President Joseph Estrada yesterday asked the
Court of Appeals to compel Malacañang to allow the public
exhibition of his video documentary.
Estrada lawyer Rufus Rodriguez asked the CA
to issue a writ for certiorari and mandamus against the Office
of the President’s Appeals Committee, which had upheld the X
rating given by the Movie and Television Review and
Classification Board on the deposed President’s bioflick.
Rodriguez also asked the appellate court to
declare the biodocumentary, "Ang Mabuhay Para sa Masa," as a
newsreel documentary exempt from respondent MTRCB’s power of
review, or be declared suitable for airing or exhibition on
television.
Rodriguez, who is also the counsel of the
Public Perception Management Asia (Publikasia), Inc., producer
of the documentary, said the suit was to correct the Appeals
Committee’s grave abuse of discretion when it decided for the
second time to bar the public exhibition of Estrada’s life
documentary, citing its alleged subversive content.
He said that the "whimsical and capricious"
acts of the respondents constituted prior restraint on the
freedom of speech and of expression of Estrada, and which
"cannot be justified by hypothetical fears but only by the
showing of a substantive and eminent evil which has taken the
life of reality already in ground."
"Deeply ensconced in our fundamental law is
its hostility against all prior restrainst on speech and
expression such that any act that restrains speech and
expression is hobbled by the presumption of invalidity and
should be greeted with furrowed brows," petitioner’s counsel
said.
Rodriguez further said that public
respondents who are exercising quasi-judicial powers have abused
their power and thumbed down the Estrada documentary for the
purpose of "pleasing their appointing patrons in the corridors
of power in Malacanang."
"It is thus the burden of respondents to
overthrow this presumption. If they fail to discharge this
burden, their act of censorship in the guise of review and
regulation will be struck down," he said.
Malacañang also gravely erred when it imposed
illegal, improper and unreasonable conditions for the approval
of the airing on television of the subject film material,
Rodriguez said.
He cited that after initially ruling that
"there is, at present, no clear and present danger to the
stability of the State," the OP "finds that subject film
material may be shown only on television only after the case of
Estrada pending with the Sandiganbayan is resolved with
finality."
It further ruled that the film may, however,
be shown even before a decision om the case is arrived at,
provided that "sub-judice matters" are deleted from it.
In either case, the Palace insisted that
before the documentary could be shown, it must stress the result
of the Supreme Court decision in Estrada vs. Arroyo on the
legality of the transfer of power. "The film should likewise
integrate, as part thereof, some kind of balancing factor
featuring the side or replies of the persons defamed or
libeled," Malacañang further ruled.
"By said ruling, respondent OP directly
imposes upon petitioner the condition and command for the latter
to introduce a new material into the subject film material.
Such imposition, condition and command is despotism and
dictatorship at its height. It concretely reflects acute lack of
awareness of the very limited regulatory/review powers of
respondents OP and MTRCB," Estrada said. – Evangeline C.
de Vera
