Impeachment no threat but ‘wake-up call’ for SC

I do not agree with lawyer Romulo Macalintal’s opinion that threats from some members of Congress to impeach members of the Supreme Court tend to diminish our people’s faith in the judiciary (Opinion, 4/3/14). I see them as wake-up calls to the gods of Padre Faura, who sometimes behave like tyrants.

Macalintal cannot afford to displease the Supreme Court because he is a law practitioner— just like some of our law professors who keep telling us, “This is just between us, ok?”  Macalintal did not mention it, but I think the case that really got Rep. Reynaldo Umali’s goat was the one where the Supreme Court cavalierly went off the beaten track in a decision that favored a sitting justice’s son. Of course, the magistrate concerned said he “inhibited” himself from that case, but “inhibition” is such an esoteric legalese whose nuances the public doesn’t really care much about. All they care to understand is, the son won in the Supreme Court because the father sits there as a justice! Would the Supreme Court have decided that case that way if it did not involve a fellow justice? His son is about to take his seat in the 16th Congress, together with his wife as party-list representative of, believe it or not, Ang Mata’y Alagaan (whose accreditation was also challenged in the Supreme Court, to no avail!).

Needless to say, even without Umali’s “threats,” aberrations like these send our people’s faith in the judiciary plunging below zero.

—GABRIELLE MICHELLE M. AGUILLERA, [email protected]