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Latest:  On 10 February 2010, I filed a petition for prohibition with prayer for injunctive relief docketed as G. R. No. 191032 against the Judicial and Bar Council before the Supreme Court.

There is no provision in the 1987 Constitution that says that the President should appoint the Chief Justice.

All the Constitution provides is that “Members of the Supreme Court x x x” shall be appointed by the President from a list of nominees submitted by the Judicial and Bar Council” (Sec. 9, Art. VIII).

But the Constitution also says that the Supreme Court has the power ”to appoint all officials x x x of the judiciary” (Sec. 5 [6], Art. VIII). And there is no iota of doubt here that the Chief Justice is an “official” of the judiciary, in fact the highest official thereof.

In short, the appointing power of the President extends only to the associate justices (or members) of the Supreme Court, not necessarily to the post of Chief Justice, which the Supreme Court En Banc may legally designate.  Thus, the selection and nominating powers of the Judicial and Bar Council under the Constitution and the consequent appointing power of the President may be exercised only in this case if the person sought to be appointed Chief Justice is not coming from among the incumbent justices of the Supreme Court.

This interpretation is in keeping with the principles of separation of powers and would best serve the independence of our judiciary, free from all political and vested interest.

This is the gist of my letter dated 11 January 2010 to the Chief Justice copy furnished all the associate justices of the Supreme Court. In reply, I received a letter from the Judicial and Bar Council dated 19 January 2010 stating that my constitutional view was duly noted during its en banc meeting of 18 January 2010.

I pray that the Supreme Court asserts its constitutional power to select its own leader upon the retirement of Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno on 17 May 2010 to put to rest all the current debate and constitutional controversy about his replacement that continue to undermine or taint judicial independence.

The Supreme Court En Banc declared unconstitutional in Quinto vs. COMELEC (G. R. No. 189698, 1 December 2009) the second proviso in the third paragraph of Sec. 13 of RA 9369, Sec. 66 of the Omnibus Election Code and Section 4 (a) of COMELEC Resolution No. 8678. Consequently, appointive public officials are no longer ipso facto resigned when they file their certificate of candidacy for an elective post.

With the ruling, justices, judges, election officials, military and police officers, members of the cabinet and all appointed civil servants may continue to exercise the functions of, and hold on to, their appointive office while campaigning to get elected for an elective position.

If they lose, they just continue occupying their appointive posts without even violating Sec. 6, Art. IX (B) of the Constitution that says “No candidate who has lost in any election shall, within one year after such election, be appointed to any office in the Government of any government-owned or controlled corporations or in any of its subsidiaries”.  Why? It is because they have already been appointed before they lost the elections.

The decision does not seem to prevent the evil that the Constitution, in so many words, seeks to prevent. Next elections, should the Filipino people be wary that the Chief Justice, the Chairman of the COMELEC or the Chief of Staff of the AFP becoming a candidate for President, Vice-President or Senator while serving the office to which they were appointed?

Just asking, in the meantime that this decision is not yet final and executory.

I join our countrymen and the world in mourning the passing of Tita Cory. I learned about her death while I was in Naga City. And when I came back last night after a grueling land trip to Manila, I and my son, Jimbo, did not waste any time in paying our last respect for her at La Salle Greenhills.

Many great things have been said about Tita Cory and she truly deserves all the accolade.

But I love Tita Cory because she made us believe that what it takes to be a great leader and human being is neither education nor experience nor brilliance, just plain and simple sincerity, honesty, integrity, modesty, faith and the fortitude to rise above difficult circumstances – qualities that are rare these days and you can hardly find in any of our present day leaders.

I love Tita Cory because she made sure that we, our children, and hopefully the next generation enjoy the blessings of freedom under a regime of democracy. They say that absolute power corrupts but Tita Cory did not succumb to the temptation, when it was very convenient for her to do so. Her presidency had its own share of weaknesses but no one can deny that she served us well by making sure that every Filipino enjoy the fruits of liberty.

And I love Tita Cory because she distinctly made me proud to be a Filipino. The phenomenal and world-acclaimed People Power of 1986 was bloodless and peaceful simply because Tita Cory was its icon, its inspiration, its moving spirit. And I now reminisce that part of my life circa 1983-1986 with great pleasure which I want my children to cherish and understand well.

I dare say that Ninoy’s life and death was actually meant by God to prepare Tita Cory to be our own Joan of Arc. God must be on our side for giving us Tita Cory.

“I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life”, Tita Cory once said.  You did, Tita Cory.

