Wrong forum

Sharing yet another of Alex Magno's columns...

Alex Magno is known to most of us as a Professor of Political Science in our very own UP. His columns are oftentimes incisive and objective. Sorry, but, I can't say the same for the other columnists (whom he also referred to in this column) who have praised Lozada to high heavens, accepted his testimonies hook, line and sinker as though they were gospel truth (this is not to say that there is no truth in what Lozada has said. I personally think there is SOME truth in his testimonies) and, continue to fan the flame of what borders on sedition. But, Magno writes about sobriety, objectivity and discernment. .. qualities that make for a politically mature society and people. He talks about preservation and strengthening of our institutions over desecration and weakening of the same. He warns against playing into the hands of the political opportunists. He writes about reason over emotion.

Read on...


Wrong forum
FIRST PERSON By Alex Magno
Tuesday, March 11, 2008

They speculate wildly. They bait witnesses. They offer patently false pieces of evidence. They pass intrigue. They are pompous and, at times, vacuous.

There is none of the disciplined inquiry here that one might see in a proper courtroom. There is no proper cross-examination of testimony. There is no clear resolution of contested statements.

What we have seen is an orgy of hearsay. It is a peepshow, trying hard to get at pornographic details that have little significance for the case at hand nor the issue at bar.

The Ping and Jamby Show, as the Senate hearing on the NBN deal might be now called, is the latest melodrama to hit town. Like its counterparts properly situated in the world of entertainment, it is interminable, meandering, alternately funny and outrageous.

It has roused the passions of those already predisposed against the present dispensation. It has been shamelessly exploited by those political groups aching for yet another episode of turbulence.

“The Senate may not really be the proper venue for seeking the truth,” concluded Archbishop Orlando Quevedo.

Amen.

Most of the senators seem to be more interested in playing up to a section of the media: that section vulnerable to sensationalism and muckraking. That section that has been outrageously partial to the noisemakers, grossly underplaying the more sober voices that have spoken through the course of this so-called “crisis.”

For instance, former CBCP president Archbishop Fernando Capalla points out that 90 of the 100 voting members of the religious hierarchy believe that participating in partisan politics is not within the scope of their pastoral duties. And yet, much of the sensationalist press has given “disproportionate media mileage” only on the handful of unreasonably agitated men of the cloth.

When Corazon Aquino and Rodolfo Lozada, in their bizarre, one-sided campus tour, visited the University of Santo Tomas , the crowd of half-informed students was dutifully covered. But what the rector of the university said during the assembly saw very little media light.

Fr. Rolando de la Rosa warned, in no uncertain terms, that another round of people power could only worsen the country’s problems. The two previous instances of “people power” tore down institutions but did not properly undertake the more difficult task of building new institutions that ensure leadership with integrity.

The rector’s wise words were a stinging rebuke to Cory Aquino and Jun Lozada, who were in the assembly, trying to peddle yet another round of institution- wrecking. Yet another dramatic quick-fix that is bound to fail.

Seditious talk is cheap. Solutions are more difficult to come by.

Was the rector’s wisdom properly conveyed by our favorite swashbuckling television channel or our favorite sensationalist newspaper? I don’t think so.

There is not much careful weighing of the options going on in mainstream media. All we get is an overdose of “he-said, she-said” superficial reporting, heavily tilted in favor of the scandal-mongers.

Our public is being short-changed here. The more reasonable points of view are virtually censored. The coverage is almost exclusively on the hysterical and the shrill.

An insidious form of group-think has descended upon us. Those who are most unreasonable claim moral superiority. Those who want a reasoned deliberation are condemned as running-dogs and paid hacks of the powers-that- be.

In another time, this sort of group-think was called fascism.

When a group of former senior government officials assembled at La Salle Greenhills, they agreed to issue a tempered statement calling for greater transparency. The statement was later advertised as calling for the President’s resignation.

Later, a much smaller section of this group got together and, in what seems to be an attempt to cover up the earlier dishonesty, called for several incumbent officials to be put on leave pending what they call the “search for truth.” They even imposed a tight deadline on the President of the Republic to comply with their demand.

What gives them the right to impose such a demand is a good question to ponder. Many of those in this self-righteous lot have their own truth issues to settle, left festering since they were last in office.

None of the testimonies offered in the Senate-induced melodrama appears ready to stand in court. And yet those smeared in the course of this excessive sideshow find themselves without an impartial forum to turn to.

It is always easy to vilify. Much more difficult to rectify.

But vilification, not rectification, is the point of this Senate-induced melodrama. It appeals to the banalities of public voyeurism, not to sharpening the public’s sense of perfecting policy and setting institutions aright.

Sure, we have lingering problems with corruption and institutional transparency. They are problems that have always been there, snowed under by the many orgies of demonization that our politicians indulge in, meant entirely to unsettle the power configuration and create opportunities for the politically marginalized.

These are problems that are not solved by repetitive political circuses — made intolerable by senators trying to be cute before the cameras and peppering us with their punning, the lowest form of humor.