MANILA, Philippines -- I do not now recall what the title of the movie was or what it was about. What I recall is that there was a scene there where the hero lands in jail in provincial France after being put there by the husband of the woman he was seeing. The hero, a visiting American, pleads his case before the warden. Surely, he says, it is no crime. Surely, he says, the warden can understand these things, after all he is French. The warden listens judiciously and then replies (words to this effect):
“Ah, monsieur, to see a married woman, that is French. To be caught, that is American. You deserve jail.”
I remembered this when I read that Noli Eala has been disbarred from being a lawyer by the Supreme Court. The reason for it being that he has been seeing a married woman and has in fact had a child by her. The complaint was filed by the woman’s husband, who submitted various proofs of it. The Supreme Court was stentorian in its condemnation:
“In carrying on this extramarital affair with the woman prior to the declaration that her marriage with complainant was null and void, and despite respondent himself being married, he showed disrespect for an institution held sacred by the law. And he betrayed his unfitness to be a lawyer.”
When I read this, the first thing I wondered about was what constituted fitness to be a lawyer. Was it a capacity to be faithful to one’s spouse or the talent to not get caught? Was it the capacity to be as irreproachable as Caesar’s wife or the talent to make Caesar’s wife look irreproachable while doing things with her behind Caesar’s back? If the second, then I can buy the Supreme Court’s reproach. If the first, well, if the Court is serious about it, then I fear we may not have very many compañeros left to share their company, not excluding the justices of the Supreme Court themselves.
One could almost always hear the Court observing judiciously underneath these words: “To see a married woman, that is being a compañero. To get caught, that is being a karpentero.”
In movies, farces like this produce only comic effects. In real life, farces like this produce tragic ones. Eala himself argues that he did not carry out his relationship with the woman “in scandalous circumstances,” the sine qua non of disbarment, his intentions, even if they went against the grain of orthodoxy, being honorable. Proof of it was that he readily acknowledged being the father of the woman’s child and would like nothing better than to live with her if the laws of God and man, or at least of Juan de la Cruz and his Catholic God, did not forbid it. In movies, that could very well be a love story.
I do not know Noli from Fili, I’ve never met him. I only know that he has the thankless job of trying to sell an increasingly un-sellable product in the form of Philippine basketball, a passion that has doomed this country to sports limbo. But I do know injustice—or hypocrisy—when I see one.
At the very least, I don’t know what the Supreme Court’s ruling exactly upholds. It suggests of course that it is the institution of marriage by frowning on Eala’s apparent betrayal of it. But I’ve always thought marriage was premised on one very fundamental element, which is mutual consent, if not indeed passion, on free choice, if not indeed willing surrender. If a marriage is bad, I don’t know why the law, in all its majesty, must exert itself to enforce it. Does this ruling really uphold a very Christian view of unions or a very macho view of a man’s proprietary claim to his wife, no more and no less than his proprietary claim to his car, which at the extreme gives him leave to commit a crime of passion?
But I leave that for another day. More to the point, Eala’s crime, if it is so, is a private one: His affront is to another person, not to the public. I do not know why the Supreme Court should deem the institutions of law and marriage so infirm they can be rocked to their roots by the shudders of love, however tumultuous and illicit. This country does not lack for lawyers whose crimes are patently public ones: The injury, quite apart from insult, they inflict is to the citizenry, not to another person. I do not know that the institutions of law and democracy are so stout they can withstand the kind of pummeling they’ve gotten lately from absolute malefactors.
Virgilio Garcillano and Lintang Bedol are lawyers. They are proud of the fact and advertise it at every turn. Why the Supreme Court has not yet defrocked them before the bar, well, that can only be explained by the kinds of bars the justices frequent. Bedol, in what we can only attribute to divine intervention, supplied the perfect image for what he and Garci are—or indeed what Benjamin Abalos and his entire crew in the Comelec are—by finally heeding Abalos’s summons wearing an eye patch. Presumably he was having an eye infection treated—alas, to no avail. But there and then, heaven’s message was clear: Lady Justice wore a blindfold to show that the law saw no race, no creed, no color. Gentleman Bedol wore an eye patch to suggest that the Comelec scorned no coin, no bribe, no blandishment.
Garci went on to run as congressman of Bukidnon, though fortunately the voters there wore neither blindfold nor eye patch and resolved not to add “Honorable” to “Hello.” And Bedol continues to breathe the same air we do. But Noli Eala, who has merely defied unnatural obstacles to promote his affections—and whose real crime is defying natural obstacles to promote a sport premised on height—may no longer apply himself to things in the name of the law.
Feel free to take the lesson you feel more appropriate: Don’t be unfaithful to your spouse, only to the voters. Or, two, don’t be caught being unfaithful to your spouse, only to the voters
What I think?
All the rut starts in law school somehow....
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