Re: when it comes to gma its innocent until proven guilty when it comes to her ewnemeies its guilty util proven innocent

beri gud ! mor ! mor! ,

kwago

Dirty Sick Pig wrote:
they never did that to garci or bolante
its double standards. whats good for her is not good enough for her
enemies.


STRAIGHT out of the wild, wild, esed..- out of the wild, wild west
-royo administration to put up Wanted posters of alleged enemies of
the state, complete with million-peso bounties on their head. The most
odious aspect of the whole enterprise: the so-called rogues' gallery,
which will include even those against whom the evidence of wrongdoing
is still being collected.

In other words, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez did the entire nation a
disservice when he announced his department's plan last week, because
the new policy is based on a deeply cynical inversion of a fundamental
principle in the administration of justice: the accused are considered
innocent until proven guilty.

Not under Gonzalez's watch. In fact, Gonzalez did not offer a legal
justification for the plan; like the political operative that he is, he
merely described
its practical aspects: how it will be implemented, who will implement
it, against whom.

He said he has formed a "tracking team" of 10 National Bureau of
Investigation agents; he said the administration will post Wanted
posters in public places, and publish and air Wanted ads "similar to
those used against suspected terrorists and kidnappers"; he said former
senator and ex-coup plotter Gregorio Honasan led the list.

The closest he came to justifying the new policy was to attribute the
original idea to President Macapagal-Arroyo. In the realm of partisan
politics, presidential approval may be considered the highest form of
validation; it has no place, however, in the impartial administration
of justice. That the President first thought of the idea does not make
the new policy necessarily legal; in fact, Gonzalez's admission only
shows that the motive behind the idea is rankly political.

What the rogues' gallery does is to paint the Arroyo administration's
alleged enemies with the broadest strokes, by mixing them with the deep
red of actual communist rebels and the royal blue of military
adventurists. Thus, in Gonzalez's list, one will find both the
acknowledged spokesman of the Communist Party of the Philippines and
some Magdalo mutineers mixed in with alleged anti-Arroyo conspirators.

That is the (political) point, of course: To convict even those still
merely alleged to have participated in a conspiracy, through guilt by
association. (And guilt by repeated publication, too, because the use
of Wanted posters and the airing of Wanted ads are based on the
Goebbels principle of repetition.) Of course, one is no longer
surprised at this latest action of the administration; this may be a
turn, but it cannot be described as a twist.

It is all of a piece. The new policy fits right in with the Arroyo
administration's penchant for police-publicity photo-opportunities,
which tramples on a suspect's right to be presumed innocent. It fits
right in with the Arroyo administration's manic obsession with the
legal principle of presumption of regularity, which runs roughshod over
constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. (Administration officials
think everything they do is right, simply because they are in power.)
It fits right in with the Arroyo administration's paranoid policy of
calibrated preemptive response, which sees even peaceful assembly as a
threat to its political survival.

The Wild, Wild West policy fits right in, like iron hand in leather
glove.

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