Always on the lookout

Always on the lookout | Daily Tribune

There is a maxim in law, “quando aliquid prohibetur ex directo, prohibetur et per obliquum.” What is prohibited to be done directly, cannot be done indirectly.

In the landmark case of Arroyo v. Secretary of Justice (2018), argued successfully on behalf of the former President and the First Gentleman (yes, those Arroyos) by a lawyer reputed to possess unlimited sex appeal, the Supreme Court en banc struck down for being unconstitutional a circular of the Department of Justice (DoJ) granting the Secretary thereof the power to issue so-called Hold-Departure Orders (HDOs) and Watchlist Orders (WLOs), saying that the right to travel is guaranteed by the Fundamental Law and may only be curtailed on grounds of national security, public order or public health. The ponencia goes on to say that it is precisely the unfettered power of the Executive to impair the sacred right to travel that the Bill of Rights seeks to prevent.

That decision was hailed as a signal victory for Constitutional rights, for having rebuffed the long-standing practice of the Justice Secretary — under whose office the Bureau of Immigration (BI) is — of preventing people from leaving on sometimes thin or whimsical grounds. Henceforth, the High Court decreed, only the courts may issue HDOs, and only after a hearing, thus satisfying the demands of due process.

Fast forward to 2023. We now have a government where some — nay, many! — officials play fast and loose with the law. The House has tried to shut down a media entity whose only fault was exercising the function of the Fourth Estate as a check on official excesses; and has expelled a member in closed-door session without hearing him.

The police have turned Davao City into a war zone just because they can’t catch an unarmed religious leader who has preached nothing but peace. Congress, whose members should know better, have launched a witch hunt against persons associated with POGOs, violating their rights under the Organic Act — especially the presumption of innocence, the right to remain silent and the right against self-incrimination — at every turn and with impunity.

In the middle of it all, the DoJ has chosen to continuously skirt around the proscription of the Supreme Court against diminutions on the right to travel, by consistently utilizing a monstrous creature called (hold your breath) the Immigration Lookout Bulletin Order, or ILBO.

This strange duck of a legal formulation, while not exactly mandating that a person be disallowed from leaving the country unconditionally, imposes so many conditions on a person appearing on the said bulletin that they might as well have denied them the right to leave the country without a court order.

Under the operating guidelines issued by the BI — which the present dispensation has (unwisely) insisted on continuing — the unfortunate Filipino on the list, when bound for another country, will be stopped when he reaches the immigration counter. There, he will be taken aside and brought to the immigration office at the airport, subjected to what is termed a “secondary inspection.”

While thereat, the immigration officers will look at the list of “focal persons” (whatever the hell that means) appearing on the same list — presumably those who requested the poor guy’s inclusion in the ILBO in the first place — and ask them whether the traveler should be allowed or denied departure.

But wait, there’s more! If any one of the “focal persons” cannot be contacted, the passenger will not be allowed to travel. How’s that for a dog with a different collar from an HDO. Truly, a person subjected to an ILBO will be left with no ILBO room. Quite recently, some people appearing on the government’s radar and targeted for harassment — for instance, lawyer Harry Roque, a foremost critic — have been included in an ILBO.

It is high time someone enriches the annals of judicial history by challenging in court the blatantly unconstitutional ILBO. Perhaps the same lawyer with overflowing sex appeal who won the Arroyo case should do it soon, you think?