When I was a little girl, I wanted to grow up like Cecilia Muñoz Palma. She was born in 1913, the daughter of a congressman from Batangas. She started by embarking on a career of academic excellence. She graduated high school valedictorian at St. Scholastica’s College, and Bachelor of Laws from the University of the Philippines. In 1937 -- long before feminism and the paradigm of sexual equality -- Justice Palma passed the bar examinations by taking first place with a grade average of 92.6%. Instantly, by that heroic feat, she became a national heroine, what in today’s breathless prose would be called a superstar.The superstar continued to shine. She finished two Master of Laws degrees, the first one from the University of Manila, and the second one from Yale University. In her later years, she was showered with honorary doctorates from abroad and from our own country, culminating with a Doctor of Laws degree from her alma mater, the University of the Philippines.
Justice Palma’s generation was raised in the work ethic, not in the ethic of instant popularity, now as common in our country as instant coffee or instant noodles. Justice Palma came from a different mould. She started very humbly as a bill drafter and legislative researcher in the National Assembly.
Having dutifully started from the lower ranks, her star now rose with prodigious speed. She began to make history. She was the first female government prosecutor. She was the first female district judge. She was only the second female to be appointed to the Court of Appeals. And finally, claiming her rightful destiny, she became the first female justice of the Philippine Supreme Court, the celebrated role model of all Filipinos who hope to enter a public service characterized by honesty, competence, and plain hard work.
One would have thought that with all these “firsts” in her resume, Justice Palma would have been well satisfied to rest among her accolades and frolic with her three children, 15 grandchildren, and 5 great grandchildren.
But no, this child of history had to go many more miles. Thus, she became the first female to head a constituent assembly, as president of the 1986 Constitutional Commission, which produced the present Constitution. And even now, at the age of 85, she continues to serve as chairperson and general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, a position that she did not seek, but was thrust upon her.
In her capacity as an incumbent public official, last January 20, Justice Palma sent a letter supported by official documents to the NBI, requesting investigation of a media project undertaken by her predecessor, Manuel Morato. The documentary evidence tends to show that he and his cohorts have violated R. A. No. 3019, also known as the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. It appears that while in public office, Morato awarded to a couple who are his close friends, a lucrative contract involving P351 million of the public funds to allegedly film a TV series called “Ang Pangarap kong Jackpot.” The PCSO and the film company executed ten contracts for 1,092 episodes, to be aired until December 2000.
Justice Palma -- with typical judicial sobriety and possible understatement -- made the following observations:
1. The contracts were awarded to Golden Lions owned by Mr. Carlo Caparas, a known friend and alleged godson of Mr. Manuel Morato, without the required bidding. Under the premises, there is no justification for a negotiated contract.
2. Considering the purpose of the project to enhance the credibility of the lotto by depicting the lives of jackpot winners, it is evident that most of the episodes produced were fiction, in view of the fact that the number of lotto jackpot winners is less than 230 as of May 1998. In effect, the Chairman and the Board perpetrated a scheme to deceive the public by misrepresenting actual winners. Hence, the ten (10) contracts covering One thousand ninety two episodes, were primarily executed to benefit Mr. Caparas and not really to depict the lives of jackpot winners.
3. The quality of the product was sacrificed to the prejudice of the PCSO because of the number of episodes contracted. While the first contract allowed Golden Lions four months to produce seventy eight episodes, the contracts for the sixth to tenth seasons required Mr. Caparas to finish 390 episodes in three months; the contract for the eleventh and twelfth seasons consisting of 156 episodes in two months; and the last contract for the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth seasons consisting of 234 episodes in two months.
4. The Chairman and the Board completely ignored the prejudice to be caused by the hasty contracts. They failed to consider the kind of finished product in view of the very short production period. Moreover, they did not consider that most of the episodes are to be shown more than a year from the intended date of production. It is manifest that the Chairman and the Board simply wanted to pay Mr. Caparas hundreds of millions of government money before their terms of office ended.
5. The removal of the provision on payment per episode was intended to allow payment even before delivery and actual airing of the episodes.
6. Payments were made prior to the delivery of the tapes. It is noted that delivery was made only after the Commission on Audit started auditing the project.
