Green palette

scorching light of

midafternoon sun

verdancy’s grandeur

wilts not.

Hann Reserve. New Clark City. May 21, 2026. 

Doggoned Senate

 

                                                                                            YouTube grab

THOSE OF age in 1997 may well still remember Wag the Dog.

For one, it starred Hollywood A-listers Robert de Niro and Dustin Hoffman. 

More worth unforgetting though is its plot – a Washington DC spinmeister distracts the electorate from a sex scandal (shades of the Bill-Monica affair) a few days before the election by hiring a film producer to…well, produce a bogus war with Albania.

The movie did not birth the idiom “wag the dog,” having been in the American lexicon since the 1870s, originating from “the tail wagging the dog.” Nonetheless, it was the movie that really made it an operative word in politics and communications, spawning the meaning “to start a war or military operation to divert political attention away from yourself.”        

General usage now has “wag the dog” meaning to create a situation to divert the people’s attention from what is otherwise of greater significance, concern or interest to them. 

Wag the dog. That is precisely what I saw in the acoustics shootout at the Senate last night. No, I have absolutely no pretensions to expertise in forensics, at best being an armchair generalist. Still, the tell-tale signs are all there.  

Doggone it.

Cancelling Abad Santos

MAY 7 is a special non-working holiday in the Pampanga and Angeles City in commemoration of the martyrdom of the Kapampangan hero and former Chief Justice Jose Abad Santos.

In the long bygone days of the boomers, the day was celebrated with endless school plays of the last hours of Abad Santos highlighted by his admonition to his son Pepito to “show these people that you are brave…that not everyone is given the opportunity to die for his country.” So honored was Abad Santos then that his martyrdom was even parallelled with Jose Rizal’s as greatest epochs in Philippine history, the Spanish Colonization for the latter, the Japanese Occupation for the former.

That was then, a long dead past.

For the past decades now, the remembrance of Abad Santos, much less memorializing his heroism, has not gone beyond the perfunctory wreath-laying and rhetoric on his official death date at the foot of his monuments – only four very visible in the whole of Pampanga: at the Provincial Capitol grounds, at Heroes Hall in the City of San Fernando, fronting the Museo ning Angeles, and of late, at the northbound entry of the North Luzon Expressway in San Fernando. 

So what school, public or private, elementary or secondary, vocational or college, in San Fernando, in the whole Pampanga for that matter, has been named in honor of Abad Santos? 

Ah yes, there was but one: Jose Abad Santos High School in 1966 per act of Congress via a measure sponsored by 1^st District Rep. Juanita L. Nepomuceno at the time when the province had only two congressional districts. Which in 1991 reverted to its old Pampanga High School, courtesy of 3^rd District Rep. Oscar S. Rodriguez, a PHS alumnus.     

Why, at the very demolition of the Abad Santos ancestral home just off the old public market in the late 1980s (early 1990s?), not even a whispered whimper of a protest was heard from the town officials or from local heritage advocates, despite the site proudly sporting the marker of the National Historical Institute as the birthplace of the hero.

Why, but for an afterthought of civic and business groups was the Gapan-San Fernando-Olongapo Road was also named Jose Abad Santos Avenue, albeit limited in usage to the San Fernando stretch, and the Department of Public Works and Highways still referencing to it in its maintenance contracts as GSO. 

Why, even the P1,000 bill that bore his image, along with fellow WWII martyrs Vicente Lim, and Josefa Llanes Escoda, have been replaced by the new “plastic” P1,000 bill featuring the endangered Philippine eagle.

Alas, to the dustbin of history has Abad Santos, along with most of our heroes, been veritably consigned. Unhappy is the land without heroes, so ‘tis cliched. But damned is that that willfully forgets them – being part of the lessons of history that Santayana admonished about.  

 

Where men fall...

 

            Punsalan. Capil. Maglanque.

MAYOR ABUNDIO “JP” PUNSALAN, JR. of San Simon. Unseen. Unheard.

Whereabouts unknown since the Sandiganbayan issued two arrest warrants against him in November 2025 for graft – with P90,000 bail – and malversation of public funds – non-bailable – in connection with an allegedly unlawful P45-million land purchase in 2023.

Punsalan had served a number of suspensions from the Office of the Ombudsman and the Pampanga sangguniang panlalawigan for grave misconduct but what projected him into the national consciousness was his arrest in flagrante delicto on Aug. 5, 2025 in an entrapment operation by the National Bureau of Investigation relative to an alleged P30-million extortion on RealSteel Corp., a business company operating in San Simon.

