Senator Llamanzares took the wrong step!

Someone goofed! The verbal attack, whether its idea originated from the live performer herself or conceptualized by some hard-nosed and highly paid strategist was apparently tactically intended to demonstrate the combative aspect of the lady candidate for president. Leaders after all, must be more assertive than timid. Leaders must, indeed, be unafraid to call black, by its black color. But, however profoundly was it thought about and no matter how carefully it was designed, to me, the harangue (I do not know how to call it differently) was plainly unnecessary. Worse, it, in the days to come, is, more likely, bound to boomerang and God forbid, the bombshell can in fact, explode in the face of the presidential candidate.

I am talking of the monologue made by candidate for president Grace P. Llamanzares against Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio. If I still refuse to call her a Senator Poe, it is not with any inkling to desecrate her father whose movies were the only Tagalog films I cared to watch, but to honor her husband whose situation in our legal structure is so secure and certain that I do not have to tell you that the husband is the home administrator!

I understand that there was a press conference organized for Senator Llamanzares following her initial poll-related victory having received the favorable votes of 5 of her colleagues. The senate voted to negate the petition to unseat the senator on some purported legal reason I am not very well-versed to discuss here. While many corners think that it was arguably a political ruling of a purely legal question, it was by any means a decision, just the same. And yes, I saw a brief and quick segment of the said media event.

Quite frankly, I am not sure it was her idea to hold such press conference. In my simple frame of mind, it was totally unnecessary to publicize her thoughts on the issue because her discourse on the topic will not add any welter to the decision of her colleagues in the upper house of the Philippine legislature.  The lady candidate achieved nothing in doing it.  It served no purpose other than to risk opening a Pandora's box of sort.

But, because Senator Llamanzares took the center stage to unleash her own kind of diatribe against a supreme court justice, it is well to attempt to understand why she did so.

The first rationale that comes to my mind is election profiling. The presidency of the republic is the most serious and difficult job to do in the country. A president is supposed to know the technical details of how the government operates as if they were the lines of his palm.  He is an accountant, doctor, educator, engineer, farmer, general, historian, lawyer, priest and so forth and so on, all rolled into one personality.

It is thus understandable that in her intense quest for Malacañang, Senator Llamanzares has to show to the world that she can joust with Justice Carpio on her understanding of the law. She must be profiled by us, the Filipino people, as possessed with the kind of sharp knowledge of the law needed for a Malacañang resident to govern the land, otherwise a little indicia of her legal paucity can drag her presidential ambitions down.

And what better stage to show her upmanship that to highlight legal points which, in her perception, the supreme court justice failed to consider. By stating, in dramatic coinage, her disapproval of the line of legal reasoning used by Justice Carpio, Senator Llamanzres, endeavored to convince us that she had the legal competence to rule our land.

I also believe that the press conference was designed to forewarn the members of the Supreme Court that she would not welcome any adverse ruling in the other cases against her that might find their way to the highest tribunal. I have not known of any litigant who has openly criticized a supreme court justice, in a press conference.  Parties to any action who might have felt that a stand by a jurist is not in accord with the litigant's belief write their thoughts in the pleadings but do not discuss their hurt feelings in a one-sided affair like a press conference.

I think, the lady presidential candidate erred. In making an outcry via a press conference, she goofed in a manner that tends to cast a doubt on her prudence.