December 12, 2007 · Posted in: Governance, Human Rights, In the News, Media, Podcasts
Overstepping constitutional and legal boundaries
WEEKS after the standoff at the Manila Peninsula, the country is still in uproar over the government’s clampdown on human rights and civil liberties that day.
Observers said the government overstepped its authority in dealing with Senator Antonio Trillanes IV’s latest caper, while others went as far as accusing the Arroyo administration of turning the country into a garrison state, back to the dark days of martial rule.
The Makati standoff and the way the administration handled it, they added, only reflects the President’s “longstanding vendetta to crush all forms of opposition.”
For human rights lawyer Jose Manuel ‘Chel’ Diokno, the media arrests, the imposition of curfew, and the filing of rebellion charges against the soldiers and civilians are all highly irregular — the arrests an overkill, the curfew unconstitutional, and the charges baseless.
Diokno, national chair of the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) handling the case of three civilians involved in the mutiny, says that in the case of rebellion, for instance, there is no sufficient evidence to prove that Trillanes and 35 others committed a crime. A group representing former Vice President Teofisto Guingona Jr., among the civilians arrested in Makati, also asserts that no crime was committed that day since there were no “armed public uprising,” “masses or multitudes involving crowd action,” or “a complex net of intrigue and plots,” as jurisprudence would prove.
Diokno also offers that systemic problems, such as corruption in the military, should be addressed if only to quell the growing military restiveness.
Listen to Atty. Diokno speak on the curtailment of civil liberties and press freedom.
Length: 00:08:07
File size: 8.07 MBClick here for his views on the decreasing democratic space and why longstanding issues must be brought to a close for any kind of development to take place.
Length: 00:03:20
File size: 3.20 MB
2 Responses to Overstepping constitutional and legal boundaries
jcc
December 16th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Whom are you kidding? Senator Trillanes did it 2003. He led a group of disconted military personnel to topple the GMA administration and he called it military interventionism. Now he did it again by abrutly leaving the court proceeedings, went to Peninsula hotel and ejected legitimate occupants of the hotel so he and his group could have unfettered access to the hotel and the people who gathered around him at the hotel called for GMA to resign and a transitional government be formed to be headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
All this point to one thing. They want to short circuit the civil institutions by forming a transitional government.
So don’t kid yourself by saying that Senator Trillanes and his group just wanted to get one good night sleep at a five star hotel that day. This is pure hogwash.
The GMA administration as well as the ones before her were corrupt but corruption is part of our political life and the solution is not removing the present leadership and replace it with a transitional government to be headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and by people probably to be chosen by Senator Trillanes. If you remember that one Chief Justice almost got impeached because he reportedly diverted the judicial welfare funds of the employees, then the composition of the transitional government proposed by Trillanes and his group offer no happy solution to the acrimonious and self-righteous blamestorming of the present dispensation.
Sleep your ambition over and when you have enough moral superiority over the present regime you want to replace, offer that to the people in peaceful and democratic process.
nbernabe
December 26th, 2007 at 2:59 am
The rule of law should always be followed. No unconstitutional measure should be allowed to overthrow the presidency. Let Trillanes and his military adventurism rest behind bars. It has been proven that people are tired of this unconstitutional move to ouster the president. I’m not a supporter of GMA but I’m against any unconstitutional move to change the presidency.
We made laws in this country and sadly we are the ones breaking it. Let us muster-up our collective effort to make this country a better place to live. Don’t let our economic gains put into waste by the likes of this unconstitutional move.
Let us be more objective in our goal to help this country move forward for the betterment of every Filipinos. We should work in one common goal — a better life and a progressive country.
We cannot work in attaining mutually exclusive end.