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House
  • INDEPENDENCE OVER IMPORTUNING
  • (Privilege Speech delivered by REP. EDCEL C. LAGMAN
  • on 24 January 2012)

 

          At 10:43 in the evening of Thursday, January 04, 2012, I received a text message from a very reliable source which recounted the A-1 information relayed by one in the small group of about four who met that night at former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s hospital suite at the Veteran’s Memorial Medical Center. The text message reads in full:

   “Kakatapos lang ng meeting with GMA. Suarez is it. He’s got the numbers. 10 withdrew from Edcel. A manifesto of support will be signed tomorrow to be formalized in a Minority caucus on the 15th with Edcel manifesting on the floor on the 16th that he is turning over the power to Suarez. The manifesto supersedes Edcel’s reso.”

           This text message confirms an earlier report that former President Arroyo was meeting with a few select opposition members closely allied with her. It also refutes denials that the former President was not in the conclave. The message spills the plot: “Katatapos lang ng meeting with GMA. Suarez is it.”

           Other than confirming the role of former President Arroyo in the enterprise to replace me, the message is presumptuous propaganda.

           First, while it claims that Rep. Suarez as early as January 04, 2012 had the numbers, the fact is as of last Wednesday, January 18, 2012 or two full weeks later, he still did not have the uncontestable absolute majority of the Minority Members.

           Second, the following day, January 05, 2012, the group of Rep. Suarez failed to secure a signed manifesto of support, contrary to the assertion in the text message.

           Third, during the Minority’s regular lunch meeting on January 16, 2012, the group of Rep. Suarez presented an alleged manifesto which showed that only five, not 10, of the 15 Minority Members who signed the resolution retaining me as the Minority Leader also signed for Rep. Suarez. As of said date, 10 colleagues who signed in December 2011 the Resolution maintaining me as Minority Leader have remained steadfast.

           Fourth, in the caucus hosted by Rep. Suarez on January 15, 2012 at the Manila Golf and Country Club only six to eight Minority members attended.

           Moreover, it was unabashedly presumed that I would relinquish the Minority leadership at the mere say-so that the Suarez camp had the numbers.

           But what is important to underscore is that the text message never mentioned a term-sharing agreement for the Minority leadership, which bogus arrangement was pursued to deodorize the plot to oust me.

           The term-sharing being claimed by the Suarez camp is baseless and non-existent. The agreement was limited to a splitting of the term of the Speaker had I won as the then Lakas-Kampi candidate.

           Rep. Suarez offered the term-sharing agreement as a condition for withdrawing his bid to contest my candidacy for Speaker within the then Lakas-Kampi. We were fighting for the Speakership and to forge a splitting agreement on the Minority leadership would have been foolhardy and would have sent defeatist signals.

           Remember, this was in early June 2010 when Lakas-Kampi still held the numerical superiority.

           The meeting at Club Filipino to formalize the choice of the then Lakas-Kampi candidate for Speaker was covered by tri-media. The news accounts of the event unmistakably document that the splitting of term was limited to the speakership.

           Inquirer.net posted on June 04, 2010 a report entitled “Lakas-Kampi leaders agree to term-sharing for Speakership.” The news report stated that “Albay Representative Edcel Lagman and Quezon Representative Danilo Suarez have agreed to a term-sharing scheme if the administration party Lakas-Kampi Christian Muslim Democrats (CMD) would bag the Speakership in the House of Representatives.”

           The report further stated that “Emerging from the meeting of Lakas-Kampi congressmen Friday, Suarez said the party agreed to field Lagman for the top post of the chamber in the 15th Congress” and “If Lagman gets the speakership, he will serve for the first 18 months, then Suarez will sit in the second half of the term.”

           Similarly, Manila Standard Today in a news account entitled “Lakas-Kampi taps Lagman in speakership race”, reported that “The administration Lakas-Kampi CMD party has agreed to a term-sharing formula between Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman and Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez if it bags the speakership in the House of Representatives.”

           The report further recounted: “Lagman said he agreed to the term-sharing proposal to avoid division within the ranks of the ruling party”; “They made the proposal and I accepted it and I will take the first 18 months, said Lagman, adding that he expected to win a majority”; and “Suarez said a coalition with other parties was in the works to get some 20 party-list lawmakers to their side.”

           No mention whatsoever was made about an alleged term-sharing for the Minority leadership.

