Sunday, September 24, 2006 Roperos: Freedom and martial law By Godofredo M. Roperos Politics Also
September 21 always falls within our weeklong celebration Press Freedom Week, meaning, we celebrate freedom and the day it was curtailed all at the same time. Which again happened the other day.
More than that, Thailand on Wednesday night had to go through the same ordeal that we underwent some 34 years ago when the military took over the helm of civil government.
The difference was that in the Philippines, the military did it for its commander-in-chief, who was at the same time the head of the civil administration, while in Thailand, the poor Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was in New York and did not know what hit him.
He left as head of the Thai government then the political rag was pulled from under his feet.
The circumstance behind Thailand’s loss of its freedom may be different from that of the Philippines 34 years ago, but should the same thing happen to our country this time, the cause could be similar.
The way I look at it, Shinawatra’s failings were in his inability to curtail and control runaway corruption in his government. The Thai PM was himself a very rich man, a businessman who has amassed quite a fortune even before he became Bangkok’s political supremo.
But it is probably because of his being a businessman that he was unable to control graft and corruption in his administration. He was probably surrounded by business cronies, like what Ferdinand Marcos had---a number of political cronies that helped did him in when the people could no longer withstand the graft and corruption they perpetrated.
Incidentally, the same circumstance obtains in President Arroyo’s government at the moment, a rather risky proposition to contend.
In any case, I said it is uncanny that our celebration of Press Freedom Week coincided with two events—the Bangkok coup, which is nakedly an outright curtailment of all freedoms recognized in a constitution, and the 34th anniversary of the declaration of martial law.
The two events somehow presented a contrasting scenario to our vivacious celebration, an innovation which is unique only to Cebu.
That the celebration also featured the launching of a book about martial rule written by someone who suffered so much from the loss of our freedoms, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, is something that added significance to the occasion.
The life story of the senator as one of the victim’s of martial rule should be a good read for all of us, but more especially so to those from the younger generation who did not go through the ordeal directly.
Finally, and perhaps even more importantly for all of us media people still living, there was the showing of the documentary done by Publio Briones, who directed and produced it for this daily, about the killing of journalists as experienced in Cebu by Cebuanos.
Certainly, if only for all of the above considerations, the 12th celebration of Press Freedom Week is a deeply memorable one.
