EDITORIAL - Fields of competence, levels of gullibility

Vice Governor Gregorio Sanchez has not been reporting for work at the Capitol due to an illness. The lack of information concerning his illness has spawned a lot of speculations. Had there been more openness regarding the matter, it would not have become the hot topic it is now.

This should provide a neat lesson to all handlers of politicians. They should know when to keep their silence and when to open up. It is tricky business, this balancing act between private matters and public interest.

Tilt the balance one way or the other, and it is the hapless politician who suffers from the unwanted backlash where none was expected in the first place. We can only commiserate with Sanchez, who must now be suffering more than just his illness.

This, we believe, is what prompted his aides to hastily call a press conference last week. Unfortunately, the press conference came too late. Many things that should not have been said have already been said, most of them probably based on wrong info or plain conjecture.

But even worse than coming too late, the press conference went into certain areas nobody was qualified to go into and thus added to the confusion. For instance, the vice governor’s aides blamed his sickness on “harassment and maltreatment” by the governor, Gwen Garcia.

Not being an authority on health or medicine, as are the vice governor’s aides, we will not even dare to measure or test the validity of that accusation. But what makes the episode truly sad is that the Cebu media actually picked it up.

This is reminiscent of a similar episode many years ago involving a local mayor. During one of his regular press conferences, the mayor was asked to comment about an earthquake that hit another place far far away.

To begin with, the media should not have posed the question as it dealt with a matter that had nothing to do with the mayor nor his constituency and was way outside his field of competence. But wonder of wonders, the mayor, who is a lawyer, proceeded to lecture about quakes.

Even if in the course of his life he managed to accumulate enough knowledge about quakes, as mayor he still was not the right authority nor source to talk about the subject. The same with the vice governor’s health. The media should know it is a matter for doctors, not aides.