Palace legal team weak, needs help - Miriam

MANILA, Philippines –  Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago said the setbacks in the courts suffered by Malacañang in its first few months in office proves that its legal team is weak and needs help.

Reacting to the ruling of the Supreme Court that President Aquino’s Executive Order No. 1 creating the Truth Commission was unconstitutional, Santiago said the Palace legal team “is inadequate in legal education.”

The senator did not blame Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. for the legal setbacks since it is not his job to ensure the directives and issuances of the President are legally sound.

“He’s only Executive Secretary. He’s not the gatekeeper of legal issues in the administration. That function is undertaken by the legal counsel or legal adviser of the President or by the Secretary of Justice,” Santiago said.

“But it looks to us that the Secretary of Justice is too engrossed with operational details,” she added.

Santiago said President Aquino should not be derided over his judicial defeat, because he is learning on the job and he is handicapped by the lack of a legal adviser with expertise in constitutional law.

“Most Supreme Court decisions turn on a constitutional issue, and logic dictates that President Aquino should have a topnotch constitutionalist in his staff. Of his present lawyers, I would merely say that their doctrinal foundations are horribly inadequate,” she said.

Santiago suggested that the President tap the services of an expert in international and constitutional law such as retired Supreme Court justice Florentino Feliciano to beef up his current legal team.

“He is not only globally recognized as an expert in international law but is also the leading constitutional expert in our country,” she said.

Apart from the E.O. 1 case, Malacañang’s first ever issuance, Memorandum Circular No. 1, which terminated the employment of all non-career service officers in government, had to be retracted a day after it was issued because it caused widespread confusion in the bureaucracy.

Executive Order No. 2, which revoked all the alleged midnight appointees of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, was also challenged in court by a number of the affected officials and in the case of National Commission on Muslim Filipinos Secretary Bai Omera Dinalan-Lucman, the Supreme Court issued a status quo ante order, which allowed her to keep her post.

Malacañang also recalled another recent executive issuance, Proclamation No. 50, or the grant of amnesty to the participants of uprisings against the Arroyo administration, after members of the House of Representatives found legal infirmities.

Sen. Joker Arroyo, for his part, advised the Palace to move on with the E.O. 1 case if it is intent on going after the alleged anomalies committed by the previous president.

He said the Palace should not consider the Truth Commission as the only way to successfully prosecute the former president because it already has all the resources at its fingers to help it in its cause.

“This helplessness is ridiculously absurd. The President has control over the entire executive branch of the government,” Arroyo said.