| DIE HARD III |
 |
| Herman Tiu Laurel |
06/11/2012
The recent Corona impeachment and conviction displayed the situation
our title highlights today: Lawmakers as lawbreakers. In a sense, that
is the rule instead of the exception because those who make the laws
have the power — the same power that allows them to break the laws they
make with impunity.
The same thing happened in 2001 with Estrada’s
impeachment and street mob ouster where the Philippine Establishment —
from the oligarchs to the Church, to the “evil society,” all backed up
by the US — ran roughshod over the Rule of Law to install the leader
they wanted.
But make no mistake: The same also prevails in the
international stage where the US violates with impunity the multifarious
laws the West has written for the world through the UN. For instance,
despite the many anti-terror statutes written into international law, it
is common knowledge that the US is leading the supply of arms to
anti-Assad terrorist rebels in Syria today.
Last week, lawyers
Homobono Adaza and Alan Paguia, together with yours truly, filed a
petition for “Certiorari and Prohibition with a Prayer for a TRO
(temporary restraining order), writ of preliminary injunction” against
the Congress and the Senate, as represented by their respective leaders,
and an urgent motion for “oral arguments” on what we allege are
violations of the Constitution and the Rule of Law in the conduct of the
entire Corona impeachment and conviction process. When a few friends
say that the petition is laughed at by some, I contend that it is
because they are ignorant of its purpose.
On the morning of our
filing, former congressman Teddy “Boy” Locsin on his radio program took a
pessimistic view of our action. However, according to those who tuned
in to his evening TV “editorial” just about 12 hours later, he had
changed his position and agreed that the issues must be raised before
the Supreme Court (SC), even if just for the benefit of “posterity.”
My
personal experience in this has been the same as my opposition to Edsa
II, where many old friends looked askance at me but four years later,
after “Hello Garci,” turned around to say I was right.
In fact,
some of my political friends from the Estrada camp today (like Rez
Cortez) even ask me, “On whose side are you, Corona’s?” By answering
that I am on the side of the Rule of Law, I hope that they’ve seen the
very reason for my being an ally of Estrada.
When I was asked by
another in the same group about the reactions to our petition from
Senators Lacson, Drilon and Enrile, I merely cited the very proof that
was presented before the Senate but which it had clearly disregarded —
the testimony of Rep. Toby Tiangco showing how the House and its Speaker
Sonny Belmonte ran roughshod over the Constitution and rules of
verification to railroad the Articles of Impeachment; and why it was
wrong for Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile to have accepted it. But I
don’t think these can be any worse than the non-action of the SC on a
separate petition of ours last January — with colleague Rod Salandanan
of Bataan and Raffy Tongco of Quezon City, represented by Paguia as
counsel — questioning the severely infirmed and blatantly illegal
Articles of Impeachment, plus five other petitions questioning the
omissions and short cuts that had caused the grave injustice.
Enrile
contradicts himself when he leads the conviction of his hapless victims
then defends those victims by saying they committed no crime. If we are
to go by the law, there should be a pursuit of all alleged guilty
parties. But as Alan Paguia points out, the law and the matter of
justice for the Filipino people in these cases of purported corruption
and abuse of high government officials are merely made into chips in the
horse trading of politics.
In the case of former Ombudsman
Merceditas Gutierrez, for example, all corruption charges were
immediately dropped in the wake of her resignation. You see: There
should have been no compromise if she had been guilty; but, as all the
politicians know, most of them are as guilty, if not more, than those
they accuse.
I think Corona believes that those who have accused
him are far worse than anything they can ever accuse him of, with his
final act of exposition of all that he is a declaration of how much more
honest he is. To this day, Corona’s major accusers, particularly Lacson
and Drilon, still refuse to execute waivers for their bank accounts and
other financial records.
The latest news is that senators allied
with JPE got the biggest pork — a product perhaps of that last JPE
meeting with Legarda et al. to convict Corona?
The Anti-Money
Laundering Act (AMLA) is a law inspired and lobbied for by the US,
supposedly to track illegal and terrorist money. But guess what? The
biggest illegal funds transacted globally involve the $500-billion
annual drug money transfers that have the Philippines as one of the
biggest sources. Even though we have no data on the Philippines yet, we
can see how the West and the US banks break the global anti-money
laundering regime, by reading “Western Banks, Immune, Enjoy Biggest
Slice of Drug Money Profits” posted by The Agonist and “American Banks
‘High’ on Drug Money” about Martin Woods, an expert at “sniffing out
dirty money passing through International Banking Systems.”
So,
the US as the originator of the global anti-money laundering rules, is
in reality the world’s chief violator. Thus, every law abiding citizen
of the world today, without yet capturing power and supplanting the
present plutocratic structure, can only expose the chicanery, fraud,
hypocrisy and misanthropy; and hope the majority comprehensively imbibes
the practice of the Rule of Law to lay the groundwork for a genuinely
democratic culture and political structure.
(Tune in to 1098AM,
dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday-Wednesday-Friday, 5 to 6
p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays,
8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m.; visit
http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio
archives)
(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Herman Tiu-Laurel)
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL:
http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20120611com5.html
