TITANic: A Commentary on the GSIS-Meralco Showdown

The Titans are these huge gods, powerfully built, fit and strong, clad with only a piece of cloth wrapped around their toned waists, their skin a golden brown, vibrant and glistened to perfection… well, at least, that is how I picture them to be. They are playing around with what seemed to look like a frisbee, no… it is actually planet Earth and it is the Milky Way that they are treading on, playfully tossing it around, laughing from time to time. That is how I have them in my mind, I think I actually got that visual from a movie that I saw some time ago. The Titans are these gods who lord over and play around with our lives, all of us just this minuscle atom-sized almost nothing, subject to their whims and caprices, helpless and insignificant.

I liken the Lopezes to the way I depicted the Titans above, by the way they are acting now. They recently called on a stockholder’s meeting, which ran contrary to a cease and desist order by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Committee), the agency that had jurisdiction to rule on such matters. They did so contending that the said order is void because it did not follow the proper procedural requirements.

In my mind, if the TRO or the temporary restraining order was issued improperly, it still had the force of law. Though they later on may question the validity of the said order because of the defects that they were pointing out, for as long as it has been issued, it must be followed until nullified by the proper Courts. Who were they to think that they could be the judge of the validity of the order, when they themselves are party to the issue? Furthermore, as Senator Enrile pointed out, what was the use of the SEC then, the government in that matter, as the authority, when private parties such as the Lopezes, could ignore their orders and carry on as they liked? What they did was not just a disobedience but an utter defiance of the law.

The Lopezes have been one of the more powerful and richer families in the country. They own the biggest broadcasting corporation in the country, ABS-CBN, among all the other big companies that dominate various industries affecting our national economy. They have exercised a huge political clout, having backed up, even the highest official of the land at a certain time in our nation’s history, President Marcos. (Ironically, during the Martial Law Era, that power of theirs which helped Marcos in his ascendancy to the topmost position, was also the same reason behind Marcos’s shutting them out. In A Conjugal Dictatorship by Primitivo Mijares, a journalist who wrote about his experiences of the anomalies in the Marcos regime, he tells the story on how the Lopez family’s power was cutoff by Marcos, notably closing the broadcasting company they owned at that time, derailing one of the family’s strongholds in Philippine society.) But after the People Power Revolution, the family regained their footing, and until now, is as strong as ever.

Yes, that is probably how they felt that they could behave as they did. Not any average family could do what they did. They probably felt like the Titans, so incredibly strong and powerful, like the gods who played around with everything and everyone, and no one can do anything but to yield and be tossed around in the palm of their hands. Or just in their minds, at least. If GSIS head, Winston Garcia has anything to say about it (which he does-a lot) they won’t be on top of the universe as they thought all along.