‘The Supreme Court has spoken on this highly fractious issue, and we hope that the contending parties will respect the verdict and put a closure on the acrimonious debate.’
THE Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), passed by Congress and signed into law by President Rodrigo Duterte on July 3, 2020, is easily the most contentious case handled by the Supreme Court in the past few years.
Various groups including the political opposition, lawyers, professionals, businessmen, leftists, human rights advocates, farmers, workers, clergy and organizations aligned with the Communist Party of the Philippines and Muslim radicals have filed a total of 37 petitions in the High Tribunal against this law. These petitions are all questioning the constitutionality of this controversial legislation, which carefully passed the House of Representatives and the Senate after much discussion, debates and public hearings.
Proponents of this law (Republic Act 11479) such as Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former chief of the Philippine National Police, cited the need to strengthen the government’s fight against terrorists especially in the aftermath of the Marawi siege and the continuing, although weakening, communist insurgency. Lacson pointed out that police and military troopers have found it hard to do their peace-and-order mandate in the face of the inadequacy of the existing security laws. Oftentimes, the criminals seize the initiative, and using our laws, even manage to hale our police and soldiers to court with harassment cases.
The ATA involves many fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, including the freedoms of speech and expression and the press, assembly and association, due process of law, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, right to privacy, travel, bail and presumption of innocence. This is why the SC had to carefully deliberate on the facts and issues of the ATA case.
It bodes well for the nation, especially now that we are in the thick of the election season, that the High Tribunal has released its verdict on the Anti-Terrorism Act. The law was declared “not unconstitutional,” except for two provisions.
The qualifier to the proviso in Section 4, i.e., “… which are not intended to cause death or serious physical harm to a person, to endanger a person’s life, or to create a serious risk to public safety” was declared as unconstitutional for being broad and violative of freedom of expression.
The second method for designation in Section 25 paragraph 2, i.e., “Request for designation by other jurisdictions or supranational jurisdictions may be adopted by the ATC (Anti-Terrorism Council) after determination that the proposed designee meets the criteria for designation of UNSCR (United Nations Security Council Resolution) No. 1373” is also declared unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court has spoken on this highly fractious issue, and we hope that the contending parties will respect the verdict and put a closure on the acrimonious debate.
