BANNER STORY : ‘In times of peace..civil rights gets paramount importance..’ — Puno
By BEHN FER. HORTALEZA, JR.
SUPREME Court Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno put in perspective growing public questions about which takes precedence in the administration of justice between civil rights and national security.
Speaking to newsmen at a breakfast press conference here yesterday hours before he was to address a full gospel businessmen’s assembly, Puno sought to explain the emerging image of the High Tribunal that he heads – mainly a media labeling — is an “activist court.”
The “point of balance,” he said is a moving point. “There is no fixed point of balance in the administration or dispensing of justice.”
Spelling it out, he said: “In times of war, the balance moves or tips to security of the state. In times of peace, the balance moves to civilian rights.”
Puno, guest of the local chapter of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International Inc. on invitation by the ministry’s national trustee Dionisio “Diony” Espiritu, said the Supreme Court under his leadership has gone out of its way to lead a national summit to study and find ways to stop extra-judicial killings because “the right to life is the first and foremost of a people’s constitutional rights.”
He said he led the call for the national forum on people’s disappearances in answer to a growing wave of national and international appeals for action to end the “disturbing phenomenon” capped, he said, by the international report of United Nations rapporteur Philip Alston that practically blamed the Philippine military for most of the country’s activists’ killings.
“We would have been remiss in our constitutional duty to find means to provide redress for grievances if we have not moved for the (national summit),” Puno said.
He noted that after the Supreme Court took “unprecedented steps” – a departure from its ivory tower image – including the issuance of writs of amparo – there has been “an obvious decline of complaints” on forced disappearances.
Puno was accompanied in his press conference by lawyer Feliciano “Atos” Bautista, national president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines and Undersecretary Cesar Guy, presidential adviser on energy.
