A contrary opinion on the matter such as mine is immaterial (for the purpose of initiating impeachment proceeding) considering that the majority in Cotabato has held the MoA-AD as violative of the Constitution. The Court’s decision however stopped short of directly holding President Arroyo liable for the violation.

Now, the Complaint of mlq3 et al states that the President not only had authorized the negotiation of the constitutionally infirm MoA-AD but she subsequently approved the agreement, implying in effect that the constitutional infraction is imputable to the President or the breach of her constitutional obligation readily discernible by simply commonsensically tying up the events that led to it. I think that’s sufficient probable cause.

Because of the foregoing, establishing the presidential motivation (e.g., to amend the Constitution in furtherance of her political needs) would perhaps be just icing on the cake.

Alright, let me be more specific: Do you believe there is a probable cause as to allegations contained in the Complaint that the President …?

Aye or naye?

add to this quandary of replacing GMA with another corrupt patrons of yours which there are plenty who are already salivating for power….

maghunos dili ka patricio… ! ! !

do you still have some recollection of the two groups of urban poor (pro-erap and pro-gloria) that massed on the streets of Manila and clashed on the streets and some poor people died on the streets because the anti-GMA would like to dislodge GMA from Malacanang? Have you quantified the costs of those loss of human lives as against the cost of just waiting for the 2010 to replace GMA?

Apparently we are not too concern of the loss of human lives because we are simply happy delivering our sermons from the comfort of our homes and displaying our patriotic fervor and soundbites in this blog while sipping our coffe atop our swivel chair of our airconditioned office suite. And we can always assume our self-righteous arrogance against those people who tried to quantify the political as well as human cost of your infantile mind that entertains that you can disloged GMA through impeachment. :)

wake up patricio ! ! ! Count your congressmen and senators to determine if you have the numbers required to unseat GMA. :)

what’s this crap . PATRICIO,

unfortunately patricio, you were the one with infantile mind. what happened to the botched erap impeachment? did not the wheel-heeled makati groups went to the streets of metro manila and brought the country to a standstill and ousted erap from power which others claimed nothing but a “judicial putchism or anarchy?

if that was not bad enough for you, others think otherwise. and what makes you think that another botched impeachment would not spiral into something more nasty?

Justices have their own biases and party affiliatons, or as T. Jefferson said:

“To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is “boni judicis est ainpliare jurisdictionem,” and their power the more dangerous as they are in once for life . . . The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.

Two hacks-in-law of the Philippine Daily Inquirer Bar distorted my comments and made them the lead paragraphs of their respective columns on the MOA-AD decision despite the desk having relegated it to the Page 8 caboose of the first page news.

I have lamented publicly and had diplomatically sent word to Malacañang through channels that US intervention in the peace process and the participation of rabid ideologues in the negotiating panel are not to the country’s interest. That the parochially molded Neal Cruz should misread my stand betrays the sloth that permeates his writings.

John Nery contests my comment on the 8-7 vote on the result, in the face of the numbers in the signature pages of the decision (which I am enclosing but need not be published because it occupies so much space). Nery dabbles, as usual, on unfamiliar grounds. For his edification, the last paragraphs of a decision are the dispositive portion, the result, the collective conclusion of the Court, and in the MOA-AD, the justices’ vote of 8-7, as distinguished from the separate opinions where there can be as many as there are justices.

I hope this can be published before the issue becomes stale. I will send copies of this letter to Art Panganiban, retired Chief Justice, and Joaquin Bernas, S.J., authorities mis-applied by Nery.

Thus, John Nery extends the “leave lawyering to the lawyers” debate in the Nov. 18, 2008 piece for his PDI Newsstand column:

Perhaps the good senator, whose clarion courage during the martial law era roused the sleeping and stirred a response in those already fitfully awake, has now reached that stage in public life when he mistakes all criticism for distortion, all unfavorable comment for hackery. Too bad, if true. What he and Rene Saguisag and Augusto Sanchez and other legal warriors did in the dark days was to educate an entire generation; thanks to defenders like him, we all know how to read legal decisions. Perhaps it is he who has forgotten his own lessons.

He presumes a non-lawyer like me does not know how to read decisions, or how they are structured. Thus: “For his edification, the last paragraphs of a decision are the dispositive portion, the result, the collective conclusion of the Court,” he lectures me, and by extension all other non-lawyers. He makes it seem as if the only thing that matters in an appellate decision is the actual vote of the justices.

Surely this is a mistake, a fundamental error. One does not need to be a lawyer to know that reducing a Court decision to the numbers, and not to the reasoning that informs the vote, undermines the work of all judges. Call it Amang’s revenge. What Arroyo describes is not law, but politics.

But aren’t courts political institutions too?