DESTINED TO BE THE NEXT MANG PANDOY

I’m kind of hurrying, so I’ll just stick to the main points I wanted to make.

The Sumilao land dispute is one of the saddest things that the media devotes its time to. So sad.

Such an overheatedly emotional issue brings out a very sad fact: the law is pro-poor. And I mean this in the truest sense of the term: such a law does promote poverty of bodies, minds, lands and other resources.

FIGHT FOR ‘FREEDOM’ AGAIN

I am extending the issue on the treatment of media in last week’s hotel episode, just to clarify some points.

The police’s main fault, as it now appears, is its inability to be more decisive. Once it had given the media an ultimatum to leave the Peninsula premises after 2 p.m., they should have fired away as necessary to defeat the Trillanes clown show, and if there were any civilian casualties, the authorities would have had no liability. Cabinet members Ricardo Puno and Ricardo Saludo made good points for Cabinet members, contesting the claim that media didn’t interfere in their operations.

FIGHT FOR ‘FREEDOM’

Of all the newspaper editorials I’ve seen so far on the Peninsula incident (poor hotel, suffering the fate of Oakwood, from the same people!), the closest one that could be called logical was from Manila Standard Today, whose Friday editorial was entitled ‘Arrogant fool.’ The following day, the same paper focused on the journalists who messed up police operations, still the most sensible editorial on that aspect.

Second best editorial was the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Friday issue. Unfortunately, based on PDI Editorial Cartoonist Jess Abrera’s lousy and unimaginative drawing in the Sunday issue of a guy named ‘Press Freedom’ being run down by the government in pursuit of rebels, it seems they think the police were curtailing liberties of the media. Stupid.