Ed Lingao on disquiet

governance

Illegal and extra-constitutional #RevGov

August 22, 2020 by
I

Just some quick notes here.

1. The people advocating a revolutionary government are in effect calling for a self-coup, or an “autogolpe” in Spanish, where a legitimately elected leader illegally dissolves the other branches of government and assumes extraordinary powers for himself.

2. A power grab is a power grab, regardless of who the beneficiary is. Remember that a President is not the same as the government. Government is a balancing of the powers of the three branches of government—the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. The different branches are supposed to act as checks and balances for each other.

If, and that is a big IF, a President accedes to the proposal and declares a revolutionary government and dissolves the legislature and controls the judiciary, that is still clearly a power grab.

“A RevGov could also happen if the insiders—the people in actual and constitutional control of the government actively assisted by the military (or the military officials themselves)—set aside the constitution, sweep out the incumbent officials, install new ones, and run the government according to their will and ways,” warned former SC Justice Artemio Panganiban in 2017, when President Duterte was still openly flirting with the possibility of declaring a revgov.

Since then, Duterte seems to have dropped the idea.

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social / media

Not all attacks against the media are done with a gun: on the ABS-CBN franchise

July 5, 2020 by
N

I need to warn you folks that this might be kinda long.

Before I left for Iraq in 2003, I was asked repeatedly WHY, when I didn’t have to (I was in Current Affairs, I wasn’t even in News), and besides, why tempt fate (Afghanistan was just two years earlier, and we almost failed to make it out of that one).

Some even asked if it was for the hazard pay (“Ang laki siguro ng binayad sa iyo ano?”) No I did not get any hazard pay at all. Returning after a month in Iraq, I just collected my one month salary as a regular Manila-based producer. Was it the “overwhelming” support that we got during these deployments? Hardly. I bought a second hand flak jacket in Quiapo using my own money, and borrowed steel helmets from the Philippine Marines. I borrowed some money from friends and colleagues to add to our suicide budget (Thank you David Jude Sta. Ana!) and my wife also pitched in to help. In Baghdad, rival GMA’s Howie Severino was even kind enough to give me his leftover Iraqi money before they returned to Manila (I have no idea how Howie liquidated THAT expense)

I did not do it for ABS-CBN. I did it because it was something that had to be done, And sometimes, you really believe it has to be done by you. That is why it pains me whenever people throw around that “bayaran” and “presstitute” label so glibly just because they disagree with what you have to say.

Is the profession perfect? Far from it. ABS-CBN was a perfect example of our many imperfections. We fought our internal battles more times than I would care to remember, from problems with politics to problems with priorities. And in the end, I really learned to appreciate the people I worked with – the colleagues who stood by us in our many battles, and some of our immediate bosses who covered for us, or simply turned a blind eye, when we simply refused to obey. Loyalty to your profession needs to trump other loyalties. Sound noble, right? Well, sometimes, or perhaps many times, we lose our battles.

The point is to know that these are battles that we need to keep fighting.

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