Caesar and ABS-CBN

By Alex P. Vidal

 

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”—Soren Kierkegaard

 

SIXTY senators, led by Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus, took turns in stabbing to death Julius Caesar at the Theater of Pompey on March 15, 44 B.C.

Seventy congressmen, led by Rodante Marcoleta Cassius and Michael Defensor Brutus, murdered ABS-CBN in the House Joint Committee for Legislative Franchises, Good Governance and Public Accountability, on July 10, 2020.

What did the Roman senators gain after killing Emperor Caesar?

Nothing.

Except that history was so cruel to them.

They had to escape outside Rome after being chased by angry Romans who burned their houses and other edifices.

Cassius and Brutus both committed suicide after being crushed one after the other by the combined forces of Mark Antony (Caesar’s trusted lieutenant) and Octavian (Caesar’s 17-year-old nephew who became Emperor Augustus) in the Battle of Philippi in 42 B.C.

As their primary source of news, public affairs program, and entertainment, Filipinos love ABS-CBN dearly as the Romans admired and loved Caesar as the symbol of their strength and dominance before Jesus was born.

 

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What did the 70 congressmen gain when they murdered ABS-CBN, by the way?

Nothing except, perhaps, helping bloat heavily the ego of a dictator.

Will history be also cruel to them?

Let us wait and see.

History has always been cruel to tyrants, oppressors, rapscallions, and egregious political lackeys like the 70 solons.

It was ancient Greece that first experienced tyranny on a large scale both from the external threat posed to their small city-states by the mighty Persian empire and from the tendency of their own politics to veer between extremes of tyranny and anarchy.

A change in government usually meant the new winners would oppress the previous winners, prosecuting them and seizing their property. Responsible self-government under the rule of law was fragile.

Waller R. Newell, professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Carleton University, warned that different categories of tyrannies emerged over the ages that have helped to classify and condemn tyranny and other exploitative forms of authority, and to encourage self-governing societies.

We can still apply those categories today.

 

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But the 70 congressmen don’t need to escape with their tales wagging like Cassius, Brutus, and their co-conspirators in Ceasar’s murder while the Filipinos grieve for ABS-CBN’s demise.

It will be their respective constituents who will kick their asses come election day.

What the 70 congressmen did was already equivalent to a political suicide.

Even in “death”, the Filipinos will continue to love and support ABS-CBN the way the Romans honored and immortalized their beloved Caesar.

It was fundamentally and logically wrong to eliminate a media institution that has been functioning as a major pillar of Philippine democracy over flimsy reasons.

It was pathetically erroneous and a monumental blunder on the part of the government to treat ABS-CBN like an ordinary pizza parlor or ice cream manufacturing company when its primary and paramount function is to safeguard democracy as a media watchdog.

Although we find it hard to comprehend why they would hate ABS-CBN with such mind-boggling magnitude and even “celebrated” the network’s defeat like the people of Moses who worshipped the golden calf, we can never hate back those who had sought to guillotine the country’s hitherto leading broadcasting network that employed 11,000 workers nationwide.

There is history as the final arbiter.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)