Philippine politics

‘Reinvent resistance’ under Duterte, says constitutional framer

Lian Buan

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‘Reinvent resistance’ under Duterte, says constitutional framer

RESIST. Anti-terror law petitioners, mostly journalists, hold a Zoom conference on March 9, 2021, to call for stronger protection of lawyers amid spate of killings.

Screenshot from Zoom

'It's not a lack of political will but a lack of political imagination,' says Ed Garcia, one of the framers of the 1987 Constitution

“It’s not a lack of political will,” 78-year-old Ed Garcia, one of the framers of the 1987 Constitution, said to journalists over Zoom on Wednesday afternoon, March 10, when asked what the missing factor was as to why there was less, or at least delayed, resistance to President Rodrigo Duterte.

“It’s not a lack of political will but a lack of political imagination. Especially in the time of the pandemic, we have to reimagine how to resist. We have to reinvent resistance,” Garcia went on.

‘Reinvent resistance’ under Duterte, says constitutional framer

The journalists in the Zoom conference were his fellow petitioners in some of the 37 petitions against the feared anti-terror law.

Earlier that day, some of the lawyers for the petitions held an in-person press conference to sound a common call: for the Supreme Court to stop the anti-terror law, and for the high tribunal to do more concrete actions to protect lawyers from being killed or attacked.

The lawyers’ press conference was held despite a gag order from the Supreme Court, as they are seemingly pushed to risk contempt to speak out on what law professor Tony La Viña calls an “existential crisis.”

Women’s rights lawyer Evalyn Ursua also called for a lawyers strike.

The journalists’ Zoom conference was pushing boundaries too, in a culture dominated by the mindset that the media must always stay in the middle.

“The regime thinks that an activist who is a journalist, or a journalist who is an activist, is a dangerous person. But I think that’s warranted kung ang kalaban ay demonyo (when demons are the enemy.) Journalists need to be activists,” said Raymund Villanueva, deputy secretary general of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.

‘Reinvent resistance’ under Duterte, says constitutional framer
The missing factor

Petitioners had noted that in 2007, the Supreme Court (SC) exhibited a rare display of judicial activism when it promulgated rules on extraordinary writs to address the spate of killings and disappearances of activists during the time of former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

A year before that, in 2006, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) had led a lawyers march to the EDSA Shrine.

So why wasn’t the same show of resistance happening today?

“The divide and conquer approach, kind of like the carrot and stick [approach] of the Duterte administration, works. Its insidious online attacks that are paid for by our taxes, paid for by Filipinos, work. It manipulates us. Combine that with real violence, and that has created learned helplessness,” said Maria Ressa, CEO of Rappler, herself facing 9 criminal cases brought on to her by the Duterte government.

Other factors

Journalist Ma Ceres Doyo said that apart from looking at the missing factor, there was also the “intervening factor,” which is technology and social media.

“Social media has been used, misused, and people can no longer differentiate the grain from the chaff,” said Doyo.

Journalist Jo-Ann Maglipon said it was also a matter of “getting the public to pressure the Supreme Court.”

“And I think we’re not getting the language right. Maybe the media that we use are not enough, the forms that we have tapped are still inadequate,” said Maglipon, noting how media reports in English may not be as accessible to the masses as the resistance movement would like.

But journalist John Nery of the Consortium on Democracy and Disinformation defended the English medium, saying it still catered to crucial people – the policymakers.

“There are justices of the Supreme Court who read us. That’s a small public sphere but that’s not a public sphere that we should just give up. In whatever spheres of influence or spheres of discourse that we find ourselves in, dapat andun pa rin tayo (we should still be there),” said Nery.

“I’m very wary of the notion that we need to conscienticize everyone. We might all be on the same page, ang problema lang, isip-survey, eh (but the problem is this survey mindset we have). You know what was missing during the vital Marcos struggle? There were no surveys, there were no attempts to look for a popular course of action, we just looked for the right course of action,” he added.

Boiling point

Another question is: will the fragmented opposition, which always seems to find a source of disagreement at every junction, finally band together?

At their last unified rally, during Duterte’s 4th State of the Nation Address (SONA), the Left and the Liberals weren’t completely on the same page on whether to call for the ousting, or just the resignation, of Duterte. The recent Calabarzon killings also reopened animosity, with accusations over which camp had allied with Duterte before. There was also the perpetual conflict of whether the Left would ever see eye-to-eye with military man and key opposition figure Antonio Trillanes IV.

Nonetheless, the rally remained a showing of unity, as both camps hoped that their elusive alliance could turn up the boiling point for dissent against the administration.

The anti-terror law petitions are also a rare instance of cooperation, combining personalities from all sides of the political fence – even bringing in former justices of the Supreme Court to put pressure on the bench they once served.

Whether all of this is enough of a “reinvention,” however, remains to be seen. – Rappler.com

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Lian Buan

Lian Buan is a senior investigative reporter, and minder of Rappler's justice, human rights and crime cluster.