Is lugaw (porridge) essential?

It was a debate online sparked by a viral video of a barangay official in San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan, flagging a food delivery rider picking up lugaw past curfew.

But the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) had already said that essential industries, including food deliveries, must remain unhampered 24/7.

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque had to make the judgment: Yes, lugaw is essential.

It’s a quirky debate, but to its core, it poses a very important question: are our quarantine rules clear?

Evidently, not so much, that even Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra withdrew a one-year-old policy of using the criminal statute Republic Act 11332 to arrest violators without a warrant, but only after more than a hundred thousand Filipinos have already been jailed.

In this episode, we talk to former justice assistant secretary Geronimo Sy, who was chairman of the criminal code committee during his time in the Department of Justice (DOJ), about how to balance criminal laws and common sense governance in this pandemic.

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For past podcast episodes:

• Episode 1 Part 1: Supreme Court’s most controversial decisions
• Episode 1 Part 2: Department of Justice’s evolving definition of warrantless arrests
• Episode 2: The rule of law in the time of the coronavirus
• Episode 3: Pandemic and the great wall of free speech
• Episode 4: Will petition to disclose Duterte health work?
• Episode 5: Legal difficulties of a prisoner mass release
• Episode 6: Breaking down the ABS-CBN franchise legal and political issues
• Episode 7: ABS-CBN and the 3 tangled branches of government
• Episode 8: Are extraordinary writs still effective in the time of Duterte?
• Episode 9: Dissecting anti-terror bill and threats to freedoms
• Episode 10: The problems with the Cybercrime Law
• Episode 11: Can we trust the gov’t panel probing drug war deaths?
• Episode 12: Why press freedom is legally protected
• Episode 13: What is People’s Initiative and will it work for ABS-CBN?
• Episode 14: The new push for death penalty
• Episode 15: A State of terror
• Episode 16: GCTA’s thorn – Do bad men deserve good things?
• Episode 17: Policies beyond body count of Duterte’s drug war
• Episode 18: Can we really bring Xi Jinping to the ICC?
• Episode 19: Philippine courts and the death of baby River
• Episode 20: Deep dive into anti-terror law IRR
• Episode 21: Supreme Court and the SALN challenge
• Episode 22: Where PH stands in fight for climate justice
• Episode 23: How to legally fight red-tagging
• Episode 24: Hope for the Rule of Law with Dino de Leon
• Episode 25: Summary of anti-terror law petitions
• Episode 26: May it please the Court – the anti-terror law orals
• Episode 27: Investigating Duterte’s drug war using hard data
• Episode 28: Your Honors, they are killing lawyers
• Episode 29: Choosing who sits on the Bench

If you have tips and suggestions for episodes, email the host at lian.buan@rappler.com. – Rappler.com