“I hope that history will judge me as favorably as our people still regard me, because, as God is my witness, I honestly did the best I could. No more can be asked of any man”, Tita Cory said in her last SONA.  We know you did, Tita Cory.

With your death, may the hopes of the Filipino people live again by tying that yellow ribbon ’round the old oak tree.

Thank you Tita Cory. Thank you. Farewell.

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Below is a song composed by my best friend, Corazon Guidote, arranged by Roy Del Valle, performed by Lisa Del Valle and photoshow assembled by Mike Reyes.

This is under  CC-BY-NC-ND Philippine License 3.0

For me, to live life sensibly means having to act in a manner that would sustain our well-being and spending our lifetime without having to regret about anything, its ups and downs notwithstanding.

For instance, we eat to live.  Ironically, the root causes of many of our physiological maladies today (i.e. high blood pressure, blood sugar swing, intolerable uric acid, arterial block, malignant growth, and the like) are also brought about by the food we eat. It’s either we eat less of what we need to eat for better nourishment or we indulge more on what our body should take less.  Some even seem to live to eat, in fact.

Life is short.  If an average person dies at the age of 70 years old, it means staying in this physical world only for 25,550 days or a total of 613,200 hours.  If we sleep an average of only 6 hours a day during our lifetime, it means that we are only awake for a total 459,900 hours to do everything that we need to do during our existence.  If we take away the time we need to spend for our childhood, or up to 6 years old when we do not have to worry about anything except to eat and play, that leaves us approximately 420,000 hours to make full use of from the moment we start schooling – that is if we would live up to 70 years old. Many would not be as lucky.

As we go through with life, we are enmeshed in a myriad of activities and endeavors involving our family, our neighbors, our friends, our workplace, our faith, our country, ourselves and even the world we all live in.  How much of our time should be devoted to each one of them is of course a matter of personal discretion. How we conduct our lives is often dictated by urgency and our sense of priority. Consequently, there is always the tendency to spend most of our time lopsidedly on one thing while we conveniently take other equally important things for granted.  And when our time is up, we can only look back to blame ourselves for the things that we did not do. But should we?

We are all driven by instant gratification. Gambling, smoking, drinking, nightlife, sensual escapades, shopping spree, addiction and even excessive fellowship are typical examples of guilty pleasures that make us feel good almost instantaneously.  Since personal satisfaction in these cases is always short-lived, there is the natural urge to do them over and over again until they become nasty habits that make a fool out of us. Unfortunately, these bad habits are hard to break. Slowly but surely, they either diminish our well-being or make us consume a good part of our lives for nothing.  Oftentimes, we do break our bad habits only when it is too late to do so.

To do anything excessively therefore, even if it is good or pleasurable, would never contribute to a sensible life. Rest and work for example are both desirable. But too much of either could also jeopardize the way we live.  Life on earth itself is sustained because nature works in perfect harmony and balance. Any extreme condition that disturbs nature’s state of equilibrium could spell the end of this world, or part of it. So it is with life.

To live life is never simple.  If we want to live life sensibly, I am not sure if there is any other sure-fire formula other than to sustain and spend it in moderation, as the first rule.

Obviously, moderation will never guarantee us an easy life. But a keen sense of it could make the way we live life worthwhile.

Like most of us, I could only wish I did.

For as long as we breathe, we will never be spared of human difficulties, troubles and pains along the way. Life is a constant struggle.

Some of our problems are innate, while others just occur without any rational explanation as if we are doomed by fate. But many of our predicaments are actually the result of our erroneous disposition, miscalculations and human frailties.

Some take even the slightest difficulty with a very heavy heart as if it’s the end of the world. Others who are put in a graver and more serious situation take them with a pittance. Ironically, many times our own reaction to our personal difficulties becomes the root of even bigger and deeper difficulties.

During our trying times, it is always best to accept things or situations as they are, first and foremost. If the solution to our problems is within our control, by all means, let’s do our best and put consistent efforts to resolve them. Otherwise or if our best is not enough, let us not forget to live in the thought that nature or fate have always the means of resolving them sooner or later.

Don’t despair. Instead, let us always appreciate what we have and not, what we do not have. Let us count our blessings and be thankful for them because I am pretty sure that there will always be another person whose situation is much more pitiful, unbearable and unfortunate than us, and yet continues to have the fortitude and faith to move on with life. Think about them. Gain inspiration and derive strength from them.

