Why is Midas speaking for CJ Corona?
It seems to me Compañero Midas Marquez should be like the US spokesman, confining himself to matters administrative, and never taking sides on issues. As it is, he sounds like he speaks for Chief Justice Rene Corona, who can hire his own PR man if he finds his defense team inadequate. It is doing a good job handling a difficult, if not impossible, task in the delayed national inquest into Corona’s fitness for his post.
Now Midas asks P-Noy, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, et al. to be like the Germans during the time of Hitler, to obey as law anything calling itself by that name and printed at government expense. He wants us to surrender our conscience to the state. He does not believe in conscientious objection or civil disobedience. He believes in being the CJ’s good servant, and the CJ’s first. But the CJ, who embroidered on his Ateneo de Manila record, is not the judiciary.
Take the Supreme Court’s temporary restraining order imprudently issued without a hearing conducing Hitlerina GMA to go to the airport, coiffed, in heels, to go abroad partly to attend conferences! The Pasay court prudently heard the doctors who said GMA could leave St. Luke’s, for home, not abroad.
Midas misled the people. GMA had not complied with a condition about the bond required by the Supreme Court. The high court should have apologized quickly for its blunder and castigated those who had misled it. The CJ should not have cut short his visit to the United States, reportedly to watch Manny Pacquiao fight, just to vote for GMA.
The Marcos martial law Supreme Court was and is not respected—the same fate awaiting another Supreme Court on the wrong side of history.
I will continue to teach my students not to check their conscience at the gate and heed it and be ready to face the consequences, including death itself, as shown by Antigone, St. Thomas More, and our people in Edsa ’86, who revolted against presidential and judicial tyranny and legislative subservience.
It has been months since the travel plan of GMA was thwarted. We all sympathize with the sick, but our local doctors and facilities are able to deal with her medical concerns. I am open to house arrest for her and even my pal, Ben Abalos, who is pushing 78. No way he will flee.
Our passion for justice for our people can blend with, and be tempered by, compassion for the ailing and the aging.
—RENE SAGUISAG,
