REPRESENTATIVE Diosdado Macapagal-Arroyo has filed House Bill 6358, which seeks to amend Article 131 of the Revised Penal Code. This is in order to prohibit, as a House press release put it, the public “from holding their mass actions in front of the residence of a public official who has been accused of irregularities or misdeeds.”

What does Article 131 of the Revised Penal Code currently say? It can be found in Book Two, Chapter 1, Sec. 3, and consists of three sentences.

First, “The penalty of prision correccional in its minimum period shall be imposed upon any public officer or employee who, without legal ground, shall prohibit or interrupt the holding of a peaceful meeting, or shall dissolve the same.”

Second, “The same penalty shall be imposed upon a public officer or employee who shall hinder any person from joining any lawful association or from attending any of its meetings.”

And finally, “The same penalty shall be imposed upon any public officer or employee who shall prohibit or hinder any person from addressing, either alone or together with others, any petition to the authorities for the correction of abuses or redress of grievances.”

Considering the colonial origins of the Revised Penal Code, these particular provisions are eminently democratic and reasonable; and while no one in his right mind could conceivably argue that the Philippines of 1930 was particularly democratic as we understand democracy today, Representative Arroyo’s amendments make the colonial era look like a libertarian’s paradise.

By way of the same House press release, Representative Arroyo’s world-famous reputation as a constitutional scholar shines: the right to petition government for redress of grievances is “not absolute,” he says. Indeed, “The right of the people to peaceably assemble for redress of their grievances can be prohibited if it infringes on the greater public good.” Since he was in short pants when the current Constitution was being drafted, we can only assume he reflects the evolution – or is it regression? – of constitutional thought under his mother’s incumbency.

And by way of his vast sociological expertise, he concludes that he knows people better than they know themselves; for the law he proposes assumes that where two or more citizens are gathered, they congregate under delusional pretenses: “The types of picketers or rallyists (sic) banned by the proposed act are those who do not seek to disseminate a message to the general public, but simply aim to intrude upon the targeted resident, and to do so in an especially offensive way.”

Honorable Arroyo’s solution, then, is to forbid the citizenry from protesting – saying people should protest, instead, in public parks. Which is the sort of innocent-sounding suggestion that sounds nice and reasonable but overlooks the manner in which public assembly has been severely curtailed, particularly in public spaces, under his mother’s reign.

To be sure, it would be naughty to assume this is legislation in aid of self-protection, particularly in light of a worst-case scenario where the President actually steps down in 2010 and can’t continue using the Philippine National Police as a private security force. It would be fairer to say this is legislation in aid of the current ruling coalition – House Speaker Prospero Nograles Jr. suffered the indignity of ralliers picketing his Davao City residence over land reform; Romulo Neri Jr. had his house picketed during the time he waffled over confronting the President on her alleged instructions concerning the NBN-ZTE deal.

For all these officials, rallies in front of the residences of the supporters of then-president Joseph Estrada, as well as in front of homes linked to Estrada and his paramours were OK, since they were expressions of the public indignation that swept Arroyo to power. But the tide of public opinion has changed; and so, the public must be disallowed what it was once permitted to do. Hypocrisy!

There are laws aplenty punishing home invasions and the defacing of private and public property, if those are Representative Arroyo’s real concerns. But they aren’t. He simply wants to exempt his friends and himself from the consequences of his family’s stint in government since 2001.