Myopic justices

Lost in the continuing debate on the legality and morality of the Supreme Court decision to allow the burial of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani are the unanimous opinions of five associate justices who agreed that the late President Ferdinand Marcos “was, and will never be, a hero” and his burial in the LNMB will “not erase the atrocities he committed during his authoritarian rule.”

Those were the very words of Associate Justice Jose Mendoza, writer of that separate opinion, who nonetheless voted to dismiss the petitions to stop the LNMB burial for Marcos on the ground that the issue was purely “political” and not subject to judicial review. He was joined by Associate Justices Presbitero Velasco, Mariano del Castillo, Teresita de Castro and Estela Bernabe. Having thus sided with the four justices who voted to dismiss the case on other grounds, they helped create a formidable majority of nine in favor of the Marcoses.

To our layman’s point of view, Mendoza’s logic was utterly myopic and bereft of any respect for the historical value involved in the case.  But let’s just try a bit of common sense here: How could he and the four others have found the wisdom to vote the way they did without realizing the logical consequence that the biggest crook this country has known was going to look like a hero in the eyes of the whole nation and the whole world? Didn’t it ever occur to them that by so voting, they would be lending their number to the four who obviously think Marcos was not all that bad and simply “erred” like the rest of mankind?

For reasons of his own, the conflicted Associate Justice Bienvenido Reyes recused himself and his vote no longer counted. Had the Mendoza and company done the same for the reason that they could not stomach (or could they now?) the unspeakable “atrocities committed by (Marcos) during his authoritarian rule” (let alone seeing him accorded full military honors and buried like a hero), all of us might have been spared this insult that is now making us the laughingstock of the whole world!

YVETTE SAN LUIS-PETROCELLI, [email protected]