Moronic verses, satanic phrases

"KUNG NAGPASOK ka ng contraband sa airport, paano naging problema ng gobyerno yun? (If you brought in contraband at the airport, how did that become a problem of government?)”

Idiotic goes Mar Roxas there, absolutely unbecoming of his Wharton education. No matter the school’s validation that he indeed finished his undergraduate course, and therefore, rightfully, belongs in its alumni book.

Roxas’ take on the tanim-bala phenomenon is but one of the memorable soundbites that rose above the cacophony of politics in the year just past. Aye, voices impacting singularly on the (un)fitness of presidential presumptions, belying indubitably presidential pretensions.

Where Roxas was simplistically moronic, Rodrigo Duterte was graphically horrific: "Tinapos ko talaga. Sabi ko, p---na nito, ito ang killing na maganda. Pumorma pa talaga ako na parang Fernando Poe…Tapos kinarga ko sila doon sa kotse nila, binuksan ko yung tangke, sinunog ko (I really finished them off. I said, (expletive) this is a good killing. I even posed like (the action star) FPJ… Then I bundled them into their car, I opened the gas tank, burned them) to show my brutality.”

Naturally turning both terrifyingly outlandish and outlandishly terrifying: “700 daw ang pinatay ko? Nagkulang ho sila sa kuwenta.” (I killed 700? They underestimated the figures).”

So, how many really?

“Mga 1,700.” (Around 1,700.)

Human rights be damned!

In keeping with his brusko persona, Duterte could not but complement his bang-bang tough guy with his kiss-kiss lover boy: “May asawa ako, may pangalawang asawa ako. Dalawa ang girlfriend ko…Buksan ko ang libro ng Malacañang. Kung may magagandang naghihintay diyan sa labas, buksan ko 'yung pinto ng kwarto ko (I have a wife, and a second wife. I have two girlfriends…I will open the books of Malacanang. If there are beauties waiting outside, I will open my bedroom.)"

Cry sexism, Gabriela! 

But for all his macho posturing, Duterte is not incapable of juvenile diversions, as in his recent spirited exchange with Roxas rising out of the elitist’s now demythicized Wharton education.    

Roxas to Duterte’s challenge: "Sampalan? Bakit sampalan, pambabae 'yan. Suntukan na lang 'di ba? (Slapping? Why, that’s for women. Let’s have a fistfight instead)."

Duterte’s riposte: "Barilan na lang. Ang mga mayayaman takot 'yan mamatay. Ano naman ang katatakutan ko? (Let’s just have a gun duel. The rich are afraid to die. So what am I to fear?)"

Reminds me of the settling of infantile differences at the elementary schoolyard after class: all talk, little action.

As pugnacious Roxas and Duterte were, Grace Poe and Jejomar Binay were slavishly patronage-seeking. At least on the issue of the Iglesia ni Cristo implosion.

In the midst of the paralysis at EDSA caused by the INC rally, Poe had this to say:

“Huwag din natin maliitin ang importansya ng relihiyon. Ang mga tao na 'yan, ang dinedepensahan nila ay ang kanilang paniniwala. Nirerespeto natin 'yan at kailangan pangalagaan din ang kanilang karapatan (Let’s not belittle the importance of religion. Those people are only defending their faith. We respect that, and we should also respect their rights.) After all, those of us in government have the responsibility to explain well to the people the reason for the steps we have taken.”   

Seconded Binay: “We cannot fault the INC for resorting to mass action to protect the independence of their church from a clear act of harassment and interference from the administration.”

Yeah, only the idiot fails to see where Poe and Binay’s hugot came from and where they were going. The INC bloc, duh. That, with Antonio Ebangelista’s unraveling revelations of the “sins” of the sect’s hierarchy, is in real danger of turning into the INC blot. 

In the field of religion vis-à-vis politics, who else but Duterte can get the longest publicity mileage. For good, or bad, matters not, as that clichéd showbiz quip has long established.   

