In aid of persecution

               The Congress of the Philippines is the citadel of the Senate and House of Representatives, where its prime and foremost duty is to make, change, alter or repeal laws; its seat is a manifestation that the Philippines is a republican state. With the view that the Congress is the law-making body of the Philippines, it can create a formidable law that could stand for a hundred years or abolish an existing legislation that ceases to serve its purpose. Notwithstanding its character as a legislative body, it is endowed with an investigative character with no other purpose but to wield a law that will foster and strengthen the foundation the Republic.

                The constitutional basis of legislative inquiry is found under Article VI Section 21 of the Philippine Constitution, whereby it declares that “The Senate and the House of Representatives or any of its respective committees may conduct inquiries in aid of legislation in accordance with its duly published rules of procedure. The rights of persons appearing in or affected by such inquiries shall be respected.” In others words, the legislators commit such constitutional provision as a license to invite resource speakers in order to shed light to any issue that would affect the national policy.

                However, it has now lost its character, much more its objective, when elected officials, under the guise of legislative inquiry, maliciously impute crimes, accuses the invited guest with felonies of enormous magnitude, and harass them with words unimaginable to be described. It has now been an aid to prosecute the resource speaker by public trial with the absence of due process, and with no proper jurisdiction. The investigative body has lost its sight that the rights of the person appearing before them must be respected. The Senate and the House of representative have committed a blunder in the system of government.

                

An assault against the Filipino ideals

                   It is this person who holds the highest office of the land that must shape the inevitable future of the republic; it is the same person who must fulfil the dreams of the people and the succeeding generation; it is the last person who is expected to violate the law, much more the constitution, and he is the President, not of any organized society, but the entire sovereign Filipino people. While his authority emanates from the electoral public, he is without license to ignore the law neither the Constitution which rests upon its document the bedrock and the foundation of the Filipino ideals.

                When President Aquino boasted, without reservation, in saying “KAYO ANG BOSS KO”, he immediately desecrated the aspirations and dreams of the Filipino people. The President is with no doubt referring to the entire sovereign people of the Republic of the Philippines, but its entirety is composed of the elite families, the poor Filipinos, the business sector, the labor, the lawbreakers, the corrupt, the smugglers, the tax evaders, the good citizens and the bad ones. Does he mean to serve the interest of every composing member of the entire sovereign body? Is he to give the demands of the present society without delay and without comprehending its consequences? Is he subject to command by any group of society?

                We may construe that Aquino may have referred to the Will of the people, but the Will of the people is not the present cries of Filipino people; it is the will that is entrenched in the Constitution that must be protected and served. The President has taken an oath to preserve its Constitution, execute its laws, do justice to every man, and consecrate himself to the service of the nation. It is an oath to secure the Filipino people that ours is a government of laws and not of men. The President must not be swayed with any unwanted call from the present public for he is a stature of the past, present and future Filipinos.

The Right to Revolt

A constitution is a social contract. It is a product conceived from the very idea that man, as a social animal, must aggregate in order to perpetuate their common interest and to protect them from any unwanted evil. As men submit to the order of the social contract, he thereby loses his natural liberty and accordingly, enjoys the civil liberty bestowed upon by the fundamental law of the land. Among other things, the contract stipulates the framework of the government, the liberty of every citizen and the sovereign power of those who constitute the very life of the contract itself.

When the government becomes tyrannical, when free men are utterly enslaved, or when rights have become cold whispers, the sovereign is free to collectively abandon the contract. It is inherent upon every sovereign to possess the right to revolt; it can only be exercised where there is outright failure, on those hands the reigns of the government is for the time being, to observe the contract with reverence and sanctity. While the living has the privilege to observe the laws of the dead, it has no obligation to preserve it, for they possess an equal right to the generation that preceded it.