A hold departure order was also issued in November 2025, to prevent Punsalan from leaving the country.

MAYOR JAIME “JING” CAPIL of Porac. Suspended.

“Accused Capil was charged with committing fraud when he gave unwarranted benefit, advantage, and preference to Lucky South 99 Outsourcing Inc. by approving, issuing, and granting a mayor’s business permit in favor of Lucky South 99 to operate as a POGO despite not being legally entitled to such permit,” read a portion of the suspension order for 90 days issued by acting Presiding Judge Josephine Advento of the Regional Trial Court Branch 265, Pasig City on Feb. 23, 2026.

The Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission raided the POGO facilities located in a leased property of the Royal Garden Golf and Country Club Estate in Barangay Sta. Cruz in 2024 and subsequently filed the criminal case, which includes seven counts of graft for violations of RA 3019 (Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act).

In October 2024, the Office of the Ombudsman ordered the preventive suspension of Capil and other local officials for gross neglect of duty in relation to the illegal POGO operations.

In April 2025, the Ombudsman found Capil guilty of “gross neglect of duty” and imposed the penalty of dismissal from service, including the cancellation of his government service eligibility, forfeiture of retirement benefits, and perpetual disqualification from reemployment in the government.

In November 2025, the RTC Branch 265 issued a warrant of arrest against Capil over seven counts of violations of (Sections 3(e) and 3(j) of RA 3019.

In December 2025, Capil posted a cash bond of P630,000 for his temporary liberty. 

MAYOR RENE MAGLANQUE of Candaba. Suspension affirmed.

In a resolution dated April 24, 2026, the Sandiganbayan affirmed its Jan. 19, 2026 resolution placing Maglanque under a 90-day preventive suspension over 97 counts of violation of RA 3019 (Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act) and 97 counts of Malversation of Public Funds filed against him and others in relation to the P900-million Malampaya Fund scam.

Notwithstanding Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson tagging former Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan in a “family business” connection with Maglanque’s Globalcrete Builders that reportedly secured P2.195 billion worth of flood control projects in Bulacan between 2018 and 2024, and their daughters, along with that of former DPWH Undersecretary Roberto Bernardo, jointly owning MBB Global Properties, no charges have been officially filed against Maglanque.

Punsalan. Capil. Maglanque. They easily make the rogues’ gallery – sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb – in the local governance milieux of Pampanga. Could not think of any other province in Philippines with as much or higher ratio of 3:19 or 15.78 percentage on the suspended vis-à-vis the total number of municipal mayors.

                     Canlas. Capil. Macapagal.

…women stand

BY COINCIDENCE – serendipity, mayhaps – taking over the mayoralty from the suspended three are all women.

VICE MAYOR ANNE CANLAS of San Simon.

In matters aesthetic alone, Canlas readily found the spot in the hearts of the Simonians – seeing her as the very antithesis to the brash, belligerent brusko Abundio.

Her immersion in the day-to-day concerns of her constituents – from tambak on potholes, monitoring market prices, P20-bigas allocation, garbage collection, general neighborhood cleanliness, street lighting, and some such domesticities – struck their chords of endearment.

A singular project that has earned environmental points for Canlas is the recently ground-broken materials recovery facility, for so long absent in a town crammed with factories, warehouses, and all that they entail.

It is in public health though – and rightly so, Canlas being a medical doctor – that the acting mayor is getting all the love. Hands-on, be it in medical missions, regular health consultations, even emergencies, mayor-doc does it all. An indelible mark Canlas imprinted in San Simon’s folklore: Her active participation in the rites of passage of boys to manhood. Something surely to be passed on from generation to generation.

Rather than an ad interim stopgap, Canlas is a much-welcomed permanent replacement at the mayorship.  

VICE MAYOR JEN CAPIL of Porac.   

Her father’s daughter, unarguably. But no bratty nepo baby certainly, is this CPA, magna cum laude grad.  

With a just-another-day-at-the-office nonchalance, Capil took the LGU reins out of the familial and familiar frame, imprinting her own brand of governance that impacted most in arts and culture, youth and sports development, and tourism – earning for the municipality five recognition in the recent Department of Tourism-Region 3 TRES (Tourism Recognition of Enterprises and Stakeholders) Awards including Most Outstanding Tourism Month Celebration 2025 Grand Winner.

In so short a time, Poracqueños are getting convinced of the daughter already succeeding her father in more ways than simply subbing at the mayor’s office.

VICE MAYOR THELMA MACAPAGAL of Candaba.

