What has the Duterte government done to ease fears that the anti-terror law will be abused?

This was the question of Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Lazaro-Javier to the government lawyers from the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) during Day 7 of the anti-terror law oral arguments on Tuesday, May 11.

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Grilled by the Supreme Court during Day 7 of the anti-terror law oral arguments on Tuesday, May 11, the government’s lawyer admitted that there was no definition in the anti-terror law for the “vague” standards of terror such as fear, intimidation, and extensive damage.

“As far as Philippine law, none that I know of [that defines atmosphere of fear],” said Assistant Solicitor General Raymund Rigodon in reply to the interpellation of Associate Justice Benjamin Caguioa on Tuesday.

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During the interpellation of Supreme Court Associate Justice Benjamin Caguioa, he grilled Assistant Solicitor General Raymund Rigodon if there’s any definition in the law that would clarify what the standard is for “fear,” “intimidation,” “extensive damage,” and other vague words that describe what a terror act is.

To all these questions, Rigodon kept saying there is no standard in the anti-terror law, in any other law, or in any other previous case.

Rigodon said to rely on construction, or on ordinary meaning.

“So let me ask you, how many people must be involved for you to say there is an atmosphere of fear?” Caguioa asked.

Rigodon could not answer, even when pressed to provide a size of a “segment of people” for there to be an atmosphere of fear.

In the end, Rigodon said, “I’m not aware of any jurisprudence.”

Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Lazaro-Javier’s interpellation on Day 7 livened up the oral arguments when she started off her questions by asking whether the government has done anything to allay the fears that the anti-terror law would be abused by law enforcement.

Assistant Solicitor General Raymund Rigodon cited Solicitor General Jose Calida, who said that the government is not the enemy, and President Rodrigo Duterte, who said that those who are not terrorists have nothing to fear.

“Is lip service enough?” Javier asked as she pressed Rigodon for a more direct answer.

Finding none, Javier cut Calida’s assistant and said: “The answer is not responsive to my question. And I have no time to debate you on this.”

Javier wanted to know if the government had done seminars so law enforcement would not make errors and abuses in implementing the law. Rigodon said he could not be sure if there had been any conducted but “I’m sure the anti-terror council will.”

Javier also zeroed in on one of the biggest contentions to the law – that it usurps judicial functions.

“Can the anti-terror council deny a law enforcer’s request to detain someone for 24 days on the ground that it was an invalid warrantless arrest?”

“Yes,” said Assistant Solicitor General Marissa dela Cruz-Galandines.

“But if the council does that, isn’t that an encroachment of judicial functions? Here, we have an administrative body doing judicial functions,” said Javier.

“We submit it’s a mere act of supervision and not an act of judicial function,” said Galandines.

Justice Ramon Paul Hernando did not ask questions to the government. After Javier, it’s Justice Benjamin Caguioa’s turn, followed by Justice Marvic Leonen, Senior Justice Estela Perlas-Bernabe, and Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo.

On Day 7 of the Supreme Court oral arguments on the anti-terror law, Associate Justice Rodil Zalameda went straight to scrutinizing the wording of Section 4 or the definition of terrorism, calling the clause on provocation “too vague.”

Under Section 4, several acts that cause harm or damage are considered terrorism if “the purpose of such act, by its nature and context, is to intimidate the general public or a segment thereof, create an atmosphere or spread a message of fear, to provoke or influence by intimidation the government or any international organization, or seriously destabilize or destroy the fundamental political, economic, or social structures of the country, or create a public emergency or seriously undermine public safety.”

“‘To provoke’ is too vague. It doesn’t say ‘to provoke government to do an act,’ it just says ‘to provoke,'” said Zalameda.

Assistant Solicitor General Raymund Rigodon said the phrase is followed anyway by “or influence by intimidation the government,” saying that not all terror groups have a list of concrete political demands.

Zalameda said the government should expound in its final position papers why there was no modifier for the word “provoke.”

If petitioners had to battle the often-used justification of national security, government lawyers were finally compelled to defend the anti-terror law’s biggest constitutional gaps, courtesy of the junior justices of the Supreme Court who took the first turns of interpellations on Tuesday, May 4.

Associate Justice Rosmari Carandang opened the government interpellation last week, by tradition as she is the member-in-charge, but during Day 6 on Tuesday, the Supreme Court reversed the sequence so the most junior began first.

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The government, through the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), breezed through a question on red-tagging by simply calling it “truth-tagging.”

“It is the submission of the government that what it does is truth-tagging and not red-tagging, your honor,” Assistant Solicitor General Marissa dela Cruz-Galandines said during Day 6 of the anti-terror law oral arguments on Tuesday, May 4.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Ricardo Rosario no longer asked any follow-up after that answer.

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