Cong, forever

TRIPLE HAPPINESS. All three Carmelo Lazatins (L-R) -- first time congressman Jonjon, former five-time congressman and three-term city mayor Tarzan, and re-elected city councilor Pogi at the Pampanga Press Club's Talk Widus forum last June 1. 

NO OTHER representative of Pampanga, past and present, has earned the title “Cong” as much as Tarzan Lazatin. Fact is, he has virtually exercised proprietary right over that honorific, that even out of the House, he is still hailed as Cong Tarzan.

Why, even in his incumbency as mayor of Angeles City for three terms, he was addressed as Cong. Not that his executive performance paled in comparison with his legislative record. It was but the way it was. Or maybe, some subconscious interplay there, given that Tarzan perfect in his five congressional campaigns – 1987, 1992, 1995, 2007 and 2010 – suffered his two electoral losses in the city mayoral contest – in his first political foray in 1980, and in his last try in 2013.

Did I say last? So, sorry. At 82, this June 28, Cong Tarzan has already set his sights on the chairmanship of the city’s premier barangay of Balibago this October. 

Should the city brace itself for Barangay Captain Cong then?

Whatever, the Cong will surely remain an essential constant in Tarzan. As I may have predicated, rather than predicted, in this piece of June 12, 2011 titled The compleat Cong:

PERMANENT CHAIR of the comite de silencio in Congress.
That long-time ridicule from his political rivals ironically birthed the sublime in Pampanga 1st District Rep. Carmelo Lazatin.
That by his deeds, Cong Tarzan eloquently speaks is most manifest in his three terms in the House from 1987, his three terms at the Angeles City hall from 1998, and his current second term back at the House. Political longevity not even his close ally, the term-limit-busting Mayor Boking Morales of Mabalacat, could come close to.
That, indeed, “solon” goes beyond mere honorific to assume its essential meaning in Cong Tarzan is affirmed in his elevation to a hall of fame of outstanding congressmen by Congress Magazine and the Global News Network.
No mean feat that in but one term, Cong Tarzan authored and co-authored 187 house bills, seven of which were enacted into law: RA 9513, the Renewable Energy Act; RA 9502, the Cheaper Medicine Act; RA 9497, the Act Crating the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines; RA 9645, Commemoration of the Founding Anniversary of the Iglesia ni Cristo Act; RA 9779, the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009; RA 9729, the Climate Change Act of 2009; and RA 9710, the Magna Carta for Women.
And more of the same, impact bills, a year into his second term.
House Bill 4370, An Act Causing the Construction of Sanitary Landfill in Every Province of the Country, the Lifting of the Ban on Incinerators, Amending RA 9003 and RA 8749.
“The creation of landfills is a long-term solution to the growing waste problem, while incinerators provide immediate and medium-term solutions,” Cong Tarzan said in his explanatory note, stressing that the incinerators should be “at par with those used in Japan…zero emission of harmful gas coming from the burning of garbage.”

Curbing cybersex

House Bill 1444, the Anti-Cybersex Act which seeks to check the widespread incidence of prostitution and pornography in the Philippines that reaches every part of the globe through cyberspace.
“Unless rigid measures are founded against these abuses, society will bear the social costs since proliferation of obscene and pornographic materials and rampant exhibition of lewd shows in our midst have threatened the moral fibers of our society…“Amidst all of these are the youth who are the heaviest users and primary audience of mass media. If left unrepressed, these obscene practices will impose their detrimental effects psychologically, morally and physically. Hence, there is an urgent need to intensify the campaign against cybersex given the numerous studies that point out to higher correlation of exposure to pornography, prostitution and incidence of sex crimes.”
So presented Cong Tarzan the rationale of his bill that also proposed punishment with penalty of not less than P.5 million but not more than P1 million and imprisonment ranging from 20 years to 30 years for the producer, financer, promoter and manager of cybersex operations; and by not more than P250,000 and imprisonment ranging from three to six years on performers and exhibitors of cybersex.
No less than the Most Rev. Pablo Virgilio David, auxiliary bishop of San Fernando, hailed the legislative action: “It’s a welcome move to stop cybersex with the house bill. It’s a global problem. We need consolidated efforts. Any move against cybersex is laudable.”
House Bill 6644, Act Limiting the Amount of Bags Carried by Children in School and Implementing Measures to Protect School Children’s Health from the Adverse Effects of Heavy School Bags.
“Pupils are supposed to listen to their teachers in school, and read their textbooks at home. In the end, having pupils carry heavy load to school will be counterproductive, with many of them physically deformed as adults. Heavy load in school could be one reason why so many now suffer from spinal injuries, including slipped discs.” So Cong Tarzan said citing various studies including those of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) on the ill effects of making school children carry bags more than 15 per cent of their body weight.
As his bill remained pending, Cong Tarzan appealed to school officials throughout the country to abide by it as the school year opens next week.

