To act like a fool is man’s inherent right

By Al S. Mendoza

ONE can be a fool and one acting like a fool should not be stopped from acting like a fool.

I guess that best describes the action, or non- action, of Juan Ponce Enrile on May 29, Tuesday.

That can also be said of the 22 other senator-judges, when not one of them stood up to interject an opposition at the way Miriam Defensor-Santiago was conducting herself that day.

It was the so-called Judgment Day, the day when the 23 senators would decide on whether to acquit or convict Renato C. Corona of the crime of culpable violation of the Constitution leveled against him by 188 congressmen on December 12, 2012.

Each one of the 23 senators was allowed to explain the vote of conviction or acquittal.

And everybody did – from Angara to Enrile the presiding officer.

Miriam was for acquittal and that was no surprise at all.

From Day One, one can already discern her bias for Corona, scolding almost everybody except Enrile while doing her ballistic thing, practically treating the Impeachment Court like her own personal playground at the slightest opportunity.

And in explaining her vote of acquittal, she was at it again, railing at even the invisible wind like a man gone berserk.

She incessantly inflicted herself on us in a manner that was so “unsenatorial,” uneducated and un-lawyer-like, if not un-judge-like.

She kept repeating that she was once an RTC judge, as if that mattered at all while in the midst of her oral diarrhea.

She kept challenging Dear God to strike her dead.

She kept saying “puro kagagohan.”

I didn’t know gutter language is also allowed in the Senate.

She also kept repeating that she would soon assume the lofty post of being a member of the International Court of Justice.

How she got there defies human logic, if not imagination.

I fervently pray she would not desecrate the ICJ faster than when Corona walked out of the Impeachment Trial the first day he appeared there.

If the nation rejoiced over the triumph of truth, justice and transparency with Corona’s removal from office by a vote of 20-3 (Miriam’s allies were Joker Arroyo and Bongbong Marcos), the Filipino people would not mourn the day that Miriam might be thrown out of the ICJ.

They’d laugh to their hearts’ content.

Not at Miriam but at the ICJ for its sin of committing the mistake of the century.

And how explain Miriam acting like a fool, if not essaying literally the role of a fool, on Judgment Day at the Impeachment Trial?

I have but only one in mind to lawyer for Miriam:  Socrates.  Socrates (or was it Voltaire?) said, “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say what you want to say.”

With that in mind, I complain no more.

From hereon, I will defend Miriam’s right to say all the rubbish she wants to say.

For, like Corona, it is also Miriam’s inherent right to make a fool of herself.

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