Carpio Diem: Seize The Call

By Herman M. Lagon

Sometimes, the sharpest truths do not come from the streets or the news. They come from voices like that of retired Justice Antonio T. Carpio—quiet, steady, and deeply rooted in principle. His recent post, “The Blind Leading the Lost,” cuts deeper than usual. This was not the filtered caution of a retired magistrate. It was a direct hit—firm, raw, and fed up. And rightly so.

He did not mince words. Treason. Betrayal. Words we usually hear in courtrooms or history books, not on Facebook timelines. But when lawmakers chopped billions from the education budget and left PhilHealth with zero funding, what else do you call it? Ask a public school teacher in Antique who photocopies modules out of her own pay, or a tricycle driver in Iloilo whose wife cannot afford dialysis. They do not need a legal opinion to know they have been abandoned.

The numbers back them up. Nine out of ten Filipino ten-year-olds cannot understand a basic text, says the World Bank. In the 2023 TIMSS, we placed dead last in math. These are not just statistics. These are real kids, crammed into overcrowded classrooms with broken chairs and fewer chances.

While schools are left to scramble, P26 billion goes to AKAP—a supposed ayuda program that Carpio calls out for what it likely is: campaign ammo wrapped in charity. Local officials know the drill. Aid often arrives not when it is most needed, but when ballots are near.

Then there’s PhilHealth. Carpio calls its defunding not just careless, but cruel. For communities with no resident doctors, PhilHealth is the one thread keeping them tied to life-saving care. Take that away, and you are not just delaying treatment. You are handing people their death sentence in advance.

But Carpio does not just go after officials. He calls out our silence too. The way we scroll past, joke about it, or say “ganyan talaga.” He warns us: apathy is not neutral. It is fuel for this kind of decay.

Even the judiciary—the branch he once served—gets a firm prod. He questions its unwillingness to act. Coming from Carpio, who turned down the Chief Justice post twice out of principle, this is not bitterness. It is grief for what the Court could still be.

And his frustration is not happening in a vacuum. The Vice President faces an impeachment case. POGOs linked to scams and trafficking continue to operate under sketchy licenses. Institutions are wobbling. And the trust that should hold them up is running dry.

Yet Carpio does not call for chaos. He calls for clarity. For action rooted in conscience. He is not wagging a finger from a high chair. He is asking: have we done enough?

His record answers that for him. He refused midnight appointments. He stood against the ouster of a fellow justice. He helped lead our case against China in the West Philippine Sea. And all without ever asking for applause.

It is the same quiet courage our public school teachers carry every day. They show up, teach hungry kids, and somehow still smile. They do not call it activism. But it is. They resist every time they choose to care when the system clearly does not.

Carpio’s post is not just a rant. It is a mirror. One that asks: what kind of nation are we allowing to form under our silence? What future are we letting slip away?

Change does not need to be grand. Sometimes, it is a parent questioning a barangay captain. A student asking why their class has no math book. A teacher refusing to inflate grades just to meet quotas. These things matter. They pile up. They shift the ground.

Carpio never became Chief Justice. He could have been one of the best ones. But maybe that was not the point. He chose integrity over title, truth over convenience. And in doing so, left behind something more lasting: a voice we can trust when things feel too broken to fix.

His post was not just a warning. It was a dare. To care. To act. To stop pretending we do not see what is right in front of us.

Because the real betrayal is not only in what they take. It is in what we let them take—without a word.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.