When the Supreme Court ruled as valid and constitutional the imposition of martial law in Mindanao by President Duterte, the majority of the justices exhibited a rare display of patriotism. Martial law is the ultimate recourse of the Motherland to protect our people. The opposition can never pre-empt that by negatively branding martial law as an attempt to curtail our civil and political rights. It can never be less than that unless the one saying belongs to the opposite side.
When the opposition made up of the Liberal Party and the various militant Left organizations filed their petition, their motive is not really to uphold our freedom that is being threatened by misguided Islamic terrorists. Instead, they wanted to project themselves into the limelight. Politics being in their lifeblood, they have chosen to position themselves as hecklers.
While the great majority of Filipinos empathize with the tremendous sacrifices of our soldiers to contain the havoc of terrorism, the opposition and their strange bedfellows in the Left could not comprehend that the decision is not personal to President Rodrigo Duterte. It was a reactive measure to counter the threat initiated by the terrorists. They cannot insist that for martial law to fall within the penumbra of constitutionality, lawless violence, invasion and/or rebellion should exist.
The petitioners failed to realize that a mere attempt to deprive the state of its authority to govern is more than enough for the President to impose national emergency. These idiots forgot that under no circumstances will a sovereign and independent state allow any political or religious group to govern alongside with it in a given territory or jurisdiction. He who disagrees to this political postulate is free to side with the rebels and fight with them.
Moreover, calling them terrorists is not flimsy nomenclature. It is the result of their savagery and brutality in treating both civilians and captive prisoners. They initiated a new type of warfare called “asymmetrical warfare,” characterized by inflicting heavy casualties on the innocent civilian population.
Using the accurate legal term to justify martial law is in fact irrelevant. Rather, the opposition is seeking to appease the secessionist who often changes their attire to that of the terrorists as when the ewan ko regime of Noynoy Aquino attempted to grant the MILF their Bangsamoro Basic Law. Whether one would call their violent action an insurrection, uprising, bloody riot, mutiny or revolution, the fact is clear that it was the Maute terrorists and the local ISIS that declared war against the government.
The fact that it was they that commenced the violence, or call it war, this column need not read the reasoning of the lone dissenter, Justice Marvin Leonen. Either Justice Leonen failed to comprehend what is going on in Marawi City or is simply blinded by his political prejudice against the administration. His dissenting opinion reeks of flamboyance and arrogance. He failed to realize that the case to be resolved revolves around the facts of the case, which is for the court to answer the question whether the imposition of martial law was proper. He is not free to speculate on what will happen if martial law is allowed because it will not resolve the question of the opposition.
Rather, Leonen maliciously omitted to cite the jurisprudence upholding the martial law imposed by Marcos as valid, legal and constitutional by the same court where he now sits as a misplaced member. Lucky for us, the outrageous view expressed by Leonen represents the lone opinion. Otherwise, the whole world will be laughing at us, seeing one justice pretending to argue on the constitutionality of martial law but miserably failing to fit his arguments with the facts of the case.
His opinion deserved to be treated as non sequitur for it contains nothing but tirades in behalf of the opposition. As justice, his duty is to cite jurisprudence to justify his position, not to articulate on the past or recite beatitudes on what we are supposed to do. For him to tread outside of his assigned task is to automatically reduce himself to what netizens referred to as a troll, out to besmirch the administration.
I could not stop my laughter when this “lipad” justice said, to quote: “Never again should this court allow itself to step aside when the powerful invoke vague powers that feed on fear but could potentially undermine our most cherished rights. Never again should we fall victim to a false narrative that a vague declaration of martial law is good for us no matter the circumstances. We should have the courage to never again clothe authoritarianism in any disguise with the mantle of constitutionality.” He added, “The ghost of Marcos’ martial law lives within the words of our Constitution and rightly so. The ghost must be rightly exorcised with passion by this court whenever its resemblance reappears.”
One could instantly notice the fallacy in what Leonen is talking about. First, why drag the high court by saying “never again will this court allow itself to step aside” when he was fully aware he represents an isolated opinion, which means he was only talking to himself? He should have the decency not to use the word “we” because he cannot speak on behalf of the Court. This explains why the justice who is assigned to write the decision or “ponente” always belongs to the majority view. Second, it was both a deception and unethical for him to use the word “We” because he was never a victim nor was jailed during martial law. It was plain derogatory for Justice Leonen to use his dissenting opinion as his platform to propagandize and express misleading facts to denigrate the rightful exercise of power by the President.
Finally, the issue of martial law is more about what happened—that a war is raging in Marawi and other towns in Mindanao. The issue of martial law could only be resolved on the factuality of what happened there. To annul the declaration because some cynics are not in consonance with the decision of the President is to put the Republic in grave danger. Martial law is about reality and survival, and Justice Leonen, the same man who brokered for the ratification of the Bangsamoro Basic Law, failed to comprehend this fact and insist in purposely misinterpreting the Constitution.