I respectfully submit that Justice Palma, under these circumstances and findings, had both a legal and a moral duty to seek recourse under our system of laws. With impeccable restraint, she referred the matter to the NBI. However, apparently the Office of the Ombudsman had been conducting its own investigation. Hence, the Ombudsman requested a halt to the NBI investigation, to avoid duplication. NBI Director Santiago Toledo said: “For the record, we did not drop any charges as claimed by Mr. Morato.”
Justice Palma, again with the same high sense of propriety, also referred the matter to a COA audit team. The initial findings of the COA team suggested that after the film director submitted his tapes, it appeared that some episodes were
unedited, while some tapes were mere duplications.Whether Mr. Morato and his cohorts are prima facie guilty or not is now a matter for the Ombudsman to decide. The Ombudsman has acquired jurisdiction, and the respondent may feel free to avail himself of all the protections of the Bill of Rights in our Constitution. Hence, I have limited myself to a narration of the chronological facts, for at this point public opinion must yield to the rule of law.
However, it appears that the criminal suspect is intent, not merely on relying on constitutional protection, but also on engaging in the politics of hate and destruction. Today’s media reports that the criminal suspect has felt free to appear on a TV show and direct his characteristic venom at Justice Palma by employing what media itself calls “crude remarks.” The crude remarks of the criminal suspect, against whom a state agency has discovered probable cause for filing criminal charges, are in the language of constitutional law, called the speech of hate.
The criminal suspect has engaged in hate speech, which is defined as a form of expression that is denigrating and offensive to someone or to some group of people. I am going to discuss briefly the unconstitutionality of hate speech. But my starting point that there is a moral problem about hate speech, concerns whether hate speech should be prohibited in whole or in part.
I humbly submit that the crude remarks reported in today’s papers constitute “unprotected expression” as distinguished from “protected expression.” The Constitution protects freedom of speech. But the Constitution does not protect all speech. The constitutional freedom of speech is based on the worldview that freedom of speech is “the matrix, the indispensable condition, of every other form of freedom.” But certain forms of expression may possess such low social value, that they merit less constitutional support than other forms of more valuable expression. This is why the Free Speech Clause has been interpreted to mean that it does not protect all speech, but only speech of a certain quality.
The Philippine Supreme Court, like the US Supreme Court since 1942, has relied mainly on the rationale that lewdness, obscenity, libel, and fighting words are unprotected expression, because “such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such low social value as a step to truth, that any benefit that maybe derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.”
People who feel free to abuse the right to free speech usually invoke the 1964 US case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which has been adopted by the Philippine Supreme Court. The Sullivan decision ruled that there is no libel, if the criticism of the government official is erroneous but honest; and the more public the person libeled, the greater the leeway and protection accorded to the person.
However, it bears emphasis that under the Sullivan ruling, there is libel if the public official can show by “convincing clarity” that the libel was made with actual malice, that is, “knowledge of falsehood or reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”
I respectfully submit that Morato, who is facing preliminary investigation by the Office of the Ombudsman, has libeled a public official considered by many as a public institution and a national treasure. The respondent made the so-called “crude remarks” with actual malice, meaning that he recklessly disregarded the truth. Justice Palma as the victim has the right to file a libel case; but I doubt very much if she will do so, considering that the kind of verbal abuse to which she has been subjected is beneath the contempt of every decent citizen. It is sufficient to make this narrative exposition, for I believe that the criminal suspect’s hate speech says nothing about Justice Palma, and everything about the suspect’s dark and twisted world.
In conclusion, I call on the Office of the Ombudsman to study whether it should motu proprio initiate proceedings for indirect contempt against the criminal suspect. The Ombudsman Act, Section 15, para. (g) gives the Ombudsman the power to punish for contempt, in accordance with the Rules of Court.
The Rules of Court, Rule 71, Section 3, provides that after notice and hearing, a person may be punished for indirect contempt for:
(d) Any improper conduct tending directly or indirectly to impede, obstruct, or degrade the administration of justice.
In the 1995 case of Lastimosa v. Vasquez, the Supreme Court said that the preliminary investigation of a case is quasi-judicial in character, and hence the Ombudsman may properly avail of the power to punish for contempt given to him by the law. This being so, I move that a copy of this speech should be furnished to the Ombudsman, for his consideration, and with the respects of the Senate.
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The Isulong Team: Isulong SEOPh, Isulong Seoph by Benj, Pinoy Isulong by Seoph Martinez and Useless Isulong