President Rodrigo Duterte’s threat of imposing martial law swings like a menacing pendulum.
At one instance he would manifest a desire to declare martial law. At another instance, he would profess that he would not declare martial law and calls any such declaration “stupidity”.
Then he announces that he wants the removal of the oversight powers of the Congress and the Supreme Court, which delimit and revoke a presidential declaration of martial law.
Now he says that no one can prevent him from declaring martial law if the drug problem becomes virulent and he would even transcend constitutional limitations.
No amount of virulence of the drug menace can be a constitutional anchor for the imposition of martial law because under the Constitution, the declaration can only be based on the existence of invasion or rebellion when public safety requires it.
Aside from heeding the restrictions of the Constitution, President Duterte must also respect the overwhelming consensus of the people, 74% of whom say in a recent nationwide survey that they are against the revival of martial law to solve the nation’s pressing problems.
Supreme Court spokesman Theodore Te was splitting hairs when he reiterated that the High Court did not derail the implementation of the Reproductive Health Law (R.A. No. 10354).
While there is no direct injunction against the implementation of the RH Law, the Supreme Court has pierced the heart and soul of the RH Law by making the certification, procurement and access to contraceptives more difficult and cumbersome.
Central to the RH Law is the informed choice accorded to women of reproductive age to determine the number and spacing of their children by voluntarily using modern, effective and safe contraceptives as a method of family planning.
When the Supreme Court halted the certification and re-certification by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of contraceptive products and devices pending FDA’s compliance with its directive to adopt a more protracted quasi-judicial process instead of the regular and usual summary administrative process purportedly to observe due process, the Supreme Court practically derailed the enforcement of the RH Law so much so that by 2018 contraceptive supplies are expected to dry up.
Te failed to admit that in lieu of the limited temporary restraining order (TRO) dated 17 June 2015 on Implanon and Implanon NXT, the Supreme Court sustained its earlier TRO and even expanded it in its Decision dated 24 August 2016 to cover the certification and re-certification of all contraceptives to be used under R.A. No. 10354, including those which have been traditionally certified for decades as safe and non-abortifacient.
Implanon and Implanon NXT are long-lasting, reversible hormonal contraceptive implants which would prevent pregnancy for up to three (3) years. These are the implants of choice of women practicing family planning.
Under Section 9 of the RH Law, the FDA is the primary authority to determine which hormonal contraceptives, intrauterine devices, injectables and family planning products and supplies are safe, legal, non-abortifacient and effective.
All that is required pursuant to Section 9 is a “certification from the FDA that said product and supply is made available on the condition that it is not to be used as an abortifacient.”
The findings of administrative agencies like the FDA are accorded highest respect and adherence by superior courts because of the former’s acknowledged expertise.
The immediate and full implementation of the Reproductive Health Law was energized by Executive Order (EO) No. 12 which was signed by President Rodrigo Duterte on 09 January 2017 and made effective immediately.
The EO is projected to attain and sustain “zero unmet need for modern family planning” by 2018 for poor families.
Four years after the enactment of the RH Law on 21 December 2012 and almost three years after it was on the whole declared constitutional by the Supreme Court on 08 April 2014, the present data on unmet need for contraceptives is still unacceptably high, particularly in the marginalized sectors.
President Duterte’s EO is in direct contrast with the Supreme Court’s earlier temporary restraining order (TRO) and subsequent decision dated 24 August 2016, which is under reconsideration, halting the certification and re-certification of contraceptive products and devices by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pending FDA’s undertaking a tedious quasi-judicial process instead of the traditional summary administrative process on certification and re-certification.
If the Supreme Court does not reverse soonest its decision and takes a longer time in resolving the motion for reconsideration filed by the Office of the Solicitor General, the supply of modern contraceptives will dry up by 2018.
Funding for the EO is assured when the Department of Budget and Management was authorized to “realign and augment appropriations” to support the full implementation of the RH Law this year, with the funding requirements in subsequent years to be included in the annual General Appropriations Acts.
The Department of Education was also directed to “implement a gender-sensitive and rights-based comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in the school curriculum”, without distinction with respect to public and private schools.
We must congratulate the Department of Health and allied agencies for successfully reducing firecracker injuries to the lowest rate in 10 years.
However, compliance with the campaign of the authorities against the use of powerful firecrackers due to fear of reprisal from President Duterte is not at all edifying.
Imposed submission to law and order due to fear does not signify discipline.
Moreover, attributing compliance to fear demeans the Filipino’s innate character and capacity to observe law and order.
The broad coalition of anti-death penalty advocates will sustain the campaign against the proposed reimposition of capital punishment until the archaic proposal is finally consigned to the legislative dustbin.
The widening coalition of legislators, religious ministers both from the Catholic Church and other religious denominations, civil society and non-governmental organization networks, college students and youth opposing the revival of the death penalty has vowed to intensify its campaign inside and outside of Congress.
Unifying the coalition are the following cogent and focal grounds against the reinstallation of the death penalty:
It is not a solution to criminality and the drug menace. The prevention of heinous crimes involves a complex and multidimensional process relative to problems ranging from poverty and inequity to police corruption and brutality, inept and discriminatory prosecution and flawed judicial system. All of these negative factors contribute to the fallibility of human justice which ensnare to the gallows even the innocent. Consequently, punishment alone is not the solution to crimes.
The only argument of the proponents for the revival of capital punishment is that the death penalty is a deterrent to the commission of alleged heinous crimes. Empirical studies both here and abroad document that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent to the commission of crimes. Even logic tells us that despite the fact that since the dawn of civilization the death penalty has been imposed on various offenses involving varied modes of execution, until now heinous crimes across the world are being committed mocking the extreme severity of penalty.
The death penalty desecrates the right to life which is sacrosanct and inviolable, and is an affront to human dignity.
The death penalty exacerbates the culture of violence and death, and its revival adds the State-sanctioned killings to the unabated extrajudicial killings.
The death penalty further marginalizes and victimizes the poor who can neither retain competent counsel nor influence court processes.
Capital punishment enforces punitive and retributive justice, instead of promoting the modern concept of penology on restorative justice which reforms the convict and prepares his reintegration into society.
The reimposition of the death penalty is a violation of the country’s commitment to abolish capital punishment and not to reimpose it pursuant to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Second Optional Protocol on the ICCPR of which the Philippines is a ratifying state party.
