Time to resign

That, at least, is what I read between the lines, in Justice Antonio Carpio’s strongly worded ponencia dismissing the rebellion case against Crispin Beltran and his co-accused.

The decision of the Supreme Court’s Second Division is straightforward, but it ends with a “Final Word” that looks, for all the world, like a shot across the bow of the Department of Justice. If Raul Gonzalez were a man sensitive to legal subtleties, and averse to repeating history, he might consider himself warned.

The high court scolded Gonzalez for a truly outrageous statement, the prosecutorial equivalent of ‘let them eat cake,’ the ‘what are we in power for’ version for the 21st century. ‘We will just declare probable cause, then it’s up to the court to decide,” Gonzalez had said in March 2006.

Immediately after the scolding, the court said:

The obvious involvement of political considerations in the actuations of respondent Secretary of Justice and respondent prosecutors brings to mind an observation we made in another equally politically charged case.

That case was Tatad vs Sandiganbayan, and it involved an inordinate delay in the preliminary investigation phase. Carpio used the following quote from that case to clinch his argument (and end the ruling on a thumping note).

[W]e cannot emphasize too strongly that prosecutors should not allow, and should avoid, giving the impression that their noble office is being used or prostituted, wittingly or unwittingly, for political ends, or other purposes alien to, or subversive of, the basic and fundamental objective of observing the interest of justice evenhandedly, without fear or favor to any and all litigants alike, whether rich or poor, weak or strong, powerless or mighty. Only by strict adherence to the established procedure may be public’s perception of the impartiality of the prosecutor be enhanced.

(Incidentally, the PCIJ report on the Beltran decision was admirably detailed and properly backgrounded, but the way it was written makes the third and fourth paragraphs seem as though the Tatad quotes were original to Beltran.)

The Tatad case involved Gonzalez peripherally; he was the Tanodbayan at the time, although he wasn’t the Tanodbayan involved in the case and reprimanded by the high court. But the out-of-bounds conduct assailed in that case overtook Gonzalez in time; he was suspended by the Supreme Court a few months later, in October 1988, essentially for insisting on a legal view already rejected by the court. (He was reinstated about four years later, in early 1993.)

Reading the Carpio decision, and remembering Gonzalez’s recent string of defeats in Supreme Court cases (his legal philosophy these days, it seems to me, is based on an untenable assertion of the executive’s privileges), I cannot help but think that, however subtly, the high court is sending him, not merely a message, but a warning.

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