Panganiban's legacy

I was at the UP giving a talk on "Advocacy and Reporting" at a media roundtable on "Constitutional and Governance Reform" when I learned of the Panganiban Court’s decision on Sigaw ng Bayan’s people’s initiative. The event was organized by the Center for Leadership, Citizenship and Democracy, the Kalayaan College Institute of Federal-Parliamentary Democracy and the A.A. Mable Media Specialists.

I have often been asked if being a journalist, it was not incompatible to advocate for Charter change. The big answer of course is no. The question is not between "advocacy and reporting" but "advocacy and journalism" because the latter is more encompassing and includes advocacies. Indeed, without advocacy journalism will not survive with so many other sources of information now available at the tip of one’s fingers. That may have been the main preoccupation of media but it is increasingly being irrelevant. It was uncanny that I should be speaking on this matter while the advocacy I was promoting was being thumbed down by the Supreme Court.

Advocacy journalism as journalism is strongly fact-based, but at the same time supports a point-of-view on some public or private sector issue. It is more developed in European media. Corporate crime, government criticism, corruption and social issues are frequent topics of interest. In this way, advocacy journalists serve the public interest in a similar way that muckrakers do. Advocacy journalism criticizes ‘ objectivity’ as the ideal of mainstream press and regards it merely as an ideological dissimulation of class bias.

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The evening before I sat next to Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban at a dinner hosted by Canadian Ambassador and Mrs Peter Sutherland for Chief Justice Beverley Mclachlin who had come for a conference on "Liberty and Prosperity". I was of course very pleased at the opportunity to reiterate my admiration for Panganiban’s dissenting opinion in 1997 and to tell him personally. "It was so inspiring." I said forgetting that across the table was former Justice Hilario Davide who led the majority decision then. Ooops. Sorry but although there was a lot of cajoling and merriment, I sensed Panganiban’s uneasiness. All he said was that it would be very close. He was still talking about three days of discussion among the justices so it came as a surprise when the very next day a decision was hurriedly issued. I wonder why?

But to return to that dinner, Ambassador Sutherland told us that Justice Mclaughlin and her husband just had carry-on luggage with them for their trip and while driving from the airport Ambassador Sutherland thought of a brilliant metaphor to compare the supreme court to a suitcase. It must be portable and able to be carried around because it contained only essential things.

I do not know if the justices present saw the relation of the metaphor to their own work and that they would be guided by the wisdom of how to bear down on the essentials. But when I finally did read the decision of the Panganiban court the next day which is now known as G.R. No. 174153, I can only surmise that this was not so. It did not stick to essentials.

Indeed the essentials and its implications to the country were simply lost on the majority opinion. It was centered on the form, language and method of the people’s initiative as if these were the principal issue to hand. I think most Filipinos will share the view that above all a people’s initiative was meant to enhance the people’s sovereignty by giving them the power of suggesting amendments or revision. Sorry but I will not be bludgeoned into accepting a difference between amendment and revision when there is none. It remains unacceptable to differentiate between terms which are one and the same grammatically and idiomatically unless it is now against the law to practice correct grammar.

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Those who had an opportunity to talk to Panganiban say that at bottom he was focused on his ‘legacy’ when he cast the vote in favor of those against the people’s initiative. This is a strange and biased presumption. Unless he has been taken in by the Opposition’s views against Charter change. A legacy requires much more than a subjective interpretation of what it ought to be. Legacy will not depend on what he thinks is his legacy than what the public and future generations will think of as his legacy. It is too early to tell how his swing vote (except in opposition papers) will be regarded and that will not be known until the implications of the decision will have unraveled. In 1997, the rejection of the people’s initiative led to the disastrous Erap regime. I hope he has not succumbed to the headlines of an oligarchic newspaper which said people did not trust the Supreme court. Ha, he can be trusted, see no hands, I am not for President GMA.

I was surprised why Panganiban should say that decision showed justices’ "independence (and) integrity" amid pressure from Arroyo officials to allow Charter change. I thought the justices’ independence’ is taken for granted and not necessary to have to be proven. If that were the case then there was no need for study or debate. What did matter would be the intellectual capacity to weigh the competing principles of law and then to arrive at a decision for the larger interest of the nation whose foundation is the sovereignty of the people.

He will be remembered all right. Whereas in 1997 he was an interpreter of broad strokes and principles this time he has descended into being a protector of grammatical ‘details’. I will never understand how Panganiban could have put his name to a 52-page decision penned by Antonio Carpio which said that the initiative called for a "revision" of the Constitution and not mere amendments, making it unconstitutional and questioned the legitimacy of six million signatures the petitioners through testimony of the opponents.

If he was so concerned that "the court cannot betray its primordial duty to defend and protect the Constitution," it should have allowed an examination of the signatures rather than a blanket rejection. By doing so the logic would have to been to remand it to the Comelec. There it would have fairer and would have given a chance to both, to those for and against through a plebiscite.

The most telling aspect of the GR No. 174153 is not what it said but what it did not say. A more noble court would have carried the message of the substance of Charter change and that a people’s initiative with all its flaws is being attempted for the sake of that change to get the nation going. The bottomline of the Panganiban court’s decision was to block the shift from the presidential system to a unicameral parliamentary government. It closed down reformist paths necessary if the country is to be in step with the rest of our wealthier neighbors who have done the same thing and enabled them to address the poverty of millions.

By refusing to remand the issue back to the Comelec which is the body designated by the Constitution to look into the sufficiency of the disputed petition reveals a tyrannical bent of the court. Once again it usurped powers that did not properly belong to it as when it turned down the R.A. 6735 in 1997 as inadequate, insulting Congress and thereby violating the separation of powers.

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This brings me to the spirit and intent of the people’s initiative as an alternative to EDSA people power. Having gone through two such attempts, it may be time to change advocacy – to amend the Constitution by removing the people’s initiative. It should never have been put into the Constitution at all if it is impossible to do so. It is just an occasion for hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness. Maybe through such a campaign we will instead sharpen our ability to judge what is essential from what is incidental or trivial.

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