Malacanang's moderate reaction to Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno’s launching of his Moral Force Movement the other day underlines the vacillating relationships between the two branches of government.

Puno who has been espousing reforms in the various areas of national set-up and circumstances was definite in his critical appraisal of the prevailing conditions.

And he is proposing measures to curb and change what the Moral Force Movement calls the “country’s moral decay.”

What moral decay?

Malacañang is, of course, aware of the chief justice’s advocacy group, but according to Palace spokesmen, “We are not even thinking of the actions or movements of the judiciary because they are very independent,” adding that the administration was “just focused on the actions and movements” of the executive department.

The same source said Puno has been advocating moral renewal “a long time ago,” so there’s noting new about his present moves.

But the hope is that they are not shrugging off the chief magistrate’s clarion call.

In launching the MFM, Chief Justice Puno defined it as “social movements not political movements, that can serve as the best engines to change our society, now petrified by politics where power is put above principles, a society ran to the ground by an economy infested by greed.”

But he was careful not to directly blame the government, calling instead on the people to start moral transformation by themselves as it is, and as it should be, everybody’s concern.

“The MFM recognizes the need to change and the change that counts is the change of ourselves,” Puno pointed out, explaining that it must be a change based on the discernment that we have oftentimes faulted others for our own undoing.

He sounds unforgiving to those who blame others for their own failures to fight for their moral virtues and principles.

He could have named specific personages – those who are notoriously known for their utter lack of scruples, but resisted: Officials in the three branches of government now and in past administrations who enjoyed their high positions which they abused and looted with straight faces.

Of course, we have them in the media almost everyday but they vanish from the front pages as new wrongdoings are uncovered. The wrongdoings, it must be stressed, do not happen only in government but in private offices and businesses as well.

The root of the problem, according to Chief Justice Puno is moral in nature and the need to cure it is to develop transformational leaders “to lead in the revival of moral virtues and ethical principles.”

Puno, it must be emphasized, has been spearheading the drive against graft and corruption in government even as he continues to seek the alleviation of poverty among the people.

“Indeed, weaving a moral fabric that clothes our country with dignity is a mammoth and enduring task,” he concedes, but contends that “with the master weaver threading the strands of every Filipino’s effort, we can hope in a Philippines that stands tall in the community of nations as a country where the truth, the good, and the right prevail.”

Still and all, what the country needs – and badly – are leaders with moral rectitude and nobility of character and purpose to give them moral courage.

“Moral courage in leadership means doing what is right and accepting its consequence, many times at the cost of convenience, popularity, and even friends,” the chief justice