Truth and power

Through my editor, Millet Mananquil, I recently received a rather impassioned pair of letters from some people within the Department of Education a group of regional and district supervisors  taking me to task for “libelously” maligning former Department of Education Undersecretary Dr. Vilma Labrador, whom I said was overstaying in a position that I and many others believe to be no longer rightly hers as chairperson of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

I was actually glad to receive those letters, albeit belatedly (these days, nearly everything is done by e-mail) because I was worried for a while that my plaint had been lost to the wind.

I can understand the letter-writers’ admirable sense of loyalty to a former superior and mentor. “That article maligned a well-loved and respected educator. That’s quite a libelous piece! Having served the government for 42 years, Dr. Labrador definitely has a big following due to the fact that she was not only a teacher and official of DepEd but a professor in Masteral and Doctoral programs in some universities as well. She has lawyers, military officials, priests, nuns, politicians, etc. who consider her their icon and model,” said Mrs. Flor Musa, Region IV-B regional supervisor, in her version of essentially the same letter.

That’s all very nice, but none of it addresses the basic point I raised, and the only point material to the issue — if Dr. Labrador is no longer a DepEd Undersecretary, why is she still on the NCCA board, which the law requires to seat a serving undersecretary, not a “special assistant” or some such substitute? This isn’t about Vilma Labrador’s character, nor even her administrative ability; it’s about her eligibility for the position she continues to hold.

The letters accuse me of attempting to steal Mrs. Labrador’s honor, but why should I do that? I have no personal stake in the matter beyond that of an artist and an NCCA volunteer who believes that, with a new administration and presumably a new ethos in government, the law should be respected, and the NCCA would be a good place to begin to do so. I don’t covet her position, and I’ve never even met her (and will be properly courteous should we ever meet). In other words, I bear Dr. Labrador no malice; I have no reason to.

I never impugned her reputation as a teacher, which may very well be impeccable—in which case, I extend her my sincerest congratulations. I have only the highest respect for teachers and what they do—my mother was one, my mother in-law was one, and I’ve been one myself for over 25 years now. (I may be a gadget-crazy and footloose columnist on Mondays, but for the rest of the week, I’m a full professor of English at the University of the Philippines—and yes, it’s something I’m quite proud to state.) But where I teach, we do not let our juniors or subordinates raise our arguments and fight our battles for us—and we do not need a fearsome phalanx of “lawyers, military officials, priests, nuns, politicians, etc.” behind us to occupy and defend the moral high ground.

If Dr. Labrador feels that I was in error, why doesn’t she write me herself so I can correct the record if I gravely misstated any facts, instead of having a posse of subordinates threaten me with a lawsuit? (I know a thing or two about libel, having faced a couple of cases—one of them from the former First Gentleman, no less—which were both thrown out.)

Why don’t these good ladies and gentlemen of the DepEd have their lawyers explain how a non-Undersecretary can legally continue not just to sit on the NCCA board but to continue to chair it, instead of rattling their sabers in the face of a journalist validly questioning the eligibility of a public official for her position?

In a month or two, all this will become moot, as even Dr. Labrador’s supporters have pointed to December as her ultimate retirement date, and I entirely agree with them that she should be enjoying the afterglow of her career rather than face pesky questions from strangers like me at this late hour. I apologize for that aggravation, hoping at the same time that Dr. Labrador can appreciate this in the impersonal manner it was meant.

If we were to argue on the level of injured pride and wrought emotions, I can assure her it goes both ways—many of us artists and NCCA volunteers also feel deeply aggrieved by the apparent imperviousness of high authority to our longstanding plea to keep politics out of cultural administration.

Let me end with a question for my fellow teachers at the Department of Education. Personal loyalty is fine spectacle to behold, but what about the damage done to our sense of right and to our cultural institutions by these continuing circumventions of both the intent and the letter of the law? What are we supposed to tell our students?

When even the Supreme Court makes it difficult for teachers to uphold a clear and unerring standard of intellectual honesty in the classroom, and would even chastise those who teach the law for their “misplaced vigilance” in raising the issue of plagiarism, how can students understand that the truth is more important and more valuable than brute power?

My calendar tells me it’s 2010, but some days it feels like 1972.

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And apropos of our last two columns on editing, let me share a message I got from a faithful and unfailingly insightful correspondent, reader Rem Maclang:

“I’d like to bring your beef (about people not wanting to be edited) nearer home. Being a UP alumnus, you must be aware of the now famous case of Justice Mariano del Castillo, who wrote the decision that became casus celebre among legal beagles, particularly from UP. In this connection, what is the duty and obligation of an editor, when he discovers text or comments copied verbatim without proper attribution, which of his own knowledge belong to others? If the answer is to refuse to edit and return the manuscript untouched to the writer, which is what the majority of the Supreme Court justices did in said case, then plagiarism is nothing more than wanting of editing that doesn’t entail any legal implications. And, for editors, like you, work will be a lot easier. By the way, it’s all right to comment on the said case because it is no longer sub judice. Justice del Castillo has been vindicated.  His decision is merely wanting of editing.”

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.