What about cleansing our ranks?

SO WE are outraged by Rodrigo Duterte's position that some of the journalists who lost their lives to violence deserved their fate because they were abusive and corrupt. Not even his assurance that the upright ones had no reason to fear could pacify us or remove our fears.

I do disagree with Duterte's assertion that anyone who trifles with another man's reputation in a serious and evil way forfeits his right to be protected by the Constitution. The president-elect must have been thinking about the Constitution of his dreams, not the one we have, which guarantees in no uncertain terms one's right to live and prohibits just as certainly, the imposition of the death penalty except for compelling reasons in heinous crimes as Congress may define.

But even as we criticize Duterte, shouldn't we, at the same time, also praise him for bringing to light something that we have known but have turned a blind eye to for the longest time?

During the last election campaign, I heard not once nor twice but so many times radio commentaries that accused certain candidates and supporters of being thieves and their wives of being prostitutes without offering any proof. How base can we get?

And yet, in spite of this, what have we done to cleanse our ranks? It is not an excuse that most of the libelers are block timers. The station management and media leaders surely could have done something.

Instead, what we hear from our ranks is the clamor for the removal of libel from the Revised Penal Code. Do that and you'll have more people wishing, if not making sure, that we were dead.

*** Sorry, Digong. We're not interested in your Iglesia ni Duterte. We already have a religion. As a matter of fact, we have two: politics and basketball.

And our gods have been kind; less than a month after we had the title fight in one, we're going to witness the championship bout in the other.

Who will emerge Duterte in the NBA title series that starts today? Or will the battle between the defending champion Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers be more like the vice presidential race which was won by a whisker?

Unlike in the elections, there are no pre-tournament surveys to determine who will mostly likely win so everyone is free to make his fearless forecast. If made on social media, a prediction could generate a discussion that, although not vicious like the one we saw during the campaign, is just as passionate such as the one Gabby Malagar, Cerwin Eviota and their mutual friends had on Facebook recently.

Gabby and Cerwin were my col- leagues in the Freeman in the ‘80s. At that time, Gabby had 80 percent less white hair, Cerwin weighed 60 kilos lighter and my waistline was a half-foot narrower.

Gabby, who holds the distinction of being the first officially retired sports writer in Cebu, is a confessed Oklahoma City (OKC) Thunder worshipper. Cerwin, who used his Freeman experience to grow into being one of Cebu's top two publicists (the other, Jonji Gonzales, also used to work for the same paper), is a Lebron James fan who rooted for the Warriors in the Western Conference Finals, for no other purpose, I suspect, but to needle Gabby.

At one point, Gabby wondered if at the end of the current NBA season, he would have already lost a number of his friends. Apparently, he has heard about or personally experienced the "unfriending" epidemic that broke out during the last election. Cerwin, however, assured him that everything was done in the spirit of fun.

OKC eventually lost three straight games to the Warriors to kiss their and Gabby's championship hopes goodbye but Cerwin gloated only once: after Game 5 that was played in the GS home court. Gabby complained of game-fixing, prompting another former sportswriter, Lou Coloyan, to ask if he had checked his source. This could be just like the allegations of cheating in our last elections, Lou cautioned.

Gabby has since recovered his trademark sense of humor. Yesterday, he was back to being the funny friend and former colleague. In other words, he has moved on. I wonder how many of those who were grieving over the results of the May 9 elections had taken Gabby's course.