This week there were columns by David Pilling in the Financial Times, an obituary in the BBC, in even as Time Magazine devoted its Asian edition cover to Cory Aquino, Ellen Tordesilla came upon a shining example of the President getting some foreign media exposure too -in the (in)famous page six section of The New York Post. The Post reported that the President spent a cool $20,000 on a dinner at Le Cirque. The bill bloat seems to have come from several bottles of wine. The restaurant says its wine ranges from $28 to $12,000.

The contrast with the Cory a new generation has come to know and appreciate, couldn’t be more vast. I wonder how someone like Bookmarked! who was touched by the events of the past days, or someone like Quiet Time Ramblings, who went to the wake and described her experiences there, will feel about articles like the New York Post’s.

Summing up Cory’s life continues among bloggers. Some more noteworthy entries follow.

From Belmont Club, And last, on the funeral:

That procession in the rain was Cory’s last duty of state; the final act in the public drama. It was also, to those who understood it, the concluding chapter in a love story. At the end of the cortege was a relatively modest grave, no grander than that which a successful small businessman might have, dug beside the spot where Ninoy lay. It was where she wanted to go. When she first learned she had colon cancer more than a year ago, Aquino told her family she would refuse aggressive treatment. Her time, she said, had come. Her daughter Kris related how, when the end was near, she was called back into the room by a nurse from the corridor, where she had stepped out to drink some coffee. Cory bade her daughter bend and said, “I can see him now. Your father is holding out his hand to me.” Dylan Thomas wrote of grave men “near death, who see with blinding sight”; of those on their deathbeds who, perhaps from the effects of medication, delirium or that blinding sight see before them those to whom they would come. Underneath the story of the People Power revolution was also a story of a woman who avenged her husband and reached out to him across the gulf of death with the frail hand of love.

And also, from the same blog (Belmont Club) in Maria Corazon “Cory” Cojuangco Aquino (January 25, 1933 – August 1, 2009)

There is at the location where the multitudes gathered in Manila to chase out Marcos an artistically inept statue of something called Our Lady of EDSA. It is a hideous representation of the Virgin Mary as she is believed to have come to a poor and desperate nation. It’s a terrible statue — all gray concrete and rain stains. But nobody minds its aesthetic defects because everyone who was there in 1986 saw the real Lady of EDSA in the flesh: a little woman, once beautiful in youth, in a dowdy yellow dress giving multitudes for a moment a glimpse into all that they could be. She could be their mirror because she was empty of normal ambition; and that is the way of miracles, when we see the extraordinariness of it all for the first time because we have learned to see. Goodbye Cory. And thank Ninoy for us.

And from Ricky Carandang:

It has become fashionable these days to say you failed. That the freedom that you helped us win in 1986 has not gotten us any closer to building a just and prosperous society. That while you yourself were not corrupt, your relatives and your advisers were. That we’ve simply replaced one set of thieves and murderers with another.

It has become fashionable these days to blame you for all of that. Because you didn’t do enough to prevent your revolution from being dismantled from within.

But the people who say that fail to see what 1986 was really about. It wasn’t about you saving us from the Regime and everyone living happily ever after. You did your part everytime you were called upon to do so. The problem was we expected you to do it all by yourself while we stood on the sidelines. We didn’t realize that we had a role to play too and that one person would not be able to do it alone. You didn’t fail. We did.

From Hansley Juliano in Spaces of Resistance:

Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino embodies, in ways that people would be hard-pressed to actually articulate, the revolutionary trajectory of the Filipino in their quest for self-realization and the establishment of a true government of the people, for the people and by the people. We see in her the personification of what can be done to make the best out of a bad situation. It has not been new to us. Emilio Aguinaldo was thrust in the global political sphere in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, and exhausted every effort he can in order to maintain the independence his people were able to grasp from Spanish hegemony, if not for the tragic mistake of trusting the “cold, calculating Sons of the North.” Manuel Quezon, for all his flair, pushed on the platform of immediate independence despite its unfeasibility not just solely because he wished to strengthen his political acumen but because he is also among those who wanted a Philippines that truly speaks for itself.

Cacique democracy, it must be admitted, can never be separated from Tita Cory’s political identification. And yet despite this, it appears that, similar to that a creole like Quezon gained Malacanang at the downfall of the Federalistas, she was able to achieve what before seemed already a hopeless effort: an inauguration of a new revolutionary tradition. Though many would say that, in her later years, she is a fading voice of conscience in a society that has already lost its own and is apathetically (and pathetically) bumbling towards a hand-to-mouth existence, no one can claim that all that effort for re-imagining and reinstating what the people seeks for themselves did not make any relevant impact on the people’s fight. Her humble demeanour, never the first to impose but willing to strike back (as witness her denouncement of her own Vice-President, Salvador Laurel, after his turnaround during the Christmas Coup of 1989), appeals to our masses in the same way that we have a fanatical devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary (she herself being one), the essential mother figure. That Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo attempted to ape it (and ultimately failed to do so) shows us how permanent an image she has imprinted in our cultural consciousness.

