Officious meddlers

They’re coming out of the woodwork, all these suddenly sanctimonious government officials presuming to lecture the Supreme Court on the "importance" of the people’s initiative case now before our Honorable Justices.

Senator Dick Gordon was being charitable. All these remarks aimed at somehow "pressuring" the Court on how to rule on the case, one way or the other depending on where you’re coming from, are in poor taste, yes. But they’re much more than that. They are patently presumptuous, totally unnecessary and probably contemptuous, although I doubt the Court will waste its time citing these purveyors of verbiage in contempt.

So, whether these blabophiliacs are senators or congressmen, administration or opposition, the Speaker of the House, or do-gooders of whatever stripe, my unsolicited advice to them is to zip their traps. Do not waste any more valuable column inches, much less squander your presumably scarce association funds in full-page ads.

The unspoken concern behind all this nonsense, of course, is a numbing fear which has apparently seized both sides of the PI debate: Either the Supreme Court will succumb to irresistible pressure from the appointing power, which has made its position on the issue crystal-clear, or it will succumb to the pressure brought to bear by opinions of the allegedly more patriotic, not-for-sale (heavens, no way!) public.

That the Court may "succumb" only to the irresistible force, impeccable logic, and irrefutable legal soundness of their respective arguments has apparently not occurred to the protagonists, especially those who snicker and sneer that in court litigation, what really matters is who you know and not the factual and legal moorings of your cause.

The rumor is going around that the court is about to issue its decision this week. This rumor is buttressed by a report that the Justices are burning the midnight oil these days in order to produce a ruling posthaste. But, hold on, if the briefs of both sides were submitted only last October 11th, the speed with which this decision will be released, if in fact this week, will set some sort of record, given the supposed complexity of the issues.

However, I’m not saying that the decision will or won’t come out before All Souls and All Saints Days, even if one of these two days won’t be a publicly-declared holiday. The timing of the decision is also critical, we are told, to another issue upon which more officious meddlers, meaning kibitzers who wouldn’t be responsible for anything in any case, have spouted opinions which, albeit sounding erudite, are no better than uneducated guesses.

The day the SC issues the decision on PI will also allegedly determine whether or not there will be enough time to press for Charter change before the May 2007 elections. If people’s initiative is knocked out, there will supposedly be no more time for Con-Ass, which may also wind up before the Supreme Court on the separate-voting issue.

It is also asserted that there won’t be any time at all in 2007 for Con-Con since the process will render all notions of timing totally irrelevant. The Convention, after all, can take all the time it wants discussing the specifics of the proposed Charter changes.

Add to this another conundrum brought about by the ongoing computerization debate. Hot-shot election lawyer Romulo Macalintal argues that there isn’t enough time for even partial computerization. Romy says the 2007 elections will have to be postponed because there is no more time for an "honest-to-goodness" bidding for new automated counting machines (ACMs).

He’s implying, I suppose, that there is time for a manifestly manipulated or completely crooked bidding, which would be a no-no considering our sad and very expensive (to the tune of P1.3 billion which the government is still trying to get back, but hasn’t so far recovered) experience the last time we tried to computerize.

For one thing, Romy says, there will even be less time for our hardy Commission on Elections to "properly evaluate" the qualifications of the participating bidders. That’s about as broad a hint as Romy can drop that if the Comelec decides to buck the odds and conduct such a bidding anyway, he will question the process every step of the way, starting from the evaluation of the qualifications of the bidders. That, by the way, was one of the problems that plagued the first "successful" bidder in the first place.

Let’s not forget that Romy has been making a veritable pest of himself trying to persuade an unmoved Supreme Court to allow the use of the virtually embalmed Mega-Pacific counting machines. The Mega Pacific contract was, you might recall, declared void from the start ("ab initio") by the Court which has huffed and puffed to Romy that he get it into his thick skull that that ruling became final and executory more than two years ago.

Think Romy’s discouraged? No way, Jose! He’s convinced that unless those ACMs are used, computerization simply won’t happen. Without computerization, the 2007 elections may have to be deferred because a manual counting of votes won’t have the credibility to put closure on the many problems which afflict our democracy today.

Senator Gordon, on the other hand, is sure there is enough time to put partial computerization in play by the 2007 elections. He says we can do that without using the Mega Pacific computers which the Supreme Court won’t allow, an insistent Romy Macalintal notwithstanding.

Does all this sound like another Gordian Knot to you? You know, that mythical knot which offered domination of the entire ancient world to whoever could untie that Knot. Now comes Alexander the Great who, of course, knew he could never untie that impossibly-knotted Knot. But, hey, he wouldn’t have been Alexander if he didn’t have a novel, improbably super-simple, solution. He took out his trusty sword and CUT the Knot. Result? He wound up ruling the known world at the time.

Alexander was one of those world conquerors who thought out of the box. Oh yes, he did have to suffer the inconvenience of dying soon after he reached his thirtieth year. I guess playing by your own rules of the game cuts both ways. Sometimes, God, or in Alexander’s case, Zeus, has His (or his) say too.

Is May 2007 a given? Or, in order to get everything out of the way, computerization, Charter change, or what have you, can May be moved to, say, September or November? In 2007, of course.

Unconstitutional, you say, in that our Charter mandates May, come hell or high water? No way out of this dilemma? Will someone bring in a Gordian Knot? And don’t forget Alexander.