As expected, Artemio Panganiban is the new Chief Justice!

Last night, the President announced the appointment of Justice Artemio V. Panganiban as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. What can I say, but hail this well-merited designation – which was both crucial, and expected.

Art Panganiban, in his ten years in the High Court excelled not only in jurisprudence, but in style and scholarship. He penned more than 1,000 decisions and ten books, several of which have become textbooks and legal classics. He’s shown remarkable versatility, covering a wide range of legal controversies touching on such diverse subjects as mathematics, economic, business, accounting, and even canon law. I think a blurb on the flyleaf of his latest book (remember, the 10th!) well describes his diligence and perspicacity. Justice Romeo J. Callejo Sr. said "One book a year and no cases left undecided. This is Mr. Justice Artemio V. Panganiban’s unsurpassed record. It is also the best summation of judicial reform." The name of the 536-page book, which came off the press only last month, is, of course, Judicial Renaissance.

The first book was named Love God, Serve Man (1994). Others were captioned, Battles in the Supreme Court (1998); Leadership by Example (1999); Reforming the Judiciary (2002); and Leveling the Playing Field (2004)."

Justice Panganiban, an eloquent speaker, has addressed audiences around the globe on not just legal but other subjects, such as delivering five lectures on the biosciences in two international conferences held in Chile in 2004. (His book on the matter is a resource book in our own school, O.B. Montessori).

Art obtained his Bachelor of Laws degree cum laude from the Far Eastern University, placing sixth in the Bar the same year. As a "most outstanding student" of FEU, he was, among others, a founder and past president of the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP). Long before he was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1995, Panganiban had distinguished himself as a practicing lawyer, law professor, "Catholic lay leader" and businessman. Sus, he was even, for a while, president of the Philippine Daily Inquirer but was eased out after . . . well, some kind of battle.

When this writer nominated Art Panganiban for the Supreme Court some ten years ago, there was a barrage of dirty black propaganda hurled against him, including the sneer that he was "only a travel agent"! (This was because, among his many undertakings such as his practice of law, Panganiban had been CEO and owner of one of our biggest agencies of that day, Baron Travel). However, it was clearly demonstrated that Panganiban was not only a solid but brilliant law practitioner – and his sterling record in the High Court has borne this out.

The interesting aspect to the new Chief Justice Panganiban’s takeover of the helm of the High Court, succeeding Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. who retired at the stroke of midnight, November 19, is that Panganiban is retirable within eleven months. In short, this appointment caps his career. Will it give him enough time to initiate, much less complete judicial reform or a judicial renaissance?

The next in line to become Chief Justice (might as well indulge in reckless forecast) will probably be Justice Reynato S. Puno. He will, when he ascends to that position, run the Supreme Court as primus inter pares, until the year 2010. Indeed, before she announced Justice Panganiban’s well-deserved appointment, President GMA asked Puno to meet her in the Palace and personally informed him of her choice of Art. What else did she tell Justice Puno at that meeting?

Justice Puno, the longest-serving member of the Supreme Court, like Panganiban, is a distinguished legal scholar – and writer (a former Editor-in-Chief of The Philippine Collegian), and a man of courage.

So that’s the line-up. If you ask me, the Supreme Court would benefit most by what Art Panganiban identified in one of his books, i.e. leadership by example – not just leadership by consensus.

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The way "prisoners" manage to stage incomprehensible "escapes" from our jails and detention centers is no longer a surprise, it’s become habitual. We are even beyond embarrassment, having grown callous and cynical over those clumsy "getaways."

The escape last Monday of a Sri Lankan and two Chinese nationals from the Bureau of Immigration’s detention center in Bicutan, Taguig City, deprives the government of a key figure in the illegal deportation of a Chinese, Zhang Du, who is one of the suspects in the kidnapping of Jackie Tiu in La Union, four years ago. This bozo Keerthi might have turned state witness. As for the two Chinese, Tan Ti Shao and Go Sak Ping, those aliens were facing drug-related charges.

We have been complaining for years about the state of our jails. Even more dangerous is the state of our jailors. In the Philippines, the most hardened prisoners get away too often not because their jail guards are asleep, but because they "happened" to be looking the other way.

