Hypo-critics

It can’t be a coincidence that some elitist law school faculty members of so-called top flight universities and self-proclaimed constitutional law “experts” like Mel Sta. Maria and Domingo Cayosa suddenly and synchronously crawled out of the woodwork to criticize the perceived delay in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte at the Senate.

In calling for the trial to commence forthwith, these recognized Pharisees of the legal community sanctimoniously cite provisions of the Fundamental Law, as well platitudes regarding the rule of law, public accountability and the people’s will. Phrases these self-righteous activists are wont to recite whenever — and only whenever — it suits their agenda.

These people are the usual suspects, so no one should be surprised. The University of the Philippines faculty of law has always been the nest of left-leaning professors eager to become relevant, and the Ateneo and De La Salle Universities are the sort of breeding grounds for priggishness whose products naturally abhor anything populist, such as Erap Estrada and the Dutertes. No wonder they are no longer in the list of top universities in Asia.

As for Sta. Maria and Cayosa, the first has always been — since he was my professor in law school — as yellow as a kidney patient’s urine; and the second will go down in history as the Integrated Bar of the Philippines officer under whose watch our big beautiful IBP building in Ortigas Center was politicized when it was allowed to be used as the venue for the press conference of one “Bikoy,” a perjured witness against then-President Duterte.

The IBP started losing its sheen when Frank Drilon prostituted its supposedly apolitical elections on behalf of his wife Violeta; that election was invalidated by the Supreme Court for unconscionable politicking. Thereafter, the IBP became a power center for big law firms seeking to influence judicial appointments for possible influence peddling. But the final collapse came during the Bikoy fiasco. Now, the IBP has become an irrelevancy in the legal profession, its existence continuing not by credibility but by mere compulsion.

But going back to these legal laughingstocks, many decent lawyers find it rich that these characters would now brandish the Constitution like a blunt weapon against the Vice President, when they were quiet as church mice when the Constitution was being brutalized by the House when it totally disregarded the injunction in the Organic Act that education must have the highest budgetary allotment, NOT the public works department.

These camotes were also deafeningly silent on the question of insertions in the latest General Appropriations Act. And where were they when resource persons were being savagely abused by the QuadComm and TriComm of the House of Representatives and by Hontiveros’ committee in the Senate, their basic rights to remain silent and against self-incrimination blatantly violated and they were whimsically detained?

And where were these self-labeled constitutionalists when the rights of former President Duterte were being transgressed on live television? And did the IBP raise a peep when Atty. Zuleika was being dehumanized by the House and then jailed for discharging her duties as a lawyer? And either I am deaf, or I did not hear a word said when I, and other lawyers, were being prevented — on national television — by the QuadComm, in the most demeaning manner, from advising our clients on their rights under the Constitution as resource persons.

It is clear that these people and entities are grocery-cart constitutional advocates, choosing only those they would defend from violations of the basic law, while ignoring those who do not fit their narrative.

They are truly critics, but of the low kind. “Hypo” in Greek meaning “beneath, less than” (thus the terms “hypoglycemia” and “hypothermia”), they can thus be termed, not only hypocrites, but hypo-critics as well.