MANILA, Philippines — Sangguniang Kabataan officers and youth community leaders from Luzon and Visayas appealed to the Supreme Court to strike down the anti-terrorism law as null for infringing on their freedoms.
In a 105-page petition, 20 youth leaders filed the 29th legal challenge against the divisive, much-feared Republic Act 11479 or the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 (ATA). The petition was filed with the assistance of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers-National Capital Region.
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“This most recent enactment of Congress single-handedly infringes on what many modern democracies consider as basic and essential rights,” the petitioners said.
They urged the SC to restrain the government from implementing the ATA and declare the entirety of law as null and void.
“The enforcement of RA 11479 necessarily involves a direct and unequivocal violation of constitutional safeguards. So long as it is in effect, this law maintains an atmosphere of fear—the proverbial ‘chilling effect’—that deters the free and full exercise of fundamental rights,” the youth leaders said.
“Thus, the law poses a danger not just for collective and individual rights, but for democracy as a whole,” they added.
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IRR cannot remedy the defect of the law
Like previously filed petitions, this latest legal challenge fired against ATA attacked its sections that are vague and overbroad, such as the penal provision defining terrorism and the acts that fall under it. The petitioners pointed out that all other provisions for related offenses hinged on this section.
Even its non-penal provisions “either grant powers to the [Anti-Terrorism Council], the police and the military personnel or lay down their functions in the enforcement of RA 11479 hinge on the validity of Section 4’s definition of terrorism,” they said.
The petitioners said the Implementing Rules of Regulation—currently being crafted by the Department of Justice’s legal team—must not be used to “correct” the law.
“Implementing rules and regulations cannot remedy this defect because the core provision of RA 11479 is, in and of itself, impossibly and irremediably vague,” they said.
“Trying to ‘correct’ the glaring and inherent defect in the assailed law through its implementing rules must be avoided because of the dangers accompanying such a proposition, not the least of which is the unwarranted discretion being given to the law-enforcer when he is asked to set the rules for the implementation of a vague law,” they said.
“By crafting the implementing rules, the executive branch would, in effect, be determining the parameters of RA 11479 and the limits of its own power,” it added.
The petitioners stressed that with the new anti-terrorism law, the Philippines would be taking a huge step “into the bowels of tyranny.”
“For when we, as a nation, accept the idea that all means—moral or immoral, constitutional or unconstitutional—are acceptable if only to defeat a fearful enemy, there would be little left to distinguish us from the very evil we feared,” they added.
SC justices set the petitions related to the anti-terrorism law for oral arguments next month. It will be held at the earliest, on the third week of September.