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These last several years, a Fascist esprit de corps
has become vividly observable. If the administration and its
instrumentalities do not actually have a Fascist mentality, then
they at least have a tendency for fascism.
Fascistic acts by government
officials (including justice department prosecutors), by the police,
the military and some judges have distorted Philippine society. Its
shape has become so different from the democratic, human-rights and
human-dignity respectful republic that the Commonwealth Period and
the 1987 Constitutions both prescribe.
Presidential orders have been
issued and carried out to institute brief mini-martial law regimes.
Leftist labor and peasant leaders, journalists and lawyers have been
arrested, tortured, manhandled, disappeared and murdered. All-out
war against rebels has been waged without regard to the plight of
civilians and innocent villagers. Perpetrators of extrajudicial
killings and enforced disappearances have not been prosecuted—they
remain free to do their ugly errands with impunity.
No less than the wise, fair and
patriotic Chief Justice had to call a high-level and general summit
to dissect and find preventives and cures for extrajudicial killings
and enforced disappearances. Recently, he also organized a summit to
help the poor gain access to the state’s justice machinery without
being intimidated or discriminated against.
Dismissal of journalists’
class suit
These considerations—especially
the existence of a Fascist esprit de corps—must inform one’s
assessment of the recent decision of a Makati regional trial court
judge to dismiss the class suit filed by journalists against Defense
Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez,
Philippine National Police Director General Avelino Razon Jr.,
National Capital Region Police Office Director Geary Barias, and
others. The suit was a complaint against alleged violation of the
freedom of the press guaranteed by the Constitution when the
journalists were arrested while covering the Trillanes group’s
Peninsula Hotel rebellion or mutiny on November 30, 2007.
The suit also targets as a
violation of press freedom Justice Secretary Gonzales statement that
journalists would again be arrested under similar circumstances.
Judge Reynaldo Laygo decided to
dismiss the case even before any evidence from either side was
presented. He said the police were justified to arrest the
journalists because they did not heed the 3 p.m. deadline set by
Police Office Director Barias for them to leave. He also found no
violation of press freedom, and no unconstitutionality, in the
Justice Secretary’s statement, made after the arrests, that
journalists refusing to obey the police orders while covering an
event would be arrested.
The Fascist proposition
The Laygo decision suggests a
willingness to accept the Fascist proposition that the state is the
supreme law, that whatever its agents say must be heeded, never mind
what the Constitution says, never mind the facts and the truth. The
decision proclaimed the arrest of the journalists who were just
doing their job to be a proper and legal act.
Maltreatment of newsmen
absolved
It also validated the
policemen’s treatment of the journalists. Policemen handcuffed
them, shackled their wrists, painfully, with strong plastic strips,
pointed guns at them, beat them with sticks, marched them into
military buses to be interrogated as if they were suspects,
threatened to charge them with obstructing justice, barked at them
as if they were accomplices of Trillanes and company. Some of the
indignities done to the journalists were videoed and shown on TV to
the whole world. Like Hitler’s SS troops and Papa Doc and Robert
Mugabe’s thugs, the uniformed men who maltreated the newsmen
didn’t give a hoot.
The journalists were arrested but
not formally told what for. And then, as if nothing had happened,
they were released and told to feel lucky nothing worse had happened
to them. There were no apologies.
What is worse is that the
Secretary of Justice, and taking his cue, the entire Cabinet
approved of the journalists’ physical and moral maltreatment and
the state’s unconstitutional violation of press freedom.
If this is not a fascist
mentality, what is?
Judge Laygo’s decision is that:
“The right of the plaintiffs as members of the press as guaranteed
under the Constitution was not violated and trampled upon by the
respective acts of the defendants.” He says the order for the
journalists to leave the Peninsula “followed police procedures.”
It was “lawful and appeared to have been disobeyed by . . . the
plaintiffs, when they intentionally refused to leave the hotel
premises for which an appropriate criminal charge under Article 151
of the Revised Penal Code, which is applicable to all, including the
media personalities, could have been initiated against them.”
Appeared to have been
disobeyed?
A decision based on appearances.
Not on facts? Did not Police Director Barias himself say he was
“requesting” and “appealing” to the media people at the
Peninsula to leave? Did he give a deadline to the newsmen or only to
the rebel officers? How could Judge Laygo say the journalists had
“seriously disobeyed police orders” when these material facts
had not been determined?
Why does the Laygo decision blur
the identities of journalists and mutinous officers? Why does it
ignore the special protection the Bill of Rights of our Constitution
gives to “the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the
press?”
The judges and justices who, like
the Chief Justice, are opposed to the fascistic mentality should
find a way to invalidate acts like the Laygo decision and help
diminish the dehumanization of the Filipinos by fascists in
positions of power.
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