           I am not a stranger to term-sharing agreements. Before I assumed the Chairmanship of the powerful Committee on Appropriations, Speaker Jose de Venecia brokered a term-sharing agreement between me and Rep. Junie Cua. When the time came, I voluntarily relinquished the Chairmanship to Representative Cua despite the fact that Speaker De Venecia had been replaced by Speaker Nograles who was not privy to the arrangement.

           I always honor a commitment or agreement. But I should not be forced to comply with an imagined or contrived arrangement.

           The repeated incantation of the Suarez camp about a term sharing agreement has become a repulsive refrain even as its creeping signature campaign demeans Minority members who are relentlessly pressured to renege on their commitment and abandon their support for me.

           Under the circumstances, the only principled action to take is to resign as Minority Leader so that former President Arroyo’s anointed one can take over despite his failure to obtain an uncontestable absolute majority of the Minority members.

           Those who affixed dual signatures for me and for Rep. Suarez cancelled out their preferences and nullified their contradictory choices. By parity of reasoning, the rule provided for in the Omnibus Election Code is instructive and applicable. It is provided that: “Where there are two or more candidates voted for in an office for which the law authorizes the election of only one, the vote shall not be counted in favor of any of them…”

           Moreover, two signatories to the Suarez manifesto have already left Lakas and joined the Nationalista Party, a member of the majority coalition. Consequently, they are disqualified from participating in Minority decisions unless they are able to show, which they failed to do, concrete proof that they have been authorized by the leadership of the Nationalista Party to remain with the opposition.

           What the Suarez manifesto achieved was to indelibly show the hand of the former President. Her two sons signed the manifesto despite earlier protestations that the Arroyos would remain neutral. All of the former Arroyo appointees now in the Minority, except for two, sided with Suarez.

           In order to foreclose further skirmishes within the ranks of the small Minority and render my association with some colleagues irreparably damaged, I resign irrevocably as Minority Leader. I have also communicated to Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla, Jr., President of Lakas-CMD, my resignation as Chairman and member of Lakas-CMD and Vice President of the Centrist Democrats International, a worldwide organization of Christian and Muslim democratic parties, of which Lakas-CMD is a member.

           I cannot continue to serve and lead a political aggrupation whose core ignores independent, committed, competent and responsible leadership.

           I cannot respect a group that demeans colleagues by relentlessly pressuring them to withdraw their signatures in a Resolution retaining me as Minority Leader.

           I cannot continue to associate politically with some opposition members who are closely linked and beholden to the former President so much so that they succumb to the importuning of a patron.

           I cannot allow the Minority to lose its credibility and independence by becoming a mere mouthpiece of the former President.

           When I interposed the petition challenging the constitutionality of the Philippine Truth Commission, I did not file it for former President Arroyo and her officials. I did not even consult her nor ask the help of her lawyers. She learned about it when it was already filed and her office even had to ask for a copy of the petition.

           I filed the petition on my own to confront the Aquino administration for committing an affront against the Constitution, more particularly the equal protection clause. I was sustained by the Supreme Court.

           Likewise, when I questioned the constitutionality of the cancellation of the ARMM elections and the granting of authority to President Aquino to appoint OICs, as well as when I challenged the validity of the GOCC Governance Act for derogating the security of tenure of government personnel and arrogating in favor of a super administrative body the powers of the Civil Service Commission, I did these again without consulting the former President.

           I wanted to deliver the strong message to the Aquino administration to uphold at all times the supremacy of the Constitution and the ascendancy of the rule of law.

           My only respectable alternative now is to become an independent. I cannot join the Majority party or coalition because I have serious policy differences with the Aquino administration like my pending petitions before the Supreme Court and my criticism of the blitzkrieg impeachment of the Chief Justice. I cannot forsake my convictions for partisan concessions.

           I wish to thank the House leadership for recognizing the importance of the Minority in a democratic system.

           I salute the members of the opposition who have remained steadfast in supporting my leadership and refusing to yield to tremendous pressures.

           I would like to thank the congressional media for a fair coverage of Minority concerns, except that a very few during the Minority intramurals were writing news accounts as if they were opinion columns.

           I will continue to fiscalize the Aquino administration and pursue to the hilt my progressive and alternative agenda, including the Reproductive Health Bill.

           I have been telling the public and media that although the former President and I were both in the opposition, I was never a GMA minion. Now, everybody knows that I am not.

           I am not the anointed one. I did not seek anointment. I treasure my principles and independence.

