sneaky snaky snarky supremes

surely, the ouster of cj sereno by fellow supremes who hate her is not good for country.  legal circles are aghast.  too many laws  defied, broken, re-interpreted.  it is all so destabilizing.  surely there is some other way of dealing with the problem.  surely a senate impeachment trial is the wiser option, let the chips fall where they may.

the original sin was pNoy’s, appointing one so young and so junior.  ang daming nilampasan, in-overtake.  kumbaga sa traffic, daig pa ni sereno ang naka-wangwang, tabi lahat ng nakapilang senior associate justices na mga next-in-line for the cj post.  at least in cj corona’s case, isa lang ang nilakdawan, ibig sabihin tipong senior na rin, may karapatan na rin si corona, besides being president gloria’s former chief of staff, or something like that.

anyway.  the original sin was pNoy’s, the mortal sin was sereno’s, for accepting the appointment.  surely she knew that she would be met with hostility, but perhaps she believed that mar roxas would succeed pNoy and then maybe leni would succeed mar, soon enough the hostile ones would have retired and LP-friendly ones appointed, and then it would all be a breeze to the end of her term.

but mar lost.  ka-DDS na ang majority supremes.  and duterte has spoken: sereno must go.  and so the house of reps got moving and built a case with the help of some five supremes, no less, and the senate has been waiting.  BUT BUT BUT what happened nga ba?

the cardinal sin was solgen calida’s.  why did he have to butt in with the quo warranto?  mahina kasi ang kaso ng house of reps?  tama ba si senator ping lacson?

PING LACSON @iampinglacson 6 hours
Ang biggest ‘winners’ sa SC decision ay ang mga abogadong pulpol na handa sanang magkalat na katangahan sa impeachment trials na hindi na mangyayari dahil malamang hindi na ipadala ng House ang Articles of Impeachment sa Senado.
11 May 2018
580 Retweets 1.4K Likes

more seriously, senate president koko pimentel is calling for the RULE OF LAW.

The Supreme Court is supreme in a lot of things but not in everything. In impeachment matters the Supreme  Court is not supreme, because the Senate is the one and only impeachment court. The Chief Justice an “impeachable official” who can be removed only after impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate.  The reputation and esteem of this present Supreme Court will now rise or fall on the basis of the soundness or unsoundness of the this controversial decision upholding a very unusual remedy to oust a sitting Chief Justice.  Let us all uphold the RULE OF LAW. The people must be given time to reiview this decision.  And the Supreme Court itself must also take the time to review its own decision.  If the supreme court is not supreme in everything then it is also not infallible in everything.  The respondent Chief Justice must be given the opportunity to file a Motion for Reconsideration.  God bless our beloved country.

if sereno is not impeached by the senate, the supremes, of course, will be no less hostile, the situation no less untenable.  sereno may have to exit the scene anyway, to keep her sanity.  but let her cross that bridge when / if she gets there.

meanwhile, here’s praying that the supremes (even just one or two? three?) graciously change their minds about the quo warranto, and soon.  if only to shut sereno up, LOL.  her media blitz is quite effective, the message quite arresting, even exciting, particularly the call for a national conversation (!) on everything that’s wrong with filipino society, before it’s too late.

the lady is hitting the ground running.  maybe there’s hope.

marvic leonen: quo warranto “a legal abomination”

I DISSENT.

This Petition should have been dismissed outright and not given due course. It does not deserve space in judicial deliberation within our constitutional democratic space. Even if the Chief Justice has failed our expectations, quo warranto, as a process to oust an impeachable officer and a sitting member of the Supreme Court, is a legal abomination. It creates a precedent that gravely diminishes judicial independence and threatens the ability of this Court to assert the fundamental rights of our people. We render this Court subservient to an aggressive Solicitor General. We render those who present dissenting opinions unnecessarily vulnerable to powerful interests.

