Freedom of Speech vs. the Monologues of Power: ‘The Thrilla in Manila’
Araneta Coliseum. Oct. 1, 1975. I was 12 and glued on our black and white television. It was a fabulous day to watch my first boxing match, ‘Thrilla in Manila’. At stake was the world championship belt.
Most everyone rooted for the more popular Muhammad Ali as he stepped into the ring for the final bout with challenger, ‘Smokin’ Joe Frazier. Ali towered over Frazier like the One Vanderbilt Building staring down on a sari-sari store. Ali’s reach — a whopping 198 centimeters as against Frazier’s 185.4 — resembled that of a U.S. Barrett M82 sniper rifle. Locked and loaded.
Ali won by a technical knockout (TKO). From the start, the clear imbalance of power was obvious. Good thing Frazier put up a good fight. Ali’s ‘pop-culture icon’ status, however, provided the last nail on Frazier’s defeat: most everyone thought is was a fair bout.
Today, another “Trilla in Manila” is in the works. Same old crazy match-up: the popular mammoth against the miniscule dissenters. And because the miniscule is putting up such a good fight, the mammoth opted for a technical win: by appropriating for itself what is not within its business to appropriate:
Freedom of speech.
Allow me to explain. Recently, Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Sec. Eduardo Año hurled a recent riposte on the issue of Facebook’s shut down of over a hundred fake news sites. Some of these sites were reportedly linked to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP).
The Philippine STAR quoted the retired general as saying, “These pages were private accounts and must enjoy the guarantee of free speech [emphasis, mine] on major issues of social concern under the Philippine Constitution and Philippine laws”.
In short, the social media giant is being accused by Año as having deprived these “private” accounts of their basic human right to speak.
Año’s defense of these so-called “private” accounts, topped with Sen. Ronald dela Rosa’s barking for a senate inquiry on the matter, tell me there is more to AFP/PNP links to these accounts than meets the eye.
These said accounts seem to serve as echo chambers for the PNP’s and AFP’s campaign to red-tag progressive groups and critics of government.
Admittedly, I find it hard to believe that the military and police top brass would go out of their way to defend these Facebook accounts without them, in some way or the other, calling the shots.
To fight for the proven fake accounts’ freedom of speech? For an administration hellbent on implementing the Anti-Terrorism Law to its inhumane extent, the State claiming to fight for its freedom of speech makes for a really bad script.
This brings me to a question I’ve been mulling over for years. I am neither a constitutionalist nor a member of the bar. But the little I know of law has forced me to wonder: do government officials fall within the scope of freedom of speech?
My understanding of the Bill of Rights, particularly freedom of speech, is that it serves as an equalizer. It was carved right into the very heart of the Constitution as the public’s counterpoise to the swathe of power we give to the State.
These rights stand as the citizen’s fortification against the exercise of power in extremis, its stone bastion, the ordinary man’s walled city.
What government wields in matters relating to political and legislative power, economic resources, an armed security force, and a well-funded machinery are all set on equal footing with the one thing citizens exercise to keep these powers in check: the right to freedom of speech.
Without this right, the resulting imbalance of power would place the public at the receiving end of government abuse and impunity.
There’s more.
I’ve noticed that in the last four years of the Duterte administration, a number of officials had claimed for themselves the right to freedom of speech in order to excuse either their profanities or false statements, their vilification of critics or the sundry ways they justify a systematic red-tagging campaign.
By doing so, these officials subscribe to the idea that they, in their capacity as government officials, are as equally the beneficiaries of freedom of speech as the average person.
Question: doesn’t that create a level of imbalance the likes of which puts all the chips in government’s favor? After all the power, resources and machinery at the State’s disposal — at its beck and call —adding freedom of speech to their claims to power would make the State altogether invincible.
And us, critics, defenseless pawns.
This hardly squares with the democracy I know. To clear the air, I consulted a couple of lawyer-friends on the matter. Needless to say, I was right in asking that question.
Basic legal exposition teaches that government entities are duty bearers, private individuals are rights holders. In the performance of official functions, officials of government are held to a different standard — a code of conduct, if you will — than they would be in their private capacities as everyday citizens.
Officials are duty bearers when acting in their official capacity as representatives of the powers and functions of the State.
That’s why we have the Civil Service Commission’s Code of Conduct: to act as their bible on official behavior and speech, not the Bill of Rights.
The government service code of conduct legitimately imposes restrictions on some specific rights, such as freedom of speech. Government functionaries are not supposed to make partisan political statements on public forums, for example.
In fact, in Section 4, the Code of Conduct calls on all public officials to “[P]erform and discharge their duties with the highest degree of excellence, professionalism, intelligence and skill. They shall enter public service with utmost devotion and dedication to duty [emphasis, mine].
These words compel any public official to live, speak, and act as a public official even in their private capacities— the virtual world of social media and cyberspace, included. These requirements leave citizens no room for doubt as to a public servant’s official function and responsibility both in private and in public.
As this clearly reveals, government service is not a matter of “style” (as some of Duterte’s mouthpieces have claimed as justification for the President’s uncouth manners) but of conduct based on a clear, unbendable professional and moral code.
This goes to explain, too, why the reasonable expectation of the ordinary’s person’s right to privacy is lowered in the case of public officials facing legal charges.
Therefore, when a government official is acting — or can reasonably presumed to be acting — in an official capacity, they are bound by the Code of Conduct for Public Officers, not by general constitutional free-speech standards.
The Duterte administration, in what seems like a concerted effort to create an upside-down world, has appropriated the Bill of Rights for itself — free speech, most of all — to justify the tomfooleries coming out of its mouth.
It’s apparent from what my lawyer-friends shared with me that free speech is NOT within the province of officialdom, more so the monologues of power.
What the monologues of power are bound to is a Code of Conduct admonishing them to live lives dedicated to duty, faithful in the defense of the public’s rights, for as long as they function in their capacity as public servants.
Thus, the claims being made by government officials to the right of free speech only serve to muddle any further understanding of the nature and power the Bill of Rights affords the ordinary citizen.
If State functionaries want free speech, I suggest they don’t run for office.
