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Tuesday, 03 August 2010 11:37 |
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Dear Bro. Adolf,
The reason why the Filipino people are losing or have lost their sovereignty is because they have not been allowed to exercise it through their justice system.
In the U.S., even when the American people were still under British colonial, the common American people had always been a partakers of justice via their jury systems. When they created the U.S. constitution, they made it sure that the Jury System should become a part of their government.
This is where we differ with the American people. They have the jury system but we don't have it. We made a copycat of the U.S. Constitution and purposely omitted the Grand Jury and Trial Jury systems in the Philippine Bill of Rights.
Except for these omissions, we have an excellent constitution where it expressly stated in Article II, Section 1, that: "Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them." Nonetheless, the Jury System is only a procedural device as an aid in the exercise of the people's power in a civil manner in the enforcement of the people's sovereignty and their laws.
With the sovereign authority of the people, the Filipino people can create the jury system even if it is not expressly mandated in the Bill of Rights in the Philippine Constitution.
There are two jury systems under the U.S. Constitution. The Grand Jury system and the Trial (by) Jury System or Trial Jury System for short. In the U.S. constitution, there are many freedoms that the American people can enjoy. Without these juries, it would have been very difficult for the ordinary American people, specially the blacks, to compete in availing all of their freedoms and their public officials would have been garnering all those freedom for themselves.
Without the jury systems, slavery in the U.S. would not have been abolished over the objection by wealthy slave owners in the adoption of the system.
This is what happened in the Philippines. The Filipino people inherited a vast number of freedom under their American copycat constitution. But because the common Filipino people have been deprived in using the jury system to aid in their quest for full enjoyment of their freedom, like freedom to investigate and indict a corrupt officials under their own independent decisions through the grand jury, the common Filipino people have always been railroaded by their public officials in gaining more freedoms than what the common Filipino people could enjoy.
When it comes to justice, justice is always fixed to favor public officials because they practically owned and monopolize the justice system. Those who steal land titles of the poor people could not be prosecuted because it is easy for them, first to buy falsified land titles, and then buy judges and prosecutors to prevent them from doing their jobs.
This government monopolized justice system should be dismantled by the adoption of the jury systems.
What we need in the Philippines is adoption of the Grand Jury and Trial Jury systems so that the common Filipino people can exercise their freedom to decide on their own independent decision to investigate, indict, hear and try to convict corrupt Philippine government officials.
I have been recommending the adoption of the jury systems since the days of Pres. Cory Aquino and, thank God, at least this time, I am not the only one who is talking about it now. I was able to find Atty. Berteni Causing, Atty. Cita B. Garcia, and Ms. Elvie Medina who are all based in the Philippines and they are now busy campaigning for the jury adoption.
Atty. Toto Causing has been able to get the support of the Philippine Postal Union Workers with member and officers of around 5,000 people to help in the gathering signatures for sponsorship of the "People's Jury Initiative" that I have drafted. Atty. Cita Garcia is also busy conferring with the leadership of the CBCP. Ms. Elvie Medina will be putting up a TV Jury Nobela wherein the audience can participate in mock jury trials to let the people be familiarized how this jury thing works.
And, BTW, the draft of the "People's Jury Initiative" has already been published in the Internet, and you can kindly browse on it in the URL below:
http://www.the- filipino- people.com/
I hope you will kindly come on board to enact this initiative and have yourself become an official co-sponsor for the "People's Jury Initiative".
With juries, the people don't have to die to fight corruption.
After all, fighting corruption is like fighting in a battlefield. It cannot be won by "generals" alone. We need "foot soldiers" called the jurors to do the fighting with their jury ballots and not with bullets.
Thank you. God bless you.
Marlowe
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