(music credits: as stated in the embedded pod and vid)
It seems three months late though, still, the Supreme Court is expected any Tuesday now of this month to issue a ruling on the issue of whether or not the NTC can summarily shut down without any hearing, and without the minimum requirements of due process, a news media organization that is the ABS-CBN network, during the pendency of its franchise application in Congress (on a petition for certiorari and prohibition filed by ABS-CBN a week after it was summarily shut down on May 5, 2020).
The inaction of the Supreme Court until it was too late can be seen by some as perhaps a testament to its seeming indifference, at best: an inaction that allowed events to overtake the legal issues presented before it — because now the franchise had been denied by 70 committee members of Congress without any substantial showing (substantial evidence) of violations of laws as basis for “killing” the franchise (the phrase “kill the franchise” being a quote from one of the committee leaders).
In other words, the issue presented before it (the grave abuse of authority of the NTC in shutting down a news organization without due process while the franchise application is pending) had become moot and academic because the franchise had been “killed” by 70 committee members …
… unless the Supreme Court seriously takes up its judicial function and takes judicial notice of the televised public congressional hearings, and traverse the legal issues presented by the “killing” of the franchise being based not on substantial evidence of violation of laws but on the way that the news network had in the past exercised its editorial judgment — perceived by some congressmen as “biased”.
Based on its inaction for months that show its indifference, it may continue taking this road of indifference to the violation of the fundamental rights of the people, and dismiss the case for mootness without a substantive discussion of the issues raised, even for academic purposes.
Or the members of the Supreme Court can wake up one sunny Tuesday morning and decide: “Why don’t we traverse the constitutional issues once and for all and discuss whether or not Congress can deny a franchise based on no standard of evidence at all?”
Would that they could care for the time given to them when they could still make a difference.
