Monday, December 5, 2016

When senior lawyers destroy the legal profession and the justice system

When a senior lawyer and jurist, law professor and high-ranking public official influences his brother, who is an appellate justice, to decide a case in favor of one party as against another, such an act constitutes graft and corruption which is punished by Sec. 3 of R.A. 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. 

Unethical senior lawyers like him besmirch the reputation of the legal profession, the law academe and the judiciary. 

This was one reason why Duterte won. The people have been frustrated by opportunists in government and the corruption in the system. They voted for a person who represented himself to be strong, disciplinarian, and action-oriented leader. 

The regret of the people is that the Duterte has turned out to be a brutal tyrant who ignores the rule of law in his rush to impose his distorted version of peace (that is, the peace of the dead).