So the globally beloved Francis be damned: “Sabi ko, ‘Bakit?’ Sabi sarado na [ang daan]. Sabi ko, ‘Sinong darating?’ Sabi si Pope. Gusto kong tawagan, ‘Pope, p—na ka, umuwi ka na. ‘Wag ka nang bumisita dito. (I said ‘Why?’ They said the road is closed. I said ‘Who is coming?’ They said the Pope. I wanted to call him ‘Pope, you SOB, go home. Do not visit us’)”

So the Mystical Body of Christ be the object of Duterte’s wrath: “I will destroy the Church and the present status of so many priests and what they are doing…You priests, bishops, you condemn me and suggest I withdraw, but then I will start to open my mouth. There are so many secrets that we kept as children. Do not force (me to speak) because this religion is not so sacred.”

So who seeks to destroy the Church?

Find it in Matthew 16:18: “And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

Yeah, where Roxas is merely moronic, Duterte is utterly satanic.

Christ missed

THE GHOSTS of Christmases past – with my sincere apologies to Dickens – still haunt this Yule present. As it was then, so it is now: Pray, tell, where is the Christ in this season dedicated to His very coming?

I do not see Him in the frenzied shopping rush causing all those monstrous traffic jams around the malls. I find none of virgin conception, but everything of compulsive consumption offered, woefully, at capitalism’s unholy shrines.
I fail to hear Him in the cacophony of sounds – from neither consumer noise nor the piped-in carols – at SM or Robinsons, Walter Mart or Nepo, or even Saver’s Mall. Above all the din, ear-splitting is the tinkling of cash registers – sweet, sweet music to some taipans’ long, long ears.
Commercialization has taken over religion. An even more apt assertion: Commercialization is the new religion. People appear more zealously religious in going to the shopping malls than to churches.

“We worship in churches, we shop at malls.” As that tarp at San Agustin church  tries to right us.   
My religious sentiments still smart, remembering that television commercial of some years back of that American fast-food chain capitalizing on the pure-Filipino tradition of the nine-day dawn Masses to impact its commercial presence: Si_bang Gabi incomplete without the M, in the form of the logo of the food franchise. It is not only that burgers have taken over bibingka and puto-bumbong as after-Mass delicacies. The burger joints have taken precedence over the churches themselves.
Pasintabi po lamang, Mayor EdSa, but I failed to sense the Christ too at the organized chaos at the Giant Lantern Festival event. The Christmas Star there inevitably devolving to a mere, albeit grand, spectacle of light from its sublime symbolism of love – the greatest manifestation of love that is the birth of the Christ.
Pray, tell, who still know the meaning of the Christmas lantern?
I remember my high school theology professor – the then-Rev. Fr. Paciano B. Aniceto – lecturing that the Christmas lantern took after the Star of Bethlehem that pointed to where the Christ was born and thereby guided both lowly shepherds and majestic magi to the manger.

Hence – the good Apu Ceto explained – wherever the Christmas lantern is hoisted, posted or hung, there the Christ is, there His love is. The lantern being the Star’s representation.
Thus, of all the symbols of Christmas – from mistletoes and Christmas trees to Santa Claus and the snowman – it is the Christmas lantern – our very own parul – that has the greatest, if not the only, theological value. Are we even remotely aware of this? Of that value invested in the lantern by the five-pointed star of its very shape or at its hub which makes it a parul? Indeed no lantern is a parul without the star.

Star-struck we all are: always finding celebrities but little, if any, of the Christ in all those stars. Which this Christmastime also comes down from the celluloid firmament to regale us with that escapist farce that is the Metro Manila Film Festival. Ah, were the faithful as religiously devoted to Christ as to AlDub...
So I grant that it is always SRO, standing-room-only dummy, at the churches the eve of Christmas Day, the worshipers even spilling out to the churchyards.
Do they come to welcome their Savior? Or to show off their new clothes, to meet and joke with friends, to unleash their unruly children, to be and do just about everything but to worship?
And so it always is that during consecration the loud clop-clop of some boys’ new pairs of shoes and the shrieks of little girls running by the very altar herald the transformation of the wafer into the very body of Christ and the wine into His very blood.
Joy to the world, what lord has come?

Then, as now

NOW ANY society in which most of the people are poor is always in danger of having its political authority corrupted and dominated by the rich minority.