National

(Opening Statement of Rep. Edcel C. Lagman at the “Prospects for the Philippines” forum of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP)

on 19 January 2012 at the Mandarin Oriental, Makati City)

 

For some time now the entire nation is focused on the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona, particularly on the current trial before the Senate.

 

It is the daily fare of tri-media as well as of social networking sites. It is the preoccupation of the time, the flavor of the season. Its intensity continues to escalate.

 

There should be no debate that impeachment is a recognized constitutional process to uphold public accountability and sanction the excesses of high government officials like the President, Vice President, Justices of the Supreme Court, Members of the Constitutional Commissions and the Ombudsman.

 

It is also settled that more than a judicial proceeding, impeachment is a political exercise.

 

Consequently, the Congress of the Philippines, indubitably a political department, plays the stellar role in impeachment proceedings. The House of Representatives impeaches and prosecutes, and the Senate of the Philippines tries the respondent and decides to acquit or convict after trial.

 

However, the other political department, the Executive Branch headed by the President of the Republic, has no constitutional role. In fact, the Constitution bars the President from extending clemency or pardon to convicted respondents in impeachment cases.

 

Nonetheless, the rule of law, not the importuning of the mob or the obsession of one man, must be ascendant in all the phases of the impeachment process. It is a political undertaking circumscribed by due process and the tenets of fair play.

 

Consequently, the Senate as the impeachment court should have conducted a preliminary hearing to determine whether the “verification” of 188 complainants was compliant as a component of due process or was a shameless sham because it was physically impossible for 188 Representatives to have individually and personally “read and understood” in a couple of hours the 57-page complaint as required by the Constitution and the House Rules on Impeachment Proceedings. A valid verification is a condition precedent to impeachment and trial. The purported verification of 1/3 of the Members of the House was the speed vehicle which conveyed with alacrity the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. Perforce, a preliminary hearing on the alleged fatal verification was in order.

 

The Senate should have motu proprio prohibited and sanctioned print media for publishing self-serving full-page paid advertisements which tend to influence Senator-Judges and calculated to sway public opinion on which some Senator-Judges announced they would base their decision.

 

We commend the Senate for warning the prosecutors and defense counsel not to present and advertise their evidence before the public. Indeed, the only proper forum to adduce evidence is before the Senate as the impeachment court.

 

We also welcome the ruling of the Senate denying the prosecution’s request to subpoena the kin of the Chief Justice. The majority of the Senator-Judges saw through the malevolent scheme of involving the family of the Chief Justice to inordinately hurt and harass him in order to force him to resign.

 

Like the impeachment of the Chief Justice, the controversial reproductive health bill has also been regular media fodder. It has consistently received media mileage – both negative and constructive – and partisans from both sides are still enthusiastically airing their opinions on an issue that will affect the health and lives of millions of women and children.

 

Again, like the ongoing impeachment trial, there seems to be no lukewarm or ambivalent reaction to the issues on reproductive health, responsible parenthood and population and development.

 

One either strongly believes that the impeachment is a farce, a travesty of the rule of law and a direct assault on the Judiciary or that the days of impunity of errant magistrates are over.

 

The same is true with the reproductive health bill. Critics of the measure have labeled it an instrument of the devil and claim that it would signal the demise of the Filipino family and race. On the other hand, supporters of the bill readily maintain that an RH law would guarantee the right to health of mothers and children and will be instrumental to achieving sustainable human development.

 

Certainly, passions have run high in both the impeachment trial and the passage of the RH bill. Some quarters may even go as far as claiming that both the current trial of the Chief Justice and the campaign to pass a reproductive health law are so divisive and conflict-ridden that they have struck a discordant note in the Filipino public’s nerve and have polarized the country.

 

But the striking contrasts between the impeachment proceedings and the RH advocacy are gravely important to underscore.

 

The impeachment agenda, however noble, has a limited impact on the lives of people, particularly of the poor, marginalized and disadvantaged who care more about the eradication of petty graft like those committed by kotong cops, market collectors and small-time bureaucrats which bedevil their daily existence. On the other hand, the RH advocacy will save and uplift the multitude of women and children as maternal health is improved and infant mortality decreased, consistent with the Millennium Development Goals.

 

It is in this context that the President must employ the same, if not more, zeal and determination in having the RH bill enacted as he did and is doing to have the impeachment prosper.

 

He has the vast arsenal of power to convince his allies in Congress to fast track the enactment of a long-delayed legislation for the good of the greater number.

