IRRITATING.
A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court came out with a resolution, to dismiss the election protest case of the late 2004 presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. As expected, his bereaved wife, Susan Roces, cried foul over the Supreme Court junking her motion to substitute for FPJ in the Presidential Electoral Tribunal case.
Subsequently, Roces accused the Supreme Court justices of bias and of playing to the tune of the President Macapagal-Arroyo’s political harp.
What a brazen display of arrogance and ignorance!
Roces’ below-the-belt argument and appeal to pity are very irritating. She should have just kept her mouth shut. All she said were words that could incite sedition.
The Supreme Court had legal basis to dismiss her petition and the case. Apparently, Roces wanted the Supreme Court to be a fact-finding body. Sad to say, that is not the Supreme Court’s role. Absent legal standing, there was no reason for the High Court to continue hearing the case.
Roces’ act is not novel. Other losing candidates during elections also grumble until the next elections arrive. It’s just too bad that a lot of losing Filipino candidates cannot humbly accept defeat. For them, they didn’t lose. They were cheated.
What irritating behavior and attitude. Instead of taking the loss in stride, they do everything to disrupt national unity and destroy the winning candidate’s plan of government by inciting their supporters to turn against the incumbent.
Another irritating matter is the divorce bill filed and sponsored in the House of Representatives by party-list Rep. Liza Masa.
Just last February, another bill concerning the propagation of artificial birth control was sponsored in the House of Representatives.
I cannot understand why some of our representatives think of measures to destroy families and take life which are very un-Christian.
Masa contended that her proposed measure has safeguards. She said, for example, a married couple separated de facto can only file for divorce after five years of their actual separation.
I feel, however, that they are not safeguards, but are just delays before the actual divorce. If enacted, a person who wants to get out of a marriage because he has found a new partner, will only have to wait for five years to be released from the promise that death will be the only event that would part him from his spouse. Five years or one month does not really matter when a spouse is really bent on getting a divorce.
Having a divorce law will only embolden people who have no regard for the sanctity of marriage. Since they belong to a predominantly Catholic country, Filipino legislators must try to strengthen the marriage which is the driving force of the basic social institution: the family.
A divorce law will only encourage everything else except keeping marital vows sacred. Divorce would be the easy way out. It would create more social ills like broken homes, which have been proven to cause psychological trauma to young children.
If they are really so concerned about enacting laws that would matter, they should try amending the Revised Penal Code (RPC) and the Civil Code.
For example, the RPC (Act. No. 3815 of 1932) punishes unjust vexation with an imprisonment of one day to 30 days or a fine ranging from five pesos to P200. If a person is really serious about maliciously annoying a neighbor, a conviction will only cost the criminal five pesos at the least, supposing the court does not impose the penalty of incarceration. The criminal now walks away almost unscathed except that he lost only five pesos, which is now not even enough to buy a kilo of rice.
Instead of enacting a divorce law, they should try criminalizing the act of breaching marital vows. That could help solve philandering, unfaithfulness, and all other acts inconsistent with the promise to be together for better or for worse.
