A wise counsel

One day, many years ago, I ushered then Congressman Pablo Garcia to a small corner that I called my law office. He was then waiting for his turn at the dental chair in the next suite. His dentist, the late Dr. Ruiz was completing a work on an earlier patient. Being a young practitioner then, I took the privilege of inviting Noy Pabling in ostensibly for a cup of coffee, but in reality, in the fond hope of learning something from an eminent legal mind. That encounter left me with the lasting impression that the erudite Noy Pabling had the interest of this country in his heart probably more than what most of us blabber about.

I remember my chance talk with the legal scholar when he expressed his thoughts recently on the issue of the Peoples' Initiative. His sharp mind raised a point many of us lesser mortals have not seen. More importantly, in his critique on the efforts of Atty. Raul Lambino and company, he has foreseen that Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, whose claim to the presidency, I think, is somewhat tainted by the unresolved issue of cheating, might be weakened even further. In Noy Pabing's perception, the president should be wary of Atty. Lambino's movement because it would result into making the president's term slip merely into some kind of a transition government.

In layman's terms, the group of Atty. Lambino wanted the Commission on Elections to certify that its petition, upon the initiative of a certain qualified number of Filipino voters, is sufficient in form. Such a petition is supposed to equivocate certain proposed amendments to the constitution. With Comelec's certification, as Atty. Lambino would have it, a plebiscite is supposed to be set for the eventual approval or disapproval by the citizenry.

In other words, Atty. Lambino would claim that the people, by direct action, have proposed certain amendments to the constitution as another method of effecting change in the charter. That's why they would call it the Peoples' Initiative

Unfortunately, the Comelec, relying upon a case decided by the Supreme Court, dismissed the petition. It anchored its action on the ruling that the constitutional provision on Initiative needs an enabling law for it to be capable of being implemented. However, the high court said there is no such enabling law yet with an earlier one, pretending to be such implementing statute failing to address constitutional parameters. Necessarily, without a law to enable the constitutional provision on Initiative, the action of Atty. Lambino, allegedly the Peoples' Initiative, would have no legal basis.

The current move of Atty. Lambino, is to assail the Comelec decision before the Supreme Court. This group wants our highest tribunal to declare that the dismissal by the Comelec of Atty. Lambino's petition was not correct. Of course, there is a noisy claim, not quite baseless, that of the composition of the Supreme Court which found the earlier enabling law unconstitutional, is not the same as the present court. In the whispers coming from the group of Atty. Lambino, the whispers, by the way, are too loud that everyone hears, they seem to say that the remaining justices are of different mind.

Here, I believe, lies the worry of Noy Pabling. Our Cebuano constitutionalist sees the danger of the Lambino petition, a danger that only a mind steeped in the study of the constitution could correctly anticipate. He is afraid that should the Supreme Court be persuaded by the gobbledygook of Atty. Lambino, and reverses its former ruling, it would result into the paradigm shift of the government, the way the so-called Peoples' Initiative boasts of, from presidential to parliamentary. As political history all over the world has seen it, all such shifts of governments necessitate a transition. In the apprehension of Noy Pabling, such a situation would reduce Pres. Arroyo, to a mere head of the transition government, rather than being the real head of the government which she claims.

It is thus the wise counsel of former governor Pablo Garcia for the president to see through the myriad actions of her sub-alterns and decipher which are coated with vested interests.