A heart to heart talk with GMA

Yesterday, I had a frank discussion with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. I believe that, just as important as what she said was how she looked. Literally "stormed at with shot and shell," assailed by journalists and other groups for her declaration of a state of national emergency in which, they claim, she placed press freedom under siege; attacked by militant and Leftist organizations all over Metro Manila in rallies and demonstrations; threatened by persisting coup rumors which haven’t died down; she looked as smiling and unruffled as ever. One couldn’t help thinking: this is one tough little lady.

La Presidenta was accompanied by her palace chief-of-staff, Mike Defensor.

I won’t dwell on most of what was said. (Anyway, the STAR will publish a front page one-on-one interview with what can be expressed on the record in the next day or two). But one of the things that inevitably came up was her so-called crackdown on the media. She has already ventilated her views on what she calls, "responsible journalism" in well disseminated television interviews. She reiterated her idea that while we have press freedom, "freedom comes with responsibility". As she told GMA-7 anchor Mike Enriquez, she does not seek praise but looks for journalists who do not just praise, in fact frankly criticizes, but knows the limits. In sum, GMA emphasized that journalists and opinion writers can attack her and her decisions all they want but they must be fair, not cite unidentified or malicious sources. In the end, she wanted to draw the line between criticism and insult. "Too many alleged criticisms directed at the presidency," she asserted, "have neither basis in truth nor a sense of decency, but are outright insults." There is too much incitement to sedition being peddled in media, she mourned, "under the excuse of press freedom."

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Let’s face it. Although there’s much validity in what La Presidenta complained, presidents will never be happy with media nor media with presidents. Nobody enjoys criticism, least of all leaders of government. Journalistic gadflies, therefore, are unwelcome even in such enlightened "democracies" as the United States, Great Britain, France, and Scandinavia. Less so, for that matter in Asia, all of our neighbors included, where authoritarianism in one form or another reigns.

By the same token, journalists are far from perfect. It can be pointed out that nobody anointed us to be messiahs, or arbiters of culture and civilization, defenders of public morality, and critics of government and society, except ourselves. It has already been repeated, ad infinitum, that while lawyers have to take Bar examinations to qualify to practice, doctors must hurdle medical board exams, dentists must pass similar examinations to qualify, and even veterinarians, not to mention nurses, engineers, teachers, etc., no journalist is required to take a test, not even a psychological examination, before inflicting himself on the world. Politicians love to underscore that newspaper men or media persons were never elected by the people to public office, as they (the politicians) were, and thereby have no license to preach.

On the other hand, as Chrysler’s retired genius, Lee Iaccoca pointed out in his bestselling book many years ago, journalists and radio-TV media persons are "elected" every single day of the year. The disgruntled reader, who finds fault with the reportage or the editorializing of a newspaper can simply refuse to buy the next copy. A newspaper without circulation soon withers on the vine. Retaliation comes even more swiftly in the case of television and radio newscasters and commentators. The disappointed viewer or listener can simply switch off, cutting off a commentator in mid-sentence, or switch over to another station or another channel.

It is a matter of credibility.

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As I’ve said, its an exaggeration to cry out that GMA’s recent tough measures and the tough talk of her Cabinet officials are equating her with the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos. (I was amused to see on television last Sunday, Macoy’s admittedly bright and charming daughter, Ilocos Norte Congresswoman, Imee Marcos, coming to the "help" of the protesting Philippine Marines, ostensively in the defense of democracy and freedom. Susmariosep!)

The late Apo Marcos took away our freedoms one dark night, on September 21, 1972. What he imposed was real martial law. The darkness of his hegemony persisted until February 1986. We indeed had "law and order" under Marcos. However, behind the neon-lit façade of the "discipline" of martial law, the country was systematically looted, thousands were arrested as "subversives" and dumped in prison camps, and hundred – including 22 journalists and media men – were "salvaged" (meaning kidnapped and murdered) or assassinated in straightforward fashion.

Sadly, the "new day" promised by President Corazon C. Aquino never really dawned. Our troubles did not end when Marcos and his profligate wife, Imelda, were banished from paradise by the angel of Edsa with a flaming sword. Disappointment soon began to set in. The liberated newspapers (25 of them!) were soon in full cry against a new wave of alleged "graft and corruption." But at least, they could cry. The Filipinos could stamp their feet and yell. Unfortunately enough, so could the real subversives, from the Communist to the radical Left who most enjoyed the full use of Cory’s proclaimed "democratic space." Oh well. Those same radicals and Red Guards are still the noisiest today. That’s both the peril and glory of democracy.

