Judge not

It is never easy to sit in judgment of anyone. As the husband of one who must, day in and day out (except for fiesta officiales and authorized leaves) decide who should be jailed and who should stay free, I know that the job can oftentimes be emotionally draining, if not gut-wrenching at times. I myself have sat as a juror of many a beauty pageant, but then, for obvious reasons, there is no comparison as to the degree of difficulty.

Levity aside, the complication is replicated in multiples if the case you have decided is one that attracts much public attention. Then you will have media to contend with and, in this day and age of social media, netizens who are students of Professor Google and graduates of the Twitter School of Law who think they know more about the law than even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. If you resolve a case, not to the liking of a segment of the public, you run the risk of incurring viral ire.

That is exactly what happened to Manila Regional Trial Court Judge Marlo Magdoza-Malagar after she declared, in a case filed by the Department of Justice, that the Communist Party of the Philippines — New People's Army was NOT a terrorist organization, citing copious jurisprudence to support her more than one hundred and sixty-page ponencia.

I am, of all people, not in accord with her decision. I have marched on the streets against the CPP-NPA and their despicable capo Joma Sison, represented in court those who have been victimized by Communist recruitment in schools, and General Esperon in his legal battle with the agit-prop website Bulatlat.com. In other words, I am unabashedly a rabid anti-communist, make no mistake about it.

But I draw the line at encouraging physical assault against a member of the Judiciary. As an officer of the court, I have always stood for judicial independence when the courts are under assault. I came out with newspaper ads when that joke of a President, Noynoy Aquino, started persecuting Chief Justice Corona. I was at the forefront of defending the decision of the Supreme Court from certain moronic millennials for removing Maria Lourdes Sereno from her post for being unqualified from the start.

Judges are not infallible. That is why there is a process whereby higher judicial authorities may correct the faults of lower courts. A citizen is, of course, entitled to criticize the work of a judge when he feels that the judge has erred. But to impute improper motives when there are none — as it would appear that Judge Magdoza-Malagar has a spotless reputation — or worse, to strongly imply that it would be acceptable to bodily attack a judge for a decision made in good faith and with legal support, truly outruns the bounds of reason and decency and threads on the dangerous boundaries of contemptuous incitement.

Evidently, the entire Judiciary, much of the legal academe, bar associations, and many on social media, have seen the danger of such a course of action. And I never thought I would join a common cause with leftist lawyers I have locked horns with continually, but it only goes to show the universality of the public outrage against such threats.

While, again, I may disagree with Judge Magdoza-Malagar on the issue of the CPP-NPA, I am secure in the knowledge that she decided the way she did fairly and freely, without any undue influence or pre-existing prejudices being brought to bear. She was only following the example of Thomas More of "doing what becomes her as a judge."

"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again," as the Bible says. It would be well for everyone to comply with this injunction, lest they become as godless as the Communists they wish to stamp out.