Truth, being suppressed, can't set us free

One of the few things I treasured when I started to practice my profession, was a simple poster which my loving mother-in-law, Crispina Ladia, (may her soul rest in peace) gave me. My lady Carmen and I had it mounted on a frame in the shop of then aspiring now internationally acclaimed artist, Fred Galan. The poster was an excerpt of a prose attributed to an American magistrate. At the end of the excerpt was the phrase "the truth shall set you free". The name Justice Learned Hand was written on the lowermost right portion to indicate the authorship of the excerpt.

For lack of any expensive décor, I placed it at the most prominent part of my office. Everyday, I stood to read it and in due time, out of my profound respect for Justice hand, I resolved to put his prose to actual practice. It thus became my own creed to guide my best efforts in dealing with people.

I remember the poster in the light of a much publicized recent event at the Malacañang when, as recounted many times over, Acting Education Secretary Fe Hidalgo, while making a briefing before Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the cabinet on the state of affairs of the department, was rudely interrupted and humiliated by her boss, the president. Having read better written editorials castigating the unnecessary, if not abusive, display of temper, I wanted to pass the issue. But, Justice Hand kept coming back.

I could imagine the excitement accompanying the education acting-secretary when she was still preparing for her presentation. She would have in mind an impeccable exposition. The facts should be irrefutable, the logic unassailable and the performance, nothing less than virtuoso. After all, she was going to do it before the most powerful enclave of the land. Truth being the preaching in her department, she was bent on showing the bare facts unembellished by the usual make up prevalent in the discourses of politicians. Whatever deficiencies her department faced or was burdened with, the truth, in her unpretentious mind, would set her free.

The official never anticipated being brutally cut down to size. In her culture, no one would dare assail a presentation carefully assembled by the best minds entrusted with the task of educating our citizenry. Even if there were details that were uneasy to divine, her training was that questions had to be asked and answers, she was presumed to have, were to be awaited.

As we have all probably read, that was not the case. The president of the republic would not want to hear that the education department which is supposed to receive the highest attention of this regime, or any administration for that matter, continues to suffer the chronic malaise of lack of classrooms. Adopting her own formula, the president wanted to impress upon the citizenry that in her watch, every need for classrooms was addressed. If it happened that past tenants of Malacañang were unable to provide this basic requirement for education, she, waving her magical wand, finally solved the perennial problem. In the process of the president's omniscience, she reduced her education secretary to the unworthy level of a bumbling incompetent.

It was sad that instead of defending her report with the force of logic, the acting-secretary capitulated. By meekly agreeing to the formula of her boss, she desecrated her intellectual product. Worse, by somersaulting to the presidential equation, her initial datum, which could be the truth, was betrayed as barefaced falsehood.

That event added to the mounting number of issues searching for the truth. We hunger for the truth of who Jose Pidal was. We wanted to find out if was true that an extradited congressman gave two million dollars, as protection money, to a former high ranking official reportedly very close to the palace. What was the truth behind the alleged 2004 poll fraud? Was it true that a huge part of the Marcos fund was used in the so-called fertilizer scam?

Because I believe this administration would want to suppress the truth of these and many other issues, we, as a people, could never be set free.