Peel away the layers of angry and hurtful words that quickly descended and continue to descend on National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose and what do you find at its core --just an old man expressing his sentiments. Whether those sentiments tended to belittle Maria Ressa or give comfort to President Duterte should not be unusual and surprising in the free market of ideas of a country that is supposed to be democratic and free.
But is the Philippines still democratic and free, given the slander that rained on F. Sionil Jose? If it is not anymore, then do not look at Duterte as he had absolutely nothing to do with the attempts to gag Mr. Jose. On the contrary, it is the very people who scream the loudest about protecting freedom of expression and who see Maria Ressa as the face of that freedom, among them journalists, who are bashing Jose for exercising that very freedom.
I have purposely omitted mention of the many honors, accolades, achievements and body of work of F. Sionil Jose because I honestly believe it is not a man's credentials that entitle him the right to freely express himself. It is his basic humanness that does. Every person is a unique individual who walks upon the earth with eyes that see, a heart that beats, and a brain that thinks differently from the rest. He is himself and cannot be anybody else.
If we were all the same, then it is either we are all Albert Einsteins or we are all village idiots. But we are not. We are to one another separate, unlike. To protect our individuality and out of respect for our independence, rights are established and recognized, including the right to free expression, a right that has been so blatantly, cruelly and shamelessly denied and withdrawn from F. Sionil Jose by those who profess to protect it.
And what did Mr. Jose say exactly? Why, Mr. Jose merely said Maria Ressa did not deserve her Nobel Peace Prize. He merely contradicted Maria Ressa's claim that the press in the Philippines is under assault by Duterte, that a seeming state of war exists in the country. Mr. Jose neither sought to compel the Nobel Committee to take back the prize nor tried to persuade Maria Ressa to take back her characterization of the Philippines.
The old man was merely speaking his mind. Yet the so-called vanguards of press freedom descended on Jose as if he was a vicious enemy to be annihilated. Some even ruthlessly called him out for his age, using disrespectful words like senile, unaware of the fact that he is more lucid than they are. One, a Journalism program official at a Catholic school, called Mr. Jose pathetic. I wonder what kind of journalism is being taught at that school.
But what happened to F. Sionil Jose, though, was not unprecedented. Weeks before, Toni Gonzaga was relentlessly bashed on every media platform for interviewing Bongbong Marcos, thus allowing him the opportunity to exercise his right to freely express himself. Among Toni Gonzaga's bashers were the same journalists, so-called guardians of freedom and democracy. What a shame. No, let me modify that --how shameless of them.
The son of Bongbong, Sandro, who was not even born yet during martial law, was viciously attacked by participants of the same webinar he was supposed to be a resource person of, simply because he was a Marcos. Yet it is no big deal to his attackers and bashers that their own presidential bet picked as running mate a man who married a woman whose previous marriage found great honor in having Marcos Senior as principal sponsor.
This creeping hypocrisy is doing a great disservice to this nation. We cannot be trusted as a country if the watchdogs of freedom have no qualms sweeping freedom aside to suit particular interests. If the watchdogs cannot be trusted for being hypocrites, can we blame the citizens for not trusting anybody else? No country ever progresses if its leaders are corrupt, its watchdogs hypocrites, and its citizens spinning aimlessly in between.