THE shutdown of ABS-CBN broadcast facilities diminishes Filipinos' sources of information and entertainment and inevitably raises charges or suspicions of repression of the press.
That is acutely more destructive in these trying months of national emergency.
The Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC), a nongovernment, non-profit advocate for free but responsible media, urges our leaders to steer back the dispute and debate to where it should have been allowed its regular due course:
[1] To Congress, where almost a dozen bills seeking ABS-CBN's franchise have been pending: Do give the broadcast network the fair hearing that it deserves. ABS-CBN began to get it at the Senate inquiry but the process was interrupted although the network was publicly promised full opportunity to be heard at the House, with the assurance that, like other broadcast stations similarly situated in the past, it would continue to operate until the legislative and executive decision is completed.
[2] To National Telecommunications Commission, which broke its commitment to the legislators and rejected the sense of the Senate and the request of the House committee on franchises: Do reconsider the order of shutdown, keeping in mind the "guidance" of Justice Secretary Menardo Guevearra who ruled there is "sufficient equitable basis to allow broadcast entities to continue operations until Congress will act on the bills for renewal." That, in fact, has been Congress's and NTC's practice. Enforcing the law becomes, or is seen as, tyrannical if not enforced with justice.
[3] In the Supreme Court, where the quo warranto petition against ABS-CBN is pending: In its chamber, both parties, the government and the network, can litigate over the alleged violations that would strip it of its license to operate.
Let processes of the law take the case where it must finally rest. Would justice eventually triumph? We will see but that is another matter.
At a time when full attention must be on the plague that afflicts the entire nation, the country is being distracted by the beating from world opinion. The controversy is also widening the division among our own
people, between those who condemn and those who cheer the closure of ABS-CBN.
Pachico A. Seares
Executive Director