Law and lawfulness

There is probably no country in the world with as many laws as the Philippines. Part of the reason for this surfeit of laws is the fact that our national legal system embraces many major systems of laws from ancient to modern times – an inescapable consequence of our colonial history as well as our propensity to indiscriminately copy other peoples’ national institutions and traditions.

Marcos’ martial rule also exponentially increased the number of laws in the Philippines. On every conceivable subject, the prolific dictator generated a remarkable number of presidential proclamations, decrees, letters of instruction, executive and administrative orders and other legal and quasi-legal instruments of martial administration. For well over a decade, Marcos would not allow Filipinos to forget that he was a lawyer – obsessed with the law without necessarily being lawful. During that period, Filipinos might have missed the antics of Congress as well as the lawfulness of some of its more patriotic legislators; they could not have wanted for Congress’ legal output as Marcos more than made up for legal enactments even as he abolished the legislature.

There is probably one more reason for the Philippines’ voluminous statutes. Much like Marcos, most Filipinos are obsessed with making a good impression on others, with having others think well of us regardless of the harsh realities that eventually corrupt other peoples’ idea of us as a nation.

We are consumed with the desire to appear lawful. So we surround ourselves and others with manifestations of the law everywhere we turn. In our buildings, our streets, our homes, schools and churches, even in our fast disappearing forests and increasingly polluted seas, the law is omnipresent. The do’s and don’ts of human behavior stare us everywhere in this country, often accompanied by the appropriate documentation of their legal source – a republic act here, an executive order there, a municipal or barangay ordinance over there or a departmental regulation someplace else.

A series of formidable injunctions on some classically moulded tablet fronting a university church in Diliman impresses the innocent as reminders of the ultimate laws of humankind. In Baliwag, a more prosaic sign warns those who would treat the place as a garbage dump that the law forbids it and specifies a costly penalty. In Lubao, Pampangos are given to understand by yet another sign that "Bawal mimi keni!" (In the case of the latter, one is left to wonder whether the proscription is merely someone’s declaration of personal allergy for uric acid or the presidential town’s full majesty of the law being reflected.)

Along the North and South Expressways are innumerable reminders of the Philippines being legally a lefthand-drive country, with prominent signs admonishing overtaking only on the left or outer lane, slower vehicles to remain in the right or inner lane and the shoulder to be reserved only for emergency stops, denied to drivers who might think of using it as a spare passing lane. Legal penalties – fines in depreciated local currency – are conspicuously specified.

One can go on and on citing the unending litany of laws purportedly regulating the daily life of the nation. How Filipinos live, where they live, with whom they live, who they beget children with, how children are to be raised, what people eat, where they eat, how they choose their authorities and how they dispose of them – these are all concerns where the law has its expressed competence.

Highly visible and often dramatically threatening, the laws are indeed everywhere in this country, probably more so than in any other country. But where is the lawfulness?

Definitely not in the citizens. Nor, most unfortunately, their authorities.

Both the law and lawfulness are grounded in a sense of order which most Filipinos have not learned to develop or seriously sustained within their country. That sense of order acknowledges the importance of the self and its self-worth but also fundamentally recognizes the primacy of one’s community. Selfishness is not exterminated, but it knowingly yields to altruism and the interests of the bigger community.

Modern science and mature religion interestingly are both contributory to this sense of order among the citizenry. Both emphasize universality and systemic relationships rather than unmitigated individualism and anarchic selfishness. In trying to figure out why lawfulness has not been more characteristic of Filipinos, one may look into the sad state of science and science education in the country and the superficial religiosity of most of the people.

One is not reinventing anything by suspecting this link between law and lawfulness on one hand and science and religion on the other. The most lawful societies are also those where people are scientifically well developed and take their religion seriously – not fanatically but intelligently and committedly. In these societies, both science and religion are used by the people and the authorities to liberate and empower every conceivable human being in their midst. Neither science nor religion is used as a political tool to keep anyone in ignorance and superstition.

With intelligent science and equally intelligent religion, one can be hopeful about Filipino lawfulness. With neither or just one of the two, we may abandon all hope.