PNoy: Pushing for a constitutional crisis?

Last night, I listened to the nationwide speech of Pres. Benigno Aquino III and my jaw literally dropped that this President did not only defend the Disbursement Acceleration Program, it is clear proof that Mr. Aquino is still in complete denial that DAP has been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. So now he said that he would file a Motion for Reconsideration but in doing so he clearly refuses to accept the SC verdict and worse, he literally threatened the SC with a potential clash between the Executive Branch and the Judiciary.

The problem we are having with this President is that he believes that he is the law and that the Supreme Court must kowtow to him. Clearly he is ruling this nation as if he was a dictator. Just because he appointed the Supreme Court Chief Justice, he believes wrongly that he also controls the Judiciary.

PNoy said “My message to the Supreme Court: We don’t want to get to a point where two coequal branches of government would clash and where a third branch would have to mediate,” Isn’t this a not-so-veiled threat? It is for this reason that the President will soon file a motion to reconsider to the SC… and if they won’t budge what then? He’ll file an impeachment charge against the entire SC? Stupid!

If you didn’t notice, what’s coming out of the newspapers are questions about the Judiciary Development Fund. Ask yourself why this issue is suddenly coming out quite coincidentally when the SC ruled that DAP is unconstitutional. I have no doubt that the spin doctors inside Malacañang are responsible for this.

Yesterday morning, Karen Davila had Department of Budget and Management Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad explain their side of  DAP, that it is legal, from their end. Hey! How many SC decisions that we were unhappy about but accepted just the same because the SC is the court of last resort. But this President will not accept the SC ruling and will contest it. So what would happen if the SC denied their motion for recon? A constitutional crisis? This seems to be what Pres. PNoy wants to see happen! Abangan!

Meanwhile CBCP president Soc Villegas has asked DBM Sec. Abad to resign, but he still believes the President is honest. In another news, SWS and Pulse Asia surveys reveal that the President’s ratings have dropped from a high of 70% down to 53% and I would like to believe that SWS and Pulse Asia are not telling us the real score on the President’s popularity. I’m absolutely sure that the President’s ratings are very much lower than that.

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In its earnest effort to curb loud and deafening motorcycle noise, did the Cebu City Council just revised a 1964 ordinance that requires the use of a “Silencer” for all motor vehicles without studying? I gathered that this new ordinance has more teeth where violators may be fined P3,000 for the first offense and P5,000 or imprisonment or not more than three months or both at the discretion of the court for second offenders.

So the question is…how loud is loud? In the United States, they too have an anti-noise ordinance but no imprisonment. But before they could implement their anti-noise law, they don’t allow the registration of vehicles unless it first passes a decibel test. Yes, this is really the job of the Land Transportation Office to control vehicles; especially motorcycles that have passed its minimum decibel count. Though I haven’t read the ordinance yet, what I would like to know is whether the Cebu City Council has already established the proper noise level through a decibel counters. Secondly, whenever CITOM apprehends a motorcycle, it must be done through the use of a decibel counter so that the noise level can be established.

Without a decibel counter, anyone can accuse you of too much noise in your motorcycle or motor vehicle. I have an old Harley Davidson and it has a straight pipe… and it is loud only if I give it a full throttle,otherwise, it sounds just like any other motorcycle. For sure the Cebu City Council did not look into this because big bikes by their nature have big engines and if they run at 60 KPH, you’d hardly hear a loud noise. Unlike those small motorcycles where the silencers are removed, they make so much noise but it doesn’t really improve their speed.

Let me point out to the Cebu City Council and I am for this ordinance. But whether they like it or not, they must use technology so they could make a legal arrest. This is akin to the Drunken Driving law, where police authorities must have a breath analyzer in order to establish that the driver is driving while intoxicated. So the levels of intoxication must first be established by the State before an arrest can be made and no arrest should be done without the use of a breath analyzer.

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