‘Protect the people’? Not in Constitution
President Duterte’s threat to declare martial law is based on something new, which is nowhere found in the Constitution: “to preserve the nation, to protect the Filipino people.”
Section 18, Art. VII of the 1987 Constitution lists only two cases: invasion or rebellion “when the public safety requires it.” With “public safety” as descriptive requirement, not a third instance.
Did the president not know it when he spoke last Jan. 14 before Davao City business leaders and made the martial law threat anew?
He must. He even said he wouldn’t base it on invasion or rebellion but on his duty “to preserve the nation and protect the Filipino people.” And he wouldn’t be stopped by the Constitution’s safeguards on duration of martial rule and the right of Congress and Supreme Court to review his acts.
Explanation
So how would his spokespersons and allies explain it this time? They may say, as they did before, that:
-- It’s an exaggeration, a hyperbole, his way of speaking (“salita lang niya yan, magsanay na tayo sa kanya,” said a university professor last August);
-- He’s so passionate about his war on drugs that he could get “intense”; -- He’d consult other people before taking the emergency move.
Scary if
Or they might not explain anymore and let the threat hang to put the nation on edge.
It would be scary if there would be no walk back, no assurance that, once again, it’s just words talking, some mischief from what the president called his “insignificant mouth.”
The latest threat is much more ominous and serious. It means the Constitution would be openly violated and “no one could stop” it. Marcos ring
The problem with these threats is that they are hurled and defused, made and explained away, until one day it could explode and the nation would be helpless in every sense. “Never again” would just be hollow rhetoric on tarp one could no longer even see hung on some building.
In a perverse “deja vu” of sorts, the basis “to preserve the nation, protect the people” has a similar ring to the Marcos justification of martial law. Marcos vowed to use his regime “to reform society.”even see hung on some building.
“If I have to declare martial law, I will declare it. Not about invasion or rebellion...I will declare martial law to preserve the nation, protect the people.”