2016 can be considered an annus horribilis for Filipinos who fought hard for justice, peace and stability to reign in the country, after the dark years of the martial law regime under president Ferdinand Marcos ended in 1986. The spate of extrajudicial killings and last Friday’s sinister manner of burying the remains of the dictator, have riled the citizenry already bothered by the seeming disregard and disrespect of our laws and for the latter, forgetting the abuses committed during the Marcos dictatorship.
The clandestine operations leading to the deposed president’s burial, which could not have happened without Malacañang’s blessing, brought back painful memories of how it was when Marcos was the absolute ruler and law maker of our land. Dissenters were tortured and killed, fear descended and institutions were badly mangled. We had to slowly regain our bearings after the dictator and his family fled in the aftermath of the People Power revolution.
Let it not be forgotten that the 1987 Constitution protecting the people and our life support systems, and to which public officers vow to follow and uphold, is a product of the people’s desire to be wiser and not to allow a dictatorship to flourish.
Independent office of the Ombudsman and the Commission on Human Rights were ordained by the Constitution to exist and, respectively, serve as the protector of the people and watchdog of abuses and corruption in government and to promote human rights. Social justice provisions were institutionalized such as giving preferential access to the subsistence fisherfolk to their traditional fishing grounds and for local sectoral representatives to be part of the local lawmaking bodies, which however have to be attained.
The powers of the Supreme Court and Congress were strengthened to make them effective checks to the abuse of the Executive Branch.
The Supreme Court is given the power and the duty to ensure that other branches of government, including the president, do not abuse their authority. It is given rule-making powers to protect constitutional rights. Thus, it promulgated ground-breaking Rules of Procedure for environmental cases, writ of amparo and writ of habeas data, which courts in other countries could not do.
Indeed, as Ambassador Caroline Kennedy propounded, “The bedrock of our democracy is the rule of law and that means we have to have an independent judiciary, judges who can make decisions independent of the political winds that are blowing.”
It is understandable why the Supreme Court ruling catering to the President’s desire to have Marcos interred in the Libingan ng mga Bayani was disappointing to many.
The same Constitution which has strengthened our democratic way of life and integrated the right of the citizens to participate in decision-making at all levels, now stands to be changed by the initiative to have it amended by Congress, sitting as a constituent body. This should be looked at and, if we still care for our country and the future generations, vigorously opposed.
The serious challenges that we now face require us to embrace and own the 1987 Constitution and make it work. We take to heart the vision that we set in the Preamble which reads:
“We, the sovereign Filipino people, imploring the aid of Almighty God, in order to build a just and humane society, and establish a Government that shall embody our ideals and aspirations, promote the common good, conserve and develop our patrimony, and secure to ourselves and our posterity, the blessings of independence and democracy under the rule of law and a regime of truth, justice, freedom, love, equality, and peace, do ordain and promulgate this Constitution.”
We all should fight that “The blessings of independence and democracy under the rule of law and a regime of truth, justice, freedom, love, equality, and peace” will not be cast aside.
The disappointments at recent developments in our dear Philippines should motivate us to do what we each can, if we did falter in the past, to rebuild and attain our dreams to have the regime of justice, freedom, equality and peace under the Rule of Law, that we all deserve and which we desire for the present and future generations.
We, the students of the 70’s who have witnessed the abuses and loss of our collective dignity during martial law, have never been prouder than last Friday in seeing our youth express their outrage on-site in rallies in major cities of the country, and online, in social media, at this latest callous display of raw insensitivities to the abuses and injustices heaped on fellow Filipinos.
We take to heart what Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that “change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom….”
The work goes on – for our country. Never give up. Mabuhay!