In the Philippines, the real power lay back of the shifting factions, in the hands of a few rich families strong enough to bend Government to their will. This oligarchy intervened in government to preserve the political privileges of its wealth, and to protect its right of property.
This intervention of wealth in politics unavoidably produced corruption. And when this practice seeped through the whole of society itself, the result was moral degeneration. So the Philippine political culture equated freedom with self-aggrandizement, and the politics of participation, so essential in a democracy, with the pursuit of privilege.
Oligarchic “values” permeated society all the more easily because the rich controlled the press and radio-TV. The press particularly became the weapon of a special class rather than a public forum. The newspapers would noisily and endlessly comment on the side issues of our society, but not on the basic ones: for example, the question of private property.
The oligarchic propaganda was that somehow, with the election of “good men” – good men who please the oligarchs – mass poverty would come to an end. The search for “better men in politics” and not institutional change; a “higher political morality,” and not the restructuring of society – this was the oligarch’s ready answer to the question of change. Revolution from the Center, 1978

*    *    *    *    *

MORE OFTEN the politician neither legislates nor administers so much as he intervenes and mediates. He achieves a personalized relationship with his constituents as individual persons, more anxious about doing things for each of them rather than for all of them. A bridge, a school, or a rural development project, although important, is not enough. Has he been approachable? Has he managed to place a son in a Manila office? Where was he when a fire broke out or a typhoon came? How personally generous has he been with the needs of certain influential leaders? If he fails in these personalist tests, he fails as a politician.

Are the people to blame for this state of affairs? Hardly, for conditions are such that the majority depend on the government. But are the politicians, who are simply responding to the situation as they see it? I would say Yes. Within the undeniably practical limits of political survival, politicians can and should try out some innovations that will transform the political culture from being populist, personalist and individualist to being more nationalist, institutional and socialist, in the strict meaning of being more conscious about the needs of society and the national community…

One reason for the pervasiveness of corruption is that in being part of the system, everyone it touches seems to benefit…The corrupt politician who is at the same time accessible to his constituents has more chances of staying in power than an honest one “who has not done anything.” He probably takes his legislative or executive work more seriously, concentrating on collective goals to the detriment of political “fence mending,” but he is more often judged by the populist, personalist and individualist standards of the political culture.

A true politician should be able to lead his constituency in a precarious present toward an uncertain future, but he dare not initiate or innovate unless he can be sure it will not cost his position.

It is easy to condemn him for lack of moral courage, but what good is a businessman without a business, a politician without policy? “I must see where my people are going so that I may lead them,” an Athenian politician was supposed to have said. There are certain conditions, however, in which this attitude cannot be a useful principle of democratic leadership. Today’s Revolution: Democracy, 1971

*    *    *    *

CONTINUING RELEVANCE of things written over a generation ago – from media monopoly to patronage politics – reflecting the constancy and consistency in the praxis of Philippine politics. Aye, in the rut the nation has consigned itself, getting deeper at each change of administration.

Can’t blame some succumbing to nostalgic sentimentalism: “Marcos, now more than ever!”

Home for Christmas

THIS SEASON of joy makes – to me – an occasion for tears.

If only for one carol – I’ll be home for Christmas. Whoever sings it, Bing Crosby or Michael Buble, Whitney Houston or Josh Groban, reduces me to a crying heap.
Just the first strains are more than enough to work up the lacrimal glands –  
I’m dreaming tonight of a place I love
Even more than I usually do
And although I know it’s a long road back
I promise you…
Thoughts of toiling fathers in the desert sand, of seafaring husbands amid the winter seas; of care-giving mothers in some retirement home, of child-rearing sisters in some high-rise flats – all of them longing, pining —     
I’ll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree
Aye, presents under the tree, but not so much – indeed, not ever – for snow and mistletoe. As for the parol, simbang gabi and bibingka, puto bumbong, suman and tamales.

