Rules can be changed and should be changed whenever necessary, but constitutional provisos, especially in filling a presidential vacancy, should always be followed to the letter and respected.

Retired Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio was quoted a few days ago as saying that it may prove more difficult for Vice President Leni Robredo to defend her electoral win in the poll protest filed by her poll rival, former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, with the changes in the composition of the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET).

In a television interview, Carpio said the reason it would be more difficult for Leni is that the Supreme Court (SC) justices would be one less vote for the vice president, although he was careful enough to also state that the High Court, sitting as the PET, is aware of the significance of this case.

He did stress, however, that the same tribunal “will consider the implications,” saying that “I think the court will also consider the implications of all of these if you allow a protestant to go outside of the pilot provinces because that will prolong the election contest and that will change the rules.”

Carpio and the then case ponente, Benjamin Caguioa, dissented from the majority opinion on an 11-2 vote.

What is not being brought out, however, is that Caguioa’s report on the vice-presidential poll recount was based purely on Robredo’s revisors recount and failed to take into account, if only for comparison’s sake, as well as full transparency, the recount based on Marcos’ revisors’ report — although the Aquino appointed Justice appeared to have shown bias in disregarding the Marcos revisors’ recount, depending solely on the Robredo count to push his opinion.

This will, in all probability, be a factor in the PET’s handling of the comments it ordered from both parties. The way it looks, the 11 Tribunal justices may have noticed Caguioa’s one-sided report on the recount, which may have prompted the majority to junk the then ponente’s report and opinion and called for the parties’ comment, for “due process.”

And this is probably what Leni and her camp fear most, if Marcos and his lawyers present their revisioners’ count with the proper evidence and explanations that may well prove the massive fraud committed by the then administration to benefit its vice-presidential bet.

That the two dissenting justices, along with Robredo and her legal camp, kept pressing for the PET to dismiss the case outright on some lame excuse, such as claiming that the Tribunal will be violating its own rules if a revision and recount of ballots are allowed in other provinces beyond the maximum three provinces chosen, as well as Carpio’s caveat that the Tribunal should not change its rules midstream to accommodate a party that has failed to comply with the expressed rule, may be grounded on the same fear.

“The Tribunal will be violating its own rules if it allows a revision and recount of ballots in other provinces in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, beyond the maximum three provinces chosen by the protestant,” Carpio warned.

“The last thing that this Tribunal should do is to change its rules in midstream to accommodate a party who has failed to comply with what Rule 65 of the 2010 PET Rules expressly requires,” he stressed.

But what are being claimed by Robredo and her lawyers, following the claims of the dissenting justices on the danger of changing the rules, are, well, laughable, if not hypocritical, considering the fact — and it is fact — that the High Court breaks its own rules. Worse, it broke the sanctity of the Constitution in 2001 and the entire clean election results in 1998 when it deliberately went against the 1987 Charter in ousting then sitting President Joseph Estrada, who had not been convicted by the Senate impeachment court, had not resigned, died nor was he permanently disabled to function, with the High Court’s coming up with its invented opinion of the non-existent “constructive resignation.” Let us not to forget that the same SC broke another rule, which was for the court itself — and not the parties — presenting as “hard evidence” to prove Estrada’s claimed “mental state” while the farce of an Edsa 2 was ongoing. The “evidence?” A photocopy of a newspaper column item based on an unauthenticated claimed diary written, not by Estrada, but by a third party!

Leni’s lawyers and the dissenting justices should start going back to the High Court’s history of changing rules in midstream and making up its own rules due to politics and partisanship. What most everyone should remember is that, in general, if rules are not changed, what then does any nation need its courts and supreme courts to rule on what has already been ruled upon — rules and decisions that cannot and should not be changed?

Heck, even the 50 handpicked delegates of the 1987 charter violated the rules, and knowingly too, since they wrote down in the constitution that their original yellow president, Cory Aquino, is the constitutionally-elected president in 1986, when she was never the elected president of the Philippines.

And more pointedly, even the fake Ma. Lourdes Sereno court broke the jus sanguinis rule, claiming that any adopted child born in the Philippines is a Filipino citizen.

Rules can be changed and should be changed whenever necessary, but constitutional provisos, especially in filling a presidential vacancy, should always be followed to the letter and respected, not violate them through the High Court’s non-existent doctrines and rulings.