That polite word—again

House Bill  4252  sports  a grandiose  title: “Freedom of Information and Transparency Act of  2011.” It crams a lot of—what’s the polite word for “BS”?   “Bovine  ordure”?

Drafted by  Rep.  Rodolfo W. Antonino, this   bill  would  exhume  remains of  “right of reply” measures, rightly  buried  by the previous  Congress.

This Nueva Ecija  solon’s legislative  horizons are  constricted. On one end  is his bill to convert  Nueva Ecija’s  San Leonardo-Peñaranda Road into a national road. An act to declare Aug. 25 a special nonworking public holiday in Gapan City is at the other end.  HB 4252  is his initial foray into transparency issues.

“The State recognizes the right of the people to information on matters of public concern,” Antonino  begins  in Section 2. He calls for a “policy of full public disclosure of all  transactions,  involving public interest… and  a legal presumption in favor of  access to information.”

Section 14 directs agencies to upload, on their websites, contracts, rules, etc. That’s  a practice Local Government  Secretary  Jesse Robredo, with Budget and Management  Secretary  Florencio Abad started early on.

Antonino’s  bill overlaps with the Freedom of Information (FOI) measure that Deputy Speaker  Lorenzo “Erin” Tanada and like-minded solons filed last year. Still, HB 4252  appeals. Why?

Because  President Benigno Aquino III  “oscillated from ‘cross-my-heart’ support to ‘aw-shucks back pedaling’ on FOI.” He didn’t certify FOI as a  priority measure last year. Malacañang  since then crafted a rider that’d create  an office to screen requests for information.

That’s a  “needless bureaucracy,” Tañada said.  “A  year is more than enough time to study the bill,” he told a  Philippine Press Institute conference. A  consolidated bill  is before the   Senate and House. A clear signal  from P-Noy  that his bill is welcome hasn’t come.

“Corazon and Benigno Aquino Jr.  stood  without  ifs and buts for transparency in government,” recalled  “Viewpoint” (Philippine Daily Inquiry,  Feb. 20,  2011).   Over 42  days,  Cory and family searched for their  Ninoy  imprisoned by the dictatorship in Laur. The President’s  “waffling smudges the  ‘draw-the-sand-line’ stance his parents took.”

HB 4252’s booby trap is  stashed in Section 10: “Opportunity to Reply.” Aggrieved parties  can demand that their replies  to criticism  be published “in the same space” of  newspapers or same program in broadcast.   It  directs  that  replies  “be published or broadcast  not later  than three  days.”

What if “the editor or   station manager fails or  refuses”?  Another  “mine”  is wired into  Section 16  on “Criminal Liability.”

For a “first offense,” an editor or station manager would be slapped with  a P10,000 fine.  For “a second offense” the penalty bolts  to P50,000. There may be  “incorrigibles”   who commit a third offense. They’d  be slammed with a  fine of P100,000. “Closure or suspension of the franchise of the publication or station for 30 days” would follow.

Did  Ferdinand Marcos ever vamoose?   And do  these provisions ring a bell?

They’re snitched  from  former Bacolod  Rep. Monico Puentevella’s  House Bill 3306 and  Senators  Bong Revilla and Francis “Chiz” Escudero’s  Senate  Bill 2150.

Both measures stipulated  that a reply must be published or aired on the same page or program. They should be of the same length or time. No  charges may be levied.  Publish or air within 24 hours, demanded Puentevella. No, the senators said. Make that three days.

Under  previous measures, and now  Rep. Antonino’s bill,  an aggrieved Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo  or “libeled” Abu  Sayyaf   could muscle aside editors—and dictate the contents of an editorial or a broadcast.

“Only dictatorships barge into newsrooms to usurp editorial functions,” a  Cebu Citizens Press Council  memo stressed. “A  legislated right to reply operates as a command. This is prior restraint. Media  can not be told what to publish nor can it  ordered  what not to publish.”

“There are absolutes in our Bill of Rights,” Justice Hugo Black wrote. “They were put there by men who understood what words meant, and meant their prohibitions were absolute.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, in  1974,  heard Florida candidate Pat Tornillo cite local right to reply statutes when he  sued Miami Herald. The statute fractured the Constitution’s ban on prior restraint, the Herald replied.

“Decisions on content, format and treatment of public issues and public officials —whether fair or unfair—constitute exercise of editorial control and judgment,” the Court ruled.  “Government may not force a newspaper to print copy which, in its journalistic discretion, it chooses to leave on the newsroom’s floor,” Justice Byron White wrote.

The Puno Supreme Court  hewed   closely to this constitutional tradition. It spiked Justice Department and National Telecommunications Commission warnings against airing the “Hello Garci” tapes of  Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. This threat to gag constituted  prior restraint.    “It challenged the most exalted of all civil rights, the freedom of expression,” Puno wrote as ponente.

The least  Rep. Antonino can do is to excise this smuggled  rider from HB 4252. Let this exhumed  bill  stand or fall on it’s own merits.

At the Inquirer’s 25th anniversary  rites, P-Noy recalled that his parents  battled for  a free press. “A free media is indispensable, if a democracy is to function efficiently, if it is to be real,” he quoted Ninoy.  “The people, who are sovereign, must be adequately informed all the time.”

Fine.  But for P-Noy to spurn his parents’ sterling legacy by waffling—What is  the polite word  again?  “Bovine ordure”?