From Rosselle Tugade also in Spaces of Resistance:

The death of President Aquino cornered the Filipino people in such a situation: we are reminded of how we whitewashed our hopes, how fragile we have become in the face of change, how impatient we are at engaging in long struggles, and more importantly, how infantile our democracy is. After her tenure, President Aquino was the subject of criticism because of acts of injustices which transpired during her time: the refusal to repudiate national debt, the Mendiola Massacre, and the exclusion of Hacienda Luisita from the agrarian reform project. These, of course, were all very real but Cory was neither the best executive this country ever had. Amidst the criticism to her government, the spirit of forgetting intervenes to make the most of us surrender to the conditions of what we were born into, hence making us prisoners into another vicious cycle of stagnation. Cory Aquino’s life was a life of suffering, but it was a suffering with acceptance and suffering for a purpose. Her greatness certainly does not lie in her acuity at managing the bureaucracy; it rests within her courage and faith as an ordinary person to heed the call of democracy and freedom which are far larger than her own life.

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom, Hannah Arendt says. But in order to do so we must know first of which crimes against the country should be placed under the platform of justice. It is only then that we may proceed to making the guilty accountable and to growing more maturely from what has happened. Whatever fate the Philippines has experienced for the past two decades is surely not the result of a case of a quick forgive; it is rather the consequence of forgetfulness and an allergy to learning from the past.

As the rest of the Filipino nation poured out their sympathy for Cory, I cannot help but fear that what we have been grieving over is not the loss of a great woman and her extraordinary life. I fear that what we have seen is regression into the nostalgia of a golden age we enjoyed but did not care to fight for and preserve. The task then is for us to move out of the preference for forgetting and do so as how Cory did: inspire one another with the spirit of revolution and hope.

From A Leftist’s Reflection on the Death of Former President Corazon C. Aquino:

I contented myself with the proposition that my current disposition is valid, politically correct and consistent with the masses’ interest and pulse. Cory will not have my sympathy.

But then again, as I was watching Mrs. Aquino’s funeral service, I cannot help but notice the continuing pouring of support and sympathy from many people. I am not talking about here of middle class people who we often associate with Cory but rather, of ordinary, everyday people; the labanderas, the obreros, the manangs, the urban poor, the probinsyanos; the very same masses we from the broad left movement have sworn to serve with utmost passion and dedication.

They have no anger in their eyes, no impassioned tirades on the Aquino government’s horrible mistakes, no finger pointing, no rage, no resentment. All I saw on television was a long yellow line of sad heart-broken faces waiting for their turn to view their president one last time; mourning as if they too have lost a loved one, grieving as if they too lost something important in their life.

My first reaction was sheer amusement and bewilderment which immediately turned into anger. How could the people have possibly forgotten? How could have they possibly forgiven Cory and her regime when they were never given any exoneration from their misery and poverty in the first place? How could they idolize her and identify with her?

I concluded this could be the result of the Filipino people’s overt romanticism, its legendary propensity to easily forgive and forget which inevitably fused with corporate media’s proclivity for creative spins and spectacles. I said to myself, this would quickly fade as it was quickly created with the people going back to reality; back to their wowowee dreams, back to our same old rubbish shitty lives.

However, each passing day was a revelation. Particularly, what struck me most was when people were asked why they were there. Almost all answered that they wanted to pay tribute to the woman who helped them restored democracy, who helped them reclaimed what was rightfully theirs. From the mother who brought her daughter all the way from Isabela to teach her about democracy, the students who were too young to even remember Edsa 1 up to the laborers and the poor who proudly claimed to have been participants to people power 1, 2 and even 3, all said it was because of democracy.

Then it finally dawned on me why this woman despite her regime’s numerous social and economic transgressions is so loved and cherished by a people representing three generation of Edsas. It’s not so much because she is religious, a mother-like figure to many, a glorified widow or simply a martyr; beyond the labels, our ideological flexing and the comfortable branding of pundits, Cory has been duly recognized by the people as an icon in their transition from despotism to rule of law, their struggle from tyranny towards a sense of freedom and democracy. Cory is first and foremost the representation of that ideal, of that difficult journey towards democratization, of that collective national experience.

And it did not stop there. She will also be remembered as a defender of that particular form of democracy flawed and wanting it may be in so many ways, not measuring up to our Marxist concept of a democratic archetype. From people power 2 which removed an incompetent and corrupt regime up to her participation in the fight to throw out the illegitimate Arroyo regime and its sinister plan to amend the constitution, Cory will be remembered and respected as a person who despite her privileged status joined the people in their most trying and important political junctures.

She will also be remembered for her seemingly incorruptible disposition and her lack of desire to cling to power more than what was bestowed to her. This is in sharp contradiction with the succeeding governments that followed her especially the current Arroyo regime which has shown its penchant to further its illegitimate rule through a combination of brute force and fake consent.

By Jessica Zafra:

To us she was the symbol of the world we wanted: a world where people could speak their minds without disappearing, where public servants actually served, where leaders were honest, just, selfless, intelligent and dignified.

You don’t have to be 35 and up to know that that was not the world we got. These days when we speak of politics at all it is with indifference, anger, or “Please, could we talk about something that doesn’t make us nauseous?” But there was a time when we could discuss government with hope, pride and trust in our leaders, and that was when Corazon Aquino was president.

It did not last. We were cruelly disillusioned: “Pare-pareho lang naman pala kayong lahat.” The revolution had failed us, if it was a revolution at all. Later, whenever Tita Cory urged us to join mass protests against official corruption we still went, but many of us wondered what for. Massing on the streets would cause traffic jams, disrupt business, generate bad press for the country. We should be mature, let the democratic process take its course.