Indeed, in Camp Crame, the main police headquarters, a succession of terrorists, kidnap chiefs, druglords, and other gutter rats have not merely escaped they waltzed through barred doors, floated down undetected from second-storey lock-ups, or were conceivably ferried out in style. Have the wardens, security officers, and jail guards concerned been punished? After the Monday "jailbreak, Immigration Commissioner Alipio Fernandez Jr. ordered the "relief" of the guards who were on duty on the midnight of the "escape." He growled that "heads will roll!" Tsk, tsk, Al. Such a grandiose statement when erring or lax jail officers and guards face a maximum penalty of mere dismissal from service. Of course, if found guilty, the suspect-guards may face separate graft complaints with the Office of the Ombudsman, but don’t hold your breath about their being crushed, by any heavy imposition of justice.

Our problem in this land of perpetual lawyering is that certain laws have no teeth, and even if they do these statutes are hindered by the slow pace of justice. In sum, nobody gets punished.

I dislike the idea of a dictatorship, but alas the way we interpret democracy and "human rights" in this republic is giving democracy a bad name. As I’ve recalled ad nauseam, this journalist was a prisoner of the Marcos martial law regime, and have no love for the late Macoy’s brand of strongman rule. However, he demonstrated that an iron-fisted policy gets results. Remember when he stood up a drug lord in the Luneta and had the fellow executed by firing squad – a highly-publicized "death by musketry." Illegal drug operations in the land plunged and were, for a time, almost nil. Today, of course, the Drug Octopus simply gets bigger and bigger, destroying millions of lives, and corrupting our society.

Capital Punishment? The law has been rendered a joke by its not being implemented. How many convicts on Death Row have been executed by the current GMA administration? A pathetic few. It’s La Presidenta’s policy, it seems, to stop executing death convicts.

The result is that nobody’s afraid of her or afraid of the law, while crime and rebellion flourish.

Singapore sends drug smugglers and drug pushers to the gallows. We send them singing all the way to the bank. And if they’re caught, why, they simply "escape."

I wonder what would happen if a law were passed (not likely) imposing the death penalty on wardens, jail officers and guards who allow detainees accused of major crimes to "escape" during their watch? If a few of them were really sent to the lethal gas chamber, then, there’s not the shadow of a doubt, prison "escapes" would be reduced dramatically, if not go statistically down to zero. But again, La Gloria might order a commutation, or stay of execution.

What a way to run a Republic, whether "strong" or wrong.

As for the Bureau of Immigration (BI) when will it be purged of crooked personnel? Cases keep popping up, again and again. The National Bureau of Investigation last December 5 filed graft charges against three BI officials and six others for allegedly aiding a suspect in the Jackie Tiu kidnapping case escape to China. One of them was, in fact, the Chief of the Intelligence Division of the Immigration bureau himself, Faizal Hussin. Since kidnapping is a heinous crime, why the "laxity" in the case of the Chinese suspect, Zhang Du? He got away – out of the country – completely.

And what about the "ten little Indians" case, the bigtime drug dealers who were whisked off, scot-free, on a plane to Singapore some years ago, virtually escorted to the airport and their getaway from the detention cells of the BI and the NBI? Did anybody, including the big shot who signed the order to let them go, get punished for that outrageous deed? One of the biggies even got promoted.

Houdini had nothing on the escapees from confinement in the Philippines. The great Houdini wiggled out of locks and chains, even when underwater. In this benighted country, they get VIP treatment by way of escape.

Democracy, if that’s what we call what we’ve got, doesn’t seem to work here. Nor, unless we change, will those high-falutin’ Cha-Cha plans and maneuvers.

I’m old enough to remember the movie classic, The Singer, Not the Song starring Dirk Bogarde. Here, it’s not the Song that’s out of tune: it’s the singers.

I know that Christmas is not the season to express gloomy thoughts. But the Baby Jesus came into a world of gloom, 2005 years ago, to bring us the light. It’s time we let that light His Christmas Star shine into our hearts, instead of shielding ourselves from its healing and inspiring rays. Or thwarting God’s Justice – let His will be done!