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There is something, other than the banal language, that is truly startling about the majority decision of the Supreme Court penned by Justice Antonio Carpio: it did not address the issue at bar.

The issue at bar is the petition filed by Lambino, Aumentado et al asking the Court to declare as abuse of discretion the Comelec’s dismissal of the people’s initiative to amend the Charter. Only in the dissenting opinion of Justice Reynato Puno is the issue properly addressed.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Puno asserted that the inconclusive ruling in the 1997 Pirma case could not possibly be considered an authoritative precedent. He prefers to remand the issue back to the Comelec to sort out the contentious details regarding the popular initiative.

The majority decision penned by Carpio, by contrast swam into all the peripheral issues: the claims by certain local officials that the 3% requirement was not met in their area, the adequacy of public information provided by the Sigaw ng Bayan group, etc.

As that decision raved and ranted against the popular initiative, it lost sight of the basic issue of law at hand.

The Carpio decision apparently forgot that the Supreme Court rules on matters of law and not on matters of fact. The facts are for the inferior courts and other bodies to establish.

The basic flaw of the Carpio decision is that it rules on the contentious facts, thereby overriding procedures and processes that are in the jurisdiction of other authorities. It does what the Supreme Court has no means to do: to inquire into the conduct of the people’s initiative and the process of verifying the signatures.

These are matters that are not at bar. Questions about them may be raised in another case and before another court, but not yet in the petition at hand.

The Carpio decision seriously oversteps jurisdiction. Because of that, it will not be incorrect to call it arrogant and imperious.

Beyond that, it liberally labels personalities, groups and events. It attempts to preclude the debate over the form of government and prescribe the political means for constitutional change. It raises a bar of public appreciation of constitutional issues that cannot possible be met anywhere on this planet.

The effort here, it seems, is not only to kill the people’s initiative but also to prevent the option of a constituent assembly from prospering. That might be the reason why this particular decision was written with so much virulence.

To be sure, this particular case carried great political consequences. There were powerful interested parties on either side of the question at hand.

Much has been said about the efforts of proponents of the people’s initiative to pressure the justices to see the things their way. Those efforts have been the subject of much speculation, extensive media discussion and, quite obviously, much exaggeration.

The curious thing about this is how little coverage was given the truly colorful array of forces and personalities who tried their best to sway the justices to the side of the Carpio decision.

Many of those anti-change personalities and forces may be gleaned from the list of intervenors in the case involving the people’s initiative. In addition, I think I have formed, from reliable sources, a fairly good picture of the range of personalities and forces who called in favors and put pressure on the justices to defeat the initiative and close other avenues for constitutional reform. That range includes oligarchic blocs, some of the most deeply-entrenched power-brokers and leaders of religious blocs notorious for political meddling (including one prominent preacher rumored to be nursing presidential ambitions).

For my own analytical clarity, I listed down the personalities and groups on a piece of paper, Then I grouped and re-grouped those on the list into possible subsets of shared interests. None of those subsets really made much sense in explaining the vehemence with which these individuals and groups resist constitutional reform.

Only by looking at the entire list will everything make sense. These were individuals and groups that thrive on the status quo. If the constitutional order is reconfigured, they will dramatically lose influence.

What is it about the present constitutional order that they are so hell bent on maintaining?

The listings and the political map I have before me as I write this piece has a subtext that screams out as I look at the names more closely. That subtext is the extreme vulnerability of the present constitutional order to vested interests and oligarchic politics.

The humongous cost of getting elected to national office makes every candidate vulnerable to the temptations of power-brokers. These power-brokers offer sums of money or promise blocks of votes to candidates. In exchange, they demand from candidates who won concessions for large government contracts or key Cabinet posts that will allow them to control turfs of governance. From sitting senators who benefited from their electoral investments, they demand loopholes in legislation that would spare large business concerns from competition.

On my list of people who either sent word to justices or found the temerity to directly call them up are those who imagine themselves kingmakers. They squeeze their share of the gravy and grab their piece of the pie by placing their protégés in key regulatory agencies and in their Cabinet posts of interests. Some of them, I know from my years of economic reform advocacy, rewrite the final versions of reform legislation to protect the business interests of their principals.

That list of those who "won" at the Supreme Court makes the outcome of that controversial vote all the sadder.

If the campaign for renovating our constitutional order falters, the biggest beneficiary will be the old oligarchy and the gangs of power-brokers that pander to them. The real battle, after all, is over changing the highly centralized structure of governance that allows power-brokers to prosper using the leverage of expensive elections.

It is the possibility of altering that structure of governance to broaden the base of our democracy that is the final goal of the campaign for Charter change. The Carpio decision, with all its virulence, represents the triumph of those who want this structure of permeable government to persist.