The Elusive Flight

No less than the fundamental law of the land provides that a person shall have the free right to travel, unimpaired by any state regulation, save only in cases when the national security, public safety, or public health is imperilled. The state, then, has the exclusive authority to restrict one from the enjoyment of his free movement, particularly when his act of travel would lead to endanger the general interest of the public in matters of security and health. Thus, it can be gleaned that the right to travel is a superior right of an individual than that of the power of the state to prohibit such because it is subject to the conditions imposed by the Constitution.

The Former President’s issue of seeking medical attendance outside the Philippines has now become a classic clash between the obligation of the State to prosecute those who must face the portals of a courtroom and an individual’s right to travel for purposes of treatment. The denial of the President to grant the travel abroad is premised on the ground that FPGMA’s condition is non-life threatening. In addition, the government is apprehensive on the risk that the former president might take flight from the charges filed against her in the courts of law. It can be remembered that flight is an admission of guilt.

It is on this basis that the government impaired the right of President Arroyo to travel. One need not have the expertise of analysis and logic to understand that the impairment of the government of her right to travel was not anchored on national security, public safety, or public health. To grant her the opportunity of cure outside the jurisdiction of the Philippines will not mean the introduction of sedition, rebellion or insurrection, or the entrance of any contagious diseases into the land of the pearl of the orient. 

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.