What right has Manila to judge Marawi?

Both houses of Congress and the honorable Supreme Court are taking it upon themselves to pass judgment and make decisions on the city and the people of Marawi, without having personal knowledge of the realities on the ground. The only basis for their decisions and the attempts at justification for their official actions are hearsay testimonies of central office officials and bureaucrat functionaries. These head office bigwigs are used to the standard operating procedures in leading their subordinates in the regions and LGUs from their ivory towers in the National Capital Region. This is the institutional incongruity of an overly centralized government, which perpetuates the arrogance of imperialistic Manila. This is also the strongest argument in favor of federalism.

The honorable Manila-based justices of the highest court of the land are being asked by the trapos in Congress to annul the declaration of martial law in Mindanao. First of all, they are attacking the very grounds for the proclamation itself, alleging with some shade of sarcasm, that terrorism is not rebellion and that the drug trade does not pose a grave and imminent danger to the security of the state. They are also attacking the scope of martial law, alleging that if at all, the proclamation should be limited to Marawi only.

This column refuses to comment on the merits of the case. As a lifetime member of the Bar, I refuse to comment on the merits of the case because it is “sub judice.” But I deplore the audacity of Luzon-based politicians to claim any basis to take actions on the place and the people they really do not know.

Without martial law, the President, as commander-in-chief, cannot make urgent and critical decisions that can address immediateconcerns.IfthescopeofmartialruleislimitedtoMarawi only, the rebels and the terrorists can easily slip into Iligan or just cross the mountains into the jungles of Bukidnon, or take a speed boat to the Zamboanga peninsula, and the military officials cannot maneuver their troops with a sense of urgency. The people in Metro Manila, including those trapos in Congress and the oligarchs, who are safely tucked inside their mansions in plush and exclusive villages, to my mind, do not have the legal right nor the moral authority to ask the Supreme Court to make a judgment on the basis of hearsay reports.

The propensity of people in the capital region to dictate their determinations on the life and destiny of the people in the outskirts andoutlyingareasofthisrepublicviolatestheprincipleofautonomy and is a complete antithesis of the very essence of democracy. And it is precisely the compelling reason why we should hurry up in our movement to change the form and structure of our government into a federal parliamentary system.

Since the times of the Spanish colonization, we, from the marginalized areas of the archipelago, have always been dictated by people from Manila and other parts of Luzon. If the Supreme Court wants to see for itself the truth on the ground, then it should hold the hearing in Lanao, at the very least in Iligan, outside the war zones.And then, they shall know the truth.And the truth shall lead them to the most just and fair decision about martial law.