EDITORIAL - The Poe vote serves another purpose too

The composition of the Senate Electoral Tribunal that sat and decided on the disqualification case against Senator Grace Poe on citizenship issues is instructive. It tells a lot about the eventual 5-4 decision that emerged and allowed Poe to keep her Senate seat. The SET is composed of three justices of the Supreme Court and four senators.

The three justices of the Supreme Court sitting in the SET are associate justices Antonio Carpio, Teresita Leonardo de Castro and Arturo Brion. The six senators in the tribunal are senators Loren Legarda, Bam Aquino, Nancy Binay, Pia Cayetano, Vicente Sotto III, and Cynthia Villar. In its 5-4 decision, the five who voted for Poe were Legarda, Aquino, Cayetano, Sotto and Villar. The four who voted against were Carpio, de Castro, Brion, and Binay.

The five who voted for Poe are all colleagues of hers in the Senate. They could not have voted otherwise or there would be a lot of red faces and awkward silences the next time they meet in the Senate. The only senator who voted against Poe was Binay. But this was to be expected. Binay's father is Vice President Jejomar Binay, who is running against Poe and two others for the presidency in 2016.

Of the five senators who voted for Poe and the lone senator who voted against, it can very well be said that they voted along political or personal lines. They did not vote on the merits of the case, which involved very serious legal questions that bear not only on the instant case involving Poe but on similar controversies that may arise in the future involving similar questions.

In so doing, the five senators who voted for Poe, and the lone senator who voted against, all did their country a great disservice. They abdicated on their sworn duty to vote in accordance with what they felt was lawful and right, not by what they believed was convenient and expedient. The nation expected them to carry out a great responsibility with honor and authority and they failed in that miserably.

It is not enough to point out the political nature of the tribunal in order to justify the political biases of its members. When the task at hand requires the exercise of even-handed treatment in order to attain a result that is not only worthy of the dignity of the tribunal but the unassailability of its actions, one would have expected the senators to rise above self for the country's greater good.

Alas they did not. Or perhaps more aptly, they could not. In the end, it was only the three justices who measured up to what was required of them by strictly adhering to the merits of the case, never mind if they all ended up in the minority and losing tally. Never has a vote of three, cast in truth and integrity, risen to be appreciated by a nation gratefully assured that the great divide between learned justices and shallow politicians remains as distinct as ever.