COLUMN: FIRST THINGS FIRST– John Stuart Mill at the barricade – By Francisco S. Tatad

NYC Chair Ronald Gian Carlo Cardema. PHOTO FROM NYC HOMEPAGE

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FIRST THINGS FIRST

 

SEVERAL high officials and candidates for senator have crossed party lines to oppose a proposal by Roland Cardema, the head of the National Youth Commission (NYC), to strip “anti-government” and “rebellious” students of their government scholarships — a move that appears to confuse dissent for dissidence, and seeks to outlaw the exchange of ideas within academic premises.

President Rodrigo Duterte would be well-advised to repudiate the proposal and also reconsider the evident academic fitness of its proponent.

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Will he accept defeat?
But will DU30 do it? Given the composition of the bloc opposing the proposal, DU30 may yet decide to look at the names opposing it rather than at the merits of their position, which is entirely laudable. The names include Vice President Leni Robredo, for whom DU30 shows so much disdain, Liberal Party senatorial candidates Samira Guytoc, Gary Alejano, Florin Hilbay, and former Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo; they also include Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, Education Secretary Leonor Briones, Commission on Higher Education Chairman Prospero de Vera 3rd, Sen. Francis Escudero, chairman of the Senate committee on education, and presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo.

The young Cardema obviously wanted to protect DU30 from the rigors and consequences of an unwanted intellectual debate. He has been able to finish his half-term without indulging his critics or anybody else in such debates; one cannot risk the nation’s stability now by allowing high school and university students the freedom of expression that is rationed in small doses to the members of the Cabinet and the conscript press.

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Emboldened
The opponents of the proposal were clearly emboldened by the fact that DU30 had not taken a clear position in support of it; otherwise it might have been difficult for the Cabinet members involved to take that position. DU30 is not known to suffer any opposition to his position on any issue. One stark example is his federalism project, by means of which he would like to cut up the country into 18 separate “parts” — only three of which appear to be economically viable — and try to put them back together again into one federal whole.

We have not heard one single intelligent debate on this issue until now. But give the students the academic freedom they enjoyed under Marcos, and we will probably see the campus ablaze with pyrotechnics. I cannot imagine DU30 supporting a series of university or college campus debates where one debating team would be free to point out, for DU30’s enlightenment, what a federal system is, and what it is not.

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Various offenses
For starters, you combine separate and independent units into one federal whole rather than cut up an existing unitary state into several fragments and hope to put them back together again. Nor can I imagine the President allowing a debating team to point out, as I have repeatedly tried to do in this column, that the President has absolutely no legitimate role to play in amending or revising the Constitution. This is specifically and indelibly written in Article 17 of the Constitution, under “Amendments or Revisions.” This power is reserved exclusively for the Congress and the Filipino electorate through a constituent assembly or a constitutional convention; no mention of the President, who has decided to inject himself into the whole process.

This means the President’s decision to create a consultative commission to prepare a draft federal constitution, which has been submitted to the House of Representatives, is indisputably illegal. The expenditure of any amount in support of this committee and its members, without the authority of Congress, is similarly illegal. So is the commission’s draft illegal. A 102-page study of the federal draft by the 95-year-old former Senate president Juan Ponce Enrile, who is running again for the Senate, shows the most atrocious proposals coming from the so-called legal luminaries who want to revise the 1987 Constitution.

Almighty and eternal
The atrocities are legion, but the most atrocious appears in Section 4 of Article 21, under “Amendments or Revisions.” This provides: “The democratic and republican character of the government, its federal structure, its indissolubility and permanence shall not be subject to amendments or revisions.” This sounds like the evangelists Matthew and Luke quoting our Lord Jesus Christ, “Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Where did the drafters of this document get the temerity to say this?

To go back to where we started. The NYC head wanted to perform DU30 a service by abolishing academic freedom in the name of politics. This would have guaranteed that in the whole of academia, media and politics, only one dominant thought and voice would be heard. There would have been no need to burn all our books, as in Nazi Germany, or send the writers, scholars and artists to the gulag. This would have knocked us back to a new Dark Age. Our universities, where every question may be asked and every idea proposed without committing a crime, would have become extinct; our right and ability to think and ask questions will have died.

Not a question of numbers
A democratic government loses its claim to its name when it begins to believe it can attain the truth while avoiding the clash of conflicting opinions and ideas. The young Cardema may be temporarily defeated, but no one can say he won’t be resurrected sooner or later. We cannot drop our guard. The intolerance of reason and truth now looms large before our eyes; more and more power is foisted upon us without authority, and the first thing it disrespects is our right to speak our minds with the greatest clarity and courage.

With the support of the most corrupt propaganda fraudsters, whose services could be easily obtained for a price, reason and truth are now reduced to a question of numbers. “Who is saying this? Are they few or many?” These questions have replaced the truly meaningful one — “What’s being said?” Many of us tend to forget what John Stuart Mill said: “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

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IN MEMORIAM. We join the nation in mourning the passing of Bobby Mañosa, 88, National Artist for Architecture, who passed on Wednesday in the peace of Christ. He will be long remembered for his architecture which now adorns the country’s landscape and for his many good works in the service of others. He belonged to a family of brilliant architects, one of whom Pinggoy has been a dear old friend. I ask the gentle reader to offer a prayer for the eternal repose of his soul. Thank you very much.

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TRIVIA

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