Onion-skinned

Malacañang Palace is not only the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the Philippines. It is undeniably the country’s seat of power, a symbol not only of executive power, but in our political culture, also of a great authority barely hindered by the boundaries of separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.

The Office of the President’s estimated budget allocation for 2019 of close to P7 billion, and P2.5 billion for “confidential” and “intelligence” expenses, do not even closely approximate the breadth of the powers of the presidency.

One such power is the bully pulpit, a position that commands unparalleled attention and a platform to push one’s agenda. Anything that the president says is considered policy.

Members of Congress take their cue from presidential speeches. Heads of departments and line agencies stand ready to execute the president’s orders. Prosecutors, and even judges and justices, take into account the president’s pronouncements.

This is the way presidential power in our country is embodied and expanded under a patronage-based party system. One mortal hand is entrusted with so much power in order to govern the country and lift its people from an impoverished state.

The least people would expect from that very powerful leader is to be onion-skinned.

In the landmark case of US vs. Bustos (1918), the Supreme Court then under the Commonwealth of the Philippines, had penned what is now known by law students as the “onion-skinned doctrine.”

“Men in public life may suffer under a hostile and an unjust accusation,” it says, but “the wound can be assuaged with the balm of a clear conscience.” Then the court made this admonishment: “A public officer must not be too thin-skinned with reference to comment upon his official acts.”

In a 1994 case, the Supreme Court seconded the following statement from the Solicitor General: “A public official, more especially an elected one, should not be onion skinned. Strict personal discipline is expected of an occupant of a public office because a public official is a property of the public. He is looked upon to set the example how public officials should correctly conduct themselves even in the face of extreme provocation.”

For private individuals, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with being onion-skinned. But when one holding the pen is faced with someone holding and pulling the big levers of power, the latter being onion-skinned changes the dynamics of the game.

Since 2016, the online news site Rappler has been following the trail of blood left by the president’s war on drugs. It has reported after months of investigation that the police were most likely outsourcing extrajudicial killings to vigilante gangs. It was relentless in its reports, peppering these with on-the-record testimonies from ordinary witnesses and even self-confessed vigilantes.

In 2018, international news agency Aljazeera reported: “As Filipino news site Rappler battles with authorities, media feel the chill.” This after the president had repeatedly accused Rappler of being foreign-owned, then banned its chief reporter from covering the president. Shortly thereafter, cases were filed plus an old one revived.

An arrest warrant for that old cyber libel case was served on Rappler chief Maria Ressa right after courts closed Wednesday last week, preventing her from posting bail. Prior to that, she had posted bail for five counts of tax evasion; that is, according to Ressa, six arrest warrants in two months.

The president’s spokesperson said Ressa should stop crying and just face charges against her in court. But it’s true what they say: You cut an onion, you end up crying.