Take every problem as challenge to our human existence because this is what makes life beautiful and meaningful, especially when it is time for us, or others, to reminisce, or even laugh at, what we have been through. But if we opt to fall into the trap and the attitude of defeat and surrender, it is almost certain that we will be buried in oblivion as we dig our own graves.

Our Creator did not promise us a rose garden on earth. All He has given us are our options.

One of the most important faculties of the human mind is its ability to remember.

It is a great source of wonder what this world would be if human beings have no memory of their immediate past. Perhaps, life would be peaceful because every frustration, antagonism and difficulties would be buried immediately after they occur. When everything is forward looking, there is absolutely nothing to keep, no ax to grind, and no excess baggage to worry about.

It sounds utopian but I really don’t think it is. Without memories, good or bad, life also loses its meaning and significance outright. Feelings and our sense of being would also not matter.

During our lifetime, people spend much time recording the past. Development of better tools and technology to perpetuate and preserve human events and interaction is a never ending quest. When people look back, it gives them their sense of being, their sense of belonging, and their sense of humanity.

It is our natural gift of mental and emotional faculties that makes us human beings and the real attribute that distinguishes us from other creations. And the human memory rightly serves their purpose.

Inevitably, our entire journey in life is the building block of our own memories in this world for others to keep after our time is up.

In the end, it is not so much whether we lived a life in misery or a life of fortune, a life of constant struggle or a life of ease, or a life of helplessness or a life of strength. It is when people constantly capture a vivid imagination of you at whim just to remember how you made a good difference.

And the best thing about building good and pleasant memories is it does not require a special skill or talent or possessions, all it needs is a sincere and true heart to love and care so that others could keep you in mind till the end of time.

There will always be a better person than each one of us and this truth we must accept. Someone will always run faster, climb faster, and reach their goals earlier than the rest.  But this is not a valid excuse not to reach the destination we have set for ourselves. If others made it, there’s no reason why we can’t.

The achievement of others should serve as an encouragement, inspiration and motivation for all of us to move on. But if for some reasons, we failed to join the finishers at the finish line, don’t despair.

I believe that life is not a race but a journey. It is not a matter of who finishes first. It is not even a matter of whether you finished your own race or not. At the end of the day, it is not really so much about who is good, better or best, particularly if you make others fall just to win. They say that it is lonely to be at the top.  But should it be?

Since life is not a race but a journey, we have to make a good difference in the lives of those people who travel with us. Life is meaningful because we helped others succeed, not if we make others fail to achieve our own success. The success of a person is measured, not when he tells other people that he did, but when other people say he does.

Making a good difference in the lives of others means taking care of those people who are with us in our journey. In the process, we also let these people to take care of us. We don’t feel envious or the angst when others succeed because we know in our hearts that we are a part of that success.  In the same vein, other people feel good of our success because they know that they are part of it. And there is no reason to be lonely at the top in either case.

If we have to treat life then as a race, let it be a contest of how we can make others succeed.

Heroes and champions are never born, they are made — by the unsung heroes and the unknown champions who lived and traveled with them in the course of their lives because they too felt that their heroes and champions also took care of them along the way.

Making a good difference in the lives of others also means making a good difference in our own life.

In the course of my journey in life, I find it almost meaningless to reach my destination but leave behind all those who should have been with me in the first place.  And I am talking about our personal priorities.

We live in a very complicated world under a myriad of human activities that we have to take care of a lot of things. But which and how much of the things that we do day in and day out really matter at the end of our day? Some activities that others find trivial may be important to others and vice-versa.

Understandably, no one else would be able to define what our priorities in life are, except ourselves. Some people would set their priorities according to urgency. Others would act on the basis of relationships. Some would react according to duty while some would on the basis of the things that please them most.  

But regardless how one sets his or her priorities in life, I find it ironical, if not cynical, for some people to strive for fortune at the risk of their own lives or by bringing about the misfortune of others, or seek fame and recognition from others when they could not even command the honor and respect of their own children. Many people engage in charity when charity has not even began in their own homes. Many people make it appear to show so much love for others when it truth and in fact they are only meant to satisfy, or even cover up their own desire for, self-affection.

Some suggests that of the things we do in life, the order of precedence should be for God, country and people. But I do not believe that we should define our priorities in life in this order. On the contrary, we have to measure every decision we make or any action we take whether or not it satisfies what is good for God, country and humanity, concurrently and not successively. Anything less is unacceptable because it brings about a rift in the world we live in.

