Opinion
MORE people are coming out because democracy is about to criticize the institutionaliza- assent and dissent! tion of extra-judicial killings in the context of President Ro*** drigo Duterte’s war on illegal The camp of Vice President drugs. Leni Robredo is trying all The Catholic Bishops’ Con- tricks in the book to delay the ference of the Philippines led resolution of the election prosome 20,000 Roman Catholics test of former Senator Bongin a protest rally. The war on bong Marcos against her. She drugs has left more than 7,000 has appealed the decision of people dead since Mr. Duterte the Presidential Electoral Triassumed office. bunal finding Marcos’ petition In the rally called “Walk valid in form and substance. for Life,” the Catholic leaders I am, myself, a lawyer. I called for non-violence. The know that when respondents promotion of violence, they appeals for reconsideration, it say, only encourages more vio- is just a ploy to delay the prolence. cess. The Duterte administraWe all know what the Libertion may dismiss this rally al Party and the “Yellowtards” as nothing more than an ex- tried to do during the counting pression of the sentiments of of votes. They tried to make a minority in social media. Roxas win but Duterte’s lead But we should not forget that was so overwhelming that the eight out of 10 task proved Filipinos are impossible. Roman CathoSince Marcos’ lics. margin over I am sure The probRobredo was lem though is President Duterte so much slimthat the Catho- knows what his mer, things lic Church no “happened” in longer has a mentor is talking that particular Jaime Cardirace. about. nal Sin, who never hesitat*** ed to do what I have earlier he thought refrained from was best for the country. We commenting on whether forshould not forget that the par- mer Justice Secretary and now ticipation of the Church led Senator Leila de Lima deserves to the downfall of two presi- what she has been getting from dencies—that of Presidents President Duterte and Justice Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II. I Estrada. am convinced that this is vindicAnd then there is former tiveness that the Liberal Party is President Fidel Ramos, the getting. It is also a violation of man who convinced former human rights since she is getting Davao City Mayor Duterte to tried by publicity. run for president. I cannot say with certainty that But Ramos, a few months De Lima is guilty as charged. into the Duterte presidency, Only the courts of law can decalled the country a sinking termine that. But my gulay, what ship under the former Davao she is getting from the Duterte City mayor. And now he has administration is not something I other issues against the man would wish on my worst enemy. whom he encouraged to seek Since the issue is now in the highest post in the land. court, she would have her day to I am sure President Duterte contest these charges. For me a knows what his mentor is talk- person must be presumed innoing about. He should listen, cent until proven guilty. Indeed instead of lashing out at him there has been miscarriage of as he always does at his crit- justice in many political cases. ics, whom he calls “sons of Still, I believe in the majesty of whores.” the law. Getting the armed forces I don’t know how long the involved in the war against case against de Lima would last, drugs will worsen the culture but knowing our lawyers and of impunity. The military has a judges, we may not even see different mandate from “serv- their finality until after the end ing and protecting the people” of President Duterte’s term in —that is the Police’s responsi- 2022. bility. The only consolation De I also notice that there are Lima can get is that she would more opinion writers criticiz- certainly have her day in court. ing the President’s methods. The way I see it, everything Those in power do not have being experienced by De Lima the monopoly of good inten- these days is politically motitions and patriotism. I repeat vated. She is a staunch oppo—the President must listen, nent and critic of the President.
Fighting... From A4 try other, equally familiar but bloodier methods, like actual rebellion. As for the Duterte administration, I think it needs to focus on its work and not fall into the trap of getting into the political mud-wrestling ring that the Yellows have prepared for it. I think that by ignoring the noise and doing actual work, the government can convince the citizens that the Yellows have already ensured their own irrelevance and are now working on their political extinction. That said, this is why I don’t think Press Secretary Martin Andanar helped the administration’s cause yesterday by accusing the media in the Senate of accepting bribes in order to write stories about Trillanes. This is precisely what I mean about the error of getting down and dirty with a senator whose mission in life is to get Duterte and his people to engage him in a dirt-throwing contest.
Even if Trillanes cannot really win in his chosen venue in a battle using his favorite weapons, there is just no sense in fighting him there—or anywhere. Mudslinging is Trillanes’ game, after all, and even if you emerge victorious in a battle with him in the gutter, you will still end up smelling like a sewer. At the end of the day, the government should just carry on doing its job of helping the poor and the needy. It should let the citizens themselves come to the conclusion that the Yellows are engaged in a futile and desperate attempt to regain power, if not by their rallies and their rehashed, discredited allegations, then by other, more destructive means. If the Yellows are as spent a political force and as irrelevant as I believe them to be, there’s no use getting as het up as them. Let the people decide this referendum with their feet as they steer clear of the old ways that brought the Aquinos and their minions to power 31 years ago.
