In Naga City last June 12, Independence Day, President Aquino was rudely interrupted in his speech by the heckling of an Ateneo de Naga student, Emmanuel Pio Mijares, 19. Presidential security and police swiftly subdued Mijares and arrested him. He was later detained and slapped a slew of charges.
The incident had all the trappings of sensation and controversy. And they are all stacked against the president for doing nothing to stop what was clearly an overreaction to an exercise of free expression. To be sure, Mijares was impolite, his protest inappropriate. But he was non-violent, easy really to look away.
Other world leaders like former US president George W. Bush and former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton all had their own much worse experiences of being interrupted in their speeches. Both had shoes thrown at them but they just took everything in stride. In fact, both engaged the detractors in discussion.
Why, even former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Aquino's most hated enemy, also had her speech cut in mid-delivery by a heckler. While the heckler was pacified, nothing further was made of the incident. In fact the heckler still graduated, the event Arroyo attended being the heckler's graduation.
So how come, in the case of the Aquino heckler, in which the full force of the state was employed not just to subdue the heckler but to make the rest of his life miserable as well, given the serious charges he is facing, there seems to be a deathly quiet.
One would have thought that there would be a spontaneous eruption of support for Mijares. There should have been a lot of noise already in the airwaves and in the opinion pages about how Aquino cannot seem to countenance criticism and the exercise of free expression.
Except for a few insignificant voices, nobody has really taken up the cudgels for Mijares, who appears determined to fight the charges filed against him. Does nobody care anymore for free expression? Are Filipinos willing to let the state curtail free speech?
We do not think so. We believe people are just turned off by the fact that Mijares is a leftist. Right or wrong, it is the common perception of people that leftists are nothing but troublemakers. How sad, that for an image problem, a lofty ideal must suffer the consequence.