"x x x.
...By contrast, the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 delivered in 2002 but idled for more than a dozen years by unresolved litigation exemplifies the massive waste from collective failures in the Philippines. The Supreme Court has just (September 2015) decided that the Philippine government should now pay the Piatco group $521 million. Somebody‘s head should roll since the Canlas Committee formed to advise on the issue recommended to President Arroyo a course of action that could have made the facility pay for itself. But that head won’t roll.
Because Philippine society suffers a serious pathology: it is unable to punish even heinous injuries to our society. That means repeated slaps on the face of law abiders. Still it hit me like a punch in the gut when the Supreme Court decided that Juan Ponce Enrile can walk free on bail even when the charge is non-bailable by law and by the Constitution. The Supreme Court, the presumptive ultimate protector of the rule of law, contravened both law and Constitution by enacting a new doctrine of jurisprudence -- “humanitarian grounds”. A friend and fellow age-grouper in a flight of mischief and irony quipped: “Every senior citizen has now been granted a free pass to rape.” Don’t count on it! The nagging suspicion is that the new doctrine derives not from humanity but rather from the power and stature of the accused. We still have to see the perpetrators of the Ampatuan massacre get their just dessert. The Priority Development Assistance Fund case threatens to drag on until all the perpetrators shall have attained the right to invoke clemency on “humanitarian grounds”. Meanwhile the Supreme Court allows itself to be dragged into the thoroughly useless “Torre de Manila” controversy. Inability to punish gnaws at our sense of selves and our allegiance to the law.
x x x."
