The State as Leviathan and the People’s Exodus in GR 206486 Leonen
Justice Leonen’s separate opinion in GR 206486, which nullified the jeepney modernization program’s implementation for lack of proper consultation, can be read as a modern political allegory with deep biblical and literary resonance. The government’s mandate, though aimed at progress, is framed as a top-down decree reminiscent of an absolutist sovereign-a Hobbesian “Leviathan”-imposing its will without covenant with the people. The jeepney drivers and operators, meanwhile, embody the collective struggle of the common folk, their livelihood and traditional “chariots” threatened by a faceless regulatory Pharaoh demanding a sudden and costly exodus into an unknown technological promised land. The legal conflict mirrors the prophetic tension between the law of the state and the justice due to the community.
The narrative powerfully evokes the Biblical Exodus, but with a critical twist. The government casts itself as the agent of modernization, leading the transport sector out of the “bondage” of old, polluting vehicles. However, Leonen’s emphasis on the lack of participatory dialogue casts the state in a different light-as a ruler who failed to listen, thereby risking the creation of a new bondage: crippling debt and disenfranchisement for drivers. The jeepney, a cultural icon of Filipino ingenuity and resilience, becomes the symbolic “golden calf” of this story-not an idol to be destroyed, but a cherished artifact of communal survival that the ruling power seeks to replace without honoring its significance.
Ultimately, Leonen’s opinion champions a literary theme of the “little man” versus the impersonal machinery of progress. It is a Sisyphian struggle where drivers perpetually push the boulder of compliance up a hill of shifting regulations. By insisting on genuine consultation, the opinion advocates for a different mythos: one of social contract and democratic dialogue. It argues that true modernization cannot be a tragic epic where the people are mere casualties of the plot, but must be a collaboratively written story, where the drivers-the modern-day heroes of the streets-are co-authors of their own destiny.
SOURCE: GR 206486 Leonen
