FSGO on Supreme Court

The Former Senior Government Officials (FSGO), of which I am a member, has issued a statement on the Supreme Court. Here it is in full:

“Evident Partisanship of the Supreme Court

“(A Statement by the Former Senior Government Officials)

“From its founding, FSGO has been critical of the Gloria Arroyo regime. In deference to President Aquino’s admonition to ‘treat her with respect,’ we will not comment for now on her antics at NAIA Terminal 1 on the evening of November 15.

“We are thankful that the Executive Branch has acted according to its sworn duty as one of the three co-equal branches of government.

“We regret the evident partisanship in the Supreme Court’s November 15 en banc decision on the TRO. The eight votes in favor were all appointees in Arroyo’s second term. Of the five in contra, only Justice Jose Mendoza was appointed in that Arroyo term.

“Public servants must be reminded that no one is divinely appointed. The same holds true with the Court and its members. Furthermore, the Supreme Court, as with other lower courts, is expected to be a servant, not the master, of the people and certainly not beholden to the appointing power.

“The present Supreme Court as a body has been obviously partisan for Mrs. Arroyo. The Court has to gain its moral ascendancy and earn real authority for itself. We respectfully remind the Justices that exercise of their granted authority will be vitiated if and when they lose the real respect of their constituency. For any Supreme Court, that constituency is no less than the citizenry of our Republic.

“We call on the Justices not to further undermine the credibility of the Supreme Court as an institution.”

The FSGO has chosen not to comment on the incident at the airport on Nov. 15, but as an individual and as a media practitioner (but not as an FSGO member), I want to comment on it.

I think that media should not have allowed itself to be manipulated by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s media handlers on that day. It is clear to me that she knew that she would be stopped at the airport. She knew that she would have to be taken to a hospital from the airport; that is why she had an ambulance waiting for her.

As a former president (or alleged president, since it is no longer sure that she won the election against Fernando Poe Jr.), she was entitled to the usual courtesies accorded even to minor functionaries. She could have gone directly to the plane through the VIP access of NAIA 1. She could have avoided media altogether.

In fact, there was no reason for media to expect her to go to the airport that day. When one books a ticket and checks in through the Web (as she is said to have done for her second “try,” before the warrant of arrest was issued), an airline is bound by strict rules of confidentiality not to tell anyone about it. Try asking any airline if a particular person is in a manifest or list of passengers, and see where it gets you.

She told the media that she was going to the airport. She made sure there would be cameras following her rehearsed act of being in a fake life-threatening condition. She made sure the event would be covered live on television and radio. In fact, after the event, reporters recounted that, on that day, they were alerted about her coming to the airport.

Why did she stage her moro-moro? Obviously to court public sympathy. Unfortunately for her, her years of in-your-face disrespect for the Filipino people could not be undone by a couple of hours of scripted drama. As she has done so many times in the past, she underestimated the intelligence of the Filipino people.

WRITING WORKSHOP TODAY: This afternoon at 5 in the Filipinas Heritage Library in Makati, I am giving a free workshop on “How To Write A Book.” Only people who have never written or published a book are welcome to the workshop. It will be a real workshop, not a lecture. I will make the participants start writing their books. If you will be there, be ready to write.

OCCUPY WRITERS: Aside from being writers, what do Gemino H. Abad, Mila D. Aguilar, Abdon M. Balde Jr., Albert Casuga, Genaro R. Gojo Cruz, M. Evelina Galang, Rhod V. Nuncio, Ninotchka Rosca, Santiago Villafania, and myself have in common with Margaret Atwood, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, Junot Diaz, Neil Gaiman, William Gibson, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ursula K. Le Guin, Adrienne Rich, and Salman Rushdie?

We are all signatories to this short and simple statement: “We, the undersigned writers and all who will join us, support Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement around the world.”

Together with many other writers, we have joined the Occupy Writers Movement, (occupywriters.com). In today’s wired world, a writer can no longer work alone; a writer must be part of the global community of writers.

CONGRATULATIONS: Congratulations to the National Book Development Board, particularly its incredibly efficient and indefatigable Executive Director Andrea Pasion-Flores, for the highly successful 2nd Manila International Literary Festival.