In the end, I believe that we should take our respective families, especially our progenies, at the center of our priorities in life. Personal success is nothing if we are all alone to relish it; what is worse is when our own family curses us for the neglect they suffer as a consequence. We say that the family is the basic unit of society and so whatever is good for them is also good for the country.  If we all raise our children well, we can rest assured of a better breed of the human race and I am sure our God would be pleased. I believe that we exist to make this world a better place to live in and the easier route to achieve this purpose is to make our own family our own disciple by following our own example.

There is nothing wrong with drive, determination, and ambition to realize our dreams and expectations. But make sure to bring with you your family in your journey. Do not leave them behind. We have to realize that in times of grief, solitude, heavy trials and tribulation, sickness, or even death, no one else would be there to comfort or be with us the way our own family would.

Whether you accept it or not, I strongly believe that as we travel through life our family should always define, set and be the underlying basis of our personal priorities. If we do so, I am almost certain that we will not leave this earth for another life in vain, even if we do not achieve what we please for ourselves.

Life’s journey starts with a dream. As they say, it’s the only thing that is free nowadays. And there’s actually no limit to what we want to dream about.

To realize a dream, most people find the need to device a plan or a strategy, consisting of short-term or even long-term goals or activities. Others would go about their dreams by just leaving things to fate but this is the surer path to lose in life by default. Dreams would have better chances of fruition when we consciously and actively pursue them through our actions. But regardless of our individual preference, our dreams always set the expectation of our journey.

Our expectations fail because of our failure to act, or maybe because we took the wrong path when we are called upon to make our choices. For some, the experience is bitter. For others, the experience is a misery, if not a tragedy. But others would just rise to the occasion and take up failure simply as a challenge to do more and better.

Our expectations also fail because of circumstances beyond our control, or maybe because we are not gifted with the talents to make our expectations work. Oftentimes, unforeseen events make us helpless or even discourage us from moving on in our journey. Human limitations as reason for failed expectations though is more apparent than real and have become a convenient excuse for failing. This world is replete with individuals who were born to fail because of their innate physical disabilities but nevertheless conquered their own dreams that normal human beings would find extremely difficult to do.

Whatever is the real reason for our failed expectations, I believe that the most important thing is to give and do our best all the time in the pursuit of our dreams. In the end, when our expectations are not met, we can ask ‘what happened?’ or ‘why it happened?’ if only to learn, or for other travelers to learn, from our mistakes and our frustrating experience. 

But when the bad weather comes to pass, the most difficult and critical part of the process is acceptance. How we accept things as they are and that not everything works according to our liking, our plans, or our expectations define our personal triumph or our personal doom. Losers can still be victors if they know how to rise up to the occasion. Acceptance is the key. And needless to say, the process of acceptance is never complete unless there is either remorse or forgiveness or both, when the situation calls for it.

We have to believe that bad things happen for some good reasons, albeit incomprehensible at the time we perceived defeat. I personally believe that failure is always a blessing in disguise but we will never know unless we recognize it ourselves.

Life is journey because we have to keep moving until we reach our final destination. And if things don’t work according to our expectations, we have to make a conscious effort to accept things as they are, and start dreaming again and again, if necessary. It is never too late to start a journey over and over again because there is always hope for as long we live, and this fact we must accept as a basic premise.

Since I was young, I have always wondered what life is all about.

Is it about the things that we aspire? That life is simply about our quest for personal success, fame and prosperity.

Or is it about the people around us? That is – we live to be the keeper of our family, our country and our fellow human beings.

Is life about what would make us feel good? That life is about the pursuit for pleasure, peace of mind, happiness, freedom, recognition or love.

Or is it about keeping our Divine faith? That life on earth is temporal and all the things that we do here are meant to serve God to gain eternal life.

But maybe life is all about all of these. If it is, then to live a full life becomes a very tall order given our everyday encounter with failure, enmity, frustration, temptation, our individual frailties, and even inevitable events.

The way life is lived depends not only upon ourselves but also on the people and the conditions, foreseen and unforeseen, around us.

If life then is a journey, very few would obviously reach their destination. Maybe that’s why there is an IF at the center of life as a constant reminder that life is something we must endure and survive.

For me, life is not really about reaching my ultimate pre-determined destination because at the end of the day, I may not reach it, after all. Life, for me, consists of the bits and pieces of things and events, big or small-good or bad, that come along my way in the course of my journey. Over the years, I learned that life is not much about reaching the destination. It is about how I carry on the journey that matters.

In the course of my voyage, I realized that I only need to know, carry and keep in mind a few things that really matter because there is always sense in traveling light. And from this perspective, I realized the beauty of my journey in this world called life.