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Churchill Aguilar

THE release of Sen. Enrile from his hospital arrest after being granted bail by no less than the Supreme Court on Tuesday should be taken as a final point to lose faith on the authorities running the judiciary. No voting from the “esteemed justices” can ever change the law which states that plunder is a non-bailable offense. If that be the case then we might as well do away with our laws and settle for popular voting.

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The guardians of our law (the eight justices who allowed the senator to bail out) have become themselves above the law. In this case they are no different from vigilantes except that vigilantes try to serve us justice by putting the law into their hands while they deny us justice by misusing their powers granted to them by the state––both fundamentally wrong. Now, they are the Supreme Court, where can we run now to cry foul?

This kind of precedence should not be allowed. I could not imagine how this would become the basis for others to sseek bail, too. And since it was a Supreme Court ruling, it can now be used as jurisprudence. This seemingly small decision destroys the sanctity of their esteemed office. Never will the Supreme Court now be seen as neutral and impartial, because in this case, they are everything but that. How else could they explain that the eight who voted in favor of the bail were all appointed by then president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo?

Kung pobre gani, bisan nangawat lang ug pipila ka libo madugta man sa bilanggo-an kai mao lagi daw ang bala-od, pero kung ang gamhanan mangawat ug minilyon, butaran lang sa mga justices para maka gawas? Mao ba na’y hustisya?

Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile was charged with plunder and graft. The plunder case looked at the senator’s commissions from questionable projects financed by his development assistance funds while the graft case focused on his illegal diversion of development funds to fake NGOs. The Ombudsman probe that Enrile got P172 million worth of kickbacks plus around P345 million of his PDAF was diverted to 6 NGOs owned by Napoles.  Can that be settled with simple voting? I mean it’s just bail, a temporary freedom, but if even on bail they can bend the law to his favor, we can already foresee how his trial would go.

As for Enrile back in the Senate, God bless the Filipinos!

 

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