The legal bind

ME, I am just being legalistic about it. President Marcos was a President for so long, and he was a soldier. That’s about it.

Thus, President Rodrigo Duterte justified his decision, aye his initiative, to bury former President Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. This upon his arrival in Lima, Peru for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. This in the face of protest rallies at home.

Duterte made it as simple as it can ever get, perfectly within legal bounds.

There was no prohibition to the dictator’s burial at the Libingan because the 9-5-1 decision of the Supreme Court on Nov. 8 upholding the President’s decision also lifted the status quo ante order issued by the tribunal in September.

So said Supreme Court spokesperson Theodore Te in a text message to media. 

A clear majority of the magistrates ruled that the President did not commit grave abuse of discretion when he allowed the burial of Marcos at the Libingan, qualified as he was – to Duterte – to lie among dead soldiers and Presidents like him.

Te furthered that the petitioners opposing the burial had not filed a motion for reconsideration.

As to Duterte, so to Te. Marcos’ burial at the Libingan fully adhering to the rule of law.  

Ay, the rule of law. How many crimes have been inflicted upon the people in its name?

To prevent anarchy in the streets and restore the rule of law, so Marcos precisely predicated his declaration of martial law. And let loose lawlessness upon his hapless people.  

A co-opted Supreme Court then – the Chief Justice at one time reduced to being the Imeldific’s umbrella holder – upholding the Marcosian martial reign via presidential decrees and commitment orders, of letters of instruction and implementation, as the very exercise of the rule of law.

For all his unjustifiable one-man rule, Marcos has been bequeathed justice through that majority decision for his burial now. What perversion of justice obtains there?

The High Court’s 9-5-1 vote allowing the dictator’s interment in the heroes’ cemetery makes less the rule of law than the rule of numbers.
No, I am not a lawyer. Not even close. And I do not have the least conceit to posture like one. But here comes to me, incurably bookish and avidly observant,  a consideration of certain universal givens.

Stripped to its essentials, Law is a “function of Reason,” as Aquinas put it. Kant furthered: “the expression of the Reason common to all.”
Law is “the rational or ethical will” of the body politic; “…the principal and most perfect branch of ethics,” as the British jurist Sir William Blackstone wrote in his Commentaries.
Thus, in the Marcos burial case, the subsumption of a moral inquiry, nay, its apparent nullification on mere technicality – Marcos was President and soldier according to Duterte; No MR filed versus the burial, per Te – no matter how “legal,” still comprises a travesty of the Law. As factored in the above-given “truths.”

Said Duterte: “Whether or not [Marcos] performed worse or better, there’s no study, no movie about it, just the challenges and allegations of the other side.” Ay, there’s precisely the rub, Mister President. The most grievous insult to the gravest injury inflicted upon the martial law victims. The utter falsification, indeed, the worst perversion of Philippine history.

And, pray tell, Mister President, how did your “no movie about it” factor in the issue? No stretch of my creative imagination allows its least relevance to the issue at hand. Your interpretation, Andanar? Your translation, Abella?    

Then Aquinas anew, still in Summa Theologica: “Laws enacted by men are either just or unjust. If they are just, they have a binding force in the court of conscience from the Eternal Law, whence they are derived…Unjust laws are not binding in the court of conscience, except, perhaps, for the avoiding of scandal and turmoil.”  Touché.

Really now, has conscience a place in Philippine political praxis? In the judicial exercise too?
Hence, the “rule of law” in its application in the Marcos burial case takes a primary place among those that a forgotten jurist said were “…laws of comfort adopted by free agents in pursuit of their advantage.” Again, this observation coming from a non-lawyer.
Hence, the Marcos burial case making a travesty of “the doctrine that the universe is governed in all things by Law, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.”

Alas, the martial law victims still crying for justice, aye, literally still searching for their disappeared kin, over 40 years after the crime.

The despicable dictator interred – with full honors – in the country’s pantheon of heroes.   

No justice, No hero. What rule of law?