DEFINITELY. But of course I mean only as secretary of the Agriculture department, since after 100 days this has proven to be a very wrong move.

In June, days before he assumed office, Marcos said: “It’s important that the president take that portfolio not only to make it clear to everyone what high priority we put to the agricultural sector, but also as a practical matter, so that things move quickly.”

It turns out that the Agriculture department in practice has become his administration’s lowest priority, with the President, sources in that department say, having visited its headquarters only twice. The first was on July 4, his first and only meeting with the department’s executive committee. And the second, a week later, but to meet only with his representative Leocadio Sebastian (who was fired a month later) and a few directors.

IT is indeed an indication that the overall deterioration of Philippine journalism may have started to infect even a specialized section of it — opinion columns.

It was Philippine Star’s Jose Dalisay, a novelist and biographer who was supposed to be the newspaper’s replacement for the columns of the late F. Sionil Jose, who started this assault on opinion column-writing.

Obviously realizing he’s a fictionist all his life and not a column writer, Dalisay declared he was creating a new genre he calls “editorial fiction,” short fiction stories filling up his column space in that newspaper. That “genre” can exist only in lampoons, and only for student newspapers wanting to have some fun. Read his column, and you wouldn’t know and aren’t forewarned that what he writes is pure unadulterated fiction.

This is another of the anti-Marcos bashers’ big lie, their concocted revision of history. The Supreme Court in fact ruled in two decisions that martial law was constitutional and Marcos’ proclamations, decrees and other official acts were legal. These decisions were in General Register L-35546 of Sept. 17, 1974 by the First Division and GR L-40004 of Jan. 31, 1975, by the court sitting en banc (i.e., the whole court).

WITH the anniversary of martial law declaration tomorrow, its critics have revved up the propaganda line they have been exploiting for half a century. Even an otherwise intelligent journalist, Sheila…

READ on to find out that I'm not just rudely bad-mouthing Her Excellency, Vice President Maria Leonor Gerona Robredo. I have material in black and white to justify that question.…