THE Supreme Court on Tuesday issued a status quo ante (SQA) order temporarily stopping the government from proceeding with the burial of strongman Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani as President Rodrigo Duterte had ordered.
In an en banc session, the Court granted the immediate relief sought by the six petitions against the burial and issued a 20-day SQA order stopping the Defense Department and the Armed Forces from burying the Marcos remains at the hero’s cemetery.
Court spokesman Theodore Te said the order takes effect immediately and will last until Sept. 12.
The order was directed to Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and AFP chief-of-staff Gen. Ricardo Visaya.
The tribunal also agreed to reset the oral arguments on the case from Aug. 24 to Aug. 31.
In considering the case, the Court consolidated all six petitions filed by groups of Martial Law victims led by former Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Satur Ocampo, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman and former Commission on Human Rights chairman Etta Rosales; a group led by former senator Heherson Alvarez; a group of University of the Philippines students; and former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao human rights chairman Algamar Latiph.
The petitioners argued that the planned burial of the late dictator is “illegal and contrary to law, public policy, morals and justice.”
Allowing the burial of the former leader at the heroes’ cemetery, they said, would violate Republic Act No. 289 (law regulating the Libingan ng mga Bayani) and R.A. 10368 or the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act.
They said the burial would also violate constitutional provision on state policies.
The DND and AFP as well as the Marcos family already answered the petitions last Tuesday and asked the high court to dismiss the petitions.
National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, one of the petitioners, welcomed the Court’s status quo ante order.
“It is our fervent hope that this order will soon be made permanent, and that it will give way to demystifying those bizarre myths of the plunderer and dictator and laying to rest his mortal remains where it confounds no one but his family,” the group said in a statement. With John Paolo Bencito