Granting this Petition installs doctrine that further empowers the privileged, the powerful, and the status quo.

A better reading of the Constitution requires us to read words and phrases in the context of the entire legal document. Thus, the general grant of original jurisdiction for quo warranto actions to this Court in Article VIII, Section 5(1) should be read in the context of the provisions of Article XI, Sections 2 and 3 , as well as the principles of judicial independence and integrity inherent in a constitutional order implied in Article VIII, Sections 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 of the Constitution.” G.R. 237428, Republic v Sereno, Leonen J. dissenting.

Medical Errors and . . . Deaths

Godofredo U. Stuart Jr., MD

This is a response to a commentary that appeared in the Philippine Inquirer editorial page, written by Thaddeus C. Hinunangan, a resident pathologist at the Philippine General Hospital: Are Doctors Allowed to Make Mistakes?

No, doctors are not allowed to make mistakes. Not in the noble intentions of medicine, framed in that motto phrased centuries ago by Ambroise Paré: Guérir quelquefois, soulager souvent, consoler toujours—To cure occasionally, relieve often, console always.

But in the practice of medicine, human error is inevitable. We assuage ourselves with half a proverb: To err is human. But because of medical errors, patients die.

Read on…

AIDS movie-in-my-mind

in the time of cory, i was mostly writing scripts for cause-oriented docus (the rape of our forests for DENR, land reform for DAR, women’s rights for NCW, boracay for DOT, ccp-npa rebels-without-a-hope for PIA…) and once i took on a gig translating HIV-AIDS and safe sex materials from english to tagalog for DOH.

this was in the late 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic that hit america’s gay community in 1981 was beginning to peak.  in the beginning no one had any idea how the “gay cancer” was being transmitted, but by the late eighties, malinaw na, and over here the DOH started putting together safe-sex materials for dissemination, and it was a hoot translating vagina.  the only tagalog word acceptable to DOH doctors then was:  “puwerta” as in “door” … “entrance” …  “opening” … when puwede ring puki, pekpek, kepyas, atbp.

sometime in the early ’90s naman, FVR’s time, i helped put together an ambitious proposal for a safe-sex sitcom that counted on kris aquino and her look-alike (the name escapes me now) playing twins, one conservative, one promiscuous, in a barangay setting with a barbershop-cum-parlor nearby, complete with a pilosopo tasio na nakatambay sa labas, nanonood, nakiki-alam, nagmumunimuni.

it must have been a government project because i remember having to attend a related DOH event in malacanang with vivian recio who would have produced it, leo martinez who would have directed, and raquel villavicencio and uro de la cruz who would have taken turns writing it with me.  but of course kris hated it, so it never got beyond the proposal stage.

in 1997 naman, i wrote the story and script of “Loveletter,” a comicbook on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) produced for an AIDS control and prevention program.  nonoy marcelo did the graphics, if memory serves.  i should have a copy somewhere.

finally, in the early years of the new millennium, i reached for the stars, LOL, with  a movie storyline inspired by the classy and beauteous broadcaster and senator’s daughter pinky webb and the incredibly naughty and taklesa queen-of-all-media presidential daughter kris aquino.  i imagined a combination of the two as fictional celebrity and socialite krishna colayco, who would find she had contracted HIV, announce it to the world in a major major presscon (talbog ang enrile-ramos defection), and then proceed to undertake a massive multi-media campaign countrywide informing about HIV / AIDS and pushing for safe sex that of course would meet with violent outrage from the church, the military, the mtrcb, even the palace.  jorge arago polished it up, titled it “Star Struck!” and entered it in FAP’s screenwriting contest (can’t remember what year, 2003? 2004?).  of course it didn’t win.

fortunately jorge sent a soft copy to amy rara for safekeeping that she forwarded to me some days after jorge died.  reading it now, for the first time since writing it more than a decade ago, i must say it still works (!) but it would need a lot of updating and it would cost a fortune to produce.