The Bangus Ultimatum

Testing and fiddling with automatically crossposting my entries from hereon to a livejournal. This is thanks to the wonderful LJXP plugin.

I know, I know. I think I’ve given LJ users some grief before, but the truth is that I’ve been secretly in love with the platform and its social networking features. I want to make my content available to LJ-based communities and I do admire LJ-users for being such an active amiable bunch. So there.

(Statement of the Jose P. Laurel Constitutional Law Society)

More than three decades ago, then President Ferdinand Marcos issued Proclamation No. 1081, suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus and placing the country under martial law. The events of the fifteen years that followed have left their indelible mark on all Filipinos, even those who, at the time, were too young to understand what it all meant.

Three days ago, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo issued Presidential Proclamation 1017, and while she stopped short of suspending the privilege of the writ and declaring martial law, the events that followed her Proclamation shadow the acts of the former dictator.

It is the firm belief of the Jose P. Laurel Constitutional Law Society that Proclamation 1017 is a form of undeclared martial law that allows Gloria Arroyo to effectively skirt public accountability.

As is clear to anyone who bothers to compare the two issuances, the language of 1017 is, almost verbatim, the language of 1081. Although both are anchored on provisions of the Constitution, both have been used to legitimize actions that won’t take a law student to know run counter to the values of free speech and assembly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in Article III. Ostensibly pursuant to an authority granted to her by law, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has sanctioned the aggressive nature in which the government has responded to peaceful assemblies of oppositors to Arroyo’s administration, the warrantless arrest of those perceived to be threats to national security, express “appeals� by Malacañang and the National Telecommunications Commission to the media to refrain from airing events that might incite sedition or rebellion, and concurrent directives to cancel media licenses and raid offices of newspapers who prove recalcitrant.

By refraining from using the words “suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus� and persistently insisting that nothing in the Proclamation talks of martial law, Arroyo avoids the four checks contained in Sec. 18, Article VII, namely: 1) the 60-day limit on the effectivity of any proclamation suspending the writ or declaring martial law; 2) her obligation to report, within 48 hours, to Congress on the reason for such an action; 3) the power of Congress to revoke the suspension or proclamation; and 4) the power of the Supreme Court to review, upon petition by any citizen, the sufficiency of the factual bases of the proclamation or suspension.

More than anything else, the 1987 Constitution was a sweeping reaction to the events of the 1970s, and it was the intent of the framers that the fundamental law guarantee that the outrages committed under the Marcos dictatorship would never again be permitted to occur.

The Constitution expressly states that even in a state of martial law, the rights protected under its aegis cannot be suspended. No matter what has or not been inscribed in Proclamation 1017, the fact remains that freedoms fought for by generations of Filipinos who came before us are being violently wrested out of our hands by a Chief Executive who refuses to accept that the true power in this country lies not in the officials who hold public office, but in the people whose vote put them there.

We call on all students of the U.P. College of Law to stand with us by affixing your signature to this statement. Let our voices be heard.