A5
mst.daydesk@gmail.com
Two women
TO THE POINT EMIL P. JURADO
The President must listen
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2017
FORMATION GARY OLIVAR TWO women are very much in the news these days. One is accused, the other is her erstwhile accuser. One is already behind bars, the other will soon join her. I’m referring of course to Janet Lim Napoles and Leila de Lima. And much of what fascinates me about their intertwined stories is how (i) local feminists and (ii) the Yellow crowd (not always so distinct from each other) have reacted so differently to their plight. It simply reconfirms the old aphorism: Where you sit is where you stand. *** Ma’am Janet hit the headlines three years ago, during the PNoy administration, with her scandalous tales of multi-billion peso scams and 100 percent kickbacks at the highest levels of government, not to mention her alleged kidnapping of Ben-hur Luy, a distant cousin turned whistle-blower. The Yellow crowd immediately pounced on all those lurid stories of corruption going back to way before PNoy’s time. And who can blame the feminists for steering clear of their sister in light of all the damning evidence against her? Then-Justice Secretary Leila de Lima jumped into the prosecutorial fray with gusto. Just in time for her senatorial campaign, three sitting senators ended up arrested for plunder, while Ms. Napoles landed in prison for kidnapping her poor cousin. But have you ever experienced
smelling something rotten, no matter how much perfume you spray around you? This must have been what President Duterte was feeling when he complained that so much had been left unexplained in the whole Napoles debacle. Among the questions that must have been bothering him: Why did Luy not behave at all like a kidnapping victim throughout his purported ordeal? Why are there only three senators behind bars, all of them members of the opposition to PNoy? Was it possible that—gasp!—the Yellow crowd has cornered the entire market on virtue? Why did De Lima’s investigation stop at the point when PNoy took office? Was it also possible that—double gasp!—the shining young prince had immediately banished all sin from the land with his sheer beneficent presence? These are the almost-theological questions that will now preoccupy our unassuming new Solicitor General Jose Calida. I’ve learned from him on TV that he’s actually “the people’s tribune” (or, more familiarly, “the 16th Supreme Court justice”) as well as government’s chief prosecutor. It was in the former role that he decided to seek dismissal of the illegal detention case against Ms. Napoles. By thus answering our first question above, we may soon be seeing the answers to the other two. *** The painfully slow movement of the great karmic wheel has finally caught up with Ma’m Leila, who ran after Ms. Napoles with such selective gusto. It was she, too, who, after some hesitation, defied the Supreme Court in 2012 just to keep former President Arroyo from leaving the country for medical treat-
ment abroad. [Of course, PNoy’s grubby hands were all over that incident, and he’s still footloose and fancy-free on Times Street. But, hey, that karmic wheel’s still turnin’, turnin’, turnin’…] As soon as our chief anti-drug crusader came into office last July, it was only a matter of time before all those festering rumors about De Lima’s chumminess with drug lords saw the light of day. And what a show indeed we were treated to: One drug-related witness after another stood before Congress to confirm that, yes, the new senator had been their biggest protector at the Justice department! Some have complained that the witnesses are unreliable because they are criminals. But from whom else might we expect to get knowledgeable testimony about such matters? If some of them—or indeed, maybe all of them— are lying, that is what a court of law, following the rules of evidence and due process, is supposed to find out. On the other side, many others have resorted to shaming De Lima about her physical appetites and the men in her life. Whatever probative value may be found there, I cannot for the life of me understand how such public shaming can be stomached by any man who has a mother, wife, sister, daughter. Only after Ma’m Leila finally faces the judge can she put an end to the appalling sexual innuendoes, by replacing them with the much more gossip-worthy tidbits of a real trial. *** Thus, De Lima should in fact be gratefully embracing our unassuming Justice Secretary Aguirre for bringing her to court. And yet she’s having to be dragged in there, kicking and screaming. And with her considerable dramatic
skills, she’s cobbling together an interesting coalition of supporters: Catholic nuns surrounded Ma’m Leila when she joined the Church’s “walk for life.” They must have been the same nuns who were escorting NBN-ZTE whistle-blower Jun Lozada all over the place years ago, until the courts wised up to his fantasizing. The bishops should really be more careful about whom, and what, they embrace. Feminists are rallying around her as a convenient symbol of oppression by our openly chauvinistic president. I won’t even ask where they were for Ms. Napoles, or earlier for Mrs. Arroyo. But I can certainly ask them if they think victimization by sexist shaming is enough of a free pass for de Lima to get out of a court trial for something as lethal as coddling drug lords. And of course the Yellow crowd has been ratcheting up the level of tension by talking about EJKs and threat of martial law—as if, even if true, these issues had anything to do with the drug charges against her (see “feminists” above). Do these inveterate plotters hope to gain anything from escalating disorder? Secretary Aguirre is a transparently good man who wears his faith on his sleeve. I wasn’t a fan of his when he joined the legal team that impeached the late Chief Justice Corona. But I’ve been won over—wig and all—by his even-handed ways and his doggedness in the pursuit of justice, qualities that he shares with SolGen Calida. The country—and, yes, even these two women—are in good hands with these two men. Let the trials begin. Readers can write me at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com.