In other words we had resolved to suck it up. Grownups do it all the time.

So we did what was deemed pragmatic. We made compromises and dug in.

We didn’t want any trouble. We got by; some would argue that we did pretty well under the circumstances. But something rankled. If we were doing the right thing, why were we beginning to loathe ourselves?

We heard ourselves speaking with fond nostalgia about how orderly the city was during the Marcos years, how at least there was support for the arts. More and more we found ourselves throwing our hands up and saying, “Whatever.” Is that what being an adult is like, saying “There’s nothing I can do”? No more applying your imagination, just sheep-like acceptance? Because if that’s maturity, it is not a good thing.

When I heard the news of President Cory Aquino’s death I was surprised at how upset I was. I found myself getting teary-eyed when talking about her. Most times I will gouge your eyes out before I let you see me cry, but in this instance it’s all right — my friends are getting soppy, too. On TV, hardcore former coup plotters are weeping because Tita Cory is dead.

Thousands of people with nothing to gain lined up for hours at La Salle and at Manila Cathedral to pay their last respects to our president. They had nothing to gain but their self-respect and the feeling that they had a country. Politicians promise us everything, but sometimes all we really want is to feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.

On Monday morning on EDSA I thought it was 1986 all over again. Why this massive outpouring of grief and affection for a symbol we thought we had outgrown?

I think Tita Cory reminds us of our other, better selves — the ones who were prepared to make sacrifices for a noble cause. Politicians and governments have sorely disappointed us, but we never lost faith in Tita Cory the human being. She never mocked our aspirations or knowingly insulted our intelligence. She defended the Constitution from those who would bend it to their own ends; she rejected the idea of perpetuating herself in power. Say what you will about the missed opportunities and lost chances, Cory Aquino was decent to us.

She was a good person.

And after all our “growing up,” “learning to face harsh reality” and losing our illusions, it turns out that character does matter. Being good does make a difference. You will not receive praise or payment for it, and other people will mistake your goodness for weakness, but it resonates among people you won’t even meet.

In his column, The Ateneo and public opinion polling , Mahar Mangahas kept referring to “the spiral of silence phenomenon,” without every actually explaining what it is:

In planning for the first Ateneo-SWS poll, of May 1986, the issue was raised on whether to risk asking whom the respondents voted for in the snap election – suppose most said they had voted for Marcos? I appreciate the Ateneo for agreeing to ask it; the result was that 64 percent said they had voted for Cory Aquino. (The risk was actually small; we didn’t know about the “spiral of silence” phenomenon yet.)

In early 1987, we had to decide whether to do an Ateneo-SWS poll just before the May election, to maximize its potential to predict the outcome, or much earlier, to enhance its value to campaigners. We took the second option. The March 1987 poll found only half of Cory’s senatorial candidates in the winning column; her campaign manager Paul Aquino told his staff that they could not afford to sleep any more. Eventually, with the help of “Cory magic,” 22 of her 24 candidates won. (But critics claimed that the survey failed, because the election outcome was different.)

After the joint project expired, Ateneo and SWS shared the briefing revenues 50-50 as pre-arranged, and then did polls separately. With funding from various foundations, Ateneo did at least six national polls over 1988-1992. In 1992, its post-election poll found some 40 percent saying they had voted for Fidel Ramos, even though he had won with only some 25 percent of the official count – but it was again the “spiral of silence” at work.

Here’s a handy-dandy definition,

The spiral of silence is a political science and mass communication theory propounded by the German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. The theory asserts that a person is less likely to voice an opinion on a topic if one feels that one is in the minority for fear of reprisal or isolation from the majority.

In a speech he made on May 18, 2000 (the keynote address during the Annual Conference of the World Association for Public Opinion Research, 17 - 21 May 2000, Portland, Oregon, USA), he tackled how not knowing “the spiral of silence” made some survey results curious:

Some of you, perhaps, may recall that Ferdinand Marcos was virtual dictator in the Philippines from September 1972 to February 1986. Opinion polling was very uncommon then. For instance, in 1983 a book of survey indicators, The 1982 Philippine Social Weather Report, by myself and others, was suppressed from publication. In November 1985, when Marcos unexpectedly announced over American TV (the David Brinkley show) that he would hold a so-called ’snap’ presidential election, he waved on-camera a national opinion poll, done the previous July and publicly reported in August, by the Bishops-Businessmens’ Conference (BBC 1998), an independent civic group, as his basis for expecting to win. He was alluding to a survey item that asked, “How many in this locality would vote for Ferdinand Marcos if he runs for President again?”, to which 53% answered Many or Very Many, and 37% answered Few or Very Few.

No amount of clarification could persuade Marcos loyalists, and even some anti-Marcos elements (to my frustration as the BBC survey director), that the score of 53-37 was NOT a prediction of the vote for Marcos versus whoever. Perhaps Fate decreed that this portion of the poll be misinterpreted so much. More significant survey findings, such as the opposition to legislation by presidential decree, and opposition to detention of persons by presidential fiat, both by 2-to-1, were ignored by the Marcos-controlled media.

