AS fate would have it, Marlon Brando and his biographies – Brando Unzipped and Songs My Mother Taught Me – are placed again in the back burner. For the second time. I know what political scientists – the true, ardent ones – believe in: that politics is never a matter of fate. But if you had been born in the ‘70s, and aware at the beginning of 1972, seeing a Marcos ready to live in the palace again is nothing short of terrifying. A dark deja vu.
History is going to be rewritten. This much, all journalists and writers agree on.
I can see what will happen in the few months, or even days, of this administration. There will be realignment of political affiliations, with politicians moving to the dominant party, and with a few staying loyal to their aggrupation, to what they believe in.
This happened back in the early days of martial law. Except for those incarcerated, the other politicians all shifted their allegiances. Sadly, the same happened with writers – columnists, essayists, poets. Again, except for the rabid anti-administration, anti-martial law writers, the rest joined the happy mob. The New Society.
Will this happen again?
I clearly recall how before the declaration of Martial Law, a new newspaper was founded. It was called Daily Express. The media and other pundits were not quiet about it; they talked about a Romualdez being behind the paper. In what was then touted as the freest press in Asia, the Philippines was the last expected to have a newspaper backed by the administration. There were glib remarks about it but when martial rule was enforced, Daily Express was the last newspaper standing.
Well-funded as the paper was, including the weekly Expressweek, many could recall the bad quality of paper used to print the said publications. They easily tore and, for proof, go to libraries and see for yourself these papers with plastic tapes where they were torn and frayed easily.
The new technologies have all but dissipated this scenario at present. There is now the Internet and social media where color and ideologies are much more difficult to pinpoint and disaggregate.
Where would the control be? Where lies the censorship and restraint?
Even as I write this column, there are talks of children’s books published by Adarna House, a noted publishing house, having been red-tagged. These books, although for children, deal with topics like dictatorship, the phenomenon of the Edsa People Power and many other themes written to instill social awareness and respect for histories. Presently on sale, the books are much sought-after by parents who are, it appears, eager to catch up on the past and make them accessible to children.
There is also a heightened interest in the more critical books on Marcos and the years of the dictatorship. And while we are at it, will the administration look the other way when terms like “conjugal dictatorship” are bandied around in columns and conversations? Already, the book The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos by Primitivo Mijares is threatening to be a golden bestseller. If there are still copies around.
As the media was controlled during the Martial Law years, one cannot really find substantial reports on the state of journalism and communications in that era. Ironically, the book by Mijares provides a window into those early days of martial law and the real golden days before the dictatorship.
Under the chapter “The Era of Thought Control”, Mijares explains the creation of the Department of Public Information (DPI Order No. 1) “which required all media to print and broadcast accurate, objective, straight news reports of positive national value, consistent with the efforts of the government to meet the dangers and threats that occasioned the proclamation of martial law and the efforts to achieve a new society.”
You may want to ask: What is a straight news report and what do we mean by “positive national value”?
According to Mijares, “the news media were prohibited from carrying any editorial opinion, commentary, comments or asides, or any kind of political, unauthorized, or objectionable advertising.”
The DPI expressly prohibited the following, and I quote: a. Materials that tend to incite or otherwise inflame (italics mine) people or individuals against the government or any of its duly constituted authorities; b. Materials that undermine (italics mine) people’s faith and confidence in the government or any of its instrumentalities; c. Materials that are seditious (italics mine), not based on facts, or otherwise without definitely established and well-identified verifiable sources, or based on mere allegations or conjectures; d. Materials that downgrade or jeopardize the military or the law enforcement authorities, their work and their operations; e. Materials that abet, glorify, sensationalize crime, disorder, lawlessness, violence; f. Materials that destroy or tend to destroy (italics mine) public morals as well as morale; g. Materials that foment opinions (underscoring mine) and activities contrary to law, and; h. Materials that sow or generate fear, panic, confusion, ignorance, and vulgarity among the people (underscoring all mine).
Think of those prohibitions in the context of the present-day discourse and social media developments. In an era of post-truth and fake news, how does one deal with, for example, with news that are not based on facts? In this world where for every ignorant response, or even non-response, one has the ultimate privilege to demand from others to “respect my opinion”, how can one foment opinions? Or, is the veiled command to respect an opinion even when there is none the new existentialism, the new Zen koan. Oh my satori, the flash of enlightenment in my dumb haiku! My Orientalism!
And there is more: How do trolls operate in a universe that punishes those who produce materials that cause fear, panic, ignorance, and vulgarity among people?
If there is a lesson in all these prohibitions is this realization about how generations have been silenced systematically and gradually for almost 20 years. The writers were not spared by these “laws” again except those who forgot who they were and became the new citizens of the then putative New Society.
There are more lessons in the book on the conjugal dictatorship. On the page indicating the many prohibitions slapped against the press, it is written these: “Before the imposition of martial law, there were no laws or decrees regulating the operation of the press. The Constitution guaranteed that ‘no law shall be passed abridging the freedom of the press.’” Think of those words again: there was nothing to regulate the operation of the press. Mijares continued: “No government license or permit was required to publish a newspaper. He [the Journalist/Publisher] was merely accountable under the laws of libel and sedition. But he could not be arrested without a warrant.”
This freedom is too good to be true… for people used to being controlled by the state.