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I AM
amazed at how some people in media can twist statements
just to make some headlines. A good example was my
statement that if Secretary Romy Neri did really call
the President “evil,” then Neri must resign.
Broadcast and print media later quoted me but omitted
the preamble of my statement, making it appear that I
had already asked Neri to resign. If media is an
exponent of the truth, they have no business twisting
the statements of others.
****
Another
good example is the innocent statement of Undersecretary
Jovy Salazar when he said that if Secretary Neri and Mr.
Rodolfo Lozada Jr. revealed secret information and
confidential documents, they may be liable for
punishment under the Revised Penal Code.
Undersecretary Salazar is just attached to the main
panel mandated to conduct fact-finding and preliminary
investigation as directed by the President, and
definitely, he is not the Department of Justice (DOJ).
But despite this, some newspaper headlines screamed that
the DOJ will charge both Lozada and Neri.
It
should be emphasized that at this stage of the
investigation, there are no findings that can sustain
the filing of any case in court. But this did not stop
the media from making the conclusion, which not only
will mislead the reader, but had already misled many
people as can be gleaned from the many text messages I
received in connection with these distorted headlines.
****
We are
reprinting a letter from Fr. Ranhilio Callangan Aquino,
dean, Graduate School of Law of the San Beda College, to
the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP),
for an insight into the views of other members of the
clergy:
I write
you in my personal capacity. My position should not be
attributed to San Beda College, but my views nonetheless
are in large measure those of a dean of a graduate
school of law.
The call
of the CBCP for “communal action” that should consist,
in the first place, of national self-examination,
renewal and conversion is truly evangelical and
admirable. But the latest call for “another kind of
people power” is disturbing, to say the least,
especially in the light of the comments made by
Archbishop Oscar Cruz this morning over dzRH.
Archbishop Cruz said: “Ang ibig sabihin ng panawagan
na iyan ay dapat tingnan na ng kasalukuyang pamahalaan
kung puwede nang magbitiw.” Statements such as these
can hardly be helpful at the moment.
May I
bring to your attention the following considerations:
1.
All
this “noise” was generated by the Lozada testimony. Till
now, I have not found anything in his statements—which I
have followed with assiduousness—that assigns
culpability to the President. In fact, it is even
difficult to construct any semblance of a case built on
“circumstantial evidence” against the President. So what
do the calls for her resignation rest on?
2.
By
contrast, Secretary Neri’s press conference makes clear
that the President had no participation in the
transactions between ZTE and government agencies. Anyone
who listened closely to his eloquent and forthright
declarations would not have failed to understand this.
If one of the key players himself says the President had
nothing to do with the transactions, where is the
factual premise for the calls for her resignation?
It would be the easiest thing to Neri to exculpate himself by
pointing to the President’s orders to him, and winning
the sympathy of the populace, including the CBCP—but he
has not. Should this not be counted in favor of
considering his statements veridical?
3.
Proceedings before the Senate lack the rigidity of
prosecutorial and judicial proceedings. The rules on
evidence do not apply. Any student of law will recognize
that what much of Lozada says that is considered “juicy”
is, in fact, hearsay. The rule against hearsay evidence
is not a mere legal nicety. It has a very practical
epistemological foundation: you cannot accept a
repetition of another person’s statements if the person
who made the statement himself is not available by
cross-examination because there would be no way of
testing credibility and consistency.
4.
The CBCP
should be the voice of sobriety. It should not jump the
gun on investigations. It should be the last to join the
bandwagon on popular sentiment. In fact, calls for
resignation, to my mind, lack any moral moorings at all.
What moral precept is it that justifies such a call?
Only when a government is utterly lawless, tyrannical,
despotic and oppressive—and only when there is a viable,
workable alternative—would such a call be justified. Has
the presence of these elements been established with
moral certainty?
5.
The
noise of
Manila should not be confused with the voice of the country. Is the
rest of the country convinced about the position
Manila
agitators have taken? How does the farmer in Ilocos
Norte, the fisherman in Cagayan, the pearl diver in
Tawi-Tawi or Jolo deal with these issues?
The
voice of each of them is, by fundamental human-rights
precepts, as vital as that of any vociferous member of
the Black and White Movement, and probably even more so,
because none of them has any political agenda.
The CBCP
erodes its own credibility when it takes precipitous
political postures not grounded in uncontestable
evidence. I still have to listen to evidence that points
to the culpability of the President in processes that
have been established precisely to establish this—and
the circus that goes on at the Senate is not such a
process!
(Just
one more thing: Our priests and seminarians have been
seen in Senate and at Makati in their cassocks. Are they
as eager to do these habiliments for sacred liturgy?) |
