MANILA — The treason and inciting to sedition cases filed against officials of the government’s peace process office, including members of the peace panel that negotiated the peace agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), should be dismissed because it is “appallingly bereft of factual and legal basis.”
According to the lead counsel of the GPH peace panel, Atty. Rene Saguisag, in the joint counter-affidavit to the complaint, Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) Secretary Teresita Quintos Deles and Government of the Philippines (GPH) Chief Peace Negotiator Professor Miriam Coronel-Ferrer and other members of the government peace panel said that “[a]t best, (the complaint) is the product of wilful ignorance of the basic tenets of criminal law, democracy, and the legislative process, and must be dismissed for utter lack of merit. At worst, it is the complainants’ malevolent attempt to use the Honorable Office for their political ends…”
“As government officials, my clients hold themselves to the highest standards? with regard to adhering to the laws of the Republic of the Philippines. Even if? this case is appallingly bereft of factual and legal basis, they personally submitted their counter-affidavits in deference to the established legal processes of this country,” Saguisag added.
The treason and inciting to sedition case was filed last May 28 by Buhay Party-list Representative Lito Atienza, ABAKADA Party-list Representative Jonathan Dela Cruz, and University of Asia and the Pacific law professor Jeremy Gatdula.
Deles and the others, in their joint counter-affidavit, argued that “the BBL is clearly a document inciting peace, justice, order, unity, and goodwill among all peoples. Quite contrary to the baseless asseverations of the complainants, the text of the BBL itself reveals that it espouses an enduring peace.”
“To charge us with treason and inciting to sedition is to misunderstand not only basic concepts of criminal law and constitutional law, but the very idea of a nation, democracy, the Philippine people, and the history of the Republic of the Philippines,” continued the counter-affidavit of Deles and the peace panel members.
They said that the complaint failed to prove the existence of all the elements of treason such as a state of war.
Deles and the peace panel members also raised the possibility that the complainants are trying to subvert the power of the Supreme Court by filing the complaint with the prosecutor’s office. They argued that “[t]he Honorable Office is being invited by the complainants to exercise a power that lies solely with the Supreme Court. Even on this matter alone, the Honorable Office must dismiss the instant Complaint-Affidavit.” (OPAPP)
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