 

The President has prioritized the RH bill before the LEDAC and the Congress. But “prioritization” is not enough. Perforce, he must assure its immediate enactment by marshalling the resources and forces of his office.

 

While the impeachment of the Chief Justice is viewed by many as an insidious assault on the independence of the judiciary as a democratic institution, the passage of the RH bill will enhance human institutions, alleviate poverty and make sustainable human development achievable.

 

The impeachment process against the Chief Justice may result to a collateral damage to legislation and governance.

 

It appears that legislation, including the enactment of the RH bill, may be put in the back burner as congressional attention and energies are concentrated on the impeachment process.

 

Likewise, the implementation of national policies may be further stalled or temporized as the Aquino administration is consumed by an inordinate obsession to remove and replace the Chief Justice.

 

I hope it is not true that the Aquino administration is contriving to use “People Power” to the hilt to oust the Chief Justice in the event he is acquitted by the Senate. Governance should not be forfeited to the rabble.

 

In contrast, the enactment of the RH bill optimizes governance as the government will be liberated from spreading too thinly limited resources to a ballooning population which may soon hit the 100 million mark.

 

The enactment of a comprehensive RH law, with adequate funding and willful implementation, will assure that important human development factors like quality education, adequate health care, full employment, stable food security, responsive mass housing and a robust environment will not remain impossible dreams.

 

Let the impeachment proceedings continue and end as warranted, but we must enact the RH bill with alacrity because it will have more positive far-reaching and long range benefits to the Filipino nation.

 

Finally, I assure all of you that whatever is the result of the minority intramurals in the House, I am ever ready to defend to the utmost the RH bill which is one of my principal advocacies and shepherd it to eventual passage.

 

Thank you.

 

Reproductive Health
  • CHALLENGES TO RH
  • (Speech delivered by Rep. Edcel C. Lagman during the Launching
  • of the Primer on Legal Issues in Reproductive Health
  • at the UP Law Center on 09 December 2011)

 

           The variations of the RH bill have been stalled in the legislative gauntlet for over 12 years now since the first comprehensive bill was filed in 1999 during the 11th Congress.

 

            The travails of the RH bill continue despite favorable and enabling indicators like:

 

            1)          Survey after survey --nationwide, regional and local--document the peoples’ vast and continuing support for the measure with (a) 71% of the respondents saying nationwide that it must be enacted without further delay (with higher percentages registered in areas where the Congressmen are opposed to the bill, like 86% in Manila, 89% in Parañaque and 88% in Cebu); (b) 68% responding that the government has authority to use public funds for family planning, including the procurement and distribution of contraceptives to voluntary acceptors (64% in Manila, 70% in Parañaque and 75% in Cebu); (c) voters prefer candidates who have an agenda on family planning; and (d) the vast majority of the respondents are Catholics.

 

           2)           The Philippines is a signatory to relevant international conventions promoting and protecting reproductive health, like: (a) the Tehran Convention on Human Rights which upholds the right of parents to freely and responsibly determine the number and spacing of their children; (b) the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action; (c) Convention on the Rights of the Child; (d) Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); (e) Universal Declaration of Human Rights; (f) International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICECSR); and (g) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

 

               3)          President Aquino has endorsed to the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) and to the Congress the enactment of the RH bill as a priority administration measure.

 

               In this connection, it is pertinent to ask whether the President is doing enough to assure the passage of the RH bill? Maybe prioritization is not sufficient. The President has to do more to convince his congressional allies that the enactment of the RH bill is imperative as an indispensable tool to achieve sustainable human development.

 

              The arsenal of the Presidency to rally support for a measure or agenda is legendary. This time, the weaponry of power can be used by the President for the good of the greatest number—the multitude of the marginalized and disadvantaged, particularly women and children who are the direct and immediate beneficiaries of the RH bill.

 

              The challenges to the RH bill are not cerebral. They are mundane and parochial. They cannot even be elevated to “challenges”. They are just plain “obstructions”, like the following:

 

              1)  Problem of quorum;

              2)  Repetitive questions or recidivist interpellations and absentee interpelators;

              3)  Political equation; and

              4)  Fear factor

 

              Quorum – It is a truism that the act of legislation is a numbers game. The numbers could be herded, mob-like, unthinking, ambivalent or sparse. But they are numbers just the same. Numbers are needed to enact. And lack of numbers is useful to delay legislation.

