'Act of judicial statesmanship'
Inquirer News Service
I FIRST encountered this highly profound phrase in an opinion of former Senate President Jovito Salonga on the Supreme Court decision that declared President Joseph Estrada as constructively resigned. The decision was met with vigorous opposition from some of the country's legal minds, for being unconstitutional. It became the subject in the columns of leading opinion writers, who took their respective sides—for or against. Salonga came out with an opinion, saying that what the Supreme Court did was an exercise of judicial statesmanship. He called the Davide Court an activist court.
I recently encountered the phrase again in an Inquirer column of Fr. Joaquin Bernas. He urged the Supreme Court to reopen the protest case filed by defeated presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr.—as an act of judicial statesmanship. The case was pursued by FPJ's wife, Susan Roces, after his death. But Roces' petition to substitute for her husband was struck down by the high court on a technical ground. Father Bernas argued that with the reopening of FPJ's protest case, the attention of the nation would be focused on the Presidential Electoral Tribunal—which would pursue the case vigorously, until such time that it would be able to determine who really won in the May 2004 presidential election.
The frantic call for President Macapagal-Arroyo's impeachment and the maddening protest rallies demanding her resignation would then become unnecessary. But this could only be realized if the Supreme Court exercised, once again, that act of judicial statesmanship. If the honorable justices did it in January 2001 to save the nation from chaos and bloodshed, why couldn't they do it now for the same reason? And it would undoubtedly be a defining moment for Hilario Davide Jr., who is retiring as chief justice this December.
—CESAR T. PUENTENEGRA, Gullas Law School, University of the Visayas, Cebu City
