SC slapped silly again

Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno may have been right to be genuinely concerned about what happened - that of President Rodrigo Duterte naming several judges suspected of involvement in illegal drugs, from a list that was, as it turned out, far from perfect. But she reacted the wrong way, and her reaction proceeded from the wrong facts. Hence, she got it on the kisser.

First, the wrong reaction. It was perfectly all right for her to write Duterte regarding her concerns. But she should have written him privately, not make the letter public. As it turned out, her letter was all over the media, read, re-read, analyzed, and otherwise nitpicked long before Duterte even got hold of the original. Duterte can actually be a warm, gentle and caring person. But if you grab him from behind like that, you are going to regret it.

Second, the wrong facts. When Duterte named the judges from his list, he was not meddling in any way with the judiciary or its functions. Any record of the speech he made when he read out the contents of his list will show that he actually called out to the judges mentioned to report to the Supreme Court. He was actually acknowledging the power and authority of the judicial branch to discipline its own members.

It is, therefore, truly amazing how Sereno could have knee-jerked reaction without first ascertaining fully where she was coming from. Maybe she was just being overcome with zeal in her desire to protect her turf. But too bad for her, because her turf was never at any time under any kind of threat. Now, because of her miscalculation, it has come under threat by its own actions. By its own hand, it has exposed how weak the Supreme Court truly is.

Remarkably, this is not the first time the weakness of the Supreme Court has been exposed. Back in July of 2014, in another face off with the president of the republic, at that time Benigno Aquino III, the Supreme Court was forced to shut up and retreat into its shell when Aquino threatened it with a head-on collision with the executive branch.

There are two remarkable differences as well between Aquino's faceoff with the Supreme Court in 2014, and its faceoff with Duterte just a few days ago. In the 2014 faceoff, Aquino slammed the Supreme Court for invalidating his Disbursement Acceleration Program or DAP as unconstitutional by a 13-0 vote. In the faceoff of a few days ago with Duterte, it was triggered mainly by miscommunication.

The Supreme Court-Aquino faceoff of 2014 had far more serious repercussions on the strength, independence and respectability of the judicial branch because the issue then at hand was an actual unanimous 13-0 Supreme Court decision that Aquino not only refused to recognize but made immensely clear with a vicious threat of a head-on collision.

The faceoff with Duterte, on the other hand, proceeded merely from a mishandling of the methods and a misappreciation of the facts — in short from a bad but eventually forgettable case of miscommunication. Even if the Duterte threat of martial law may sound grating to the ear, that is still no more than just a problem for the ear - full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, according to the world's most studied playwright.

Sometimes I am beginning to wonder if it is not the media that is actually bringing this country down by focusing too much on the sensational and what sells or catches attention while completely disregarding the essentials, such as context and even actual facts. Remember how the media deliberately played up the shoot-to-kill order of Duterte by willfully omitting the qualifying part from the rest of his statement that said... "if they resisted arrest violently?"

When Duterte threatened to impose martial law in reaction to the Sereno letter feasted on by the media, the media should have provided context by making it clear there was no way Duterte can declare martial law just like that even if he wanted to. There are conditions to be met before any president can declare martial law and any such declaration needs to have the concurrence of Congress. But there was never any such media contextualizing until much later, when the damage was done.