Who pays for government junkets IS relevant

xecutive Secretary Lucas P. Bersamin was a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and that could be a problem for him and President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr.

As ex-Chief Justice, Bersamin is used to the terse unwritten legal philosophy that “the law is what the Supreme Court says it is.” Speaking to the Malacanang Press Corps, he answered the question “who paid for the President’s trip to Singapore to watch the Formula One races?” by simply saying, “It’s not relevant.”

Boom. Next question.

It’s not that simple anymore, Sir Luke. In the Court of Public Opinion, oral argument is unlimited. Free citizens exercising their constitutional right to demand that their president OBEY the Constitution cannot be overruled. You can give a gag order on litigants but, unfortunately, doing the same thing to the public is a suppression they will fight vigorously.

And history is on the people’s side. They ALWAYS win.

I get this sense that it’s probably the reason why President Bongbong Marcos chose a retired chief justice for his executive secretary. Presumably, a lot of people—lawyers and lawmakers especially—would politely defer to the former top magistrate. This professional courtesy would be an effective armor against, at least, the “academic” sort of criticism of the president’s actions and pronouncements.

There is an analogy to this about the State being immune from suit. After all, there can be no right against the authority that enacted the law that gave you the right. I’d say 99% of the time, the State can do no wrong so you cannot sue it. Just loosely speaking, for all practical purposes, you can interchange “State” and “Government.”

This is how the expression was born, “You can’t fight City Hall.”

But as always, there are exceptions—principally when the State gives its consent to be sued. In many cases the Supreme Court itself has cited numerous instances when the State “descends to the level of the ordinary citizen,” as when the State sues the ordinary citizen. Then justice demands that the citizen be able to SUE back.

When Lucas Bersamin dismounted the lofty towers of the Temple of Justice at Padre Faura, to comingle with the rest of us children of a lesser god, he became like one of us: fallible, error-capable and compelled to accept that not every pitch you throw will be conceded as a strike.

Therefore, when EXECUTIVE SECRETARY Bersamin thumbs the nose of media and dismisses a relevant question, he must expect the pushback and learn another valuable lesson: that unlike protected witnesses testifying in court, public officials who do not answer important substantial inquiries will find the public answering those questions FOR THEM.*