And – above all – family —   
Christmas eve will find you
Where the love light gleams
At the Misa de Aguinaldo singing Gloria in Excelsis welcoming with the angels and the shepherds the birth of the Savior. And then, from the humblest hovels to the grandest mansions, the whole family, in prayerful thanksgiving, partaking of the noche buena feast.   
I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams.
The overseas Filipino worker sings. And I just can’t help but cry with him. 
Still, he, she can dream of some homecoming.
Alas, that is not so with the folk uprooted, displaced, death-visited by Yolanda, and earlier, Pablo. 
Home for Christmas is now all in the heart, pained memories of what once was. 
Of them, what can we sing?
Only dirges to haunt the barely surviving. 
Suffering deepening. The weeping unceasing.

Yet, hope eternally springs.

There in the Book a cause for some soul-uplifting: “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”  
No home at His aborning. Home for all mankind is in Him. 
Rejoice.   

Communion with the Kapampangan soul

IMMERSING MYSELF in our own music these past few days – in keeping with the celebration Pampanga Day – I dug out of the old baul a prized find.

Right at the very first strains, the heart goes a-flutter, the spirit soars in this…

Communion with the Kapampangan soul

THEIR MUSIC seared the psyche of a race long in search of its forgotten greatness: its culture maculated by the infusion of alien influences, its virtues devalued by the immoralities of flawed saviors, its very existence imperiled by nature’s rage.
That was ArtiSta.Rita, composed of home-grown talents shepherded by a Kapampangan returnee from London’s West End, when it exploded into the local scene a few years back with its maiden album. Kapampangan Ku, the title song, defined the very identity of the race and inspired a celebration of everything Kapampangan, from the cultural to the culinary, from the historical to the mythical.
It did not come as any surprise then that in that May’s elections, it was Kapampangan Ku that likewise defined the very outcome of the gubernatorial contest.
In its third outing, ArtiSta.Rita went beyond romancing the Kapampangan character: Paralaya is a communion with the Kapampangan soul. The spirituality of the race is celebrated here, even in the most mundane and ordinary of places, things and events.
Can anything be extraordinary in that ubiquitous roadside sign Abe Pakakalale? The simple caution for motorists to slow it down is lifted to the high moral plane of right over wrong in treading the very road of life – “dadalan kami king yatu,” to the ultimate destination – “parasan mi balen nang indu.”
Akasya starts with the mundane but immediately transcends imaginings of Joyce Kilmer’s famous ode to the tree, and assumes the very manifestation of the Creator Himself, cherishing and nurturing all of creation – “Lingap mu’t lugud king labuad/Sasalbag babie kang bie kanakung abe.”
The search for life’s meaning that takes one to great distances and greater longings only to find it within oneself, if only one opened his heart – so celebrated in Paulo Coelho’s novels, most notably in The Alchemist – finds a fuller, and deeper, expression in Pamanuli -- “Nung nukarin mengaparas/Ikwang mengalampas-lampas/Atiu ka pala keni king lele/Kakung matimyas.” Life’s journey ends where it starts – with the Lord.
And then, oneness with Him. Stirrings from the prophet Isaiah, resonate in Abe Mu Ku – “Abe mu ku nukarin ka man/Abe mu ku kapilan man/Ala ng muna pa/King lugud ku keka/Abe mu ku kakung kaluguran.”
Indeed, there is more to moonlight than Eros. Bulan provides an uplift to the spirit eclipsed in the darkness of despair – “Potang malungkut ka/Potang tatakut ka/Potang paintunan mu ku/Lumwal ka, talanga ka/Akit me ing bulan a masala/Karin mikit kata.”
The human spirit rises higher with man’s affirmation of God’s guiding light in Siwala – “Ing kekang s’wala diren nakung sala/Dala ne ning angin iadwang king batwin/Ing kekang s’wala diren nakung sala/King isip at pusu, kapasnawan.”
Penitential lamentation, so inhered in the praxis of Kapampangan Catholicism, naturally finds expression in Aduan Ku Mu – “Aduan ku namu Keka O Ginu/Katmuan Mu la ding kakulangan ku at antabayanan king gulu/Bustan Mu sa’ng mibayu ing karokang gewa ku/Lawen Mu sa kakung lugud daraun ku O Ginu.”
Two selections that pay homage to the father and the teacher still do adhere to the album’s general theme of the soul, of man’s pining for the divine: God after all is Father and Teacher to man.
To win his future, a young man looks back at his past and sings a song of gratitude to his father in Tatang Kung Kaluguran – “Ngeni maragul na ku, ladlad ku no ring pakpak ku/Sulapo na king angin sapul sapul king lupa ku/Mangaparas man nukarin, ing lugud mu atyu pa rin/Dakal a salamat tatang, king masanting a daratng.”
Mayap a Oras gives recognition to the hardships of the talaturu in moulding the mind of the youth – “Migigising kang maranun/Obra ing isipan/Mananggang gatpanapun/Babie mu ing eganaganang/Lugud at sala/ A manibat king pusu/Kabiasnan at kebaluan/Ika ing tuturu.”
As the Kapampangan is a lover, so some love songs are a must in an album expressive of his soul.
Bayung Bengi, Bayung Sinta sings of the lovers’ anticipation of an early evening tryst, of the stars watching over a love ever renewed – “Pagtiririn tala ding batwing masala/King bulalako metung ku mu adwan/Eka sa tatabili gamat pakatalan.”
The angst, the fears, the insecurities of the torpe at seeing the object of his repressed affections are played to life in the carrier single Paralaya -- “Dakal ku buring sabian keka/E ku balu nung atuan daka...Nung balu mu mung malwat ku nang sasalikut/Ing panamdaman, pansinan mu naku man…Alub kung makiagnan king kakung palsintan.”
On the wings of song, cliched yes but that is the experience one gets with the blend of the musical accompaniment that enhanced poetry, if not the purity, of the lyrics.
Thanks to Andy Alviz and all those great artists, Paralaya set me on a personal journey to get to my Kapampangan core.
(Reprinted from Punto! November 5, 2007)