 

              The lack of a quorum is a convenient excuse to stall legislation. The absence of a quorum can even be contrived or intentional.

 

              It is for this reason that we have continuously reminded RH authors and advocates to be present at all times. But even they could not subscribe to this strict discipline.

 

              The solution is for the leadership of the House to take the bold initiative and enforce the rules, including sanctions for absenteeism. Leniency must be jettisoned. It is a bane to policy-making.

 

              Recidivist Interpellations – After 12 years of debate inside and outside the Halls of Congress, all relevant and irrelevant questions have been asked about the RH bill. There is absolutely no new argument or novel misconception.

 

              Questions are asked repeatedly not to debate or inform but to cause delay.

 

              Many registered themselves as interpellators but when their time comes to confront the sponsors, they either conveniently absent themselves or feign not being prepared.

 

              We call again on the leadership of the House of Representatives to adopt, issue and enforce the rules of engagement which ban repetitive questions and limit the interpellator’s time to not more than one (1) hour in order to foreclose inordinate delay.

 

              Political Equation – Politics is addition. To a politician, every vote counts, even the vote of the devil. Hence, a politician reaches out to all. Although there is no Catholic vote, an ordinary politician, as much as possible, will not dare displease his Bishop or get the ire of the Church. Consequently, he usually defers or succumbs to the importuning of the clergy.

 

              The solution is a strong political will and steadfast commitment to a cause. This should be buttressed by a full realization that the RH advocacy is supported by the people and there is popular rejection of the undue interference of the Church hierarchy in secular affairs.

 

             Fear Factor - The macabre instruments of torture and terror employed for ages by despots and ecclesiastics are merely secondary to the pervasive and malevolent instigation of fear to secure blind adherence and break principled resistance.

 

             The Catholic Church has long perfected the policy and practice of instilling fear in both the faithful and prospective converts.

 

            The fear of sin has been conceptualized and propagated by clerics in order to make their ministry continually relevant as they intercede on behalf of sinners for God’s pardon and mercy. The fear of eternal damnation and hellfire has coerced or frightened people to obey Church dogma and has subdued crusading dissenters against the teachings of the faith.

 

             Nowhere in recent years has the Church’s mastery of the fear factor been put to much exploitative use than in the current debates on the reproductive health bill – fear of contraceptives, fear of a demographic winter and fear of promiscuity, among others.

 

            The Catholic Church peddles the fear and lie that contraceptives like pills, IUDs and injectables induce abortions or are abortifacients, and will definitely lead to cancer; a demographic winter, which is a scare tactic, will lead to the decimation of the Filipino race; and sexuality education will create a breed of sex maniacs.

 

             The solution to fear is to foster the truth. Those who capitalize on fear are bankrupt in reason. They cannot compete in the free market of ideas. Fear has to be confronted and dismantled because it is the antithesis of truth and free choice.

 

            These “challenges”, more appropriately “obstructions”, are not insuperable. They are feeble posturing and mainly dilatory tactics. But delay is not victory. It just temporizes the eventual and certain triumph of a progressive and much-needed RH law.

 

            In our inevitable victory, we truly count on the unwavering support of the NGO community which prominently includes the ReproCen, and the steadfast advocacy of the academe like the UP College of Law, UP Institute of Human Rights, UP Institute of International Legal Studies and Center for International Law.

 

             This Primer on Legal Issues in Reproductive Health is a welcome addition to the increasing positive literature on reproductive health. And more importantly, it will be our veritable ammunition when we venture to the next battlefield—the judicial forum where the opponents of RH vow to contest the constitutionality of the RH law.

 

             Let me underscore that the detractors of the RH bill are the ones going to the Supreme Court. This means that they have conceded that eventually there will be a Reproductive Health Law, whose constitutionality they will challenge, albeit vainly and perfunctorily.

 

             Whether these “challenges” are real or contrived, your RH advocates inside and outside the Congress are always ready to confront and vanquish the oppositors, now in the Congress and subsequently in the Supreme Court.

House

  

       Notwithstanding the full recognition of the fiscal autonomy of the Supreme Court and constitutional bodies with the return to said agencies of their respective funding for unfilled positions with only a reportorial  requirement prescribed, and the grant of P5,000,000.00 for the publication of the Philippine Collegian, the students’ newspaper of the University of the Philippines, I nonetheless cast a dissenting vote because the appropriations for the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) and for Public Private Partnerships (PPP) are inordinately overstated and excessively funded, which budgets could have been reduced to augment the appropriations for education, SUCs, health and infrastructure.

