Was Quicho’s ‘asinine babble’ publishable?

I FIND Oscar Franklin Tan’s column, “When is stupid legal opinion stupid?” (Opinion, 6/22/15), quite disturbing. Urging the media to “minimally scrutinize legal statements themselves independently of the author,” he took vigorous exception to Inquirer columnist John Nery’s thesis (“When does opinion become an unpublishable stupidity?” Opinion, 6/16/15) which, in Tan’s view, espoused the dubious proposition that “there is an unbounded range of valid opinion on law.”

Tan insists that there are textbook rules that are so basic no one, much less a lawyer, should be allowed to screw up with “baseless” pronouncements. By publishing such pronouncements, the editors exacerbate “public confusion on what the law in textbooks actually is….” He virtually proposed to have such cockamamie opinions consigned outright to the trash bins. He would thus put media people (mostly nonlawyers) to the task of “minimally” vetting which legal mumbo-jumbo holds water (and is therefore “publishable”) or doesn’t!

In the wake of the Senate blue ribbon committee’s report on the multibillion-peso scams allegedly pulled by the Binay family on the people of Makati City, the Binay camp’s mouthpiece, lawyer Rico Quicho, went to town denouncing that report for being one-sided, repugnant to the sporting idea of fair play, and therefore in blatant violation of the Binay family’s constitutional right to due process. He railed against the fact that Vice President Jejomar Binay’s “affidavit” (where he purportedly answered the charges “point by point,” thereby proving his and his family’s “innocence”) was not taken into account.

Quicho’s “legal opinion” was given similar prominence in the May 30 issue of the Inquirer—i.e., on the same front page that headlined, “Poe signs report vs Binay.” Indeed, elementary is “the rule in textbooks” that an affidavit is hearsay and therefore totally inadmissible in evidence (i.e., worthless) until the affiant comes forward to testify on it and face cross-examination. Notwithstanding that the Senate had kept its door wide open for him, the Vice President used all kinds of alibis to avoid Senate questioning. Thus, lawyer Quicho was obviously talking through his hat! Even laymen saw that.

I therefore ask Tan, should the Inquirer not have published Quicho’s babble for being palpably asinine or “baseless” in light of hornbook law?

—STEPHEN L. MONSANTO, Monsanto Law Office, Loyola Heights, Quezon City, [email protected]