The National Press Club Elections: Politics, Media-Style

By Don Gil K. Carreon

AT A time when unity is most needed by Philippine media, discord reigns at the National Press Club (NPC), the country’s oldest organization of journalists.

Politics has divided the club. The two major parties—the Press Freedom Party (PFP) and the Reform Party (RP)—that vied for the NPC leadership have split the club after a bitter squabble over the elections on May 7. On that day, RP and PFP held separate elections with both parties being declared winners by different election committees (Elecom).

To settle the dispute, Judge Aida Layug of the Manila Regional Trial Court   Branch 46 directed NPC officials to hold new elections under the court’s supervision. On June 14,   the court organized a meeting to discuss the election rules. The meeting was snubbed by RP, which boycotted the June 18 elections that was won by PFP. Of the club’s 1,777 members (1,420 regular and 357 lifetime), only 419 voted.

According to Alice Reyes, RP’s presidential bet, her party did not participate in the elections because they had already won the previous polls.

“The (May 7) election held was legitimate because the proper procedures were followed,” Reyes says. She added that the court did not have to intervene since the election was an internal affair of the NPC. Meanwhile, RP has elevated the case to the Court of Appeals.

Divisive elections
Trouble started when the NPC’s Elecom, headed by Jose Pavia, disqualified Louie Logarta, PFP’s candidate for secretary, due to an outstanding debt to the club. Logarta reportedly owed NPC more than P66,000 in rent for a space in the club that he used for personal purposes in 2006.

Logarta’s inability to settle his accounts led to the loss of his status as a member in good standing, a requisite for candidates.

“A member in good standing is one who, quoting the words of the by-laws, is ‘up to date in his fees and dues.’ Now, that does not include back accounts but it has been a practice, kung may utang ka sa club, hindi ka puwedeng tumakbo, even if you have paid all your (membership) dues and fees,” explains Pavia.

Benny Antiporda, NPC vice president and member of the PFP, disagrees with Pavia. He says money owed by Logarta to the NPC must not be used as basis for him to lose his good standing.

“How can you say that a member is not in good standing kung rental ang utang mo? It’s not the membership or it’s not the money of the press club but it’s a rental of his office. That’s a different issue,” Antiporda says.

Eight of the club’s 15 officers protested Logarta’s disqualification and questioned the formation of Elecom. The eight officers, including Logarta, who was auditor, says former NPC president Antonio Antonio should have informed the board before forming Elecom. Antonio supposedly violated the club’s by-laws which gave the board the sole right to create an election committee.

On April 27, the eight board directors convened a meeting and passed a resolution replacing the Pavia-led Elecom with one headed by Abner Afuang.

On May 5, the eight NPC board directors took the case to court. The group petitioned for the nullification of the Antonio-appointed Elecom, a temporary restraining order (TRO) that would prevent the Elecom from performing its duties and responsibilities for 72 hours, and a prayer for a special raffle of the case. Judge Cielito Mindro-Grulla issued the TRO and granted the request for a special raffle.

Knowing the damage that separate elections would bring to the club’s image, Antonio says he tried to convince some of his allies to let Logarta’s candidacy to proceed.

“I had a meeting (with my allies) and told them, ‘Let us avoid this trouble,’ but they reasoned that we had to be firm in our decision,” Antonio says.

The Pavia-led Elecom went ahead with the scheduled elections upon the advice of Reform Party’s (RP) lawyer, Ricardo Valmonte, who says that the TRO was defective. Valmonte says an injunction can only be legal if both sides were heard by the court. Since the RP did not participate in the hearing, the TRO was supposedly invalid. Not wanting to be left out, the PFP also held an election on that day.

On June 6, Layug decided on the petitions filed by Logarta’s group, saying both parties were wrong in proceeding with the elections because there was a TRO against it. On the issue of Antonio’s formation of the Elecom, the court ruled in favor of RP, saying that Antonio did inform the board before creating this. Layug supported the PFP position that Logarta should not have been disqualified because the money he owed the NPC was incurred not as a member but in his personal and private capacity.

It was the second time that a court of law intervened in an NPC election. The first was in 1963, when then NPC president Macario Vicencio called off the regular elections and decided to have the club’s  board of directors choose the organization’s officers.

Problem-plagued club
One of the original purposes of the NPC was to serve as a social club where weary journalists could relax and enjoy its facilities and services at a reasonable price. But political infighting has transformed the organization into something other than a haven for tired journalists.

In his May 7 column, Manila Standard Today’s Fel Maragay says politics has led to the members’ disaffection for the NPC.

“Candidates for president and other positions in the NPC who lost in the past elections did not like the way the affairs of the club were managed by their rivals. They became fault-finders and the main source of intrigues (against) the sitting club officers,” Maragay wrote.

