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MANILA, Philippines — The Supreme Court should not interfere in the Senate fiasco just yet, and allow the senators to resolve the leadership issue by themselves lest the judiciary become tainted by the politics of the legislative and executive branches of the government, said a constitutional law expert.
According to University of the Philippines College of Law associate dean Paolo Tamase, the SC should only get itself entangled “when there is a ripe dispute.”
“It’s tempting to go immediately through the judicial route, since the Supreme Court can definitively interpret the constitutional provisions and rules involved,” he told the Inquirer on Sunday.
“But in past disputes like this, the Court has been careful to function as a safety valve only when all options have been exhausted, since premature intervention will risk being seen by the public as partisan—regardless of what lawyers or even the Court insists—and thus its legitimacy as a politically neutral body,” Tamase explained.
