TWISTED MIND, LOGIC

By Philip M. Lustre, Jr.

The most twisted arguments I have encountered as a journalist came not from the unschooled, but from lawyers.

I was covering the chain of events that followed the fateful EDSA People Power Revolution, when Arturo Tolentino, ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos's vice presidential mate in the 1986 "snap" presidential elections, veteran lawmaker and former senator, author of many law books, and acknowledged expert on international law and constitutional law, took his oath of office as acting president in the comical Manila Hotel putch sometime in July, 1986, or four months after the EDSA Revolution.

Tolentino's argument was that he did not recognize the EDSA Revolution as a game changing event that virtually superseded the 1973 Constitution and rendered the Marcos dictatorship constitution useless.

Ergo, under the 1973 Constitution, he was the acting president since Marcos was in "self-exile" in Honolulu.

Tolentino held to that unpardonable illusion and even argued superciliously that the EDSA Revolution was participated by a "few tens of thousands of people" and, therefore, could not be regarded as a valid expression of the people's will.

Tolentino took that twisted interpretation until the referendum on the 1987 Constitution gave the expected result that the Filipino people ratified overwhelmingly the 1987 Constitution.

By that time, Tolentino issued the political statement that he was withdrawing his claim to the presidency since the 1987 Constitution has been ratified.

Over bottles of beer, I and my friends, mostly writers and editors, could only laugh at Tolentino's infantile, albeit strictly legalistic, claim for the presidency.

That's the price of being too legalistic. He may know his law but not the reality, an editor-friend told me.

Until I came across Clarence Darrow's quote: "The trouble with law are lawyers."

Of course, this is not the only quote about lawyers that came to my attention. The famous Felix Frankfurter, former associate justice of the US Supreme Court, who gained a reputation as a conservative jurist, came out with an equally disturbing note: "To some lawyers, all facts are created equal."

It's fine with me if lawyers could twist logic to get acquittal for their infamous clients. Hanapbuhay lang iyan (it's only a job) ...

It was not the first time that I encountered twisted claims that bordered on the ridiculous or lunatic.

Even earlier, I heard ludicrous arguments coming from supposed learned men and women.

During the public hearing of the Agrava commission, which investigated the Benigno Aquino Jr. murder, I heard Rodolfo Jimenez, the defense lawyer of the accused military men involved in the conspiracy to kill Ninoy, argued to high heavens not once but countless times that Rolando Galman, the alleged assassin, did it by himself because he was so determined to kill Ninoy.

In short, Galman escaped scrutiny of the hundreds of military men assigned to secure the Manila International Airport, according to the legal theory of Jimenez.

This Superman-like determination was enough to kill Ninoy, believe it or not, he told the stunned commission.

A few years ago, I encountered a disturbing argument raised by one of the the lawyers of the Ampatuans in connection with the Maguindanao massacre.

That lawyer, who sports a forgettable name and face and speaks with an unintelligible accent, raised the possibility that the 54 victims of the Ampatuan carnage could have committed collective suicide.

I told myself that that lawyer could have been overstretching himself. Or he must have drunk several cups of coffee before going to the courtroom.

Recently, lawyers of the senators involved in the pork barrel scam have been uttering equally ridiculous public statements in defense of their clients.

The lawyers of Juan Ponce Enrile blamed the jailed Gigi Reyes, former chief of staff for the pork barrel scam, and even insinuated she was the one who pocketed the tons of money of PDAF funds.

She did it without the old man's knowledge, they said. That was for those hundreds of millions of pesos passing through his office.

The lawyer of Bong Revilla gave the thundering statement that all charges against his boss were lies because his signatures on those voluminous documents were all forged.

In short, everything was forged, in his limited mind. That was his legal theory.

Of course, the lawyers of Jinggoy Estrada were not far behind.

Earlier, they said that Jinggoy did not know Janet Napoles, a statement which was somehow superseded by the picture showing Napoles and Jinggoy together in mirthful mood in a party.

By the way, that picture went viral in the Internet. Of course, that was a mere ploy or palusot.

We could expect more twisted arguments under the new administration.

This is fun.

Former US President Woodrow Wilson, a former lawyer, once said: "I used to be a lawyer, but now, I am a reformed character."

Touche!