(Eagle News)—The Alliance of Concerned Teachers has asked the Court of Appeals to reconsider its earlier decision not to stop the Philippine National Police’s alleged profiling of the group’s members.
In seeking for the appellate court’s reconsideration, ACT said its petition seeking for a halt order of the PNP’s supposed activities raised, after all, “issues involving gross violations of the petitoners’ fundamental constitutional rights” which include their right to association, right to assembly and to petition the government for redress of grievances, right to privacy, right to freedom of expression and right to labor.
It said the petitioners also “raised issues involving violations of their rights that are protected under the law on public sector unions, the Data Privacy Act and the Administrative Code, which “constitute fundamental and substantive rights imbued with public interest.”
“Petitioners submit that while procedural rules should not be belittled or disregarded, their strict and rigid application must be avoided if the same would result in technicalities that would tend, wittingly and unwittingly, to frustrate rather than promote substantial justice,” ACT said.
In any case, it said one of its lawyers, Atty. Minerva Lopez originally signed the petition with her current PTR number for 2019 and her lifetime IBP membership number, which should have “been considered substantial compliance” with the appellate court’s requirement.
The group added it was “unrealistic if not virtually impossible” for them to have obtained certified true copies of the PNP memoranda that supposedly ordered the profiling, because, among others, the police said the documents were not for public consumption.
The group added it did not violate the requirement for them to state the dates when they received the assailed memoranda.
The PNP has denied the allegations against it, saying no such profiling existed, and that intelligence-gathering was part of police work.