WHEN LAW BECOMES AN INSTRUMENT OF INJUSTICE,

THE NATION LOSES ITS SOUL

Meilou Sereno
Former Chief Justice

There was a time when people thought that the Philippines had one of the most
hopeful and expressive constitutions in the world. It was indeed unique – a covenant
among the people that prays for the help of a personal Almighty God, a preamble that
evokes the Filipinos’ longing for truth, justice, peace, love and equality. At that time, the
world believed that because of what the Filipinos showed at EDSA, indeed good can
conquer evil, when a people can unite to overthrow the chains of dictatorship through
peaceful means. Many countries followed what the Philippines did, and one after the
other dictatorships fell across the world.

Today should have been a time of rejoicing in our country, but it is not. Instead,
there is a deep sense of unease and trouble among our people. There is fear by the
great majority that they will become the victims of violence; an overwhelming
disagreement with the number of deaths in the so-called drug war; and a lack of
confidence in the future, by businessmen and consumers. These are the results from
specific surveys on the question of whether Filipinos feel safe; on whether Filipinos
agree that drug suspects should be kept alive; and on the question of the level of
confidence that ordinary consumers and businesses have for this year’s 4 th quarter.
These surveys had been most recently conducted by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas,
by the Social Weather Station and by Pulse Asia.

Yes, there appears to be support for the President, for his attention to the
problem of drug addiction and trade; but let me propose a frame for assessing this
apparent support. If the Filipinos indeed support the President’s drug war, it cannot be
support for the number of rising unsolved violent deaths associated with the drug war,
as the surveys reveal that the great majority want the suspects to be captured alive, not
gunned down. The support is not because Filipinos think the government is winning the
drug war considering that the use of illegal drugs is as rampant as ever and people are
as afraid of crime as they had always been. Rather, people perceive that attention is
being paid to the drug problem, a problem that before President Duterte, had never
been perceived by Filipinos as a major one. Then Mayor Duterte’s campaign
successfully labeled it as a major problem, a significant number of voters believed he
must be right, and now the majority is supporting the attention the drug problem is
getting.

But it must be emphasized that the public support for the attention being given by
the President to the drug problem, is not support for the manner with which it is being
conducted nor for its outcome after 30 months of a relentless police campaign. And
there are two things that characterize the manner by which the war against drugs is
being conducted – its harshness and its injustice. And because of this harshness and
injustice, I will call it an ”unjust war on drugs.” And because it is unjust, it is already evil.

Let me make several observations. First, the surveys ask a question that is too
general as to confuse or mislead. “Maaari po bang pakisabi ninyo kung gaano kayo
nasisiyahan o hindi nasisiyahan sa kasalukuyang kampanya ng ADMINISTRASYON
laban sa illegal na droga.” No one will disagree that a campaign against drugs must be
conducted. But this campaign has many facets. What is really being approved by the
survey respondents? Is it the attention being given to the presence of addicts or
pushers in the barangays? Is it the educational campaign against drug use? Is it the
actual raid on drug dens or manufacturing laboratories? Which part of the campaign is
actually meriting approval? Or is it the fact that attention by government to the drug
problem is quite well-publicized? In which case, to what extent is this approval the
product of media reporting or government messaging?

Second, how can one expect barangay residents to disagree with the anti-drug
campaign if that is now the priority campaign of the barangays as required by the DILG
and the national government? No resident who wants to get along with his co-barangay
residents will disapprove of a barangay priority program.

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 What is unmistakeable however, is that the courts themselves, including the
Supreme Court, have increasingly shown marked disapproval for the disregard of the
rule of law in the conduct of the “war on drugs.” That much is clear from the recent
decision and oral argument in the Supreme Court involving the various cases of
OplanTokhang. It had disapproved of the complete lack of due process in the conduct of
Oplan Tokhang in the Payatas victims’ petition for writs of amparo. People were killed,
massacred even, and the number of deaths under dubious circumstances disclosed in
the Sta. Ana amparo petition hearings was scorchingly questioned by the justices under
the following observations - no sufficient factual basis for the identification of people in
the drug list, suspicious deaths even during police operations, direct forensic and
testimonial evidence of rubouts. Evidently, the law had been repeatedly set aside, and
the law had been used against the people.

What is most alarming however, is how this brazen disregard for the law is
becoming the norm, not only in the drug war, but also in how corruption and dissent are
treated. The corrupt are set free, and those who point out the errors of the President are
jailed or threatened. One cannot escape the fact that it is the poor, the defenders of the
poor, or those actively calling for observance of the rule of law by government, that are
being targeted - not only in police operations, but also in police investigations, fiscals’
preliminary investigations, court filings, warrants of arrest, conviction, and finally
adverse court decisions. If those who are supposed to be protected by the law are its
victims, then what else will you call law if not an instrument of injustice? When law
becomes the instrument of injustice, what is the recourse of the people?

