Nonlawyer ‘outthinks’ lawyers on SC ruling

IF RUDY Coronel was correct about his reading of the Supreme Court’s ruling to trash the contract between the Commission on Elections and Smartmatic (“Alas, why must court rule against logic?” Opinion, 4/29/15), then Houston, we have a problem! Indeed, why subject to a “public bidding” a basically maintenance job that only Smartmatic can perform? Those PCOS machines being Smartmatic’s own products, it is totally illogical (i.e., it does not make any sense!) to let anybody else tinker with them! For all intents and purposes, that subsequent contract should be deemed as a mere adjunct to the mother contract previously inked after a public bidding!

Coronel hazarded a guess that perhaps the Supreme Court was merely irked by retired Commission on Elections chair Sixto Brillantes for entering into a “midnight deal” with Smartmatic and daring everyone to challenge it! That would be monumentally worse: Have our honorable justices become “petty tyrants”? Can they not rise above such frivolousness?

True or not, we cannot help but think along the same line, given the sheer silliness of the ruling. As Coronel put it more bluntly, if your brand-new vehicle breaks down, will you be seriously thinking of looking for a sidewalk “talyer” that can repair it at the least cost? Common sense lang talaga ’yan! Now, on account of such pettiness, the whole nation faces the imminent threat of “manual” counting in the 2016 electoral exercise!

But the most alarming thing of all is, it has taken a nonlawyer to point out the ridiculous flaw in the Supreme Court’s reasoning. Why has not the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) noticed it? Have the lawyers of this country totally surrendered their own intelligence (or whatever is left of it) to the “unerring omnipotence” of the “gods of Padre Faura”? Are we at that point where all lawyers just accept anything the Supreme Court is dishing out? We note that the IBP has never taken any stand about the “condonation doctrine” which is as “crazy” as it gets (as pointed out by another nonlawyer, Solita Monsod (“Doctrine of condonation reexamined,” Opinion, 4/18/15)! We are now beginning to believe what another letter-writer said about the IBP being excellent at nothing except making “sipsip” to the Supreme Court (“The IBP speaks with a ‘forked tongue’,” Opinion, 4/23/15)! How has this country ever come to such a pass?!

—RIMALDO PACIFICO,

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