Three weeks before the snap election on February 7th, a professional poll commissioned by the TV networks showed a score of 45% for Marcos, 26% for Corazon Aquino, and 29% undecided. In the final week, a poll by Asia Research Organization (Henares 1991), affiliated to Gallup International, found 42% for Aquino and 41% for Marcos, and assigned the 17% undecided to Aquino on account of the fear-factor; but this was not revealed by ARO for 5 years, and the sponsor is still unknown today. In the quick-count of the vote by the National Movement for Free Elections, the winner was Aquino, by 53% to 47%, while in the slow-count by the National Legislature the winner was Marcos, by 54% to 46%. The issue was politically settled by the People Power Revolution and the Marcoses’ flight to Hawaii on February 25. The following May, a joint survey by Social Weather Stations and Ateneo de Manila University asked respondents — after some discussion of the merits of ‘letting well enough alone’ — for whom they had voted in the snap election, obtaining 64% for Aquino, 27% for Marcos, and 9% refusals (Ateneo and SWS, 1986). At that time none of us knew of The Spiral of Silence yet.

Does it exist, now, and is it reflected in the “undecided” in survey results today? And if so, who do the “undecideds” fear? My view is, they reflect tacit but not explicit support for the administration -the fear, in this case, being fear of the majority that opposes the administration and castigates its public defenders.

My understanding is the House of Representatives is tackling the so-called “Right of Reply” Bill, which is essentially an Obligation to Publish Bill. Like all issues politicians seize upon, there is a kernel of validity in what they are proposing, although the manner in which it’s being accomplished is entirely wrong and patently self-serving. The only thing helping the legislators’ cause is public skepticism over the assertions of a kind of sacred sovereignty on the part of media.

A Right to Reply is actually mainly of interest to people who are private citizens, do not live in the public eye, have no access to the powers-that-be, and who find themselves dragged into public scandal or controversy, without any means to properly defend themselves.

This is only my opinion gleaned from talking to readers, including some whom I’ve urged to write to challenge things they consider unfair or offensive to themselves. Generally, their answer is, it won’t accomplish anything, anyway, because the only thing as bad as an antagonized politician is an antagonized media person.

This goes to the heart of a problem many media people have, which is, that over the years, every time media has faced official hostility, there is a significant, even dominant, portion of the population that derives a kind of delight over media’s being on the defensive. Media people have a problem with this, because most of the time, they’re used to being praised and flattered by the public, which calls on them to expose and condemn the things the public finds wrong with officialdom.

But the power of the Fourth Estate comes not from public belief in the integrity or idealism of media, though individual media people do earn the respect of the public in terms of integrity and idealism, but rather, from the general cockfighting approach of the public to politics and public issues.

Media has gained its power and become convinced of its importance because it is used as a proxy by the public, in fighting officials the public couldn’t otherwise challenge, either institutionally or politically. But the usefulness of media shouldn’t be confused with public affection or respect for the profession and industry as a whole. It is all a proxy fight, and the proxy is only useful so long as a citizen or group of citizens find media fighting for their pet causes; but as for media itself, the widespread public attitude, it seems to me, lumps media practitioners with the politicians as part of an Establishment that bullies its way to get what it wants, regardless of the public good.

Were Congress to pass a law giving ordinary citizens the Right to Reply to articles/stories/broadcasts they believe unfairly slurred them, I think the public would applaud. But such a law would have to distinguish between ordinary citizens and those who, by virtue or position or affinity are public figures (for example, the ridiculous insistence of the Palace that the President’s husband is a “private citizen”).

Current proposals in Congress do not make any distinctions of this sort, and many of the arguments made by representatives like Monico Fuentebella and even former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel, Jr. points to politicians wanting to pass the law because they feel slighted and aggrieved over media handling of their actions. But if there’s one thing public officials don’t lack, it’s access to media to give their side on any story.

From my understanding of his arguments, Locsin believes Congress has dug a legal hole for itself with this effort to compel media to give politicians the right to seize equal space to reply to stories concerning them.

On the one hand, as a media person himself, he knows that libel presents a clear and present danger to media:

Even if a libel suit is eventually won, the expense of defending against it can be so prohibitive. Libel suits are a powerful deterrent to press freedom and a potentially fatal financial threat to media. Respected jurists noted this after the highly defective New York Times v. Sullivan decision unleashed a firestorm of libel judgments from outraged state judges protective of the reputation of their constituents. That was when the “dancing in the streets [only of journalists over the NYT decision] stopped.”

But he makes a point probably noxious to media people, which is, that libel is not a question of free speech and disputes the assertion that press freedom is a kind of sacred right:

US Chief Justice Rehnquist said that freedom of speech is a value, sure but it is not the only value protected by the Constitution; personal honor is another. And while Thomas Jefferson extolled press freedom as essential to democracy, he changed his mind after four years in the presidency, saying words to the effect that press freedom is as much of a threat.

In short press freedom is not a sacred right because, as everyone knows, journalism is not a priestly calling. None of its practitioners practice celibacy except when they have no choice. Indeed, there is nothing sacral about journalism—not by a long shot—even if its practice involves excessive intakes of heady beverages, frequent complaints about the shortness of “bread”, repeated grousing about the failure of media owners to multiply their wages combined with the overcompensation of former colleagues who are unaccountably transubstantiated into editors and publishers. All this followed and preceded yet more frequently by blasphemous takings of the Lord’s name in vain—or, worse yet, someone’s mother. (The PI invective made famous by a presidential candidate uttered when copy is read.) Any journalist who takes himself too seriously is not a serious journalist and is probably an academician or a media watchdog. As Samuel Johnson may have said, “Why do writers write? It’s a job.”