Legal impediments to Internet censorship HAIL TO THE CHAIR VICTOR AVECILLA IN THE years before cyberspace became a reality, the dissemination of information was largely done manually. Research work meant trips to libraries and the acquisition, either by sale or by loan, of reference books and materials. In some extreme cases, this meant archival work or trips to dark building attics where dusty crates house rare documents. If one wanted to find a particular photograph of a famous person or a historic event, one had to check out an encyclopedia or a book that specialized in that particular line of interest or concern. In all instances requiring research work, one who had a private library had a pronounced advantage over one who did not. Back then, cinema and television, on account of their inaccessibility to ordinary researchers, did not provide a convenient source of research information. To put it simply, it was basically impossible to cite television, and motion pictures were exhibited at the cinema houses at the whim of the film distributors. The Internet radically changed the information landscape not only for the contemporary researcher but for everyone seeking information about anything. At the touch of a key on a laptop computer or a mobile telephone, anyone can access information on just about any subject of human interest, including pornography and subversive literature. In addition, cyberspace paved
Political... From A4 massacre of the poor. It has diverted resources and attracted domestic and global criticism, including, possibly, a case against Duterte, Bato, and others in the International Criminal Court. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is understandably worried about being dragged into this unwinnable war as its officers too can be sued later in the ICC. And it is doomed to failure because the strategy being followed has long been discredited and its implementation is led by institutions—the PNP, NBI, DOJ, and now PDEA—that have a history of corruption and complicity in criminal activities. The persecution of Senator Leila de Lima is also wrong. I am certain she will eventually be cleared. Granting convicted drug lords immunity in exchange for testifying against De Lima also creates a bad precedent. More positively, there is real change in the social development and social justice sectors. From the basic sectors and local governments, I hear only good feedback of the work that Secretaries Jun Evasco, Manny Piñol, Judy Taguiwalo, and Paeng Mariano are doing. Likewise, Liza Maza, Terry
the way for the birth of the socalled social media, by which private citizens can be sources of both general and specific information. Because of social media, the dissemination of information, once a lucrative monopoly of the traditional media, can now be undertaken by private citizens through cyberspace. The unprecedented accessibility of cyberspace to ordinary citizens eventually triggered numerous issues and concerns. Many “netizens,” as the users of the social media came to be called, had no regard for the laws on libel and invasion of privacy. Quite a number of “information sources” on cyberspace likewise disregarded the basic rules on news gathering and dissemination, namely, news accuracy and the treatment of victims of heinous crimes. In 1996, the United States Congress enacted the Communications Decency Act, which made it a felony to send indecent material over computer networks. It also prohibited using a telecommunications devise to, among others, transmit obscene material. A year later, the US Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional on First Amendment (free speech-free press) grounds. More specifically, the Court said that cyberspace is entitled to the fullest possible free speech protection, and that content posted on the Internet deserves the same protection as content printed on paper. The Court likewise held that First Amendment rights to free speech and a free press are essential to online media; that a free Internet is essential to the rights of all Americans; and that government regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere
with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. Moreover, the Court said, the Internet is not as “invasive” as radio or television because users of the Internet seldom encounter content “by accident.” The Court, however, emphasized that the door is not closed to legal measures designed to protect against copyright violations, invasions of privacy, and consumer fraud. American jurisprudence also posits that a public school library may use cyber filters to block access to pornographic sites by minors, provided that the filters must be removed whenever an adult requests access to the same sites. In fine, the US Supreme Court was unwilling to authorize the construction of humps in what the tribunal called the unprecedented information highway of the world. The Philippine approach to cyberspace regulation is not too different. In 2012, the Congress of the Philippines enacted Republic Act No. 10175, or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. Under this law, the penalty for libel, if committed through a computer system, was increased one degree higher than that for libel committed through other means. This meant that one who is convicted for cyber libel will not be entitled to probation, and must, therefore, serve time in prison. One provision of Republic Act No. 10175 authorized the Secretary of Justice to close down, without any court authorization, any website or information provider suspected of criminal activity. Another provision required e-mail and mobile phone service providers to submit to the government “traffic data” regarding their clients’ use of their
