THE blog community went up in arms on the side of the De la Paz family shortly after the Dec. 26 mauling of its members at the Valley Golf Club allegedly by two sons of Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman over a breach of golf etiquette.

Businessman Delfin de la Paz, 56, and his son Bino, 14, both private citizens and powerless, filed charges of light physical injuries and child abuse with the Antipolo City public prosecutor on Monday against Hussein Pangandaman, 30, and Nasser Jr., 27, who is mayor of Masiut town in the southern province of Lanao del Sur. The Pangandamans are members of a powerful and influential political clan in Lanao del Sur.

The De la Paz family members accused the Pangandamans and their bodyguards of assaulting them in a violent fracas that marred the day after Christmas, a brawl that reverberated all over the country. It was the latest manifestation of the enduring power of provincial/regional warlords in post-modern Philippine political history. The ugly face of warlord culture returned with a vengeance in the supposedly civilized ambience of golf fairways where gorillas are not expected to be seen cavorting on the manicured green.

At first glance, the scales of justice appear unevenly balanced between the litigants. The complainants are plain citizens, while the defendants are men clothed with power and official authority.

The encounter marked for the first time the clash between the denizens of blogdom inhabited by users of Cyberspace and the official holders of power in the formal structures of government. The golf club encounter unveiled the constituency of this new and powerful force in public opinion which was mobilized to join the fray by a blog report written by De la Paz’s daughter, Bambee, 18, who narrated the details of the assault. The report became the basis of the criminal complaint lodged by the De la Paz family ahead of the counter-complaints also alleging physical injuries and child abuse on the part of the family victimized by the Pangandamans. The counter-suit lodged by the Pangandamans, which came within hours of the complaint filed by the De la Paz family, was reduced to copycat versions after Bambee jumped the gun on the use of new technology and stole the initiative from the Pangandamans, whose experience in counter-suits has been defined by the nomenclature of old politics which favors people holding power.

Eventually, after some foot-dragging the Department of Justice will announce the results of its investigation, but already a new people power movement, lodged in the Internet, has emerged and has intervened forcefully to seize the public opinion initiative. It has drawn people to take sides on behalf of the victims of injustice and the abuse of power by persons in authority. Within minutes of Bambee’s blog report the vast undercurrent of blog users came to the surface to add their own versions and knowledge of the Valley Golf Club incident, reinforcing the initial report of the De la Paz family. The bloggers’ perception invested credence to the victims’ narrative, even as the Pangandamans rely on the outmoded justice department’s fact-finding process for vindication. But the Department of Justice happens to be one of the least credible and most partisan departments of this administration.

What the Pangandamans and the administration failed to appreciate is that the reason the Valley Golf incident has caught fire rapidly is that it was ignited by an outrage over injustice by people in authority using their power and violence to trample down powerless people who dare protest infractions of the rules. The blog of the De la Paz girl tapped this undercurrent against abuse of power and injustice dealt to the underdogs.

The lawyer of the De la Paz family has sought suspension of Secretary Pangandaman and his taking a leave of absence while the justice department takes its time in investigating the incident for the good reason that he is in a position to influence the outcome of the inquiry.

The force that has intervened to influence public opinion on the side of powerless victims of violence and injustice is a new element feeding on the swiftness and untrammeled flow of information facilitated by the Internet. It cannot be censored by authorities just as the Xerox machine could not be censored by dictatorial regimes of the 1970s who felt challenged by the duplicating machines and not by the bulky printing presses used by independent papers to denounce regimes and their abuses.

Media studies have identified the blog, a creature of the Internet, as an instrument of what is called “interactive journalism” or “citizens’ journalism,” in which eyewitnesses of events write their own reports without formal accreditation as members of the institutionalized media organizations. This is what media studies call grassroots journalism with basic citizen participation, feeding the votaries of information with a variety of sources and perspectives. This approach has superseded the structured reports of the traditional reporter and news story seeking to describe all angles under the two-witness corroboration rule. This is the approach and the elemental dynamic of Internet-based journalism that the Pangandamans and people in public authority are contending with. It has been harnessed by the bloggers.

Leave a Reply