AFTER ALL
Behn Fer. Hortaleza, Jr

TARPAULIN ads and signages printers must be raking it in. And if you have any doubt at all about this, try looking up as you walk or drive thru Dagupan City streets and roads, you’d never miss the retouched and unretouched images of your favorite city officials staring at you with their toothpaste ad smiles.

From Benjie Saplan Lim’s Pisasalamat public invitation to the coming Bangus Festival (whatever happened to Pista’y Dayat, the original reason for the May 1 celebration –shunted aside?) to Alvin Fernandez’s announcements of various projects, to Farah Decano’s women’s month drumbeating, to Michael Fernandez’s young legislators’ thingmagajig – all in big tarps pasted at strategic round-the-corner sites – you’d know elections are well, just that — around the corner. Oh, yes, we almost forgot our villagemate, Vlad Mata, in full crisp Marine khaki uniform and officer’s cap gazing at you along Perez Blvd. like your dream, uh, Big Brother.

The thing is, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet, folks!

Once April comes around and Bangusfest draws nigh, you bet there’d be more of those smiling faces of “great” leaders dotting every corner of the city like 2007 is here and now. New outdoor advertising technology has caught up with our dear officials and they’re using it to the hilt.

Why, passing by a barangay hall once, we could only snicker at seeing the handsome face of a full-grown, macho “Mayor Benjie Lim” on a tarpaulin sign, flashing a movie star smile with the letters “Libreng Tule” (free circumcision) plastered beside it.

Oh well, the best and noblest of lapdog intentions is not always the most, what, wholesome?

* * * *

Responsible journalism need not get a journalist in trouble. But since as a great writer once said the journalist must create trouble for truth, here we have a clearly paradoxical situation.

Activist (oppositionist?) media practitioners tend to always test the limits of their freedom while the establishment, for its survival if for nothing else, must see that it is controlled or at the very least tempered. It’s how it has always been with Media and Governance since a Ferdinand Edralin Marcos came into the life of Filipinos. For one to give way to the other now is like surrendering life, or throne, itself. Not without a fight, it won’t.

That is why, we can only see a protracted fight and a turbulent period ahead as each tries to adjust to the excesses of either – if that is at all possible. Whatever the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary does or decides from this point on, we believe, will be met with cynicism by Media which itself is universally known as the Fourth Estate.

What’s the best solution?

We think it’s quite simple. Encourage mutual respect among the Four Estates and observe the separation of powers. Today, as in the days of old, fiefdom or territories are held sacrosanct by men. Tread on turfs without permission and war erupts.

That, if you still don’t realize, is the universal truth and virtual reality.