Subscribe

RSS Feed (xml)

Powered By

Skin Design:
Free Blogger Skins

Powered by Blogger

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Will IPRA Law Continue To Shield IP's Rights?

By: Ivy Leomen B. Codilla
The Indigenous People's Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997 or R.A. 8371 endeavors to shelter the indigenous peoples in their time-immemorial rights over their ancestral domains. Its passage was hailed as one of the country's most important social legislations.
However, with the recent developments in the local mining scene, the IPRA's very existence has suddenly been thrown into limbo. Now, large scale mining companies are invading the domains of indigenous peoples as if the IPRA law were not there.

The legal basis for this renewed exploration and utilization of our country's mineral resources is the reversal by the Supreme Court of its earlier decision in the La Bugal B'laan Tribal Association, Inc. vs. Western Mining Corp. case in December 2004.
The controversial decision upheld the constitutionality of R.A. 7942, otherwise known as the Philippine Mining Act of 1995.This in effect threw open the country's doors to large-scale mining companies; and these companies now operate mostly in Indigenous Cultural Communities (ICCs).
The La Bugal case started in 1997 where B'laans from Colombio, Sultan Kudarat asked the courts to kick out the Western Mining Corp. from their land and to have the mining act declared unconstitutional.

The B'laan's said they were not surprised by the SC's about face on the issue for according to them, the case was doomed the moment the government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo made it a policy to encourage mining explorations in the country.
With the SC decision, the road is now clear for mining. And the IPRA law appears to have been swept away from that road too, along with the other barriers to mining. But not to worry, the government says, the rebirth of the Philippine Mining Industry would create 244,000 job opportunities plus the mining companies had promised hat they will practice sustainable mining and implement zero environmental damage.

In reality, however, what is happening is the intensified rape of our natural resources, disintegration of culture, and the violation of human rights-all the evils that the IPRA law supposed to protect the ICC's.

After surviving challenges to its constitutionality in the past, the IPRA law, like a tribal warrior from the olden days, at the time he is called upon to protect his people from spears and arrows raining down on them, suddenly realizes that he has lost his shield.

(This article was published by Nexus – Official Publication of MSU-College of Law Iligan Extension in 2007 issue)

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Writ of Amparo as it protects citizens in its constitutional liberty.

By: Ivy Leomen B. Codilla
The writ of amparo as defined by the man dubbed as Mr. Amparo, Justice Azcuna, since he was the first justice who introduced the writ of amparo in the Philippine bar exams in 1991;"A special constitutional writ to protect or enforce a constitutional right ( other than a physical liberty which is already covered by the writ of habeas corpus), in consonance with the power of the Supreme Court to adopt rules to protect or enforce constitutional rights".
Aside from the beneficial use and advantage of the writ of amparo, there are two important doctrines as established by the Supreme Court to cater and preserve our civil liberties. The first is the "Overbreath Doctrine, which states that "a governmental purpose may not be achieved by means which sweep unnecessarily broadly and thereby invade the area of protected freedoms", it can be stated otherwise, that an overbreadth doctrine permits a party to challenge the validity of a statute even though, as applied to him, it is not unconstitutional, but it might be applied to others not before the Court whose activities are constitutionally protected (Nachura,2006;p23).
This is a new improved and better rights accorded to filipinos because what right was available before the introduction of this so called facial challenge, that in the long line of cases by the Supreme Court, a party can question the validity of a law or statute if this is unconstitutional with regard to him only and other than that he cannot question the law or the statute..
The second is the Void-for-Vagueness Doctrine, which renders a law invalid "if men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and difffer as to its application". Hence, the law is considered uncertain if it is not understandable to common people and the law is pregnable with abuses in its execution and this law violates the due process of law.

Friday, October 10, 2008

WOMYN


By: Violeta M. Gloria

It is through her, through what is in her of the best and the worst that man, as a young apprentice, learns of felicity and suffering, of vice virtue, lust, renunciation, devotion and tyranny-that as an apprentice he learns to know himself. Womyn is sport and adventure, but also a test. She is the triumph of victory and the more bitter triumph of frustration survived; she is the vertigo of the ruin, the fascination of damnation of death.


There is a whole world of significance which exists only through womyn. Womyn is the substance of men's acts and sentiments, the incarnation of all the values that call out thier free activity. It is understandable that, were he condemned to the most cruel disappointments, man would not be willing to relinquish a dream within which all his dreams are enfolded.


This then is the reason why womyn has a double and deceptive visage: She is all that man's desire and all that he does not attain. She is that good mediatrix between propitious Nature and man; and she is the temptation of unconquered Nature counter to all goodness. She incarnates all moral values, from good to evil and their opposites. Sheb is the substance of action and whatever is an obstacle to it. She is man's grasp of the world and his frustration: as such she is the source and origin of all man's reflection on his existence and of whatever expression he is able to give to it. And yet she works to divert him from himself, to make him sink down in silence.


She is servant and companion, but he expects her to confirm him his sense of being. But she opposes him with her mockery and laughter. He projects upon her what he desires and what he fears, what he loves and what he hates. And if it is so difficult to say anything specific about her, that is because she is All. She is All, that is on the plane of the inessential; she is all the Other. And, as the other, she is other than herself, other than what is expected of her. Being all, she is everlasting deception, the very deception of that existence which is never successfully attained nor fully reconciled with the totality of existent.




Simonede Beauvoir
Excerpt from THE SECOND SEX
Book review by Violeta Gloria