But he does believe that legislation is in order to provide what he calls “The Chance to Answer and the Right to Retract”:

This is the Chance [not Right] to Answer aspect of my short substitute. Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, who asked for a second chance [to redeem an act of cowardice or—in the present case—recklessness] inspired the second aspect. To wit, a journalist should have the right to retract and thus be spared the liability or expense of a libel suit by voluntarily “eating his own words”—if they aren’t worth his trouble to keep the words out there for someone to sue on.

So instead of imposing something, the law would encourage something, a difference in attitudes that avoids the dangers of prior restraint on the press:

My substitute bill, aside from possessing the rare quality of brevity and being environment friendly, removes the smallest element of compulsion. It is this element, the US Supreme Court said in the Miami Herald case, that was the only objectionable aspect of a right of reply bill, saying that the right to compel publication is a step away from the right to repress it. Talk about hyperbole.

He argues, you cannot assert a right to reply, unless libel has been established. To establish that, you need probable cause, as established by a Fiscal.

You’d have to file a case and get a finding of probable cause for libel. Only then could you go to a media outfit, armed with the finding of probable cause, and demand equal space to rebut an offending story.

But to compel a media outfit to do so would then be tantamount to prior restraint, since it’s only probable cause, and not proven in court.

Theoretically speaking, the best that the legislator might be able to do is to declare that if a media outfit refuses to publish an apology or a statement from the offended party, the refusal could be taken as a presumption of malice. But he doesn’t see how Congress can “legislate malice.”

And there are other problems with the proposed legislation as it stands:

Finally, if a right of reply bill passes, where would that put a right of rebuttal on the part of the publication? Would the rebuttal be protected from libel? If not, then why accord the right of reply? Where is the win-some, lose-some aspect of such a bill. What if the rebuttal is allegedly even more “libelous”? Would that occasion another right of sur-rebuttal? And so on? Indeed, what if the original reply is libelous, can the publication sue for libel? This is a bill that requires more thought, though not outright suppression into the archives.

And in the sense that no politician has ever put forward a proposal unless he feels there is some sort of support, in terms of public opinion, that can provide an issue on which to base a cause, Locsin is correct. Media will do itself more harm than good by ignoring skeptical public opinion concerning not only itself, but the ethics and principles media people often grandly proclaim but which the public believes media people ignore every bit as blithely as politicans ignore the commonweal.

As it is, as he himself summarizes his bill -

In my bill, if the reply of a victim of an alleged libel is published, he loses any right to sue the writer and the publication, civilly or criminally.

It achieves what the public wants, and yet protects the media’s Constitutional rights; it gives a positive incentive for media outfits to respond to complaints of unfair coverage, accords citizens a means to get themselves heard, and potentially eliminates many unecessary suits before the courts.

Here is the statement from which I lifted the blockquotes above, in full:

Press Statement of TLL

And here is his proposed substitute bill, which has been introduced as an amendment -a substantive one- to the bill that will probably be discussed in the House tonight.

HB No. 3306

That seems to be the way the pendulum of public opinion has swung, concerning Ted Failon and the death of his wife. Two things, after the initial flurry of details (some of them wildly off the mark) concerning the whole thing.

The first is put forward by Rina Jimenez-David in her column, Celebrities have rights, too:

[On]the morning of April 15… Ted Failon, then doing a solo turn, took note of how, in Quezon City, “not one, not two, not three, but four” cases of carjacking had taken place not just “over four days, three days, or two days” but overnight!

…Failon proceeded to skewer the newly-appointed OIC of the Central Police District who was hard put to explain this boomlet in crime. Then, as most everyone knows by now, Failon cut short his program to rush home and there, as he says, found his wife with a bullet wound in the head.

The QCPD would, of course, subsequently take a lead in the handling of the investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Failon’s wife.

And there is Patricia Evangelista’s marvelous column (read the whole thing), The Failon incident:

When the men behind the badge dragged Trina Etong’s sister Pamela screaming out of the New Era General Hospital, a short while before Trina breathed her last, they made Failon the victim.

This is what Kaye Etong, Failon’s daughter said while sitting in the ABS-CBN newsroom last Thursday to the police: My mother killed herself. She ended her life and died alone. My aunt and uncle were hauled off to jail. My father is being accused, and is attempting to bring our jailed helpers and relatives together to be with my mother.

The police are hounding us. I am here, on national television, announcing that I believe my mother chose to leave us and die. Now, is there anything else you want to put us through?

Understand that this is what that admission means: that one girl has been pushed to a corner to a point that she is announcing to the public that this woman, the mother who gave birth to her, who was supposed to love her and cherish her and stand by her, has chosen instead to die, knowing the consequences to the two daughters left motherless and guilt-stricken.

The consensus then is that, setting aside what might have actually transpired -or not- in the death of his wife, the police handling of Failon and family has turned public opinion squarely against the police. In general, our culture expects a wide latitude to be given even to one’s foes in times of family celebrations (baptisms, weddings) or tragedy (illness, funerals), and for a predominantly Christian (indeed, Catholic) country, suicide in particular is something treated with kid gloves because of the stigma that remains attached to that act. And whatever official scrutiny takes place concerning the prominent, we expect some consideration for their underlings. Whether tangling with the doctors over a proposed Paraffin test, dragging household help to jail, and then depriving a distraught sister of the cultural imperative of nursing her dying sister -well, how many cultural norms could the police have possible defied in a single week, concerning a single case?

