Once tragedy, now farce

AY, THE curse of dotage could have started setting upon one, this fast ageing one. Current issues warranting fresh and forward macro perspectives almost always  get retro views through the prism of micro memories.

One starts to write. Into the third paragraph, he stops: Haven’t I written, even rewritten, something akin to this issue before?     

So, one digs into his memory bank – what the brain failed to keep, thankfully the hard drive and the blog faithfully store, fresh as the day posted.

Like, the Anti-Terrorism Act now likened to the Marcosian martial law, thus – from December 7, 2009:  

YOU DON’T use a .45 to kill a fly.
I remember reading that from a mimeographed sheet that came out of Fort Bonifacio in 1972 shortly after Ferdinand Marcos put the entire archipelago under martial law. The statement was supposed to have come from the incarcerated Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino.
Ninoy’s contention was that martial law was an inappropriate reaction, nay, an overkill, to the socio-economic and political problems besetting the country.
Summed up Proclamation 1081: “…WHEREAS, the rebellion and armed action undertaken by these lawless elements of the communist and other armed aggrupations organized to overthrow the Republic of the Philippines by armed violence and force have assumed the magnitude of an actual state of war against our people and the Republic of the Philippines;
NOW, THEREFORE, I, FERDINAND E. MARCOS, President of the Philippines, by virtue of the powers vested upon me by Article VII, Section 10, Paragraph ('2) of the Constitution, do hereby place the entire Philippines as defined in Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution under martial law and, in my capacity as their commander-in-chief, do hereby command the armed forces of the Philippines, to maintain law and order throughout the Philippines, prevent or suppress all forms of lawless violence as well as any act of insurrection or rebellion and to enforce obedience to all the laws and decrees, orders and regulations promulgated by me personally or upon my direction…”
“An actual state of war” against the republic, Marcos justified his martial law. A perpetuation of himself in power, so Marcos did with martial law...

Don’t the premises for martial law bear uncanny, terrifying, resemblance to the grounds upon which the Anti-Terrorism Law is grounded?  

Invoked as justification is the rule of law: As with Proclamation No. 1081, so too with the RA 11479.  

Of this, what has one to say he has written in January 2006, not here in Punto! but in the long Pampanga News, thus:

…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’ proclaimed martial law. To prevent disruptive rallies and restore the rule of law, so Macapagal-Arroyo issued those EOs...
… the “rule of law” that was invoked by a compliant, if not kowtowing Congress, was a rule, yes, but not of Law. It was simply the rule of numbers.
Consider these 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.
… the subsumption of a moral inquiry, nay, its nullification on mere technicality, no matter how “legal,” is a travesty of Law. As factored in the above-given “truths.”
Aquinas, 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.” Touche. But, really now, has conscience a place in Philippine political praxis?
The “rule of law” in its application hereabouts takes primary place among those that a forgotten jurist said were “…laws of comfort adopted by free agents in pursuit of their advantage.”
Time for us all to reflect on “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.”
And to those misnomered solons: “To interpret the Law, and to bring it into harmony with the varying conditions of human society is the highest task of the legislator.”

Aye, the lessons of history, if only in quotes, long committed to memory still persisting --

There is no present or future – only the past happening over and over again – now. – Eugene O’Neill.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  – George Santayana.

And, to the point in matters Marcosian and Dutertian: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. – Karl Marx.

PAGLILINAW: Opo, ako po ay aktibista noong martial law. Periodista naman po ako ngayong Anti-Terrorism Law. Nguni’t kailan man po ay hindi ako naging terorista.

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