Hey, idiots, Supreme Court cases aren’t your usual street demo prey

SOME 684 people — mostly Reds, Pinks and Yellows — are listed as petitioners of 37 petitions asking the Supreme Court to rule as unconstitutional the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) of 2020. What do they think Supreme Court decisions are based on, the size of the mob, as was the case in EDSA 1 and 2?

They should heed the recent Supreme Court admonition over the previous Aquino 3rd regime’s ouster of the late Chief Justice Renato Corona, achieved largely through a massive propaganda campaign and the bribery of the Senate impeachment jurors: “The Filipino people live, toil and thrive in a democracy, but the rule of law should not stand parallel to the rule of the mob. Toe this line, and the nation may eventually behold the laws that the Courts have forever sworn to uphold, battered and bent.”

Not elected
Even if your mob increases to 6,840 or 68,400, it doesn’t matter to the Supreme Court. Why? Because the justices aren’t elected, and they don’t give a damn what you think of them. They don’t care, unlike a lot of politicians, especially in the Senate, if the Communist Party with its New People’s Army can give them a million, though at-the-point-of-a-gun, votes.

You can’t frighten them with death threats. Most of the Supreme Court judges — unlike the two appointed by President Aquino — have been criminal-court judges. This means they had been eating death threats for breakfast for years from merciless criminals you can’t even imagine.

I had already debunked criticism of the ATA in an earlier column (“The anti-terrorism bill arms the Republic to defeat the CPP-NPA, at long last,” June 12, 2020): any objective analyst will find nothing “constitutional” wrong with. It was authored by Sen. Panfilo Lacson, hardly a Duterte supporter, who by now has years of experience as a legislator, nearly as many as his years in law enforcement, and even going after the insurgents. He knows what kind of legislation he pushed for, more than all of the lawyers now asking the high court to junk it.

Nineteen senators — including Franklin Drilon, the most intelligent and experienced Yellow legislator — voted for it to be enacted. Only two dissented: Francis Pangilinan, who went to bed with the communists in his college days to become student council chairman, and Risa Hontiveros, who was with Akbayan, organized by non-Leninist Marxists and, of course, rabidly anti-Duterte.

Now people who have never read a law or broken the law, recognize only communist “revolutionary” laws, or make big money going around the law, think they are better than the 19 senators in knowing what is unconstitutional and what is not.

Fatal flaw
Even Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, a former human rights lawyer who was appointed by President Aquino, and whom one would expect would be sympathetic to the anti-ATA crowd, cut to the chase in exposing the fatal flaw of the main argument repeated ad nauseam in all of the 37 petitions, when he asked: “Should the Supreme Court step in even where there is no actual case yet alleging a specific injury under the ATA?” That is, the anti-ATA mob have not been able to prove that the law violates the Constitution. All they have been arguing is “it could,” “there is a danger,” “it might.”

There has never been a case in the Supreme Court with such a number of petitioners asking the same thing, making the same moronic arguments. It’s not because of a national outrage against the ATA, which 99 percent of Filipinos really don’t care about, although that is the petitioners’ intention.

Rather it reveals several, very worrying features of our body politic.

First, it demonstrates the tremendous propaganda power and network of the Communist Party, and its huge success in getting bleeding-heart NGOs to rally to its causes. C’mon now, seriously and without the blah-blahs. The ATA is a sword solely aimed at the heart of the Communist Party and Islamic terrorists, the biggest threat in terms of the legal superstructure against these insurgents ever, who have expertly succeeded in using the laws of a democratic system to shield them from the state’s efforts to defeat them. No way can ATA be used against the likes of Leila de Lima or Maria Ressa.

The Communist Party, especially its leaders living in comfort in the urban areas who would be most affected by the law, are panicking, and have called for an all-hands-on-deck mobilization of all its above-ground resources against the ATA. It’s as if it’s issued an ultimatum to its cadres: If you don’t join the Supreme Court petition, you’re not with us.

The list of petitioners very nearly is a list of the usual communist fronts and their mouthpieces, but also includes many not so well-known, but which party founder Jose Ma. Sison red-tagged in his list of members of his International League of People’s Struggles (see www.ilps/info): Bayan Muna, Gabriela, National Union of People’s Lawyers as represented by Edre Olalia (officially longtime personal lawyer of Sison), Partido Manggagawa, Karapatan, and the whole gang of Reds-but-don’t-tag-us-that outfits.

Think of a personality who has demonstrated himself to be so Red his underpants must have a hammer-and-sickle logo, and he or she would be on the list of petitioners: Teddy Casiño, Satur Ocampo, Liza Maza, Neri Colmenares, Carlos Zarate, Sarah Jane Elago.

Bleeding-heart
Second, the petitions demonstrate that communists still manage to fool bleeding-heart do-gooders and flaky-minded liberal ideologues into their ranks with their huge deception that human rights under Duterte are in serious jeopardy. A number of the petitioners are far from being communists or communist sympathizers but those who have been fooled that the ATA would violate Filipinos’ human and legal rights.

Why are they so gullible? Because this was the same issue that the communists exploited for 14 years during martial law, although their big lie was that there were massive human rights violations during martial law. As I will prove in future columns, this has been one of the biggest deceptions foisted on the Filipino nation. The communists have become experts in using the human rights issue that together with Duterte’s necessarily messy campaign against illegal drugs, bleeding heart liberals have been fooled that the ATA is a threat to our constitutional rights.

That allegation is total hogwash in this day and age when ranking communists, those who had ordered so many Filipinos killed, are out on bail and returned to the protection of the NPA in some jungle to continue ordering the killing of the Republic’s troops. Where the hell are the former party chairman Benito Tiamzon and his wife, the general secretary Wilma Austria? Would you believe that this would be the third time they got out of prison? And the Reds have the gall to launch a “Movement Against [Duterte] Tyranny”?

Third, this Supreme Court case demonstrates a most sickening feature of our society. Just because Duterte backed the law, and its junking will be a dent on his political stature, the Yellows and its Liberal Party core, and other Duterte-haters have joined the mob against the ATA.

Francis Pangilinan, Leila de Lima, Sergio Osmena 3rd, Wigberto and Lorenzo Tañada, and La Salle’s Armin Luistro are there. Convicted defamer Maria Ressa, Lilibeth Frondoso and the Rappler crowd, Ellen Tordesillas with her staff at foreign-funded VERA Files are there as well. Why, even such Yellows who should have thought twice to be public figures, Mae Paner and Jover Laurio, are there. If he weren’t living in Australia, I’m sure Jim Paredes would have cried to be included among the petitioners.

Most nauseating to me is that joining the mob are former Supreme Court justices Antonio Carpio and Conchita Carpio-Morales. Just because Duterte hasn’t adopted their Sinophobia over the South China Sea dispute, they join the mob that would take back the weapon that the Republic just recently forged against the communists? And to think that both concurred with the Supreme Court ruling in 2011 affirming the constitutionality of the Human Security Act of 2007, whose loopholes ATA merely closed.

This mob would pray for the communist plague to overrun the land, if only it would help oust Duterte.

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