There is no one particular video to link with this topic, so I settled on the Maguindanao Massacre. In this video Gibo is asked about his stance on the Maguindanao massacre and if this would have some reflection on him, a bahid or “stain” if he were elected president. Gibo’s answer is very telling, in that he has already done what he can to comfort the victims of the families himself and that he now puts his faith in the legal system to do its job. The most important bit here starts at around 1:00 where Gibo says that he shouldn’t be messing with the evidence or the administration of justice because it will only muddle the waters. In other words people shouldn’t expect him to take personal charge of the matter and hand down justice from on high. Many people would see this as a good thing, as justice served quickly, so why would it a bad thing? Because it undermines the authority of the Judiciary as a separate institution from the Executive branch of government.
Many people see this as a “weakness”. They like men of action, men that take matters into their own hands, men that make things right because they know it’s the right thing to do; in short, they want a benevolent dictator without even realizing it, and Gibo wants none of this. Let’s imagine Gibo became president and took matters into his own hands and laid down punishment on the Ampatuans, bypassing the Judiciary. Not only would this weaken the Judiciary’s image in the eyes of the public but it sets a precedent for other lawmakers and future presidents that it’s ok to do this. He is setting a precedent by allowing the Judicial system to take its course, and surprisingly enough, he is joined in this by the husband of the slain Genalyn Mangudadatu. I say surprising because “rido” is common enough in that area of Mindanao that no one would have batted an eyelash if Esmael Mangudadatu had waged war on the suspected killers, the Ampatuans. What is most surprising, yet underreported, is that for the most part his faith in the justice system has been rewarded.
Gibo’s allegiances were also questioned when the issue of Mikey Arroyo’s stepping up to represent security guards in congress came up. This misleading article bore the headline “Gibo defends Mikey’s party-list bid”. But did he really? Let’s take a quote for the aforementioned article:
Administration presidential candidate Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro on Wednesday defended Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo’s bid as party-list representative.
“Is it legal or not? It’s legal. Wala tayong magagawa (We can’t do anything about it),” Teodoro said when asked to comment about criticisms against Arroyo’s nomination as representative of Ang Galing Pinoy, a party-list group representing security guards.
The Lakas-Kampi-CMD standard-bearer said that what the next administration and the next set of lawmakers can do is to revise the party-list law to fix the “flawed”system.
Not sure about ABS-CBN’s writers, but I would have put quotation marks around defended instead of flawed. If you can read past the bias it’s clear that Gibo is in fact not defending Mikey Arroyo but the legal system as an institution. He admits that it is wrong (that mikey gets to do this), but not exactly in the way people want. People want drama. People want him to rail against the Arroyos and pump his fist in the air and say enough is enough. Instead he calmly suggests that the flawed system can be fixed by the next set of lawmakers, as they should. However they may not even need to because security guards were insulted enough with Arroyo’s posturing that they dared him to face them in a forum of security guards. My gut tells me that Gibo is happy that these people decided to confront Mikey on their own instead of waiting for someone to do it for them because it’s an institution (the forum) taking care of its own without his having to get involved.
This video, which I also used to write the post on taxation, also contains many tidbits about the role of institutions as Gibo sees it. He discusses the role of a president in creating employment (the president is not an entrepreneur…he is a supervisor) and the importance of giving the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas sufficient independence in order to chart the country through economic waters.
I think this is a good enough length to cite examples about Gibo’s stance on institutions, so in part 2 I’ll try my best to explain why I (and he) think that institutions are important.
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