Opposition Rep. Edcel C. Lagman of Albay is the first legislator to challenge the constitutionality of the “Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020” before the Supreme Court when he filed today, July 6, 2020, at 8:45 A.M. a 55-page petition for certiorari and prohibition which was docketed as G.R. No. 252579.
Lagman made good his promise to question the new anti-terrorism law which he called “replete with constitutional infirmities” and must “be jettisoned in its entirety.”
No amount of assurances from law enforcement agencies that there will be no abuses in the implementation of the “Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020” would mitigate the incidence of abuses because the law itself is abusive and derogatory of human rights, civil liberties and fundamental freedoms.
President Rodrigo Duterte’s signing into law the “Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020” further stifles dissent, imposes prior restraint to freedom of expression, derogates civil liberties, and institutes state terrorism.
The new anti-terror law repeals the less repressive “Human Security Act of 2007” which provided for safeguards for fundamental freedoms.
We should not wait for any abusive enforcement of the proposed “Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020” to happen after it becomes a law because the abuse is in the measure itself.
Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano fails to see that the proposed new anti-terrorism law is the abuser for containing provisions violative of civil liberties and fundamental freedoms.
The purported ban on the grant of legislative franchise to companies which have operated for more than 50 years is definitely another non-issue based on the following reasons:
There is no constitutional provision or statute which prohibits the renewal or grant of a congressional franchise to corporations which have been in operation for more than half a century.