Nothing out of the normal bureaucratic rote obtains in the municipio with the man monikered “Ing Malugud” absent from the mayor’s office: Macapagal, no more than a Maglanque continuity in LGU matters, on the surface.

Still, the odiousness of comparison between the suspended and the substitute somewhat permeated the recent spiritual twinning of the Nuestra Señora de la Merced Parish in Barangay Bahay Pare and the Basilica de la Mercè in Barcelona, Spain.

Macapagal hosting breakfast for apostolic nuncio Archbishop Charles Brown at the town hall and standing beside him during the civic reception raised some what-ifs among not-a-few of the attendees: What if the graft-and-corruption-charged Maglanque were in Macapagal’s place? E ya caya milablab, o minasuc mu man?    

Yes, comparisons are indeed despicable.

Distaff dominance

Canlas. Capil. Macapagal. They have upped the ante among women in local governance in Pampanga with four elected mayors – Malu Paras-Lacson of Magalang, Esmie Pineda of Lubao, Lina Cabrera of Sasmuan, and Vilma Balle-Caluag of the City of San Fernando; three elected vice mayors (aside from the three acting mayors now) – Rhodora “Oday” Nacpil of Sta. Ana, Gloria “Ninang” Ronquillo of Sto. Tomas, and Lucia "Buday" Guintu of Masantol.

That “a woman’s place is in the house” is far from just a sexist idiom but can become a political reality, Pampanga proved with three of its four House districts ruled by women: Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the 2^nd, Mica Gonzales in the 3^rd, and Dr. Anna York Bondoc in the 4^th leaving only the 1^st to Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin Jr.

And then, of course, there’s Gov. Lilia “Nanay” Pineda at the Capitol.

Oh, the women in Pampanga politics, further author sayeth naught.

 

 

 

 

Ode to Labor Day

 

                                                                                                                        Photo: BZL

WORK ‘TIL you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

Work. Underpaid? Bereft of benefits? No job security? Work. Be thankful to be working. Work harder.

Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

Give quality time – not to the growing children, but all to work. Keep bills paid. Years pass. Chances pass. Lucky, work you have. Be glad. Thank God.

Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

Get older. Get scared to work less hard. Work harder. Prove you still can.

No time for neighbors, community, friends, or the laziness of leisure. No riches. No home left.

Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

No savings. No pension. All spent staying barely healthy enough to work harder.

Holidays a time for silent desperation. Of work deprivation. Why stop?

Work. Don’t stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

Or maybe go to sales at the stores where workers are working ‘till they drop, reminders of just another working day. Don’t be sorry for them. They work. You don’t. Envy them.

No job here. Work somewhere – sweat to your last drop in Saudi, Dubai, Bahrain, even in war-torn Libya, Iraq, and Yemen. Work in any way – nanny in Singapore, caregiver in Israel, nurse in London, factory worker in Incheon, domestic helper in Hong Kong, duped to be drug mule to Indonesia. Do anything. Stay alive. Keep the family back home alive.

Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

Rich people and bosses have no guilt about holidays, no fear in a nap.

Workers have no need for holidays, all fear in a wink.

Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up, get up, get up, get up. Do it again.

Pay your taxes. Pay your bills. Pay their taxes. Pay their bills. You’ve lost everything that you valued anyway. Loser. Loner. Lazy. That’s how the power class sees us all. We are tools of their greed, and the fools who lost all dreams. They are far, far smarter than we. Whoopee.

Labor Day?

Why are you not working? No job? Lost it? A day off? Why are you not working? At least, with the little left in your pockets – if any – go buy something that will swell the profits and power of those who find us all so pliable, so pitiful, so useable, so exploitable, so workable. Listen for the call. It may be the need for profits calling. If so, get up. Now.

Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

Then stop. When you finally expire – literally and figuratively. Unless the wealthy and the powerful figure out a way to prolong our lives a little longer to make a few more pesos as they inject us with pain killers and tranquilizers so we cannot even scream on the way out of their profit-making schemes. Physically, emotionally all spent. No savings. No pensions. No hope.

Labor Day?

That’s all day, every day, in every way.

The Philippines is a country of holidays – special, national, local, working and non-working. But certainly not for workers or those who wish they were. We labor for the wealthy and the powerful to have their holidays, every day.

Our labor. Their day. Aye, we are their holidays.

(By Donna Smith, executive director of the Health Care for All Colorado Foundation. Published on September 05, 2011 by Common Dreams.org. With minimal alterations/additions by this columnist to fit into Philippine setting. First published here on May 6, 2015)  

 

SABUAGA FESTIVAL: Holy Week closes on a joyous high

STO. TOMAS, Pampanga – Birthed in 2009, the Sabuaga Festival has since become the capping event of the Holy Week observance here, coming as it is after the blasting of Judas at noontime.  