It only reinforces the notion that the police are less interested less in law and order than in publicity and getting even.

After the grisly murder of Iglesia Filipina Independiente bishop (and former Obispo Maximo) Antonio Ramento, I remember his son describing to me, during the wake, how the police bungled the investigation into the murder of his father. One detail in particular stands out: the policemen brought their coffee and snacks to the murder scene and subsequently added the remainder of their merienda to the scene of the crime. Of course to this day, no one has been apprehended in the case of the bishop’s murder, the police considering a robbery gone awry.

The problem -for the police, anyway- is that once cases hit the headlines, police conduct is subjected to intense public scrutiny, regardless of whether that scrutiny is informed or not. There is, perhaps, an instinctive desire for the public to play amateur sleuth, a desire emboldened by all the detective shows people feast on in movies and on television. A few months ago, I picked up a marvelously entertaining book. “Beating the Devil’s Game: A History of Forensic Science and Criminal Investigation” (Katherine Ramsland) which gives a brisk rundown on the development of Forensic Science and criminal investigation procedure since the Middle Ages. The testing of a suspect’s hands for gunshot residue, according to Ramsland, first took place in 1932, and was done by a certain Thomas Gonzales.

I bring this up, because of one particular aspect that looms over anything the police do or don’t do, concerning their investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Ted Failon’s wife: the politicization of the police, and with it, the prioritization of the political aspects of crimes, to the detriment -even abandonment- of scrupulous police procedures. The police are perceived to be neither professional, nor fair; put another way, the capacity of the police to engage in neutral investigations is hobbled and inevitably compromised, by political considerations that affect, in particular, high-profile cases: either things can be hushed-up if the case involves someone with access to the authorities, or taken in all sorts of unhelpful directions if the case involves people not in good odor with the present dispensation.

This not to say that the State had no right to get involved; or that charges shouldn’t be filed. In Ramsland’s book, she puts the involvement of the authorities in suicide (or alleged suicide) cases in context:

They were… the keepers of the king’s pleas. Those who held the office, soon to be called coroners, collected taxes, but they also summoned inquest juries for people who were seriously wounded or who had died from “misadventure.” Since these officials were there to protect the king’s interests, they could confiscate animals or objects implicated in accidental deaths and take over goods found in accidents or wrecks, although they could not themselves render verdicts.

…One’s manner of death had implications for taxes, because in certain types of deaths the king confiscated the property.

A suicide is no longer an outlaw, except in the religious sense (for Catholics, hence the lingering social stigma in our society involving suicides; though the Church more often than not, tempers this by giving wide latitude to the assumption that a suicide might involve temporary insanity, mitigating the circumstances in the eyes of Church authority). However the State requires all deaths to be certified and registered; and death by suicide is the kind of thing that requires ruling out other possibilities, such as foul play. All these certifications and necessary inquiries, too, necessarily involves taking notice of the financial implications (and motivations) of alleged suicides.

But this brings up the possibility that what violates the law may not be worth the persecution involved. Consider the established fact that the site of the suicide was cleaned up; and that, since it is reasonable for the State to inquire into the circumstances, cleaning up the scene obviously makes a determination one way or another more difficult. Therefore, an obstruction of justice. But there is also the possibility that if the cleaning up can be considered a sign of foul play, it might also have been a very human response to the grisly nature of the event: what normal person wants a reminder of the event to remain? If the former is determined, then if done alone or in cooperation with others, the cleaning up was certainly a crime; if the latter, it does not seem either reasonable or beneficial to the public to insist on a persecution leading to conviction.

The police could have come out smelling like roses out of this one, precisely because the QCPD had been criticized by Failon. Instead, they did practically everything possible to alienate public opinion and render a dispassionate, professional finding after a scrupulous investigation.

In this, the only counterpart of the police in terms of unprofessional behavior was large segments of the media. The airwaves were cluttered, from the start, with misleading or patently false information in some cases. There were pious requests for privacy to be respected, followed by a showbiz-style extravaganza that passed itself off as news coverage: network muscle was wielded to monopolize the news in favor of ABS-CBN’s coverage, which may or may not have been motivated by the manner in which the rival network tried to peddle its own scoops, including the broadcasting of the alleged suicide note.

Baratillo@Cubao pointed out in a recent conversation that what seems to have been overlooked, in the mania for amateur sleuthing that accompanied the event, was the element of justice. For Failon’s wife and the real circumstances, whatever they might be, surrounding her death; and for her family. The public’s interest is, of course, to ensure that if foul play resulted in her death, that it be punished -and conversely, for the family and friends of the victim to be cleared of any potential, unwarranted, stigma attached to that death.

The police blunders means whatever they determine will be clouded by public skepticism; and for Failon and his network, that ratings and protecting one of their own trumped all other considerations.

aside from masticating quotes CSI: “a… family burdened with tragedy that put you under a microscope. That close, nobody can look good.” Indeed. Some reactions giving a sampling of public opinion can be found in Smoke, in Purpose Driven Paul, and Now What, Cat? in pakshet 101 and Touched by an Angel.

