If the lifting of 1017 was good news, it was only because its proclamation was bad news. PGMA said as much when she said that she’d do it over and over again if her administration were again threatened by coups. This is the main reason civil libertarians have questioned before the Supreme Court the constitutionality of 1017.

If rebellion under our jurisprudence is a "continuing crime" — you are a rebel even if you’re asleep — PGMA is obviously right to regard her proclamation as a "continuing threat." No wonder a former SC associate justice, Isagani A. Cruz, called the "doctrine" questionable. The analogy here is that breathing is a "continuing sin."

All the same, it was good news that with the lifting of 1017 last Saturday, Puerto Princesa City was celebrating its 134th founding anniversary with the opening of a 2000-sqm baywalk comparable to Manila’s. Mayor Edward Hagedorn had relocated 500 families for the city’s reclamation project.

This was also about the time that a PNP 5000-sqm heritage memorial park was announced in the hope of restoring the image of the police. That’s the good side of the images on TV where police were seen beating up a student demonstrator.

The images were the "anonymous sources" forbidden by the government’s media guidelines. Vice President Noli de Castro, to his credit, frowns on this kind of censorship: He advocates "self-regulation" instead, as if self-censorship is not censorship in itself.

That’s why it’s good news that Davao City journalists aren’t cowed after an initial "chill." They are encouraged even more by Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s defense of his city as a "free zone."

The final good news is that Rep. Joey Salceda’s called the media gag of 1017 a "clumsy and silly mistake" even as Davao journalists called it a "bad joke." But they’re not laughing.

Ditto for the students who take seriously what they have been taught.