Next president after Jojo

His suspicions percolating for some time already, imagine a husband finally catching his wife coming out of a motel with another man. In a paroxysm of rage, he bludgeons them to a pulp. In answer to charges of frustrated murder in court, he invokes Article 247 of the Penal Code which exempts him from punishment. Technically, such defense would require the indispensable proof of “surprising his spouse in the act of committing sexual intercourse with another person.”

The reason for the law is, such grave, in-your-face insult to his honor is a circumstance that justifies a husband’s violent rage. Now then, since the “surprising” happened during the act of getting out of the motel, that might present a conundrum. The question of whether or not adultery occurred before that would most likely be deemed mere “speculation”—for lack of direct evidence!

Truth to tell, technical gobbledygook like that trumps common sense more often than not! Expect that kind of spectacle if the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee gives in to the Binay gofers’ insistence that the matters under investigation be left to the “proper forum” (i.e., the court) to decide on. Their dogged determination to pursue that tack is understandable. Indeed, if there is no “judicially admissible” evidence that the Binays actually screwed the people of Makati (and the Boy Scouts across the nation), all this ruckus at the Senate hearings will amount to nothing but “haka-haka lang”!

In the hands of a skilled defense lawyer, most of the testimonies and documents so far produced at the Senate hearings may never see the light of day in a court of law. The prospect of such testimonies or documents being hobbled by myriad objections every step of the way is more real than imagined. We have already seen how defense lawyers of plunder suspects now before the Sandiganbayan used every trick in the book to block or suppress evidence. The pedagogic (i.e., basically exclusionary) thrust of the rules of evidence can be so frustrating, not to say exasperating, to non-lawyers. Abused, the whole process will not conduce to an early resolution of issues.

Thus, if it was all up to the court to determine the culpability of the Binays, chances are no judgment can come out of its proceedings in the next 10 years or so; and, who knows, the next president after Jejomar (against whom the present issues may have by then become moot and academic) may be Junjun—or Nancy! That is assuming their dad can be trusted not to do a Marcos! Heaven help this nation!

—GEORGE DEL MAR, gdmlaw111@gmail.com