A government not of laws but of men

Among the earliest principles of Political Law that I learned in the very first few days of my Law school more than four decades ago was taken from the 1919 case of Villavicencio vs. Lukban. Ours is (supposedly) a government of laws and not of men. So ruled the Supreme Court through the pen of Justice Malcolm. By the way, the word ‘supposedly’ is my insertion. It was not written in the decision. “No one”, continued the court, “is so high that he is above the law; no officer of the law may set it at defiance with impunity.” That legal principle, among others, pushed me to pursue that collegiate study in almost obsessive character. Consider what the court further said: “all officers of the government from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law and are bound to obey it” and that political law precept stuck in my young mind then.

Two recent events seem to suggest that the Villavicencio vs. Lukban principle no longer holds sway or that it is cast aside, in gross and utter disrespect, by the powers that be. I really hope that my observation is wrong but as may be demonstrated by these events, I am afraid that ours may no longer be a government of laws because it may have become a government of men instead. If that is so, all officers of the government may no longer be sworn to uphold the majesty of the law and perhaps what they say may supplant our legal order.

The first observable event happened when President Rodrigo Duterte read the names of alleged corrupt government officials few days ago. I was stunned in disbelief. How could the president so recklessly injure the integrity of people without a shared of damning proof? But I imagine that his millions of adoring fans boisterously applauded the fact that the president identified members of the House of Representatives as allegedly involved in acts punishable by the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices, also known as RA 3019. If ours was a government of laws, no officer of the government, not even the president, could so malign a citizen of this country. To me, however it was done, it was libel committed against the honor of concerned congressmen and it was the president, who, if not for his immunity from suit, could be held criminally liable. President Duterte noticeably padded his defamatory act with a kind of incomprehensible caveat by saying that since there was not enough evidence against the people he libeled, they continued to enjoy the legal presumption of innocence. That is where my dough lies. If the president did not have enough incriminating evidence against the people he mentioned as allegedly corrupt, he should not have named names. The lawmakers and the engineers whom the president shamed as probably corrupt are innocent unless they are charged in court and proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. That is the law but then again ours is no longer a government of laws!

The second event involved a general whose family almost sounds like that of the president. In a televised interview, the general said he, a military man, conducted a medical research for a COVID-19 vaccine and having found some, he had his men inoculated. The defense secretary stated that the vaccine was “smuggled” and that means the smuggler had to be sanctioned. On their part, the medical experts assert that the act of the general is against the law. Yet, listen to his justification for disobeying many provisions of law? He wants to protect the president as if his declaration is enough to erase the criminal liability for violating our laws. Indeed, to the mind of the general, ours is looking like a government of such men as he.