services. As expected, the constitutionality of Republic Act No. 10175 was challenged in the Supreme Court. Eventually, the tribunal upheld the main provisions of the law, particularly the one regarding cyber libel, but voided the provision authorizing the justice secretary to close down, without the benefit of a valid judicial warrant, suspect websites and information providers, as well as the provision on “traffic data.” The ruling of the Court was welcomed by well-meaning users of cyber technology. There is word that the government intends to filter pornographic sites on the Internet. If that is so, there is a good chance of that measure getting questioned in the Supreme Court. Just recently, however, the Secretary of Health espoused the view that censorship of pornographic sites in the Internet is an effective measure against the spread of HIV among the students and the youth. In fine, that view suggests that internet pornography effectively encourages the youth to be promiscuous, and to engage in unprotected sex. While the Health Secretary’s view appears to be well-meaning, it is legally untenable and impractical because, first, the jurisprudence on cyberspace regulation indicates that it is virtually impossible for the State to impose restrictions on Internet access on the part of adults. Second, Philippine law provides that a person above 18 years of age is an adult. Third, many college students are, legally speaking, adults already. The government’s crusade against the spread of HIV is laudable, but it should not be at the expense of free speech and freedom of expression.
Ridon, and others like them are working hard making sure their offices deliver to their constituencies among the basic sectors. Their efforts are not noticed by traditional and social media because they are not controversial even as they are making an impact on the lives of the poor. But it is in the environmental sector and potentially in the peace process with both Moro revolutionary organizations and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (which includes the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army) where the greatest potential good social change can come. For immediate impact, the decisions that Gina Lopez makes promise to be the most dramatic. For lasting reforms, success in achieving and implementing permanent peace settlements with the Moros and the communists will go a long way to change the country. Unfortunately, the detractors of Lopez have become personal and have launched propaganda attacks against her, distorting things from her past to put her in a negative light. There is also misinformation about the impact of her mining decisions, with the President himself misled into saying that we would lose P70 billion because of this. As Dr. Cielo Magno, a UP economics professor and an ex-
pert on mining economics, has computed, it’s more like P10 billion. There are of course serious issues around the decisions of Secretary Lopez that the President must resolve. On this, I align myself with Finance Undersecretary Bayani Agabin who has said that these decisions must be weighed according to the standards of substantive and procedural due process. As for the peace processes, I am optimistic about the Mindanao talks now that the BTC is about to be launched, but there is uncertainty on the fate of the NDFP negotiations. Negotiators on both sides are supposed to meet this week to discuss and hopefully agree on a bilateral ceasefire. In my view, such a ceasefire is essential for the process to succeed. Yes, the negotiations can go on even when there is fighting but trust will not be built. Unfortunately, as historian Vince Rafael has pointed, the fight between the AFP and the NPA has taken on dimensions of a “rido,” a family feud, as we see in Mindanao, that is difficult to stop once it begins. Definitely, a good step forward as well would be for the President to release the 400-plus political prisoners affiliated with the NDFP. This is a matter of justice and not necessarily a quid pro quo or in exchange for the
ceasefire. In any case, agreement on the ceasefire should not be contingent on the release. Still on the NDFP peace process, I would also propose to the negotiators that they accelerate the timetable of the talks. I have studied the texts of both sides on the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER), and my expert opinion, as a negotiations professor, scholar, and practitioner, is that the positions between the government and the NDFP are not far apart. Mostly, it’s a difference language and that is not a formidable obstacle. I believe a CASER agreement can be completed in a couple of months. In relation to the political detainees, maybe the government can release first, upon signing of the bilateral ceasefire, those prisoners who are over 60 years old, those who are sick, and young mothers. After the CASER is adopted, the rest of the political prisoners could then be released. A full amnesty for all involved in this 49-year-old conflict should wait the final political settlement. All eyes are on the President. I hope he makes the right decisions on mining and peace. Facebook: deantonylavs Twitter: tonylavs