Undeveloping Casanova

THERE IS no stopping Arnel Paciano D. Casanova, president-CEO of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority.

On Monday, Dec. 7, Casanova regaled us with the news BCDA, Vivapolis sign MOU to develop Clark Green City, to wit:

PARIS, FRANCE – President Benigno S. Aquino III witnessed on December 1 the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the state-owned Bases Conversion and Development Authority and Vivapolis, held at the Hotel Scribe here, to foster technical cooperation in the development of Clark Green City — the country’s first ever smart, green and disaster resilient metropolis.

The signatories of the MOU were BCDA President and CEO Arnel Paciano D. Casanova and Vivapolis Representative Michèle Pappalardo.

Vivapolis represents French stakeholders – both public and private entities – seeking to promote a shared vision for sustainable urban development at an international level and to promote the French know-how in the field of sustainable cities.

“The MOU will pave the way to establish a strategic partnership between BCDA and Vivapolis that encompasses a whole range of activities designed to optimize the development of Clark Green City,” Casanova said…

Great job, Sir.

Just last Sept. 8, Casanova dished out to the media this equally fantastic piece of news: Filinvest Land bags BCDA contract to develop 288-ha Clark Green City

Gotianun-owned Filinvest Land, Inc. yesterday bagged the right as the joint venture of state-owned Bases Conversion and Development Authority for the development of the 288-hectare Clark Green City.

BCDA said in a statement after FLI, the lone bidder, submitted a valid bid with P160 million in development premium payable upon signing of the contract. With that, FLI will become BCDA’s joint venture partner for the development of Clark Green City.

 “We are excited to move forward with our new joint-venture partner and start building what will be known as the country’s first ever smart, green and disaster-resilient metropolis that is expected to significantly improve the lives of our countrymen,” BCDA President-CEO Arnel Paciano D. Casanova said…

We are most impressed, Sir.

Only a month ago, on Aug. 13, yet another of Casanova’s declarations on the Clark Green City made the screaming headline Japan gov’t to invest in Clark Green City.

The Government of Japan, through the Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport and Urban Development (JOIN), signed a cooperation agreement with the state-owned Bases Conversion and Development Authority to help the Aquino Administration develop and build Clark Green City as a major economic center in the ASEAN bloc.
The agreement was signed by President and Chief Executive Officer Arnel Paciano D. Casanova and JOIN President and CEO Takuma Hatano during a ceremony at the Manila Diamond Hotel.

