Untimely ejaculations

It is characteristic of those who are immature to jump to conclusions and make rash judgments. Children and young people are naturally most susceptible to this infirmity and the more mature public usually laughs off their ensuing discomfort, often benignly advising the young to look before leaping anywhere. Of course, older people who reflect the same handicap are not treated as gently by their peers. For them a whole vocabulary is reserved by the latter, some of its entries reflecting the appropriate contempt which the sensible feel for those who habitually rush to judge.

Filipinos do not seem to be much bothered by those who would stampede them into convicting fellow citizens without the benefit of a fair and public trial. As a matter of fact, if media coverage were to be the primary indicator of the current temperament, one might conclude that Filipinos get their highest high snorting sensationalistic and premature allegations of criminal behavior among their authorities.

Why aren’t there more Filipinos protesting the manner in which the most serious charges are hurled against their compatriots? Why isn’t there more criticism of the easy tendency to try someone by publicity instead of having the law take its proper course? If the Supreme Court no less were to be distrusted and disabled as the institutional venue for justice, would a good substitute be the military’s intelligence service or media’s investigative arm? Democracies do thrive on synergies and the judiciary, the military and media could and must democratically collaborate in any quest for justice, but democracies also cannot dispense with their own constitutional procedures unless they would violate their very nature as democracies. The present attempts to preempt, marginalize or unduly influence the courts – via trials by publicity – are most subversive of this country’s fragile democratic order.

This country is populated by denizens other than our innocent children, the young people who lack experience and their seniors most of whom could stand for their political education. These groups are prone to make errors of judgment as they usually make decisions lacking hard evidence and without reflecting much on what they are misled to believe may be "hard evidence". However, even as they may be unwitting accomplices in the subversion of justice, these people are not driven by malice and their errors are rectified in time with more experience and growing maturity.

It is a difficult case with yet another kind of Filipinos. These are the truly maleficent ones, those prone to dramatically pass off their unverified suspicions, "raw intelligence" and outright fabrications as the hardest of facts and the most incontrovertible of truths There is unfortunately no dearth in this country of ever-scheming politicians, unscrupulous businessmen, tabloid-minded journalists, envelopmental columnists and other low-life form bearing the genes typical of predatory creatures that creep, crawl and slither, e.g. crocodiles, alligators, lizards, snakes and other members of the class reptilia.

When these people conspire to make public allegations of criminal offenses by whomsoever their target or targets might be, the citizenry had better be on guard. At risk here is not the immediate person or persons being accused but the democratic process itself which defines the competent authorities and the legal procedures by which any Filipino may be properly deprived of his life, liberty and property.

The vital issue here is not even the guilt or innocence of any concerned party, but the viability of the process by which either guilt or innocence is established by competent authorities in any case involving a citizen of this republic.

Those who insist on disabling this process by the subversive use of media – those who make for untimely pronouncements and premature ejaculations before media’s camera, microphones and tape recorders – cannot credibly claim to be defenders of any democratic order. Even on a Sunday, one cannot avoid thinking of such people as simply Philippine society’s compulsive jerks.