A camote tale
It is counterproductive for Leila de Lima to go to town assailing the Supreme Court for what she believes is selective justice in allowing Senator Juan Ponce Enrile to post bail on humanitarian grounds. If she thinks the Supreme Court, or at least the eight justices who voted to let Enrile go, favored the elite with their decision, then she can always ask the Liberal Party, under which she intends to run for the Senate in 2016, to initiate impeachment raps against any or all of them.
But for her to just go public with her bitching only serves to undermine what crucial faith people still have in their Supreme Court. She probably may not care a hoot, especially after her boss Noynoy already once threatened the Supreme Court if it dares tamper with his DAP. But there are still many who do, people who believe that the Supreme Court, with its imperfections, is still democracy's best shot, given how hypocrisy and corruption have crippled both the executive and legislative.
And it is unfair for de Lima to limit her vitriol to media knowing how the justices concerned can never rebutt her allegations and answer her charges in the same manner. If she truly wants justice as she understands it to be served and have any errors, if ever, rectified, then she is always free to avail of all the legal remedies available to her if that is her intention. For her to just spit and hiss before the microphones only serves her own interests, political or otherwise.
If de Lima wants media mileage for her possible 2016 senatorial run, it should not be at the expense of the Supreme Court. Her beef is only against the eight justices who may have erred in their Enrile decision. But there is a need to keep the integrity of the Supreme Court as an institution intact. As an institution, the Supreme Court is far more valuable than any service de Lima can render the republic, whether as justice secretary, senator, or plain defender of Noynoy.
So if de Lima has a beef against any or all of the eight justices involved in the Enrile decision, then she should go through the process, of which she must surely be aware of, having gone through the same in the Corona impeachment trial. For no matter how painful a process that may be, that is the only built-in way to heal institutional injuries the Supreme Court may have suffered. That is the only way to ensure the institution survives.
I myself agree with the substance of de Lima's bitching, even if as a non-lawyer I may not comprehend in the same manner that she can all the legal nuances and implications that the Supreme Court Enrile decision may entail. But from my simple appreciation of what happened, I cannot appreciate letting a man go free, even if only temporarily, for reasons of poor health, only to see the same man dive into activities that require health that is far from poor.
And so I submit that Enrile may have simply been accommodated, and that indeed he may have benefitted from selective justice. But hey, de Lima should be the last person on earth to bitch about selective justice. If selective justice were to be an award to be given away, I cannot think of no one else to nominate other than de Lima herself.
Long before de Lima got her chance to accuse the Supreme Court of selective justice, she herself had been accused of the same. And the irony is that the selective justice for which she has often been accused of involved who else but Enrile himself and two other senators, Bong Revilla and Jinggoy Estrada. Aside from the three and a few other sacrificial lambs, none of the big fish -- all Noynoy's friends -- were prosecuted. Whether accused or accuser, it is still selective justice.
De Lima describes the Supreme Court Enrile decision as like taking the Philippine justice system back to that of a banana republic. This is the problem with people who see the mote in other people's eyes but never see their own. De Lima herself and her brand of dispensing justice are far worse than a banana republic's. A banana at least struggles to stand up. Hers is like that of a camote -- or has she forgotten how she ordered Gloria Arroyo held without charges.
In that sad and sorry episode in our history, Arroyo was held without charges until a judge could hastily be found to issue a warrant in six hours. She may also have forgotten how Noynoy threw out her recommendation to prosecute his friends in the Luneta bus massacre and how quietly she accepted the rebuff where more principled officials would have promptly resigned.
In the Mamasapano massacre, she made a big spectacle of leading a huge delegation of investigators to the site. But what did her efforts amount to? Nothing. It was like the mountain laboring to bring forth a mouse. Why? Because as everybody knows but which none in the Aquino government would admit, the trail of responsibility goes all the way back to Noynoy. And the camote just could not rise higher than its own self.
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