JOIN is a Japanese government corporation that aims to invest and participate in transport or urban development projects, involving Japanese companies, such as bullet trains, airports, and green cities. Its target investment worldwide is Y30 trillion by 2020.

Under the agreement, both parties will start to work on the details of the joint venture companies, including but not limited to: the scope of work; function; funding source; authority; responsibility and procedures; and discuss with private sector companies in both the Philippines and Japan as regards to their interest in Clark Green City…

Excellent, Sir.

Earlier, on Jan. 6, 2014, Casanova press released BCDA, SoKor firm to build ‘Green City’ in C. Luzon.

CLARK FREEPORT — The Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) recently partnered with a South Korean firm in an effort to build the first smart and green city in Central Luzon.

Through a memorandum of understanding, BCDA partnered with Incheon Free Economic Zone Authority (IFEZA). The partnership is expected for Philippines to gain new insights in building the country’s first smart and green city in Central Luzon and to position the new city as the international business district in the Southeast Asian region.

BCDA President and Chief Executive Officer Arnel Paciano Casanova and IFEZA Commissioner Jong-Cheol Lee signed the MOU to explore potential collaborative opportunities in relation to sustainable urbanization with IFEZA’s experience with the Songdo International Business District and BCDA’s planned Clark Green City.

According to Casanova, IFEZA has successfully launched the Songdo International Business District within the Incheon Free Economic Zone in 2009 as an international city that integrates the best practices of urban planning and sustainable design principles with a synergistic mix of residential, commercial, retail land civic uses in a master-planned environment.

Casanova said with the Songdo International Business District as the international hub in Northeast Asia, the Clark Green City is envisioned to complement and create synergy with Songdo by being the international business hub of the Southeast Asian region.

Our highest admiration, Sir.

Aye, as early as Dec. 19, 2012, Casanova had already been pushing the buttons, with BCDA, global tech experts to develop ‘Clark Green City’

CLARK FREEPORT–The Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) has forged a collaboration with global technology experts on urban planning and information and communications technology (ICT) development with a view to optimizing the potential of the projected Clark Green City in this Freeport.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed to confirm a three-way collaboration and the signing ceremony was attended by BCDA President and Chief Executive Officer, Arnel Paciano D. Casanova; Country General Manager for Cisco in Philippines, Stephen Thomas Misa; and Korean-based firm Centios (formerly known as kcss) CEO, Hung Kwon Song.

According to Casanova, the MOU “creates a non-binding framework for furthering discussions under which the parties can explore potential collaborative opportunities and determine business opportunities in relation to sustainable urbanization,” referring in particular to BCDA’s Clark Green City project.
What can we say?

Were the rate and volume with which Casanova has been churning these press releases on the development of Clark Green City but a quarter of their verity, that area, by now, would have been awash in economic vibrancy.

Absent any concrete developments – pun unintended – Clark Green City to us, and to many, remains Casanova’s (un)developing delusory fantasy.    

Cry havoc!

AND LET slip the maddened mongrel. A paraphrase of that line in the Bard’s Julius Caesar applied aptly to Rodrigo Duterte.

He howls: "Ang atake sa akin is pumapatay ng tao. Totoo 'yan, wala tayong problema diyan. Yang mga taga Davao, alam nila yan."

Citing one specific case: "They kidnapped a Chinese girl, they brought her to another province, repeatedly raped her, tapos isinauli nila... Kumain pa yung mga unggoy doon sa bahay, nagpaluto. Pagbaba nila, tinapos ko talaga lahat."

"Tinapos ko talaga. Sabi ko, p---na nito, ito ang killing na maganda. Pumorma pa talaga ako na parang Fernando Poe."

That’s one “good kill” deserving an explosive ending: "Tapos kinarga ko sila doon sa kotse nila, binuksan ko yung tangke, sinunog ko to show my brutality. Kaya nga sabi ko, I'm doing this for everybody — to the criminals and to the bad elements, and to those who continue to oppress the Filipino people. Hindi ako nagpapa-hero, wala akong talent, but I will not allow you to continue na magpahirap sa Pilipino. Crime has to stop.”

