Editorial: Time to move forward

THE controversy surrounding the issue on whether PGMA can appoint the next chief justice is now over with the Supreme Court putting the matter to rest after voting 9-1-2-3 saying the President can name Chief Justice Renato Puno’s successor upon his retirement on May 17. This simply means the Supreme Court has ruled on the issue. This also means that we should accept the high court’s decision and now move on as a nation.

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This country has been so severely divided on many critical issues including this one that’s why the SC’s final ruling comes like a whiff of fresh air.

Meanwhile, people are speculating what Liberal Party standard bearer Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III’s reaction will be considering that he has vowed not to recognize the chief justice appointed by President Arroyo if ever he is elected president in May. Whether he will eat his words in the event he gets elected, remains to be seen. In the meantime, the saying: “Making promises one does not intend to keep is worse than breaking vows you thought you could keep,” is indeed worth remembering at this point in time.

Incidentally, the controversy over the 4,915-hectare Hacienda Luisita of the Cojuangcos is fast shaping up to become Aquino’s Achilles’ heel. This as Noynoy promised some 10,000 farmers that if he becomes president his family would distribute the land to them by 2014.

Now comes his cousin Fernando Cojuangco, chief operating officer of Azucarera de Tarlac and Jose Cojuangco & sons, rejecting Noynoy’s promise to the farmers who have all these years been deprived of their lands under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (Carp), which was violated by his late mother when she opted instead to skirt the law under a much-criticized stock and profit sharing program.