Robredo can’t become President in ‘revgov’

Batas Mauricio .

JUST a minute. If President Duterte declares a revolutionary government, that presupposes the dissolution of the 1987 Constitution and the government that is operating under it. Since it is through the mechanism of that Constitution that Vice President Leni Robredo became vice president of the government of the Philippines, she necessarily ceases to be vice president when that Constitution is dissolved.

In fact, her position as vice president, and all other positions in government like the presidency, for that matter, are all dissolved by the installation of arevolutionary government. That is because the authority under which those positions have been created and are being discharged, the 1987 Constitution, is dissolved likewise.

All power when a revolutionary government is declared becomes vested in the President, or the person who declared the revolutionary government. It is only the President (or the person who declared the revolutionary government) that holds all power.

The example of an obscure housewife declaring a revolutionary government, dissolving the 1973 Constitution and the government that was running under it, and assuming all power in 1986 after grabbing power from a duly-elected president, then President Marcos, shows us this truth.

The widow vested all powers of government in herself alone. She did this by her issuing a Freedom Constitution which she and her allies, both local and foreign, also called the 1986 Provisional Constitution, under Proclamation No. 03, March 25, 1986.

In short, there is already a precedent in this country that says that when a revolutionary government is declared, the entire government operating under the prevailing Constitution at that time that is jettisoned is likewise abolished, and the person who declared the revolutionary government assumes all power thereafter.

Corazon C. Aquino did this in 1986. There is no rhyme or reason, or any other legal prohibition, why Presient Duterte cannot do it now, in 2019. If President Duterte does this now, or the declaration of a revolutionary government, the entire government machinery under the 1987 Constitution will be junked.

I mean, that would cause the abrogation of the 1987 Constitution (which, significantly, must already be set aside for it has become clear to all that it was a product merely of vindictiveness), the present government would vanish, as it were, including the officials running it. Robredo therefore has no right to assume the presidency if Duterte declares a revolutionary government.

She can be arrested if she does that!

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Documents reaching the Suprmee Court show that around 250,000 cases involving illegal drugs are now being tried and litigated in the nearly 1,100 Regional Trial Courts (RTCs) in the country today, according to Supreme Court Deputy Court Administrator Raul Bautista Villanueva last April 1, 2019.

In a lecture he delivered for about three hours at the Mandatory Continuing Legal Education seminar on the current status of the country’s courts at the UP Law Center in Diliman, Quezon City, Villanueva (who was himself a Regional Trial Court judge in Las Pinas City before he went to the Supreme Court) disclosed that some 640,000 cases are pending trial before the RTCs across the country.

About 80 percent of this number, or about 510,000, are criminal cases, and more than half of these criminal cases, or about 250,000, are illegal drugs cases. Villanueva said the present work load of RTC judges are truly terrible and too taxing, although on account of various issuances by the Supreme Court, some 70,000 of these cases have been resolved asof 2018.

On the other hand, for the cases that are being tried by the so-called “first level courst” of the country (or the Metropolitan Trial Courts, MeTCs; Municipal Trial Courts, MTCs; Municipal Trial Courts in Cities, MTCCs; and Municipal Circuit Trial Courts (MCTCs), the Supreme Court has recorded some 146,000 cases being tried by them.

As per the lecture of Supreme Court Deputy Court Administrator Raul Bautista Villanueva before lawyers attending their Mandatory Continuing Legal Education Seminar in UP Diliman, Quezon City on  April 1, 2019, it was clarified that by virtue of rules and guidelines coming from the Supreme Court, these first level courts have already disposed of some 6,000 cases last 2018.

Villanueva also explained that the most common cause of delay in the resolution of court cases or in the issuance of decisions in those cases nowadays is “postponements” of trial in the RTCs and the MTCs. For one reason or another, trials are often cancelled and reset to a longer date, but this problems is now being addressed earnestly by the Supreme Court, Villanueva said.

Deputy Court Administrator Raul Villanueva also discussed some of the most recent regulations issued by the Supreme Court to assure the speedier trial of all cases before the lower courts of the country. One of these regulations is the so-called “Revised Guidelines on Continuous Trial of Criminal Cases”.

There are many new “styles” of trial procedures in the Revised Guidelines that would hasten the disposition of both civil and criminal cases mentioned by Villanueva, and we will try to dwell on many of them in the succeeding issues of this column. At this point, however, I wish to pay attention to the following matters: the Revised Guidelines took effect on April 25, 2017, as A.M. No. 15-06-10-SC.

What are the cases covered by the Revised Guidelines? All criminal cases still pending of course, and the violations of the Comprehensive Drugs Act of 2002 and the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, as well as cases involving the environment and intellectual property rights and those being tried by family and commercial courts.

We will deal with all of these later, God willing.

E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com