What made Palace go quiet?
Nosy Tarsee has been asking around about the arrest of a veteran journalist, a 72-year-old who has spent most of his working life telling uncomfortable truths. He was a ferocious critic of the previous administration and is now sworn to torment the sitting president.
He was picked up on a Saturday morning, in full view of the media, on a cyberlibel complaint that more than a few lawyers described as dubious at best.
The arrest itself is not the strangest part. An official scribe with a long record of access to the Palace’s inner circle told Nosy Tarsee that the oddity lies in how the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) responded.
The PCO started well. It said the government did not want a climate of fear and that even critical media was essential to a healthy democracy.
It was exactly the line you’d expect. And then, nothing. No follow-up, no clarification, no word on who ordered what. Nosy Tarsee’s source said the silence had been louder than the statement.
It gets stranger. According to the source, the arresting officers did not know the substance of the complaint or who filed it.
A man in his seventies was taken into custody before cameras by people who could not say why or at whose instance.
Nosy Tarsee will leave readers to judge whether that is how a normal case begins.
The agencies that should have the answers are the Department of Justice, the Department of the Interior and Local Government, and the Philippine National Police.
The source said it appeared they went along with the drama to create a political backlash against the President’s bitterest enemy.
A government that says it wants a free press ended up as the instrument for jailing a critic, to the benefit of a rival who has no love for either.
The circumstances of the arrest and subsequent developments point to a poisoned chalice, according to the source. Certain forces are fanning what looks like an ordinary court action.
The goal is not justice for the complainant or the accused but to whip up public outrage against whoever filed the complaint. The case has become less a legal matter than a political weapon, and everyone is trying to aim it at someone else.
That brings us to Malacañang. According to the source, the Palace is struggling to figure out how to exploit the complicated situation. Defend the arrest, and it looks like it is persecuting the press. Condemn it, and it looks like it has lost control of its own justice and police machinery.
Say nothing, and it looks like it has something to hide. The Palace, Nosy Tarsee’s snoop said, is choosing the third option while it works out which of the three would hurt the least.