Murder most foul. Crime solved by crime of the more heinous kind.

He woofs: “Kung sabihin ninyo, ‘Ano bang credentials mo? Ano bang pakita mo sa Pilipinas, Duterte? Balita namin babaero ka.’ Tama. May asawa ako, may pangalawang asawa ako.”

And more: “Dalawa ang girlfriend ko. Gusto niyo ako maging presidente? Kailangan niyo malaman ang pagkatao ko."

Even if elected: "Buksan ko ang libro ng Malacañang. Kung may magagandang naghihintay diyan sa labas, buksan ko 'yung pinto ng kwarto ko,"

Abject objectification of women. Unbridled machismo that Gabriela denounced “reinforces the society’s low regard of women and consequently increases women’s vulnerability to violence and abuse.”

Flagrant flouting of the Commandments – the Fifth and the Sixth in the above-cited instances – and fanciful flaunting of his atrocities, do not make Duterte sincere and honest, as his apologists contend. They only make him ultra full of himself.

Hubris, as the Greeks of old put it.

Which explains now Duterte’s profanity directed at Pope Francis: “Sabi ko, ‘Bakit?’ Sabi sarado na [ang daan]. Sabi ko, ‘Sinong darating?’ Sabi si Pope. Gusto kong tawagan, ‘Pope, p—na ka, umuwi ka na. ‘Wag ka nang bumisita dito.”

No, Duterte did not feel he owed anyone any apology: “It was my expression of anger borne out of the helplessness of the millions of commuters suffering from this daily gridlock. It was never intended to be directed to the person of his holiness Pope Francis, who has my utmost respect.”

So, who is referred to by the personal pronoun “ka” – you – appended to the expletive and the dismissive commands? The traffic gridlock? 

Even more manifest there is that everyone is fair game to Duterte’s cursing.

Which he vainly justified thus: “We are all the creations of God. We have God-given talents. The talent that God gave me is cussing. Instead of blaming me, blame God because He created me.”

He could have as easily, and more understandably, scapegoated: “The devil made me do it!” But no, it has to be no one less than God Himself that has to take the blame for Duterte’s human frailty. Aye, it can only be hubris. If not blasphemy, as the Second Commandment decrees.  

A righteous rebuke Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Soc Villegas, president of the  Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines issued: “…Vulgarity is corruption. When we find vulgarity funny, we have really become beastly and barbaric as a people. When a revered and loved and admired man like Pope Francis is cursed by a political candidate and the audience laughs, I can only bow my head and grieve in great shame. My countrymen have gone to the dregs.”

Unleashing in Duterte his rabid odium ecclesiae: “I will destroy the Church and the present status of so many priests and what they are doing…You priests, bishops, you condemn me and suggest I withdraw, but then I will start to open my mouth. There are so many secrets that we kept as children. Do not force (me to speak) because this religion is not so sacred.”

So full of arrogance. So consumed by pride. So Duterte. So supra hubris. 

Most unfortunately for Duterte, hubris is a one-way street – to nemesis.

Or, as Proverbs 16:18 holds: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

Best yet is the universal truth impacted in that ancient heathen proverb: “Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”

A Duterte presidency?

Spare us, Dear Lord, your own cry in Calvary: Eli, eli lama sabbachthani.  

Joke no more

IT WAS one of those Balikatan or Cope Thunder Exercises and we were viewing F-16s screaming off the runways to the blue beyond.

Ah, to have such state-of-the art aircraft, sighed us – mediamen – in collective awe.   

But we do have F-16, said Maj. Allan Ballesteros, then-Clark Air Base Wing information officer.

Where?

Right there on the tarmac. He pointed to two Vietnam War vintage aircraft already long decommissioned.

Those aren’t F-16s, they’re F-8s.

So what do you make of one F-8 plus one F-8?

Yeah, right. Not just the butt of, but the joke itself is the Philippine Air Force.   

“All air, no force” as some wag put it most aptly.