As for the sainted Tita Cory who is now demanding the resignation of GMA, this writer and one of our leading Philippine STAR columnists, the late Luis Beltran were sentenced to jail on October 22, 1992, Judge Ramon T. Makasiar of the Regional Trial Court of Manila convicted me to up to two years of "prison correccional" on the basis of a libel case filed by President Aquino. In addition, Louie Beltran and I were ordered to "jointly and severally" pay complainant Corazon C. Aquino "the sum of P2,000,000 as moral damages.

My crime? Although I was several hundred miles in the south in Davao City in Mindanao island when columnist Beltran’s offending article was written and published on October 12, 1987, the judge declared that "it is no defense that the article in question appeared without his (my) knowledge and consent, "nor was I" relieved of my "liability" simply because "the defamatory article was published without malice" on my part! Needless to say, whatever the outcome of our petition for reversal of that harsh decision by the Court of Appeals, Judge Makasiar’s 39-page ruling in favor of the ex-President had what one Supreme Court Justice rightly described as "a chilling effect of the media."

By golly. The fact that I had been the cellmate of her husband, the late Senator Ninoy Aquino in military prison in Fort Bonifacio, and one of my dearest friends, indeed my "brother" did not save me.

Now, who has been harsher on media, Santa Cory or La Gloria? When a president sues you for libel, you are royally screwed. She was St. Joan of Arc, while poor Louie and I were the villains. She personally went twice to the Court to testify in our case. The harassed Philippine STAR lost millions of pesos in advertising, perhaps 60 percent of our anticipated income.

We were finally acquitted by the Court of Appeals years later, almost three years after Louie Beltran had died of a heart attack. At least he was vindicated posthumously!

We must take today’s events in the context of reality. Of course we must complain if our freedoms are truly threatened. But what we are getting today are merely pinpricks not commensurate, I think, with the screams of agony now dominating the airwaves and some of the print media. I believe I can say this as one who has fought in the trenches of journalism, from reporter to foreign correspondent, to where I am today – a scarred and battered old warrior almost ready, as they use to say about horses, for the glue factory.

I have been kicked out of three countries for my reporting, Singapore, Burma (Myanmar), and the former South Vietnam. Perhaps I can contribute this small comment to the furor which is raging today.

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THE ROVING EYE... I’m glad that business taipan Lucio Tan has been cleared by the Sandiganbayan with the Presidential Commission on Good Government being ordered to lift a sequestration order on four firms owned by him – Allied Banking Corp., Fortune Tobacco Corp., Foremost Farms and Shareholdings Inc.. The government continues to harass Lucio Tan on tax evasion charges. In reality, he is one of our biggest taxpayers and has played a major role in building of our economy, along with several Taipans and business tycoons. His companies including Philippine Airlines employ more than 50,000 people (multiply this by an average of five dependents each and this gives you a small picture of what would happen if he and his so-called "empire" went belly-up). In short, in his employment are more Filipinos than the combined strength of the New People’s Army, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Moro National Liberation Front and other insurgent groups combined – not to mention the terrorist Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah. Instead of being recognized and honored, poor Tan keeps on being demonized in even the most well-manicured and hypocritical circles. I think that this time, he won a good fight…By the way, Party List Representative Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, and her sister ABS-CBN’s famous "Strictly Politics" television talk show host and commentator, Pia Hontiveros-Pagkalinawan, are daughters of one of my high school and college buddies Ray Hontiveros. Ray and his brother Benny were my classmates in the old Ateneo days and we belong to a closely knit "brotherhood" which we simply called "Our Gang". Ray was always earnest, hardworking and soft-spoken. It's interesting that both Pia and Risa married two Philippine Military Academy graduates. Risa married Lt. Colonel Frank Baraquel, PMA ’86. He was a PNP officer assigned in the Cordilleras, Mountain Province and later comptroller. He died of a stroke in Baguio City. Pia, in turn, is happily married to Lt. Colonel Arwin Pagkalinawan, PMA ’88. He is very highly regarded by GMA as the head of the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission in Camp Crame. Risa is very strongly against GMA and is suing the police for having arrested her, a member of Congress, in last Wednesday’s Quezon City rally. Pia is an independent and outspoken television journalist. There you see how our democracy works. And truly it works.