The power of injustice
SEEMINGLY AT work today across the professions is a closing of ranks so self-aggrandizing it perverts the nobler sense of fraternity. If it appears most marked among lawyers and judges, it’s only because circumstances have put them on the spot, circumstances of which three have been the most provocative:
- the ignoble fall, by televised impeachment trial, of a chief justice;
- the prospect of an outsider—either a non-member of the Supreme Court or, in any case, a non-clubby member—succeeding him; and
- a president apparently intent on not only naming an outsider precisely, but also using what power he has to sort out the judicial system.
If justice proves elusive and beggarly, so does, to be sure, education, health care, spiritual ministering, indeed, all public service, to which all vocations are pledged supposedly but now, seemingly only nominally. For that matter, my own profession—journalism—which likes to hold itself up as the watchdog for truth in the public interest, has been turned upside down so tragically it is the proper practitioners themselves who have become the minority, not seldom ostracized outsiders.
Indeed, what we may well be seeing at work here is a perversion of democracy itself, a phenomenon in which the force of numbers, even if constituting a mere fraternal majority, is deployed for its own ends and deployed so brazenly and vociferously as to compensate precisely for its lack of legitimacy.
It may not be altogether implausible to blame those 14 years (1972-1986) of martial law when all sense of profession, vocation, or mission was validated or voided by one man—Ferdinand Marcos—and all sense of law and justice dictated by him. For how indeed could any sense, let alone practice, of free, moral thought survive that kind of setting and become established as legacy?
What in fact has survived to this day is martial law itself; it lives through habits (official and military corruption notably), through many of its characters (not the least Marcos’s widow and children, who have managed to maintain themselves in both wealth and office), and through concocted histories of which some continue to be used in academia.
In other words, while fixing blame is all part of the process of learning from one’s mistakes, no notable gain of the sort shows. And where precisely the need for reform is most urgent, not only has it gone unalleviated, it has been aggravated—in the dispensation of justice, in fact right at the highest levels.
Their chief impeached—for concealing improbable wealth and for, in yet other ways, betraying the public trust—tried, found guilty, and fired, and an associate justice facing similar proceedings, for plagiarism, the holdouts of the Supreme Court remain standing, almost to a justice, unchastened, in denial, indeed defiant. They insist that, as the dialect idiom goes, nothin’s broke with their court, and therefore nothin’ need fixin’, and that certainly they need no leadership from an outsider.
Apparently taking fraternal notice, the Judicial and Bar Council, a panel formed from among leaders of the legal establishment, including former judges, to screen and shortlist nominees to the Supreme Court, proceeds to work on a particular nominee, focusing on a disbarment case against her. Not surprisingly, she happens to be a front-running outsider—the president’s own justice secretary.
Secretary Leila de Lima has earned her disbarment honors precisely for challenging the court of yet-to-be-impeached Renato Corona, a court that counts him among its majority, a majority composed of justices appointed by Gloria Arroyo, a president being held to account for her scandal-ridden regime by her successor, for whom de Lima, like any other Cabinet member, acts as an alter ego. She refused to obey an order by the Supreme Court allowing Arroyo, its own effective creator, to fly away, potentially out of reach of Philippine justice; de Lima reasoned that the order had been inadequately served, not to mention obviously railroaded.
The chain of patronage is itself too obvious to be ignored, indeed too dangerous, for it consolidates the power and culture of injustice.
Dear Mr. Santos,
Greetings!
I read your article about injustice & decided to write you
about injustice on a critical segment of Philippine society.
Also, I’m hoping that you would be able to help locate a
proper venue with the assistance of a journalist
who can help dessiminate information about a group that will
be formed consisting of all dispossessed middle class landowners
who have experienced injustice or experiencing injustice
regarding court decisions favoring landgrabbers/lawless
squatters & whose cases remain unresolved despite many years
of litigation.
Letters about this issue were sent to:
 Secretary De Lima of the Department of
Justice,
Congresswoman Castro(2nd district of Capiz),
Ex Senator Roxas,
& the President.
Waiting for a response.
I do not know anybody from
 Malacanang nor any of the other
offices of other elected &
 appointed official mentioned above
who may be able to help.
Our judicial system is broken because
even with a title, dutifully paying taxes,
open & notorious possession
of the property prior to the landgrabbing,
the landgrabbers & other
squatters get to stay by virtue ofÂ
the court’s decision in their favor.
There seems nobody to turn to.
Unless you have political or military/police
connections or perhaps money to pay
those who are in the position of power
to help/protect you.
The landgrabbers have unlicensed firearms.
They fight among themselves over land
they grabbed.
There is a serious threat of physical harm to
the legal property owners to set foot on their own land.
The legal landowner can not till his own land to plant
more crops for his own livelihood because
the court is blatantly biased towards landgrabbers/squatters.
This is inequitable administration of justice as the landowner
pays taxes, his resources stretched by lawyers’ fees & incidental
expenses incurred in decades of litigation while the landgrabber
continues unbridled occupation of the rightful landowner’sÂ
property usurping all property rights including taking produce that should go to the legal owner.
I’m pretty sure there are numerous cases nationwide
of small middleclass landowners who suffer
the skewed interpretation of justice.
Where is the law to give full protection
to law abiding middleclass property owners
against landgrabbers/lawless elements?
Is it not the govenment’s role  via the
Department of Justice/courts to
give this full protection as guaranteed
by the country’s constitution?
Yet those who own hundreds
or thousands of hectares
are able to keep their properties despite
agrarian reform law because
 they probalby had knowledge
of the impending creation of
agrarian reform laws,
converted their lands to industrial use,
 have corporate ownership,
or utilized other loopholes that exempt them from
agrarian reform expropriation laws.
Every country’s middle class is
supposed to be the vanguard of
society.
If the judicial system continues to
dispossess the middleclass of
land, it will weaken the socio-poli-
eco  fabric of the country.
It is so easy for them in the name of
social justice to give
land they do not own (with or
without meager compensation)
rendering the middleclass landless
just like the impoverished masses
these measures are supposed to
lift from abject poverty.
So they take from Jose to
give to Juan thereby impoverishing Jose
to help the landgrabbing Juan?
The intent of the law is fine
but the realities of implementation
is unjust & inimical to the
middleclass & to the country’s
future.
One can choose to obliterate/
weaken the middle class
if one is short sighted about
the consequences of such
an economic imbalance in the
country where there are
dominating oligarchs
& the rest are teeming millions
of powerless workers & peasants.
The oligarchs have their
frat brothers, filthy rich kins,
poweful business & political
connections, high caliber lawyers
to protect their wealth/interests.
The middle class, perhaps,
can count on responsible mass media/
journalists to advocate for their rights?
For other victims of landgrabbing
& dysfunctional courts, let us
organize ourselves into a group & petition
Malacanang/Department of Justice
to review these cases, excercise
administrative/punitive sanctions
against erring judges & lawless
landgrabbing elements.
Please submit your landgrabbing
stories/case histories
with
your government photo ID
attached for authentication.
These cases will be compiled
& attached to a petition to
be submitted to Malacanang/Department
of Justice for review & remedial
relief & action.
Another move will be
to request your congressman/
representative to introduce bills
to repeal the laws that protect landgrabbers/
squatters & renders injustice to
rightful owners & to grant
just compensation for excess
land beyond the no. of hectares
the agrarian reform law allows.
Thank you.
Email:
phoenixsd12@gmail.com
Filipinos Against Landgrabbing
@g:disqusÂ
FilipinosÂ