Was it right and just?
I got married when I was 18, had my first baby 13 months later, meaning I did not get married because I had to. I remember being at a reunion with my high school classmates who were also married by then. One of them was my seatmate. “You had a photographic memory,” she observed. “I would tell you between periods that we would have a quiz in history at the next class. You would get flustered, scan through the chapter in the history book during the prayer. Then you would get a 90 in the objective quiz. How did you do that?” she wanted to know.
“I would look at the pages we were supposed to study and try to remember them,” I told her. “Then, when I saw the question, I would call up the page until I saw the answer. Simple, though it didn’t always work. Sometimes I got an 80.” My classmates gasped. “You have a photographic memory!”
By the time of that reunion, I only “had” a photographic memory — past tense. By then, I had had three children and the anesthesia had killed the photographic memory I didn’t know I had. Nevertheless, my memory is still good and sometimes astounds me.
Around 30 years ago I handled external affairs for the advertising industry. “External affairs” means handling government issues, dealing with congressmen and senators, trying to make them understand why they should not propose the legislation they are proposing, and succeeding only in delaying whatever it was until the following elections when they were replaced and we would start all over again. The important thing is that I had to relearn how government worked; and I was able to remember what I had learned from my high school history books.
One, that the principal function of Congress is to pass laws, to legislate. Two, once a law is passed, the Executive Branch of the Government or the Office of the President then enforces the law. Three, if a law passed by Congress and enforced by the Executive Office is seen as having been violated then the Judiciary, upon proper complaint duly filed before it, will decide on what to do. I think this was called a “system of checks and balances.”
Sorry this writing is a bit late. I habitually suppress my political side until ABS-CBN, one of the corporations I worked closely with, had a televised hearing before Congress. I knew something was wrong with the hearing but I could not quite say what it was until I saw a conversation between two distinguished old-school lawyers, both of whom I highly respect, on social media. It clarified things for me and I could not stop myself from clarifying it for you.
In simple, straightforward English, they said: when Congress passed the franchise years back, that franchise was enacted into law. If that law was violated, it is the Executive that has to investigate and prosecute any violation thereof, and the Judiciary that will finally decide if there was a violation. Did the Executive file any case? Did the Judiciary find the network guilty of violation? The answer to both questions is a deafening NO!
In fact, the hearing was conducted by Congress, which presented alleged violations. Then, they themselves sat in judgment. And then they decided that the violations were committed and they decided to deny the application for renewal. I thought that was a classic but despicable situation of the Accuser and the Judge being one and the same. Congress accused and Congress judged. What happened to the system of checks and balances? Does this tell us it is time to abolish the Executive and Judicial branches of government because it now seems that Congress can do their work for them?
If the hearing was to determine whether ABS-CBN was qualified for a franchise, the qualifications of the applicant as stated in the law should have been the subject of determination. Did anybody even mention the law, Republic Act number or even what were the qualifications required by the law? Nobody did. Instead, the congressmen concentrated on the alleged violations of a franchise that had already expired. And it expired without any entity, governmental agency or court of justice rendering a final judgment confirming any violation.
To people like me who have in their memory the way the government was supposed to work, something did not sit right. What did that congressional hearing accomplish? Congress certainly could not pass any law repealing the grant and revoking the franchise since the franchise was already expired. In other words, the franchise was finished. It was, for all purposes, DEAD. It was a corpse.
So instead Congress denied the new franchise applied for without bothering to examine if ABS-CBN possessed the qualifications imposed by law, because in fact Congress could not even state the applicable law.
So was justice dispensed with or was ignorance of the law exposed?
You be the judge.
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