Rule of law vs mob rule

There are two issues that caught my personal attention this past week. The first is issue of the rule of law versus mob rule. The second is the heartbreaking environmental destruction caused by Chinese fishermen in the West Philippine Sea.

Stop exploiting pulpit 

During his Sunday mass sermon, a parish priest said that the issue of the disqualification case against Grace Poe should be left to the “will of the people.”

I can sympathize with any priest who uses the pulpit to speak about issues like human rights, income inequality and stewardship of nature. I can empathize with Pope Francis when he spoke in front of the United States Congress and condemned the death penalty and advocated his stand against abortion. In his regular sermon, Pope Francis has also advocated for stronger measures to combat global warming, saying it is the poor who are the main victims of climate change.

It is not surprising that the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines issued a statement that reprimanded Duterte for his personal remarks – using curse words – against the Pope. The Jesuits were understandably upset about Duterte’s public charge of alleged sexual abuse of students in some Jesuit run schools.

These are moral issues that the Catholic Church or its representatives are expected to have some public stand. The issue of Grace Poe’s status of being natural born is not a moral issue unless there is evidence that her possible disqualification is due to abuse of discretionary power by any branch of government.

The issue is a matter of law and should therefore be decided by the proper regulatory and judicial bodies – The Comelec and the Supreme Court. The public, including parish priests, have the right to protest if there is any evidence that the Comelec Commissioners or the Supreme Court Justices accepted any bribes or were coerced into making any particular decision.

If we advocate that matters of law should be left to the “will of the people,” that proposal says that there is no need for the judiciary. Judgments should be decided by a referendum instead of the courts. The Philippine Constitution becomes just a piece of paper because constitutional issues should be left to decision by popular vote.

I have not always agreed with the decisions of the Supreme Court. I do not believe that the approval of the bail petition of Juan Ponce Enrile was right. I may not also agree with their future decision on the disqualification case against Grace Poe. But I also accept that as long as we adhere to the present form of government, the alternative to recourse to the courts is mob rule which leads to anarchy.

This notion of “vox populi” has always been a difficult principle to fully accept. Democracy is the rule of the majority. But it also provides that the rights of the minority must always be protected.

The Aguinaldo doctrine has finally been sidelined by the Court. Previously, it was the rule that the crime of an elected government official is automatically erased if the guilty official is elected by his constituency in spite of his crime. This was such an absurd doctrine.

This parish priest should never have used his sermon as a means for advancing a purely political issue. His advocacy that the rule of law and the judiciary should be replaced by the so-called “will of the people” is a dangerous precedent that has been used by demagogues throughout history.

Chinese destroy West Philippine Sea

In a recent BBC feature, a correspondent filmed the actions of Chinese fishermen that is now turning the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) into an underwater desert. The news feature clearly showed the wholesale destruction of coral reefs that can make any civilized society sad and angry that such greed and callousness was being tolerated and even protected.

According to the BBC, the wanton destruction of the coral reefs could not be stopped because the fishermen were being protected by the Chinese Navy. The United States is reportedly reluctant to take on China in these waters.

China currently has 116 military vessels and 200 patrol ships in the South China Sea. It has already built seven artificial islands. Three or four of these illegally built islands have an air field and at least one has the capability to be used by fighter jets which can reach the Philippines in less than nine minutes.

The Chinese fishermen are also harvesting giant sea clams, some which are a hundred years old. According to the BBC this mass environmental destruction has led to the accusation that these fishermen are environmental looters

In the encyclical Laudato Si written by Pope Francis, he quoted St. Francis Assissi: “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who maintains and governs us, and who produces various fruits with colored fruits and herbs.

In his encyclical Pope Francis explains that oceans contain most of the variety of living creatures. Marine life in rivers, lakes, seas and oceans, which feeds a great part of the world’s population, is affected by uncontrolled fishing leading to a drastic depletion of certain species. Particularly threatened are marine organisms which we tend to overlook.

In tropical and subtropical seas we find coral reefs comparable to the great forests on dry land, for they shelter approximately a million species, including fish, crabs, molluscs, sponges and algae. Many of the world’s coral reefs are already barren or in a state of constant decline.

Pope Francis and the world asks: “Who has turned the wonder world of the seas underwater cemeteries bereft of color and life?” Who is destroying the coral reefs, the forests of the ocean ? Clearly the villains are the Chinese fishermen, protected by the naval might of China, that are turning the sea bed of the South China Sea into an underwater desert.

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