LET us be clear: the bad telenovela we witnessed at the NAIA terminal was not about a pitiful woman cruelly thwarted from seeking medical help for an illness that ostensibly can not be adequately attended to by local expertise. It was a rather tasteless but well-orchestrated attempt by a wily former president accused of heinous crimes to escape the arm of the law by jumping through a window opened by a TRO issued by a complicit court.

The facts speak for themselves. Five international flights had been booked even before the TRO had been issued and served to concerned authorities, an indication that the Arroyos knew beforehand the impending decision of the court. The vote for the TRO showed its color: the eight justices who overwhelmingly voted for it were all appointees by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The P2-million cash bond was ready at hand only three hours after the TRO’s issuance.

In a crass effort to twist the story, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima is now being depicted as hard-hearted, and subject to charges of contempt of court. Arroyo allies in Congress are making threatening noises about impeaching the President. We decry this brazen attempt to obfuscate and blur the line between the rightful accuser and the justly accused.

Clearly, the formal domain of the justice system is once again being overrun by informal pressures driven by those powerful enough to slow down the wheels of justice and grind it to a halt and thereby evade accountability. We call on our people to rise and put a stop to this trampling of our right to hold those in power accountable.

Empathy is one of our good traits as a people; but we should not allow ourselves to be misled by sly appeals to awa based on an overweening sense of entitlement disguised as right to life.

We call on members of the Philippine Medical Association to stand up and offer their expert opinions and decisively bring them to bear on the questionable claim that the condition of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is indeed empirically life-threatening.

We wish to remind the members of the Supreme Court that its authority as an institution does not exist merely by fiat. It operates within a social space where its credibility can be seriously impaired by perceptions of vulnerability to political influence and even complicity in subverting the substance of the law by habitually ruling based on the mere minutiae or letter of the law.

The government has been given power to wield the sword “to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.” (1 Peter 2:14) We support the Justice secretary’s unflinching courage to uphold the states duty to pursue the peoples case against Arroyo and see that justice is done. Spin doctors call this persecution. We call this prosecution. Let us not be fooled: this is not vindictiveness, but obedience to the mandate to be an “agent of wrath” against evildoers. (Romans 13:4)

For so long, this country has been what Gunnar Myrdal called a soft state, buckling under the pressures of the well-placed powerful and unable to abide by the hard disciplines of the rule of law. We enjoin the President and all who are in authority to stand fast in seeing to it that the full force of the law runs its due course in the case of the Arroyos.

By justice a king gives a country stability, but one who is greedy for bribes tears it down.” (Proverbs 29:4)