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The SC is unlikely to reverse its decision which voided the "Truth Commission"

Press Statements

 

             The Supreme Court is unlikely to reverse its decision which voided the “Truth Commission” as unconstitutional since the motion for reconsideration filed by Solicitor General Jose Cadiz is a mere replay of the Aquino administration’s previous submissions.

             The settled doctrine is that a motion for reconsideration will not prosper if it is bereft of any new arguments not previously resolved by the court because rehashed arguments will not suffice.

             The Aquino administration’s insistence that Executive Order No. 1 which created the “Truth Commission” did not infringe on the equal protection clause is belied  by the Executive Order’s precise provisions which solely targeted for investigation the officials and personnel of the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, as pointed out by the Supreme Court.

              The Supreme Court has ruled that the particularization of the past dispensation is not a proper and reasonable classification because it would make corruption seem a monopoly of a specific regime.

              The campaign against graft must be a crusade for all seasons and must transcend the barriers of periodic regimes.

             The Aquino administration’s penchant for castigating the past administration led the Supreme Court to opine that the creation of the “Truth Commission” with a selective and discriminatory jurisdiction is an “adventure in partisan hostility” and “a vehicle for vindictiveness and selective retribution”.

             The scuttling of the “Truth Commission” by the Supreme Court did not grant immunity to the past administration’s officials who are still subject to investigation by and indictment before existing prosecutory and judicial agencies.

             It is highly suspicious and surprising why the Aquino administration would waste time in defending a fatally infirm “Truth Commission” instead of rolling up its sleeves in filing with reasonable dispatch graft cases against suspected culprits before the proper fora like the Department of Justice and the Office of the Ombudsman.

             This patent procrastination makes the much-ballyhooed President Aquino campaign against corruption a pathetic propaganda and a partisan vendetta.

             Contrary to the assertion of Solicitor General Cadiz, what the Supreme Court struck down was the constitutionality of the creation of the “Truth Commission”, not the enobling wisdom of eliminating corruption.

            Even granting that the violation of the equal protection clause can be surmounted, EO 1 remains irremediably defective on two more grounds: (a) the President usurped the power of Congress to create a public office; and (b) the “Truth Commission” duplicates and supplants the constitutional jurisdiction of the Ombudsman over graft cases.

            These additional infirmities were exhaustively discussed in the concurring opinions of several justices, including Chief Justice Renato Corona, and were not addressed directly in Malacanang’s appeal.