House
  • CONTINUING ASSAULT ON THE CONSTITUTION
  • AND MOCKERY OF THE SUPREME COURT
  • (Privilege Speech delivered by Minority Leader Edcel C. Lagman
  • on 21 November 2011)

 

             Mr. Speaker and distinguished colleagues:

             The malevolent game plan of the Aquino administration is to defy the Supreme Court at all cost in order to fully realize its all-consuming obsession to persecute and incarcerate former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The administration’s newly invented mantra is if the Executive can implement the law, it has likewise the option not to implement the law.

             The Aquino administration is ready to impair, and has even trampled upon, civil liberties like the constitutional right to travel, presumption of innocence and freedom from arrest except upon independent finding of probable cause by the judge after due process.

            There was only one primary purpose for the (1) defiance of the Supreme Court’s TRO allowing GMA to leave for medical treatment abroad; (2) bullet train resolution by the Joint DOJ-COMELEC Panel for the filing of the electoral sabotage case against GMA despite the pending petition in the SC challenging the constitutionality and jurisdiction of the Joint Panel; and (3) the issuance with precipitate alacrity of the warrant of arrest against GMA by the Regional Trial Court of Pasay City, and the singular purpose is to prevent GMA from exercising her constitutional right to travel and detain her in the country, albeit arbitrarily and illegally.

           We should not forget that adjudications of the Supreme Court and all inferior courts must be based on real facts and legal verities, and not on imagined fears and partisan speculations.

           In the case of the right to travel of the former President, the real facts are: (a) at the time she was barred from travelling on the night of November 15, 2011, there were no pending cases filed against her in any court of law; (b) there is no hold departure order (HDO) issued against her by any competent court; and (c) former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is suffering from a rare ailment necessitating her treatment abroad.

            The legal verities are:  (a) the liberty to travel is guaranteed under the Bill of Rights; (b) the right to travel cannot be impaired except in the interest of national security, public safety or public health as provided by law, not one of which obtains relative to the projected travel of the former President, even as the Congress has not yet enacted the implementing law pursuant to the directive of the Constitution; (c) the watchlist orders issued by Justice Secretary Leila De Lima are not equivalent to an HDO; (d) the Supreme Court has issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) upholding GMA’s right to travel and restraining the enforcement of the DOJ Circular No. 41 and the WLOs issued by Secretary De Lima; and (e) the Supreme Court has junked the Government’s motion for reconsideration even as it is entrenched in our jurisprudence that a motion for reconsideration cannot stay a TRO.

            These factual and legal realities cannot be overlooked or supplanted by the Aquino administration’s mere imagined fears and baseless speculations that the former President is a flight risk and would seek political asylum abroad. There is no single credible and competent evidence presented by the Aquino administration to substantiate its fears and speculations.

            The propensity of this arbitrary and despotic agenda feeds on two perceptions: (1) the former President is unpopular so much so that the bastardization of her rights will not incense the people and may even get popular approval; and (2) the uniformed forces – the military and the police – are supportive of the administration.

            The foregoing constitutes feeble anchorage for supplanting the Constitution and the rule of law.

            The issue of justice, fair play and constitutionality are not to be determined by opinion polls or the public pulse. These are justiciable issues for adjudication by the judicial forum, more particularly the Supreme Court.

            Moreover, it is a condescending assault on the people’s ultimate judgment on arrogance of power, which is no different from a cacique’s insulting the intelligence of his unlettered tenant.

            History is replete with the people’s mass protests and resolve against rulers who have bludgeoned the rule of law. The EDSA People Power Revolution is not too distant as to be forgotten.

            The military and police officials and men are sworn to uphold the supremacy of the Constitution. While the President is Commander-in-Chief, he detaches himself from the chain of command when he impairs the Constitution. An unlawful order or unconstitutional command is not a mandate to be followed.

            Again, history is replete with heads of State cast in isolation and oblivion for flaunting the Constitution and denigrating the rule of law.

            I beseech the distinguished Members of this Chamber to shed off their partisan loyalties and uphold fealty to the Constitution and support the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of justiciable issues.

            I defer to the High Tribunal the resolution of the legal and constitutional issues on the raging controversy. And I earnestly hope that once the Supreme Court has ruled, the political departments would obey and follow its ruling.

            Thank you, Mr. Speaker and distinguished colleagues.