When I use the term “law” here, I refer to it in its broad sense. It includes the
Constitution, statutes or acts of Congress, administrative regulations, rules of
procedure, operational aspects of justice such as police investigations and operations,
preliminary investigations by prosecutors or “fiscals,” proceedings in Congress, and
finally, court decisions. All of these issuances and instrumentalities, people associate
with “batas,” “mambabatas”, “alagad ng batas”, “hustisya,” “katarungan.”

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 The people of the Cordilleras testify to a native sense of justice that honors the
land and the community. It looks at land and all of nature as a gift of God and as
blessed by the life of the ancestors. You abhor greed and lament the use of native claim
against native claim at the behest of commercial interests that wish to exploit your
forests and mines. Your people defend your land as connected to your very life line.
You have always demanded that law be fully alive to your sense of justice, and not just
be law because they are the lowlanders’ laws, copied from Western conquerors. Rather,
like Macliing Dulag, you understand that justice is more than just a piece of paper, more
than just the signature of authorities. You understand that justice is a demand from the
Creator God Himself.

Thus the very sad episode in this nation’s history, when we all heard the decision
of the Sandiganbayan a few days ago acquitting Senator Bong Revilla of the charge of
plunder that encapsulates the most recent legal abomination that has been created in
the last two years. It is a dagger stroke to the heart of justice. Justice Efren dela Cruz,
paraphrased, spoke about the glaring lack of justice when secret crimes are required to
be proven on all points by direct evidence of its every factual element. He decries this
impossible standard of proof, to wit:

… [P]roof beyond reasonable doubt does not mean such degree of proof
as, excluding possibility of error, produces absolute certainty. Moral certainty is
only required, or that degree of proof which produces conviction in an unprejudiced
mind.
Parenthetically, direct evidence is not a condition sine qua non to prove the
guilt of an accused beyond reasonable doubt. For in the absence of direct
evidence, the prosecution may resort to adducing circumstantial evidence to
discharge its burden. Crimes are usually committed in secret and under conditions
where concealment is highly probable. If direct evidence is insisted on under all
circumstance, the prosecution of vicious felons who committed heinous crimes in
secret or secluded places will be hard, if not impossible, to prove.

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and went on to object to the travesty of justice when an accused who has been proven
to have amassed great wealth consisting of illegally acquired public funds is
pronounced as not guilty:
“For Napoles and Cambe to infiltrate the money, they needed Revilla. It is
ludicrous that Revilla would casually exercise a lofty power gratis, while leaving
Napoles and Cambe [with] whom he has no blood relation or other filiation of
equally strong degree, to reap the benefits alone… I find it hard to believe that this
scam of such magnitude was confined only within the realm of Napoles and
Cambe to the exclusion of Revilla.”

If Justice De la Cruz says the whole theory of Senator Revilla not knowing about
the deposits of big money being made to his account as utterly ludicrous or laughable,
Justice Ma. Theresa Gomez-Estoesta, the other dissenting justice, puts succinctly the
minimum degree of impartiality required for a just decision in this case. She says:
One need only turn a discerning eye, and not look the other way.
…
With the majority opinion, Senator Revilla’s general defense of denial in the
guise of forgery, was given the most credence, but to a great fault. This
consequential ruin runs deep, and may eventually free a man once accused of
having conspired in raiding the public treasury to hundreds of millions…

Let me put my statement of belief at the most fundamental level and I think you in
the Cordilleras will understand this. In the Bible and I believe in your ancestors’ beliefs
as well, the shedding of innocent blood, or unjust deaths, pollute and to use biblical
terms, “curses the land.” I believe that any nation that does not decry unjust deaths, will
lose its soul. The lumads say that the land will avenge the deaths of the forefathers. The
Bible says that Abel’s blood cries out from the ground for God’s vengeance. Many more
passages talk about how God withholds his favor from a people that is cruel and unjust,
how the land cannot be healed because they refuse to turn from their wicked ways. And
it has been so for the last so many months, how we have seen evil at its hard core, our

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sense of justice being assaulted, as if government and laws exist only for the powerful -
who may be corrupt, who may be vengeful, who may be both corrupt and vengeful –
“professing” a love for the people but demonstrating no fear of God.

In the face of so much injustice, I call on the people to unite in prayer. Indeed,
when the very weapons that taxpayers money purchase for the armed forces and the
police are being turned by government against the people, when the intelligence funds
of government are used to hound dissent and oppress political enemies, when
corruption funds the campaigns of plunderers who are allowed to go free by an
unreasoned court decision, then the people must turn to God, and call out for help
amidst such despair. We call out to God in the Preamble of our Constitution to establish
for us a just society. We must remember to call out to Him once again in this our time of
utmost need.

To disregard the evil that is happening amidst us is to encourage evil. We must

fight it at all fronts, by using all legal means to fight not only corruption but all the
manifestations of corrupted hearts in government. We must fight it on our knees, in our
churches, in our homes, on the streets, by crying out to our Just God, who will not let
evil reign forever. We must awaken the consciences of our people. We must let our
voices be heard; we must not let our nation lose its soul.