What greater insult can be hurled against justice than to have an Ombudsman—the supposed sentinel of integrity—become the very mouthpiece of lies? The statement of Atty. Nicholas Kaufman, lead counsel of former President Rodrigo Duterte, exposing that the supposed ICC warrant against Senator Bato Dela Rosa was nothing more than a “figment of Ombudsman Remulla’s fertile imagination,” should have shaken this nation to its core. Yet here we are, numb again to another proof that our government has lost both decency and direction.
How absurd that the President himself appointed such a man to the highest legal office of accountability—a man who now stands accused of spreading falsehood rather than defending truth! This is no accident. It is a reflection of a system poisoned from the top, where loyalty trumps legality, and where bending the law is worn like a badge of power. Remember, this is the same official who shamelessly agreed with a noisy senator’s remark that “sometimes we have to bend the law.”
Bend the law? What a disgraceful admission from those sworn to defend it! Such words are not mere folly—they are a betrayal of the Constitution, a mockery of the very oath they took as lawyers, and an unforgivable insult to the Filipino people who look to government for justice. How can the nation expect truth from leaders who treat the law like a piece of rubber—stretched, twisted, and manipulated to suit their agenda?
What we are witnessing is not governance but the slow death of morality in public office. Our institutions have been reduced to playgrounds of the powerful—where the ignorant sit in judgment, the corrupt pose as reformers, and the incompetent pretend to be wise.
This is not merely political theater—it is the tragic unraveling of our democracy. When the Ombudsman himself becomes a purveyor of deceit, when the President tolerates the distortion of the law, and when senators applaud lawlessness as strategy, then we are no longer a republic of laws but a circus of hypocrites.
We, the people, must not stay silent. For every time we tolerate mediocrity and dishonor in high office, we become accomplices to our own destruction. The Constitution was not written to be “bent”; it was written to be obeyed. And those who cannot live by it have no business holding power over this nation.
It is time to wake from our collective slumber. The decay of justice begins not in the courtroom, but in the silence of a people who no longer demand integrity. Let this moment open our eyes to the truth—that change will never come from leaders who twist the law, but from citizens who dare to defend it. The call of the hour is clear: reclaim the honor of this Republic, restore the dignity of the law, and remind those in power that the Filipino spirit may be patient—but it will never be blind.
“la causa de la causa es la causa del mal causado”.
