyer, who generally tends to give more weight to the letter than to the spirit of the law. Methinks it is this difference in perspective that sadly urges us, Filipinos, to delight and indulge too much in endless controversies—clearly moot and impractical though they at times are—such as this one.

I mean, at the end of the day, may anyone make Brillantes or the Comelec validly liable before a court of law?  Ah, this may be what former Chief Justice Panganiban has aptly called “legal enigma” in his column.

—RUDY L. CORONEL,

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