Epidemic?

Batas Mauricio

IF it is true that the comment filed by Commissioner Rowena Guanzon of the Commission on Elections on the Supreme Court petitions contesting the poll body’s disqualification of Sen. Grace Poe as a candidate in the 2016 presidential elections was not approved by the Commission as a whole, she may have committed a violation of the Constitution and of Supreme Court doctrines saying a collegial body must act as a whole, or with the participation of all its members.

In the case of Consing vs. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 78272, Aug. 29, 1989,  which was cited in the case of Pedragoza vs. Comelec, G.R. No. 169885, July 25, 2006, the tribunal recognized the rule that a collegial body, pursuant to the Constitution, “… arrives at its decisions only after deliberation, the exchange of views and ideas, and the concurrence of the required majority vote… ” As a collegial body composed of seven members, the Comelec is bound by this rule.

Now, in view of these decisions, did Guanzon incur any administrative or criminal liability when she filed her comment on Poe’s cases without the participation of her colleagues in the poll body? I believe she committed graft under Republic Act 3019, the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, because she either caused undue injury to the Commission, or granted unwarranted favors to interested parties.

• •

There is a Facebook post that is being shared and re-shared by many in just a short span of time, and it pertains to an alleged kidnapping of a four-year old boy who went inside a toilet of a popular supermarket by himself and was never seen again by his parents, until a friend of the parents recovered the boy, heavily doped, already dressed as a girl and sporting a new haircut, from a young kidnapper.

My first reaction was, is this kidnapping story even true? Did it really happen, and  inside the popular supermarket yet which, at the time of the supposed abduction, was even teeming with customers and people who were simply whiling their time away, and in the presence yet of the supermarket’s heavily armed security guards?

If this story was a hoax, how come many respectable people were sharing it in their Facebook accounts? If it was on the other hand accurate, does this mean that this country, and this nation of about 80 million or so Christian believers or followers, have sunk really low in criminality and immorality that kidnapping has become a perfected art even among so many people, under a government that claims it has restored righteousness?