I bristled at first when I began reading the recent article “
The show must go on” of
Inquirer.net "columnist" Patricia Evangelista. Her opening remarks are a sampling of some disturbing notions that may already be implanted in the heads of some our more dimwitted compatriots, a couple of which I highlight as follows...
* * *
Patricia Evangelista seems to assert that Philippine President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III's "power to diminish the Judiciary" (if he does indeed possess it) is a good thing.
If this is the nature of the "power" wielded by the chief of the Executive branch of the Philippine government, and if this is the intended outcome of the impeachment effort against the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, then there is something fundamentally wrong with the principles underlying this exercise that is gripping the nation today. We've been told by impeachment apologists for so long that the impeachment procedure is against the person and not the institution. It seems that for Evangelista, this is neither the case nor the outcome she envisions. For Evangelista, the aftermath of the impeachment trial will be a judiciary that will henceforth be operating under the shadow of Malacañang.
But according to Rep. Niel Tupas Jr himself,
this is not the intended outcome at all...
“We are not here to indict the Supreme Court as an institution,” Tupas told the senators. “We are here because one man — Chief Justice Renato Corona — has bartered away for the pot of porridge the effectiveness, independence and honor of the Supreme Court.”
I thought, after all that, that perhaps Evangelista should check with her handlers first before polluting the venerable tabloid-turned-broadsheet with her drivel.
I read on...
Patricia Evangelista drags Corona's children into the case.
According to Evangelista, Corona's guilt will be such that even his children will suffer [
my boldface below for emphasis]...
If he is guilty, and the courts agree, it is the public who will punish him, and his children who will bear the shame.
And so I thought: that's the trouble with Philippine society. There are no individuals. Only family members, clansmen, and cronies. The primitivism of Philippine society is such that a man's success or failure necessarily forms part of his children's inheritance. It is a lifetime medal or cross to bear placed upon them by a society renowned for its medieval judgmental disposition.
* * *
But then at some point in the article Evangelista raises some good points about how the prosecution in the trial need to turn from being the slanderers and insinuators that they were before the trial into a team of
attorneys whose main weapon is evidence and its employment in the crafting of
proof...
The truths they claim depend on how they legitimize these truths in the face of an 82-year-old courtroom veteran who plays the media with the slickness of a Casanova.
Nice.
That is the trouble with Evangelista's drumroll style of writing where she tends to launch into a
balagtasan first before coming to her
point towards the end of her article. That style is so last century. In a country populated by chronic point-missers, well-highlighted points are premium. As such, points need to be made well -- and as early as possible; before opportunities to misinterpret what are mere contexts start to creep in.
Exciting times ahead. It will be quite entertaining watching so-called 'journalists' being grilled on the witness stand on national television. It's been revealed recently that "investigative journalist" Raissa Robles and "online journalist" Maritess Vitug wil be subpoenaed to testify for the prosecution in the impeachment trial of Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona.
