Sereno cautions against passing anti-terror bill until questions on freedoms answered

Former Supreme Court (SC) chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno on Wednesday cautioned against the passage of the bill seeking to strengthen the country's anti-terrorism law until questions on its impact on Filipinos' freedoms are asked and answered.

"Our people need to hear our lawmakers ask the most important questions about our survival as a nation and the future of our freedoms under the proposed Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020," Sereno said in a statement issued shortly before the House of Representatives approved the proposed measure on third and final reading.

The bill is now up for President Rodrigo Duterte's signature.

"Until these questions are asked and the answers clearly given, it is the most unfortunate of times to pass the proposed act," the former leader of the Philippine judiciary said.

Sereno's statement joins a chorus of concerns on the bill, which lawyers' groups have warned could allow the government to go after dissenters and activists and worsen the climate of impunity in the country.

She said she had listened to the difficulties the military had in dealing with terrorism under the Human Security Act of 2007, the Philippines' existing law against terrorism, when she was chief justice.

"I had expressed the judiciary’s intention to ensure that operationally, courts were not going to stand in the way of the successful implementation of the nation’s anti-terrorism programs," she said.

"It was then my view, that those problems could be resolved if agency agreements between the Executive Department and the Judiciary could be crafted, that take into account the agencies’ implementation difficulties vis-a-vis the required careful culture of courts whose primary function is to defend human dignity and the rights of every Filipino," she added.

In 2013, years before Sereno was ousted from the SC, the tribunal ruled that several individuals, including now-presidential spokesperson Harry Roque, had no legal standing to challenge several provisions of the Human Security Act. The court at the time said the "possibility of abuse... remain highly-speculative and merely theorized."

In this same ruling, the SC said that a previous decision that was promulgated in 2010 "did not make any definitive ruling on the constitutionality" of the Human Security Act.

"The Supreme Court, unfortunately, never had the chance to pass upon the constitutionality of the substantive portions of the Human Security Act of 2007," Sereno said in her new statement.

It is under the Human Security Act that the Duterte administration asked a court in Manila to declare the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New Peoples's Army as terrorist organizations. Filed in 2018, this petition remains pending.

She said the "extraordinary restrictions" on movement under quarantine rules is "already a major concession to government."

"Matiisin ang Pilipino, but this should not be abused; and when Filipinos vent their frustration in the only way they can through social media, government should be careful not to repress the human spirit that must always find a way to express itself," Sereno said.

She said the government should act as agents to enable Filipinos "to build a 'just and humane society'." "When government leads the people to injustice and to inhumanity, then the whole basis for the authority morally erodes," the former chief justice said.

"That is why Congress must, in this perilous hour when national existential questions are uppermost in the minds of the people, make the effort to ask those questions and not stop, until the present bill satisfies the standards of justice and human compassion," she said.

Sereno said the number of the Senate bill (1083) and its proximity to Proclamation No. 1081, in which former president Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, made her recall the "dark days" of the regime.

Sereno was ousted from the SC in 2018 over allegations that she failed to file some mandatory asset declarations by granting a quo warranto petition, a manner that the historic ruling's critics said was unconstitutional.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has said criticisms against the proposed measure had no basis.

Roque, for his part, said the Constitution guarantees the freedom of expression.

“There is a hierarchy of laws. Our Constitution is supreme, then [there are] the laws enacted by Congress. When the act of Congress infringes on the Constitution, it will be declared by the court as unconstitutional. Despite the [anti-terror] law, our Constitution guarantees freedom of expression,” Roque said in an ANC interview. —LDF, GMA News