PHNO-INQUIRER EDITORIAL: GOVERNMENT IS CLUELESS

INQUIRER EDITORIAL: GOVERNMENT IS
CLUELESS

MANILA, OCTOBER 8, 2012
(INQUIRER) There's the Rub Government clueless By Conrado
de Quiros - Edgardo Angara, author of the anticybercrime law, justifies it in
this way: "Why was the penalty (for libel) raised? The only rationale I can
think of is that because of the novelty and swiftness, and the spread and reach
of information and communications technology, it becomes an aggravating
circumstance. With one click, you can send it (the libelous statement) all over
the world."
That is all very well, except for one thing. Who's to say a statement is
libelous or not?
If this law had been in effect five months ago, Renato Corona might never
have been ousted. Among the things that ousted him was the netizens themselves
making their sentiments known to the senators—a thing that posed tremendous
consequences for the elections.
The wording of those sentiments would have made a great deal of them arguably
libelous, or at least slanderous. Corona would have considered it so. The
justices would have considered it so. They could have used the law to make an
example of a blogger, Twitter-er, Facebook-er, or two to stop the tide of public
outrage and vituperation against them.
With this law, no one will be called a thief again. No one will be called an
opportunist, fascist, or idiot again. No one will be called a politician with
the morals of a prostitute again. No one may be permitted to say so—except
Miriam Defensor-Santiago.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg about what's wrong with the law. The
bulk of it is that by looking at the possible abuses of cyberspace, the law
turns a blind eye to its awe-inspiring power to make the public matter in social
discourse. By attempting to curb the excesses of cyberspace, the law curbs
instead its history-altering capacity to effect change.
The medium is new and it is novel. Which only drives home the point that the
law was made by people who are either clueless about it, or glimpse its power
and want precisely to stop it from subverting their entrenched position.
In fact, cyberspace is the most liberating and democratizing force to have
come to us in a long time, perhaps for the first time.
Elsewhere in the world we've seen that—in the Arab Spring, or the uprisings
in Egypt and neighboring countries against despotic rule. WikiLeaks founder,
Julian Assange, had a point when he told a sideline meeting of the UN recently
that Barack Obama was a hypocrite to say that America was the inspirer of those
revolts: "It must come as a surprise to Tunisians (that) the US supported the
forces of change in Tunisia."
In fact, he said, WikiLeaks had more to do with it, with its exposés of the
nastiness of the now deposed rulers, among them Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben
Ali. But we see as well in Assange's fate—he has been forced to hide in the
Ecuadorian Embassy in the heart of London to avoid being fed to the wolves—what
an anticybercrime law has in store for transgressors.
Closer to home, you see the immense power of cyberspace to democratize this
country in a couple of ways.
One is that it offers a way for the citizens to get back at the people who
oppress them.
Certainly, it offers a way to put the corrupt to shame. Which makes it the
most ironic thing in the world that the anticybercrime law was passed under the
very government that professes to fight corruption.
I've said it again and again: Government alone cannot stop corruption, it
needs the help of the public to do it. The public can do that by making the
corrupt pay a high price for corruption.
That is how it's done in other countries. In Japan and Korea, the culture
itself does the trick: Shame and dishonor are enough to make the shamed and
dishonored disembowel themselves.
In America and Western Europe, public opinion does the trick: Public
revulsion and opprobrium are enough, if not to make the publicly reviled and
detested hang themselves, at least to make them resign.
Here, it's cyberspace, which is far more spontaneous and unfettered than the
mainstream media and, more importantly, which directly reflects the views of the
public, that has the potential, and power, to do that.
With one click, calling someone a crook will be sent all over the world?
Well, if he is a crook—and the public officials netizens call so are invariably
so—I'm glad the information is sent instantaneously to the world. Certainly I'm
glad it is sent instantaneously to the person concerned, the better for him to
know that we know, mahiya ka sa balat mo, naturingan ka pa namang public
servant.
Two, and far more importantly, like I said last time, what makes the Western
democracies real democracies is that the people do not just participate in
national life by voting but by shaping policies and decision-making through
public opinion.
That public opinion isn't expressed only when survey-takers ask them what
they think of things, it is expressed voluntarily, constantly, naturally. It's
not sporadic, it's permanent. It's not occasional, it's continuous. It's not a
footnote to governance, it's the text of governance.
More than anything else, it's cyberspace that has made that possible for us.
Almost unnoticed, it has come to us like a gift from the gods.
Overnight it has become possible for ordinary citizens (the youth in
particular) to have their say on life, without having to go to the radio to
complain, without having to write letters to the editor (and compete with a
thousand other letters) to set things right, without feeling powerless in the
face of being wooed like lovers as voters but dismissed like beggars as
citizens.
And the senators—with the luminous exception of T.G. Guingona who had the
imagination to vote against the law, and who continuously oppose the law—will
spit on this gift as though it were a curse.
No wonder the netizens are fit to be tied.
And government is clueless why.


Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
All
rights reserved




PHILIPPINE
HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE [PHNO] WEBSITE



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