WRONG MINDSET

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

SOMEBODY sent me a private message (PM) on Facebook social networking site, asking me this question: “So what’s wrong with those Supreme Court justices, who want to remove the Chief Justice? I said: “Everything is wrong.”

I sounded harsh or even sweeping with my response but I stand by it. The issue of the unconstitutionality or even immorality of removing her by quo warranto has been thoroughly discussed by a number of learned people, including pundits and legal luminaries.

But what has not been discussed is the kind of callous attitude of the supposed men and women in robes and of unparalleled legal erudition.

I have asked the same question to people, who are in the know. I have received tidbits of information from the chambers of the justices, who are regarded as the bitterest critics of Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno.

Allow me to explain.

The justices know the Chief Justice’s removal by quo warranto would trigger tumultuous reactions from the Filipino people. But they argue these reactions would be confined to the local intelligentsia, particularly the legal circles and the academic community.

They fully understand that it could lead to bigger issues, which include a constitutional crisis, and even a crisis of confidence on the ability of the Supreme Court to render impartial decisions as the court of last resort on many judicial issues confronting the country.

But here lies the difference.

Under normal circumstances, those learned men or women of Padre Faura would recoil and even reexamine their collective conscience amid the blistering criticisms associated with something or anything inherently unconstitutional and ergo illegal and immoral.

But forget those reexamination of conscience. The Chief Justice’s enemies strongly believe that her removal by quo warranto is the best they could do. They know she knows so much to the point that she should be deprived a forum to explain her side of the controversy.

Ergo, forget the impeachment process, where she could speak freely in the Senate as an impeachment court. They should avoid the situation where, the Chief Justice would spill the beans on them and reveal to the Filipino people their most kept secrets, including their own corruption and acts of commission and omission at the High Court.

While they fully know it could trigger nothing but tumult because of its inherent flaw, those justices even believe with inordinate cockiness that they could meet the forthcoming deluge of noises and save the situation.

They believe they are quite savvy to meet the coming stormy situation since they have the support of the sick old man of the South, who has vowed to remove the Chief Justice by hook and largely by crook (as represented by the crooks in the High Court), and his army of jukebox commentators in traditional media and trolls in social media.

They believe they could fix the mess that confronts the High Court. In short, they have the mindset that everything could be saved, fixed, and recovered, including their questionable personal honor to dispense justice.

They do not believe the scenario of a slippery slope, where an act that touches the nerve of history could cascade into something drastic, dramatic, and debilitating.

They do not adhere to the view that a patently unconstitutional act would be a game changer.

In brief, they have taken the condescending view that the Filipino people would have a hard time understanding an issue so technical from their limited standpoint. Ergo, they could do anything with impunity.

Obviously, those magistrates hardly know that history has not been kind to leaders, who had shown intransigence to follow the flow of history, or what historian Barbara Tuchmann describes as “woodenheadness” in her monumental book “March of Folly.”

The magistrates hardly understand that removing her by an inherently unconstitutional and flawed way is contrary to their self- interest. They do not foresee that they would someday pay for their misdeeds and get a dosage of their own medicine.

They do not know that their own shortsightedness, bigotry, and folly could lead to their downfall and that their own downfall would be most damning mainly to avoid any repetition in the future.