From the Malaya Editorial:
Retired Chief Justice Hilario Davide said the controversies hounding the Supreme Court were due to the court’s being "proactive" during his watch. "We had the courage to defend the independence of the court from partisan politics," he said.
Independence from partisan politics? What a laugh. The Davide court has been the most politicalized high tribunal in the country’s history and it will probably take a generation for the court to shed its image of a fawning handmaiden to politics.
The Davide court will ever be remembered for legitimizing Gloria’s Arroyo’s usurpation of the presidency in January 2001. All the good the court has done will always be eclipsed by this singular political act of installing an illegitimate president and subsequently weaving a whole cloth of judicial doctrine justifying a power grab from the flimsy thread of President Joseph Estrada having purportedly "constructively resigned."
Three women senior students at the UP College of Law had a merry time pointing out the absurdity of that ruling. The Supreme Court can only take comfort in the fact that the debunkers, at least, were not sophomores.
Perhaps it is unfair to blame Davide for the Supreme Court’s descent into politics. He was just one of the 15 members of the court. It was Justice Artemio Panganiban, now highly touted as next chief justice, who convinced Davide to swear in Arroyo after cutting the Bible to guide the court’s action. It was Justice Reynato Puno who wrote that towering decision on the Arroyo presidency based on the lie that Estrada had resigned.
It is the high tribunal that is on the dock. And that’s why whoever succeeds to Davide’s position will have a Herculean job of regaining for the court the respect and awe it used to be held.
The single biggest test currently facing the tribunal is the constitutionality of Executive Order 464 which bars officials, including the military and the police, from appearing before congressional inquiries without permission from the president.
It’s a cut-and-dried issue. But let’s see. The court might yet spring another surprise, complete with the kind of contortions that characterized the Estrada decision.
Still hope springs eternal. The Supreme Court, as the final arbiter of the law, is the last institution standing in the way of the country’s seeming descent into the rule of naked power.
It can still redeem itself.
Redeem itself? Hah. That's way too optimistic, Malaya Edit.
From Ninez Cacho Olivarez:
Fulsome praise is being heaped on retired Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr., especially by Gloria Arroyo, who called him the “paragon of service and an exemplar of upright conduct and a bedrock of confidence and stability,” adding Davide is the epitome of honesty and even handedness in upholding the rule of law.”
A lot of Filipinos — at least a majority, would hardly share that view. Upright conduct from him when he and his justices engaged in a highly partisan activity as Edsa II, where he swore in a Vice President as President even when there was no vacancy in the high office, apart from the fact that he and his justices brazenly breached their judicial code of conduct?
Honesty? Davide was caught on tape, as he was leaving the high court last Jan. 20, 2001, as saying he and his justices were off to Edsa to swear in Gloria as the “acting President” and yet when he reached Edsa, he swore her in not in an acting capacity but as full President. One who deceives cannot be said to be an honest person.
Ninez is wrong in one detail.
Davide actually did swear in GMA as acting president. Check the tapes. GMA was sworn in "to act as president" of the Philippines. I saw that on TV, and radio commercials were constantly repeating her "to act as president" line over and over until somebody from Malacanang noticed it and told the radio station to remove the commercial.
Pero nung nasa pwesto na si GMA, they and their media allies tried to slowly edit out the "to act as president" part on all the tapes and videos of her being sworn in in an acting capacity. As if the words that were caught on tape were never uttered by GMA and Davide.
Ang tawag yata diyan ay Edsa Dos "revisionism."
And here's some info on the guy who replaced Hilarious Davide, si Justice Artemio Panganiban:
PRESIDENT Arroyo yesterday named Associate Justice Artemio V. Panganiban as the new chief justice, succeeding Hilario G. Davide Jr. who retired yesterday.
A congressman known for his loyalty to Arroyo told Malaya the appointment was made over the objections of the Iglesia ni Cristo, Bro. Eddie Villanueva and about 30 other congressmen.
The incoming chief justice stirred a controversy over the overthrow of President Joseph Estrada when he wrote in one of his books that "up to now I could not understand how I summoned the courage to suggest to the Chief Justice (Davide) that the oath be administered to Vice President Arroyo knowing that President Estrada is still in Malacañang."
In the "Business Circuit" column of Malaya publisher Amado P. Macasaet, it was reported that the author later withdrew the book from the bookstores.
The statement was variously interpreted to mean that the Office of the President was not vacant when Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was given the oath as president.
The Davide court came up with what it called "constructive resignation" in legitimizing the Arroyo presidency.
UPDATE: Ducky Paredes: Panganiban choice was obvious from the start
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