The Bill of Rights is not enough?
Even Palace officials are joining the chorus in singing alleluias to Chief Justice Reynato Puno for calling a summit on the extra-judicial killing and abduction of activists and media men. Just goes to show these people have no shame or, if they do, they are totally oblivious to the fact that it’s their very hands which are dripping with the blood of the victims.The Supreme Court is the weakest of the three branches of government. It doesn’t control the police, the prosecution service or the military. It does not control the purse strings of government or conduct investigations in aid of legislation. In fact, it has to rely on the other branches to enforce its writ.
So when the High Court takes it upon itself to find ways to put an end to the killings, it is practically indicting the executive and legislative branches for not doing their jobs.
So what were Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez, national security adviser and stop-gap defense secretary Norberto Gonzales, AFP chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon and PNP chief Oscar Calderon doing there at the summit, looking smug in their continuing avowals that they were doing everything in their power to end extra-judicial killings and forced disappearances?
Chief Justice Puno is doing a heroic job of prodding the judiciary into stepping into the breach abandoned by the political departments. People are dying. The Bill of Rights is slowly being torn to shreds. The Court, as the last line in the defense of the Constitution, is forced to foray into uncharted waters all because of the failure of the other branches to perform their constitutionally assigned tasks.
The High Court, participants in the summit were told, is seriously thinking of enshrining in its rules the writ of amparo, from the Spanish word "amparar" which means "to protect." This after the justices recognized that proceedings involving the writ of habeas corpus hit a brick wall when state agents flatly deny a missing person is not in their custody.
There must be other ways of securing the people’s fundamental rights in the face of the stonewalling by agents of the state. Here is where the proposed writ of amparo comes in. It is a special constitutional writ to protect a constitutional right other than physical liberty.
There is no such animal in the 1987 Constitution or the 1973 Constitution or the 1935 Constitution. But if the Supreme Court says it can provide for such a remedy under its rules-making powers, then who is to controvert what the final interpreter of what the Constitution says?
But let’s stop talking like lawyers which we certainly are not.
Let the executive department secure for the people the liberties which are their birth right under the Bill of Rights.
Is that too much to ask?