Politics, though, is just one of the NPC’s many problems. The club owes its workers’ union P6 million in back pay and utility providers Meralco and Maynilad, P2.3 million and P466,000 respectively.

The money problems can be traced to the club’s old policies. Up until 2002, members were only required to pay P120 in annual fees or 33 centavos daily. The low membership fee was not enough to cover the club’s overhead expenses. The fee has since been increased to P1,200 a year. The adjustment, however, did not solve the problem because many members do not pay their dues regularly.

Despite the financial problems, Antonio says the club has been able to implement its projects and meet the needs of the members, although in a limited capacity.

When it began in 1952,  membership in the NPC was rather exclusive. It was open only to the five broadsheets in circulation.

NPC members multiplied with the fall of the Marcos administration and the rise in the number of newspapers. The rise in membership became problematic because of the entry of “hao hsiao” or pseudo-journalists, the existence of which both PFP and RP admitted.

The membership problem led to Manuel Almario’s call for a boycott of the elections as early as April. Almario, one of the club’s founding members and former head of Elecom, says the organization’s officers must first restore the original by-laws, amended in November 2003, before conducting an election.

“The amendments watered down the provision for regular membership with the right to vote given to persons who cannot reasonably be considered journalists,” Almario says.

In the amended by-laws, membership was opened to those “managing an organization related to, or allied with, a news publications or news-gathering agency.”

Almario says this provision opened the club to those in public relations, advertising, sale of newsprint, radio, and TV equipment since these activities are related to or allied with news publication and news-gathering.

Trouble over the NPC membership was actually a problem even before the by-laws were amended. In the Philippine Journalism Review’s June 1994 issue, it was reported that there were more “associate members” (non-journalists) than journalists who voted in the elections.

NPC president Roy Mabasa agrees with Almario’s observation on the membership issue. He wants to create a new committee to review the club’s membership.

But at the moment, Mabasa’s primary concern is to win back the support of the other members, particularly those who opposed his group in the past elections.

Meritocracy gone?
Monica Feria, one of the club’s three vice presidents in 1980, says political infighting was not as intense as it is today where the NPC’s election problems have became news themselves.

“The factions then were the Malacañang-backed newspapers versus the independent publications but (the elections) were still a popularity contest, paramihan ng kaibigan,” Feria says.

The NPC election was established to determine the best possible person to lead and unify the club. But this has not always been the case.

In the NPC’s 50 Golden Years book, the late Teodoro F. Valencia, NPC president from 1955 to 1957, says it was probably time to junk the elections and pick the organization’s leaders through merit instead of popularity.

“A politics-ridden club can only lead for the scrap heap, let us forget personal glory and ambition and get together in putting up a press club that we can be proud of,” he wrote.

But Almario believes the practice of electing officers must continue. “We should have democracy. Being media, we are supposed to be champions of democracy and freedom of the press and that is precisely what the NPC stands for and should stand for. So let the members express their preferences for the leadership,” he says.

A club diminished
As spelled out in the National Press Club’s articles of incorporation, one of its reasons for being was “to uphold press freedom and the dignity of newspapermen.”

Yet, whenever journalists are murdered or press freedom is attacked, the NPC is seldom sought for its views.

NPC president Roy Mabasa admits that the organization’s status as an advocate of media freedom has diminished

“When PP (Presidential Proclamation) 1017 was issued, the NPC was very quiet dahil tinitimbang nga nila yung sitwasyon, apparently because ’yung previous leaders nito product of Martial Law days,” he explains. This reasoning, however, does not explain why in the days of Antonio Ma. Nieva, who served as NPC president when Marcos was still around in 1984-1986, the organization spoke out courageously for press freedom and democracy.

Today’s NPC leadership denounced PP 1017 only six days after Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo declared the state of national emergency and after the organization had been roundly criticized by other media groups such as the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) and Alyansa ng Filipinong Mamahayag for its silence.

The delayed reaction to PP 1017 notwithstanding, former NPC president Antonio Antonio claims that the press club has not been remiss in its duty to fight for press freedom. He says the club has been very active, especially in the cases of journalists killed.

“We have been writing a lot of press releases about these killings, denouncing, condemning these killings, urging the government to solve these,” Antonio adds.

According to him, the club is coordinating with the Philippine Press Institute and the NUJP to come up with better ways of addressing the issue. Among the measures that have been agreed upon is the holding of NPC seminars in the provinces to help journalists hone their craft.

Mabasa promises to increase the frequency of the seminars with sufficient funding. The seminars, which will focus on ways to ethical journalism practices and avoiding libel, will start in October.

Aside from the seminars, the NPC leadership has suggested to Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Oscar Calderon the inclusion of some journalists in Task Force Usig, the special investigation group created by the PNP to solve the killings. Mabasa says media groups must be updated about police efforts to solve the murders.—Don Gil K. Carreon

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