Ducky Paredes

 “The decisions of the previous Supreme Courts were a comfort in that decisions based on principles, ethics, equity and the Law closed the book on whatever issue was before it. Not any more.”

by Ducky Paredes

Today, traditionally known as Ninos Inocentes, one has to wonder where our Supreme Court is taking us all for a ride.

There was a time when cases decided by the Supreme Court were as set in stone once the final judgment had been promulgated. This would be when the Court explicitly ruled that “no further pleadings shall be entertained” and the entry of judgment accomplished.

In a country where politics of the worst kind rears its head in almost every venture – sports, business, the judicial system, church affairs, education – and affects all facets of our lives, the SC was a bedrock of integrity in that our impression of former SCs was that the justices made their decisions based solely on principle, ethics and the Law.

This was probably why the Constitution written in 1986 (after our experience with the awful one-man rule of the Marcos) gave a lot more powers to the present SC than it used to have.

The lesson to be learned may be that one mustn’t write rules based on the quality of former justices or former senators or former congressmen. Altering the balance that made the formers exceptional may be the wrong way to go. For all we know, their limited authority may have been what made them exceptional compared to the present crop of mostly dreary ones.

A fault we have as a people may be that we seem to avoid closure. Thus, what was debated in the past – as the one between Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Aguinaldo – continues even today, even when they no longer even matter.

The decisions of the previous Supreme Courts were a comfort in that decisions based on principles, ethics, equity and the Law closed the book on whatever issue was before it – land ownership, civil and political rights or whatever else. Not any more.

A recent decision by the SC t reversed its earlier decision which already had an “entry of judgment” and on which appeals filed against the judgment had twice been rejected.

Does this mean that Supreme Court decisions are no longer final? Thus, instead of being the court of last resort, has the SC now demoted itself to a court with no binding rules where everything is always negotiable even after a “final” decision has been rendered?

Congress passed an unconstitutional law when it granted cityhood to 16 municipalities that based on constitutional provisions that says the local government code must be complied with in creating new cities. The local government code sets absolute minimums to income and population of cityhood candidates. The 16 did not qualify for cityhood, since either their population or their income (or, in most cases, both) did not meet the minimum requirements.

The League of Cities of the Philippines (LCP), because increasing the number of cities (by creating cities of unqualified municipalities) would increase the number of cities drawing from their common fund without adding equivalent funds to the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) for cities, questioned the constitutionality of the laws creating these unqualified cities. It was an open-and-shut case. The sixteen just did not match the numbers for population and income indicated by the Constitution to qualify as cities.

Mayor Benhur Abalos of Mandaluyong, President of the LCP notes that the SC first ruled as unconstitutional the cityhood applications of the 16 cities on Nov. 18, 2008. The 16 filed an appeal, which the SC denied.

The 16 then filed a motion for reconsideration on March 31, 2009, which the SC denied on April 28, 2009. In denying the motion for reconsideration, the SC ruled that “no further pleadings shall be entertained” and that the entry of judgment would be “made in due course.”

On May 21, 2009, the SC released the entry of judgment, which added that the “decision is final and executory.” The ruling was recorded in the entry of judgment.

On June 2, 2009, the SC, in en banc resolution affirmed that the cases of the 16 cityhood laws were “finally closed and terminated.” The press statement of the SC said that the High Court held that “there can be no doubt of the intention of this Court to consider [these cases] finally closed and terminated.” It also stressed that “basic is the rule in our judicial system that litigations must be terminated at some point.”

That “final” decision, as it now turns out, was far from final. The Court has now set aside the “final and executory” ruling it made earlier and ruled that the 16 are now officially cities.

Mayor Abalos calls the decision to reverse a “final and executory” decision for what it is: “That is illegal.”

But, isn’t it the SC that is the final arbiter of what is legal and illegal? When the SC commits an “illegal” act, does that make the act “legal”? Are there no more absolute standards? Can lawyers still cite previous decisions of the SC when they can have two decisions contradicting each other on one and the same case?  

Justice Antonio Carpio, in his dissenting opinion, warned that the Court’s somersault in decided cases “would wreak havoc on well-settled jurisprudence.” He sees this as leading to “catastrophe.”

“Such an unprecedented ruling would resurrect contentious political issues long ago settled,” Carpio said.

Yes, imagine if a future Court would rule that Joseph Estrada never actually resigned his presidency or that the initiative to change the form of government in 2004 did everything according to Hoyle and can then be pursued

With the recent SC ruling, everything from which we thought we were already safe can cone up from the graveyard to bite us again. The Supreme Court no longer stands on bedrock but on shifting political sand.

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On another issue, one also wonders why the SC seems to think that it has supervisory powers over the Commission on Elections which is an independent body and whose mandates is, from the Constitution itself: “Decide, except those involving the right to vote, all questions affecting elections, including determination of the number and location of polling places, appointment of election officials and inspectors, and registration of voters.”

No one, not even the SC or the President or the legislature, has powers over the Comelec in the performance of its election duties unless one complains about the abuse of their powers. The SC, by mandating new voter registrations past the time that the Comelec decided it could still revise its precinct list in good time, has created a problem that could have affected voting on election day.

As it turns out, however, the SC need not have bothered because there have been too few additional voter registrants to really matter.

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hvp 12.27.09)

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