The Chronicle, many times, had expressed our belief in the merits of the Parliamentary system. Too, we shared the view that it's time we give foreigners the right to own Philippine land and develop the capital-intensive mining industry as part of the constitutional economic reforms.

But we will not stand behind any fraudulent, sleight of the hand revisions that is unconstitutional as the Supreme Court had rightly labeled the People's Initiative to be.

We cannot stand behind people who dishonestly condemn "gridlocks" caused by stalemates between the Senate and the Lower House and then railroad a serious change in the form of government by voting as one assembly. They can only vote on such similar issues only when the present government becomes unicameral. Not before that.

Months earlier, the Chronicle had already proposed that it is best for people to directly vote the framers of the Constitution through an election of Con-Con delegates simultaneous to the May polls. We don't know what time bomb could possibly be ticking now that the Charter Change proponents cannot wait a little longer. Do the proposal agitators think that in one congressional district, there is only one man God blessed with a genius that he has to be the present lawmaker and constitution amender all-in-one like Mr. Congressman?

That's an insult to the 80 million thinking Filipinos.

The Supreme Court, as written by ponente Justice Antonio Carpio had crushed the People's Initiative as a deception and fraud against the people for many reasons. The 8-7 decision, after all, is not that close a margin as we understand five of the seven dissenters really wanted the case remanded back to the Comelec. So strictly speaking, only two of the fifteen Justices categorically supported the Initiative - for A reason one can only surmise why.

The bloodbath after the Wednesday Ruling last week saw a visibly tired and disappointed Speaker Jose de Venecia who salivates for the Prime Ministership (as we do for cold water after a 30-minute jog) hemming and hewing that "we won't have the same chance for Charter Change in the next ten years." Sunshine Joe must keep his slip from showing because ten years could be viewed as outside of his productive political lifetime and soil further his credibility.

JDV cries it was a "trial of facts" but which it should be because factual technicalities are part of the - sed lex dura lex - concept. In America, the Court ordered a criminal released from his bed where he was chained because the police arrested him there without a warrant. That is the law - one cannot invoke it only when it suits one's own personal agenda.

But the most idiotic comments would come from the Society of Poor, Hard Losers who cannot take the fact that the country will run even without their say-so. Their absurd argumentum ad hominem made even us (poor) non-lawyers roll on our belly with laughter.

One comes from a Department of Justice leader who claims it was "The Firm" gang of Carpio, Vaillara, Cruz who engineered the legal coup (insulting the integrity of the seven other concurring justices) against the initiative as their infantile revenge for not getting its candidate from being appointed today's Ombudsman.

An obscure Congressman from an island rose from anonymity to infamy by declaring that Chief Justice Art Panganiban just wanted to grandstand because he wanted to become senator of the republic like the late Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan of Cebu. Well, Panganiban could probably win the senate polls in 2007 because the 6.3 million signatories who now know they were deceived and the remaining 33 million voters who now know Art better, will certainly vote for him.

Now, we may elect to the senate in 2007 the only Chief Justice who came from the ranks of the poor - so poor that he had to take his law at the nearby Far Eastern University because his father could not afford the bus fare from Sampaloc to UP Diliman where Art was a confirmed scholar. Now, how's that for poetic justice?

The third idiocy comes from the Sigaw ng Langaw (as Antonio Abaya calls them) who, suffering from hoarse throat gloating over their loss, wants Justice Carpio to resign (ano sila sinusuwerte?) or be ousted (only the President can appoint justices in the country). They also vowed massive demonstrations against Carpio when so far what it has demonstrated was a "legal harebrained" People's Initiative Proposal - a term coined by the President's own former legal adviser and now head of the Department of National Defense, Avelino "Nonong" Cruz.

By November 8, the Plan B of Sunshine Joe called the Constituent Assembly or the Con-Ass (how apt) will gain ram the Charter Change issue on the mere basis of three-fourths vote or 195 from the Lower House and two from the Senate voting as one. Any high school kid who did not sleep in Social Studies or Current Events knows that a bicameral system like ours (which is precisely being asked to be amended) have two houses voting independently. The Senate's separate identity can best be exemplified by its exclusive power to approve treaties as the Visiting Forces Agreement.

By what Halloween's brew did the proponents drink to be so poisoned in judgment that having a joint vote in a bicameral legislature is not constitutionally infirm?

But what is more tragically bothersome are comments from the Initiative proponents indirectly defacing the Supreme Court as mere dummies, subject to the dictates of their appointing benefactors. Presidential spokesman Mike Defensor (who because of his surname "defends" even the most indefensible of all positions) said that GMA was "disappointed and perplexed" that her own Justice-Appointees were the "harshest critics" of the Initiative.

Sunshine Joe reaffirms this warped administration concept by saying that by December 7 when the villain Chief Justice goes to pasture, a friendly new honcho appointed by the Palace by the River will tilt the balance in favor of the motion for reconsideration.

Where is their respect for the independence of the three branches of government and their respect for the rule of law?

We had given the present Supreme Court the benefit of the doubt that it will remain true to the tenets of justice, democracy and liberty when faced with decisions of grave national importance. It had not fail us in affirming the "majesty of the law" by penning decisions 5-0 against this administration in three cases bordering on the right to dissent, the senate right to investigate the PCGG and now the Charter Change proposal.

In the 8-7 decision, the two telling points (to our minds) is that the 6.3 million signatories blindly affixed their names on an initiative that they were not totally made knowledgeable of - and absence of full information is not a sound basis for decision and that the distinctions of what can be revised or amended by People's Initiatives have many clear juridical precedence in three states in the United States.

Dissenting Justice R. Puno argued soundly that "we should listen to the voice of the people, above all, respect its sovereignty." But that is precisely why the Supreme Court decided that decision of a people misled by Pied Pipers with incomplete information must be stopped before it inflicts additional injury (to injury) on themselves and the Filipino people.

That, to us, is the exercise of the "real majesty of the law."