human rights lawyer Rene Saguisag
A lawyers’ group on Wednesday appealed for calm amid the growing public opposition to Republic Act No. 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act, which took effect Wednesday.
The Movement of Attorneys for Brotherhood, Integrity and Nationalism Inc. (Mabini) said that those opposed to the law should press for its amendment by Congress instead of going to the Supreme Court even if no actual case for the violation of the law has yet been initiated.
“We need judicial restraint, not a hyper-activist Supreme Court. The right thing must be done by the right party in the right way at the right time and for the right reason,” Mabini’s chairman and human rights lawyer Rene Saguisag said in a statement.
The former senator called on the Supreme Court to be careful and not to yield to pressure in acting on the slew of petitions questioning the constitutionality of the law.
“At this point, we cannot elevate 15 unelected men and women by tantalizing and seducing them to act as a super-executive and a super-legislature, shaming the elected, wholesale—a dangerous precedent, a cure worse that the disease,” he said.
“Amendment is preferable to having an unelected ‘super-Supreme Court’ shame the elected departments when there is no case or controversy and the petitioners do not have proper standing to [question it]. The infirmities must be removed by the elected, not by the unelected, wholesale, when there is no actual case or controversy yet,” he added.
One of the provisions in the law being questioned by various groups is the one that imposes a heavier penalty on online libel.
“No one should libel whatever the medium,” Saguisag argued. He pointed, however, that the Supreme Court was recently liberal in acquittals and imposing libel penalties.
Libel cases in the country could last a decade and the high court usually imposed fines and “tempered the result” of lower court convictions.
The lawyers’ group said the approach of Senators Francis “Chiz” Escudero III and Allan Cayetano to file bills to amend the law was better than the course taken by Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, who was the only senator who voted against the law.
“Given the Escudero-Cayetano initiative, the Supreme Court should show judicial restraint. Give Congress time to ‘correct’ any unwise provision and wait for an actual case involving one really hurt by RA 10175,” Saguisag advised.
However, the research group Ibon Foundation said the Court should immediately act on the petitions against RA 10175.
Given the urgency of the issue, the Court should have acted with due swiftness. Because it deferred action, it further fueled the controversy that has already triggered protests from netizens, including hackers who have taken down several government websites since last week, the group said. Jerome Aning