“Sabuaga” is a portmanteau of the Kapampangan sabuag (scatter) and sampaga (flowers) – after the sagalas’ showering of petals on the image of the Virgin Mary in “veneration of her keeping the faith and oneness with her Son in His sufferings, thus her rewards in His joyful resurrection” at the earlier Easter Sunday procession. 

Hence, petals and confetti literally rains on the processional route around Poblacion, usually starting at 2 p.m. of Easter Sunday as revelers join groups coming from the town’s seven barangays  in street dancing. (This year’s though started at almost 5 p.m. due to the heat, and ended past 7 p.m.) 

 

At the town plaza where the revelry culminates, the groups in their most exotic costumes reflective of the product of the barangays they represent – pottery for Sto. Nino, caskets for San Vicente, fish for Poblacion, garments for Moras de la Paz, tinsmith for San Matias… -- or images of their patron saints will each do its own interpretative dance presentation, on the theme sabuag sampaga, naturally. Judges coming from the arts, culture and tourism sector will proclaim the winners. 

Likewise, the Sabuaga Festival has since served as a fitting climax to the Holy Week celebration in the whole province. Indeed, the Maleldo in the City of San Fernando highlighted by the actual crucifixion rites in Barangay Cutud on Good Friday finds culmination in the joy of Easter Sunday’s Sabuaga in Sto. Tomas, which for the longest time was but a barrio of the capital town until its weaning in 1952.  

Ending Holy Week with a big bang

 

IN FIERY red pants and long-sleeved high-collared shirt a la Elvis taking over the flowing robe of his time. Short cropped hair a la early Beatles, and sideburns straight from King FPJ himself. Mick Jagger tongue, yeah that same one hanging from wide open puffed lips that has become the trademark of the now-geriatric-but-still-rocking Rolling Stones.

There is nothing biblical in the countenance and appearance of the Judas on-a-perch at the center of the courtyard of the St. Thomas the Apostle parish church in barrio Poblacion of the eponymously named town. He looked more like a puppet from some Punch-and-Judy show. But the throng, nay, the horde of faithful do not mind at all.
That was the Judas the elders have seen since their youth. The Judas now passed to their sons and grandsons, and to be passed on to their own progenies.

Easter Sunday noon has always been the designated time for the Judas show. But the concelebrated Mass traditionally officiated by the archbishop almost always takes a little too long with all those post-communion remarks of the pastoral council president and the awarding of some certificates of appreciation to the comite de festejos, Easter being the fiesta too.

The tensed uneasiness turns to collective relief, and explosions of joy, at the pealing of the church bells, the music from the band, and the explosion of kuwitis that signal the end of the Mass. 

Some more minutes of waiting had to be endured as the patio gets cleared of the parked vehicles. Then some firecrackers woven in large sipa ball-like contraption are let loose around the platform holding Judas’ perch to clear it of people. To establish a sort of a safety zone. 

Then, the show starts. 

Four papier-mache pyrotechnic black ravens from four corners of the platform “peck” at Judas’ feet igniting them and propelling Judas to make dizzying twists clockwise and counterclockwise, then turns upside down, round and round, the tongue sticking in and out. 

Then the explosions begin with the feet, the legs, the hand and arms – the head last, and loudest. Judas gets blasted to smithereens. In all of 15 minutes. 

A murmur of disappointment. Judas did fewer twists and turns. His tongue did not stick out that long. And the head exploded too soon and not too loud, as the crowd desired.

In years long past, this would have borne an ill omen. The loudness of the bang ending Judas then deemed a sign of the volume of the year’s harvest in the then-farming town: the louder the bang, the higher the yield. 

In 2012, instead of Judas, what exploded on Easter Sunday noon was a globe. No, it was not meant to signify the end of the world, not to presage any interpretation of the Mayan calendar that purportedly pointed to that year as the end for humankind. 

What was blasted away, symbolically, were the worldly sins – Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride – that keep mankind away from God. It was some sort of raising the event from pure vengeful glee to a higher level of spirituality. 

Whatever, the loss of Judas at the scaffold unsettled, utterly disappointed the loyal crowd who, year-in and year-out, come from near and far – even from overseas – just to be part of the annual spectacle.

With Judas back for blasting since, all has been well again here. 

SO, THE tradition continues this Easter Sunday of 2026. With the currency of the times impacting a political perspective on the Judas character – the Filipino politician who betrayed the nation for billions in flood control contracts.