I AM one of those "critics" who have kept silent on the issue
of the supposed breast implants of Doña Gloria. Frankly, to me the implants are
a purely private matter which I would not want to dissect in this space or the
one in Abante. And as my few friends know, we did not even deign the subject a
matter fit for discussion.
What is worth discussing is how Malacañang’s mouthpieces and
its press office handled the issue that as far as I know first came to public
knowledge via a short item in the column of Jarius Bondoc in the Philippine
Star.
While breast augmentation is in aid of vanity, which I
maintain to be purely private and personal, why the performance of excision and
biopsy had to be subjected to initial official denial is beyond me. In matters
like these, it is the responsibility of those who speak for their principal, in
this case their president, to first ask questions before they open their mouths.
Based on the frothing denials, Press Secretary Cerge Remonde
failed to ask his principal what her doctors did to her at the Asian Hospital.
Immediately he took offense at Jarius Bondoc’s straightforward reporting of
fact, and denounced it as pure fabrication. More incompetently, he even trotted
out a picture of his principal and asked if one could detect a breast
augmentation job on that, which he rather unseemly referred to as a "boob job."
When his principal and perhaps wiser minds looked at the
brouhaha, they probably realized that Jarius had the precise lowdown on her
medical records, and implying that Jarius fabricated the story was quite risky.
Jarius is one person they knew they couldn’t "fix." So they had to admit that
indeed, Doña Gloria had breast implants done two decades ago.
That is what happens when one conceals the truth, and when
discovered, tries to wiggle out of a situation by lying.
An honest person would have first discovered the whole truth,
and decided to release the same to the public, minus certain unnecessary details
that would only complicate public understanding of the situation. And
spokespersons are supposed to be after all, purveyors of the truth, because as
public officials, they are covered by the injunction that public office is a
public trust.
But since lying is the rule in the Arroyo administration,
Remonde and later his sidekick Lorelie Fajardo must have felt they were serving
their Doña well. She too has made lying not only a habit, but part of her
distorted apparatus of power. In this regime, prevarication is "virtue,"
especially when it is necessary to pursue the evil ends of cheating and
stealing.
Now let me advert to another "situation" that happened early
on in the short-lived Estrada regime. The Philippine Daily Inquirer came out
with a story about a certain Caloocan beauty queen named JR Ejercito, who
claimed that she was sired by then Mayor Joseph Estrada.
It has become public knowledge that President Estrada sowed
wild oats in his wilder days, and he never hid this fact. He was after all a
former movie actor, a box-office king at that, and liaisons dangereuse came with
the territory. Probably the only difference between him and actors of today’s
milieu is the use or non-use of "rubbers" or some such preventive device or
drugs.
The presidential spokesman then was Gerry Barican, an
accomplished lawyer, writer, and former student activist. As far as I could
remember, Gerry went to the principal before he faced the press the day when PDI
came out with its story. The alleged scion had the "unmistakable" Ejercito eyes,
and at first blush, she really did look like Erap’s progeny. President Erap
denied such to Gerry, although he admitted knowing the mother from long past
days.
The follow-up story alleged that Erap as mayor and senator
did send the mother checks regularly in the past, which was interpreted as
admission of parenthood, and therefore, sustenance. For a few days, Gerry
Barican stewed, wondering whether his president had lied to him. And Gerry does
not take to lying easily, and fully understood the requirements of his job as
public trust.
He denied JR because Erap denied fatherhood to his
spokesperson. In one of our lighter moments at the presidential yacht then
moored at a Mindanao port, I casually asked the president about that incident.
"Hindi ako sigurado," he said. And propriety dictated that I ask no further, for
that would have been intrusive of personal privacy which even a president was
entitled to.
In any case, the brouhaha died down after a week, and I
attribute that to the public’s appreciation that President Erap was not a known
prevaricator. He had bared open his life to the public, never hiding patrimony
of several, nor relationships with several. So if he or his spokesperson said
that JR was not his, the public accepted that as the truth.
So what is the lesson in these two different episodes in the
life of two presidents? Simple. When one lies repeatedly, anything he or she
says, even if that may be true, will still be doubted. When one is not known to
be a liar, what he says is accepted as fact until otherwise proven false.
***
But incompetence rears its ugly behind once more when the
once respected NBI enters the picture, and "investigates" the supposed leakage
of medical records. It tries to hide Malacañang’s hand by saying that they were
investigating at the instance of the Asian Hospital, which has understandably
kept mum, neither confirming nor denying NBI’s yarn.
Sure physician-patient privilege may have been violated, not
necessarily by the attending physician, but is there any criminal aspect to such
violation? Civil liability perhaps, but only if the patient goes to court. And
if Doña Gloria felt violated, then she should file charges and ask for damages
in a court of law. Or she could go to the Philippine Medical Association,
perhaps even the Professional Regulatory Commission, and file a complaint
against her physicians for a breach of the ethics of their profession, much in
similar manner as Katrina Halili went to the PMA to complain about Hayden Kho’s
video voyeurism cum narcissism.
***
But then again, the president’s health is a matter of not
just public interest, but one with national security implications. In which
case, should her national (in)security adviser, Norbert the banana-eater, step
in? How does Norbert balance the issue of personal privacy with the public’s
right to know his president’s state of health? Finding that middle ground will
confound Norbert as much as the public is confounded by his recent
pronouncements about a "revolutionary" transition government.
***
Now the NBI should know (but aren’t they supposed to be
lawyers out there?) that Article VII, Sec. 12 of the Constitution that their
Dona has yet to amend states that "in case of serious illness of the President,
the public should be informed of the state of his health." In the situation that
faced Barican, an adult claiming to be the president’s daughter is neither
injurious to the president’s health nor is it a matter of national security, and
so, a denial would easily put the matter to rest, being in the realm of gossipy
prurience more than anything else. But in the situation faced by Remonde, and
now the NBI which has gleefully waded into the matter, there is a clear
constitutional precept that makes this particular person’s health of public
interest.
Now surely both Remonde and the NBI know that per the Sotto
Law, columnist Jarius Bondoc cannot be made to confess who or what his source of
information was, and any attempt to pry such from him would be a violation of
one of the cherished freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, which is that which
protects the freedom of the press.
Or is this one of the reasons why Malacañang is moving heaven
and earth to Cha-Cha? To create a new glorianic order where media pests could
tremble in fear, as in the days of Ferdinand?
***
What should worry Remonde, Lorelie, Anthony, Gary, even Ed
Ermita, is why the "invasion" of her privacy did not elicit any public sympathy.
Why did the usual women’s groups not bristle when one of their own felt
violated? Why did no public concern about her health register, as it normally
should for the leader of the land? That is sad.
