Wednesday, September 12, 2007

An Anti-climactic Verdict

The verdict for former president Joseph Estrada is in: he was found guilty of plunder.

No surprise, I think, for most people. He was already found guilty by the Supreme Court, so he was expected to get the same verdict from the Sandiganbayan.

I am not going to purport that I know everything about the case or the law, but I do want to put it on record (like my opinion matters, hehehe) that I found the reading of the verdict AHEAD of the legal explanations leading to the verdict very IRRESPONSIBLE of the Sandiganbayan.

In my opinion, by announcing the verdict in the very beginning, the court pretty much allowed everyone to draw their own conclusions as to how the court arrived at the verdict. And that is definitely a scary thing, when every Juan, Jose and Pedro will announce to the entire world his "expert" analysis. *shudder* But I can't say I blame them. Who would want to sit through a supposed 1,000-page paper exhorting the legal explanations for the verdict.

But still. I think it would have been prudent of the court to at least give a FEW legalities on how they arrived at their verdict. At least, most reports out there will have some semblance of order. The TRUE lawyers who know their profession, will say that they have no comment UNTIL they have read the entire report. These lawyers have my utmost respect.

But alas, in the typical Filipino way, everything was hurried, everything was half-done, without thought as to the ramifications such actions may have on the general public. Oh well. What is, is, I guess.

I'm going to read the Opinions pages on the broadsheets tomorrow for sure.

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The kids had no class today, as the teachers were thankfully alert enough to anticipate possible chaos in the vicinity (there were none, thank goodness!).

Raine, Bang and I went to Theater Mall in Greenhills to finally watch Nancy Drew. Raine has been wanting to see this movie for the longest time. Good thing it was still showing in this particular theater.

As it turned out, we were the ONLY ones watching the movie. It was pretty fun to have an entire theater to yourself, hehehe.

All in all, it was an okay movie. Nothing fantastic, but it was gripping enough in some parts. Having read the entire Nancy Drew series, I expected Warner Bros to give me an 18-year old Nancy, blonde, with fly away hair above the shoulder. Instead, we got a very young Nancy, starring Emma Roberts of Unfabulous fame.

Again, the movie was okay, and we spent an enjoyable one and a half hours laughing at Raine because she started squealing that she was scared in some parts of the film. Scared. She who non-stop asked if we could finally see the movie! Hehehe.

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