It’s an interesting time to be in the UK, where the Mother of All Parliaments, the House of Commons, has been roiled by infighting and discouraging economic news.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer ignited a firestorm of protest last week: see Chancellor Alistair Darling warns slump could be the worst for 60 years, precipitating a slump in the Pound Sterling and a furious debate over whether he acted irresponsibly or not. In many ways the entire thing -including debating whether government ministers ought to be blunt or Pollyanna-like in their official statements, the reliability or unreliability of official statistics, the question of whether the chief executive should take the fall to prevent the decimation of the party- sounds eerily familiar and because of that, oddly comforting.

The Brits are working through issues not very different from our own and it seems to be there isn’t all that much of a difference between the way British and Filipino politicians are trying to do damage control: orare ignoring public opinion altogether while politicizing previously relatively partisan-free civil service institutions.

The Times in a recent editorial (which came at the heels of the paper’s report that a sacking was in the offing), The twilight of Sir Ian Blair, looked at the controversial head of Scotland Yard and took him to task in all-too-familiar (for Filipinos) terms:

His responses are by now well practised. He believes that near-constant pressure to quit is an occupational hazard to be shrugged off if not actually ignored. And he believes mutinous disloyalty from senior colleagues is an inevitable result of radical reforms of which he is fiercely proud.

The trouble for Sir Ian is that his reforms have not made him indispensable. Nor can he be sanguine any longer about the calls for him to go. His support from the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Home Office has crumbled: his contract will not be renewed in 2010. This makes him a lame duck not only in the view of his many critics, but in fact. If his record were spectacular, this newspaper would back his bid to stay in office until the 2012 Olympics and beyond. Unfortunately, it is not.

What sets the British media apart from our own is the deeper sense of memory, whether institutional, national, and personal, that the media, the politicians, and commentators have. For example, Libby Purves in Why did Alistair Darling choose 1948? points out a fascinating detail, concerning 1948 as a watershed year for Britain despite postwar austerity:

The disreputable anomaly of plural voting was abolished - previously university graduates could vote in two places, and business owners had an extra vote at their place of work.

The odd thing of course being that there are frustrated middle and upper class Filipinos who continue to think plural voting might be a good thing.

The business and finance media, too, write clearly and informatively, something hardly ever seen at home. The Business Editor of The Times pens an analysis: This slowdown has a long way to go yet – so just look forward to the sales. And there are short, but richly informative reports that contextualize the economic news. An article, Is the party over for pubs?, points out British pubs are closing at the rate of four per day and also ties in the various economic trends (crashing property prices, increasing food and labor costs, etc.) into the uncertain future of a British institution.

In Britain 2028: we need ten new cities, please, Camilla Cavendish looks at the immigration policies of the UK, something that ought to be of interest to Filipinos living and working here.

Just today, Gordon Brown to increase Holyrood’s tax powers focuses on the great Labour project of restoring the Scottish Parliament and increasing its powers over taxation and budgeting: again, this ia a debate erupting in Britain which should be interesting to proponents of Federalism.

A great pleasure is reading the obituaries published in the British papers. See K.K. Birla: industrial tycoon and philanthropist:

O diba?

John Nery and I have a shared, pre-PDI heritage, and that’s having been onetime workers in Today Newspaper. But John was involved in the news-gathering side of it. For my part, I was mentored by Teddyboy Locsin (our Publisher) in opinion writing -in the grand manner of his father, Teodoro M. Locsin who once wrote of himself, “I thundered and shrilled -that is, I wrote editorials.”

And I’m sure you’ve noticed the difference -I tend to be more heated, more willing to pick a fight, on paper than John does, and he tends to be more analytical, more interested in nuance and the facts, less inclined to partisanship.

But you know, at the end of the day every writer will, sooner or later, cross pens with another.

On April 22, John’s column, Armchair radicals, came out (I’m linking to the version of his column on his blog, because it has all the relevant links embedded in it), which was a response to the various criticisms-as-responses to recent suggested guidelines circulated by the Jesuits. John specifically set out to dissect Jesuitic placebo by Filomeno Sta. Ana III and Manuel Buencamino.

A jolly all-in-the-family rumble, I said, all of the writers being Ateneans and reacting to their Jesuit mentors’ political prescription. Nery and Buencamino also happen to be columnists who also happen to be bloggers. The merry mix-up, if you want to see more, is all laid out over at Ateneans Act.

Well, sure enough, a counter-response came out, titled Teachers Pwet. Meanwhile, John started a response in A Dear John letter, but hasn’t gone back to it.

My own views are closer to John’s in theory, perhaps, though emotionally I’m happier with the aggressiveness of Sta. Ana and Buencamino (you don’t have to go further back than two recent columns of mine, The 2010 Movement and Resistance isn’t futile ).

What’s interesting -aside from the arguments themselves, both stylistically and in terms of content- is that they’re taking place in several places: in the newspapers, in message boards, in columns and in blogs. It’s all part of a larger clash of contending views on what should be done (but you can go to my own blog to read more about that). For now, check out these blog entries: If you ran this country… by Jim Paredes (also an Atenean), I am Change, Are You? by Harvey Key (also an Atenean) who’s inviting students and young professionals to the first-ever TEAM RP GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Saturday, 26 April, 1PM (more on this from Chronicles from the Middle of Nowhere).

Now is this all only of interest to Ateneo de Manila alumni? I think not, not being an Atenean myself.

What do you think?

