As I watched the group of Gov. Johnny Pimentel, Vice-Governor Manuel Alameda and Tandag Mayor Alexander Pimentel make their obligatory rounds of the fair booths and stalls, I was suddenly reminded of a news item I had read online several days before wherein the League of Cities of the Philippines (LCP) was reported to be considering a plan to mount another challenge to the controversial decision made by the Supreme Court in February of last year which declared constitutional the reclassification in 2007 of 16 municipalities (Tandag included) as new cities. I immediately wondered how Surigao del Sur provincial officials and the top honchos at the Tandag city hall are dealing with this development.
It is undeniable that many all over the country who have been trying to understand the long, tangled and convoluted history of this particular legal controversy have become more than a bit fed up (disgusted would be the more appropriate emotion) with the way the Supreme Court while still under the leadership of the unlamented Renato C. Corona had been flip-flopping in deciding the matter. By reversing itself several times and favoring one party then the other then back again in a series of judicial decisions which if taken together merely served to demonstrate the adroitness with which the law can be easily interpreted (or misinterpreted) to favor one point of view then, just as easily, a diametrically opposing argument, the highest court of the land lost a lot of its credibility with the people and, upon hindsight, helped bring about the sequence of events that made possible the Corona impeachment trial and its aftermath.