To put some force in the air, PAF ordered a fleet of Aermachii S-211, primarily a trainer aircraft configured into fighter plane. Nowhere near the F-16 but could do – PAF said then – for guarding the archipelago.

The joke that is PAF turned tragic with the S-211 readily dubbed “the widowmaker” for the plane’s propensity to crash.

Internet fact check now:

January 14, 2002. PAF S-211 #017 crashed into houses inside the National Food Authority compound in Cabanatuan City, Nueva Ecija, due to mechanical problems after making several low passes over the city in a “contact proficiency” flight from Basa Air Base. Both pilots and three civilians on the ground were killed.

November 26, 2007. PAF S-211 #804 went missing after it failed to return to its Palawan base after a security patrol and search mission over the disputed Kalayaan Islands in the South China Sea, both pilots still missing and their fate remains unknown.

July 18, 2010. PAF S-211 #024 crashed in Tarlac just seven miles short from the threshold of Clark International Airport Runway 20L due to fuel starvation. Investigators later found out that a defective hydraulic pump caused an unusual vibration that loosened the fuel lines that dumped considerable amount of fuel for the return trip of the pilots who went to Ilocos Norte for a cross country navigation training flight. Both pilots safely ejected and minimal damage was incurred at the crash site and no loss of life was reported.

April 28, 2011. PAF S-211 #020 crashed in Bagac, Bataan after making several aerobatic maneuvers over the shoreline during a “contact proficiency” flight from Clark Air Base. Investigators later found out that the aircraft entered into a high-G recovery maneuver from a loop that caused the engine to go into a high-G stall and crashed less than a hundred meters from the shoreline. Both pilots died instantly.

Of PAF’s 25 S-211, the report noted, “13 remain in inventory, 5 in service but only 2 are airworthy, as of July 2011.”

And more than enough crashes – and scores killed too – of the PAF’s Huey helicopters – again Vietnam War vintage – to merit the moniker “flying coffins.”

A farce of a force, PAF has been for too long. The joke has to stop.

Two or three months back, we got some pleasant surprise with the arrival in Clark of four new combat utility helicopters from Augusta PZL Swidnik of Italy and Poland, half of a batch of eight PAF ordered back in February 2010 yet for P2.8 billion.

Aside from the eight “Sokol” – falcon in Polish – choppers, the price tag covered the pilots’ training as well as maintenance and technical support.

PAF said the Sokol is night vision goggle-capable, equipped with autopilot equipment, fitted with gun mounts on both sides and can accommodate 10.

Far superior to the Huey, in short.

Then only last week, at the 51st anniversary of PAF Air Defense Wing in Clark, PAF chief Lt. Gen. Lauro Catalino de la Cruz announced the “looming acquisition” of 12 TA-50 light attack jets from South Korea.

Built by Korea Aerospace Industries and Lockheed Martin of the USA, the TA-50 “is largely derived from the F-16 Fighting Falcon,” in terms of “use of a single engine, speed, size, cost, and the range of weapons.”

It has the standard M-197 20mm three-barrel cannon and a fire control radar system and can accommodate the AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile and a variety of additional weapons can be mounted to its underwing hardpoints. Reports claimed.

“Compatible air-to-surface weapons with the TA-50 include the AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missile, Hydra 70 rocket launchers, CBU-58 and Mk-20 cluster bombs, and Mk-82, -83, and -84 general purpose bombs.”

So much firepower promised in the TA-50 there. 

“This is a realization of the dream we have dreamt a long, long time ago,” De la Cruz said.

More than that, may this be the end of PAF as a joke.

  *      *       *     *

THAT, WE wrote here on Sept. 17, 2012 under the headline A farce of a force.

Last Saturday, Nov. 28, the dream hast started coming into being. The first two of a dozen F-50 Golden Eagle fighter jets the Philippines ordered from South Korea touched down at Clark.

"We're glad we're finally back to supersonic age," exclaimed Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin at the welcome rites.

While still a long way from a respectable minimum air defense capability, the country’s acquisition of the new fighter jets is enough to minimize, if not stop, all those jokes about the PAF.