At the annual conference of the American Studies Association of the Philippines last Saturday, I started off with a borrowed idea (from Henry Jenkins of the Center for Future Civic Media, whom I read about through Ethan Zuckerman’s indispensable blog). I started with a question: What does democracy look like? And then offered the following photograph, by the celebrated Romy Gacad of AFP, as an answer.

I explained why, in the following terms:

“This Agence France Presse photograph was taken on August 12, 2006, when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo paid a quick visit to Legazpi City to survey preparations at a danger zone under the shadow of a restless Mayon. The next day, I wrote in my Newsstand blog:

This photo, taken yesterday by the peerless Romy Gacad of AFP in the vicinity of Mayon volcano, spoke to me on so many levels I knew I just had to use it … The composition is so exact it seems almost posed, until you consider the subjects involved: President Arroyo, of course, under the umbrella, facing (or receiving tribute from) Albay Gov. Gonzalez, Reps. Salceda and Lagman, and volcanology institute chief Solidum. (Note the triangle that the officials form.) Other photos, taken by Gacad and by other photographers too, remind us that this particular tableau was very much a product of the moment; in fact, most of the pictures taken at this volcano-gazing event yesterday show either the President by herself or in a huddle with officials. But the veteran lensman saw something different, perhaps a shift in movement, perhaps a blurring and then a coming-into-focus of color. Was it perhaps the presidential umbrella that drew his attention?

“In the 15 months since I wrote that, I have become more and more convinced that this candid portrait of the hierarchy of political power, caught on the wing, tells us something true about democracy, Philippine-style.

“But if this is democracy, where are the demos? Three possibilities. The people are implied; the leaders from the executive and the legislative branches are discussing their fate. The people have been warned off; note the sign that can be glimpsed in the space between the President and her umbrella-toting guard. If we fill in the blanks, we can read: Warning Don’t Go Beyond The Line. Not least, the people (and the press) are outside the frame, watching the scene.

“You may have other images in mind that illustrate democracy, Philippine-style. Any of the iconic photographs from the four heady days of Edsa Uno, for instance, would be similarly evocative. Familiar images of Philippine elections—yellow ballot box, blue-stained index fingers, seminarians in white—remain resonant. A photograph taken by Inquirer photographer Rem Zamora during special elections last May casts the eternal triangle of ballot box, armed guard, and election volunteer in a new light, literally through a different grid.

“But back to Bicol. I hope you will agree with me when I say that the Gacad photo does two things wonderfully well: It captures the elite nature of our representative democracy today, and at the very same time it recalls the datu-and-tribute origins of our history.”

The rest of my remarks can be found here, in Newsstand. But I would be interested to find out: For you, what does democracy look like? If you can’t post a photo, maybe you can post a link!

Exhibit A (actually, Exhibit A-1 and Exhibit A-2) is what the Philippine National Police says caused the Glorietta blast.

Exhibit B is what the Ayala Corporation says caused the Glorietta blast.

And a 3-D Walk-Through of the Glorietta basement! How cool is that?

Bloggers like Tongue In, Anew seem more inclined to be skeptical of the PNP’s explanations, while other bloggers like Inner Sanctum (see his October 22 entry in particular) are not. See also, The Journal of the Jester-in-Exile.

Here’s what I find interesting. Now that the Governor-General, I mean, the US Ambassador, has spoken, it just might be that public opinion will shift, one way or another. The only reason I’m not saying public opinion will suddenly shift totally in favor of the PNP is, that the Zobels are involved on the other side, and you have another kind of colonial dynamic at work, there, as blogger Inner Sanctum seems to represent.

An effort to try to sift the evidence is in Glorietta Blast: Blaming the Basement, in Newsbreak (complete with a nifty diagram!).

As for me, I still think it’s too early to make conclusions, not least because a layman-friendly side-by-side comparison of all the available information, and the experts weighing in, has yet to be done.

Two months ago, I asked you if we should post a comment from a politician or a political group. Somebody had written what amounted to an invitation to readers to join “Team Gordon,” and I didn’t know what to do.

I like what Kabayan said in response, and his pragmatic frame of mind: Let’s post it, he said, and if what happens after is not to our liking, then “discontinue the experiment.” I also like Bert’s evocative suggestion: Post them all, he said, and we will “clobber them with kisses, or with stones.”

A couple of other loyal readers said perhaps we shouldn’t entertain posts like this; I hear them, but perhaps if we adopt Kabayan’s experimental approach they can see their way to a qualified Yes?

Here, then, is that two-month-old post from Gordon’s camp.

Vision. Experience. Track Record.

These are the criteria for leadership that should guide us in choosing the next President in 2010.

Dick Gordon is the only one with Vision, Experience, and Track Record.

He turned Olongapo City around, made subic an investment and tourist destination, and brought about the resurgence of tourism in the Philippines.

Through his long involvement with the Philippine National Red Cross, as governor and Chairman, Gordon has brought help to those struck by calamities and diseases.

As Senator, he has worked on bills and resolutions aimed at repairing our people’s faith in government institutions.

As President, we are certain that ONLY DICK GORDON’s TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERHSIP can bring about CHANGE that is FOR REAL, FOR BETTER, FOR EVERYONE, AND FOR GENERATIONS TO COME!

Visit our blog at www.teamgordon2010.blogspot.com and find out how you can help elect Dick Gordon for PRESIDENT!