WHAT is it about print journalists’ need to talk about the news they write and then talk some more with their colleagues and rivals at so-called news forums? Club 365’s daily breakfasts at Intercon which started the trend will come to an end soon, Neal Cruz has gone but his Kapihan just got resurrected last Monday.
There’s not a single day of the week that’s not been claimed by one or another media forum, with one or another group hosting for the cause of finding out what the others may have found out already though inadequately, or are still trying to find out.
Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista and election lawyer Romy Macalintal were the first guests at Kapihan’s revival, where the talk was mostly about “dq” or disqualification of candidates. I liked it that the Comelec reporters, who occupied one round table at Manila Hotel’s Roma room, tried to trap the chairman into revealing the name of the “fifth presidential candidate” who did not receive a letter asking why he/she should not be classified as a nuisance. Comelec sent out 125 letters, but there are 130 bets, the presumption being that Binay, Roxas, Poe, and Santiago did not get any. So who’s the fifth? Like the chairman, the reporters didn’t name names because, wasn’t it obvious already, it could only be Martin Diño standing in for Duterte? The mystery deepened with the chairman’s mysterious smile deepening his dimples.
Election 2016 appears headed for the cliff – two presidential candidates are facing the dq threat. The quote of the day came from Atty. Macalintal, on what happens when a candidate wins the race but is disqualified eventually, and could the new president win his/her case by invoking the “vox populi, vox Dei” principle of letting the people’s will prevail. His reply: “The voice of the people cannot amend the Constitution.”
Only the voice of the Supreme Court justices will prevail, he said. Then again, the justices are lawyers, and as jurists they explain the law according to their own individual judgment. Lawyers write the law, they interpret the law, and those whom they confuse are called clients.