THE DECISION THAT ONLY TINDIG PILIPINAS APPLAUDED

Makati RTC Judge Andres Soriano’s findings of facts and conclusion of law particularly that says: Trillanes can no longer be rearrested and his case reopened because the dismissal of his case in 2011 had become final and executory, is for me too flimsy, like a makeshift structure on shifting sands to sustain in the sophisticated altar of Justice.

Judge Soriano buttressed his declaration with the principle of immutability of the decision. As it turned out, his thesis was not as invulnerable as he posited. Indeed, it was riddled with invalidating imperfections, defies logic or reason, and only TINDIG PILIPINAS described Judge Andres Soriano's decision as "Solomonic" because they are of the same feathers that flock together. Their Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only because of its scarcity.

The application of the principle of immutability by Judge Soriano is misplaced. The reading of the subject principle should be meaningfully construed in unanimity with the ratio decidendi thereof to grasp the true intent and meaning of the principle. In the case of MENDOZA VS. FIL-HOMES REALTY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION, G.R. No. 194653, February 8, 2012, the Supreme Court ruled, Under the doctrine of finality of judgment, a decision that has acquired finality becomes immutable and unalterable.

Corollarily, Judge Soriano should have known better that he should not have allowed himself to be straitjacketed by the literal meaning of the phrase. No amount of semantical juggleries could dim this fact that immutability of a judgment does not apply in the case of Trillanes. In order for the subject principle to apply, the indispensable requirement is that the decision must be valid and enforceable. Once it is so, no amount of correction, alteration, modification or amendment can be done anymore by the court which rendered it, not even the Supreme Court.

However, the fact that Judge Soriano has indeed sustained the validity of Proc 572 as valid and binding, the dismissal of the case against Trillanes by the court in 2011 which was premised on the Amnesty granted by former Pres. Pnoy which Proc. 572 have declared as void from the very beginning, therefore, the said dismissal had no force and effect and it was as if there was no dismissal at all that had ever transpired.

Judge Soriano had been wearing the fraudulent mask of assuming a righteous stance, while he desperately hid his filthy hands with fingers crossed, hoping against hope that his duplicity would never see the light of day. Anyhow, the arguments in his decision and the fractured syntax by which they are tendered should really have no place in a judicial record. They cannot persuade; they do but irritate.