Fathering cityhood

What can well be the landmark legislation in Cong Tarzan’s second term, arguably in his whole career as representative, is House Bill 2509, Act Converting the Municipality of Mabalacat into a Component City to be Known as Mabalacat City.” Of these, much has been written about. And we shall leave it at that.
Beyond his legislative duties, Cong Tarzan is hands-on in looking after the wefare of his constituents. A random rundown now of recent benefits that came their way: 25 service vehicles worth P7.1 million “to ensure mobility of our leaders who are tasked to serve their people,” and more coming until all 85 barangays in the 1st District have one; and the P29-million Sapang Balen-Bical Road in Mabalacat; increase in the number of Lazatin scholars.
Equally at work in the House and in his district, the quiet achiever goes. So ingrained in his constituents is Cong Tarzan that all it takes for him to win in any election is for them to know that he’s running.

And more

EVEN ALREADY out of the House in 2013, Cong Tarzan continued delivering. His pet bills: House Bill No. 4450 – seeking the conversion of the Pampanga Agricultural College (PAC) in Magalang town into a state university – signed into law by President BS Aquino as Republic Act 10605 – with the former PAC now known as the Pampanga State Agricultural University; and Republic Act 10582 – creating six additional branches of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Angeles City, rising out of a bill he filed on January 29, 2013l requesting for the creation of the courts, which on that very day was  referred to the Committee on Rules, a Committee Report was made, and then calendared for reading.

And went on a smooth sailing that in five months was enacted into a law. No mean feat for legislative work there. But Lazatin is no Tarzan if not for this.

As the Cong is wont to say, En seguida, ahora mismo, larga!

   

Tugade, aptly

“YOU EXPECT us not to be corrupt. Can we expect you not to corrupt us?”

Incoming Transportation Secretary Arthur P. Tugade – to thundering applause – articulated what could possibly be the greatest message at the “Sulong Pilipinas: Hakbang Tungo sa Kaunlaran” consultative workshop between the country’s leading businessmen and Duterte’s economic managers held in Davao City recently.

Tugade, more than anyone of his peers in the Duterte Cabinet, has the sole proprietary right over that dare to the business leaders. As we have come to know him in his incumbency as president-CEO at the Clark Development Corp. where he was reverently referred to as APT, as much for his initials as for his acclaimed appropriateness for the position.

APT instituted at the CDC a “no-gift” policy whereby even the simplest tokens for birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, product launches and inaugurations are politely declined.

Invitations by Clark locators for business meetings with CDC officials and staff over lunch, dinner or coffee were conducted during – never outside -- office hours, and always the CDC paying for lunch, dinner or coffee.

Any favor, no matter how little, coming from the locators was considered a bribe.

Office hours were government time and therefore to be spent on-the-job. Staff meetings, so as not to interfere with “official work,” were exclusively after 5 p.m. So what if some lasted until the break of dawn, what came first was that no government time misappropriated.   

And who but APT, of all those who held the CDC helm, came to Clark with only his personal driver, unencumbered by his own executive and personal assistants to dislocate those already in place.

And who but APT refused to avail himself of the CDC president’s staff house, preferring to commute daily from his Ayala Alabang home, at his own expense in gas and expressway toll charges.

Even as other government-owned and -controlled corporations and other agencies outraced one another to sign the Pledge of Integrity required of them, the CDC did so a year later, only after APT was convinced that a “culture of transparency and accountability” has been institutionalized – at his initiative – at the Clark Freeport.

Yes, Tugade is most apt as articulator of incorruptibility in government. Thus, aptly too, the resounding acclamation from the business leaders.

This, finding further affirmation in Tugade’s assurance of the Duterte administration’s commitment to “The speedy implementation of public-private partnership and infrastructure projects as well as respecting the sanctity of contracts,” listed No. 10 in the business leaders’ recommendations arrived at during the Sulong Pilipinas consultative workshops.

Once more, Tugade is most apt operative model where the sanctity of contracts matters. 

At CDC, the contracts with locators achieved near-divine status during APT’s presidency. The confidentiality clause cloaking every contract with invincibility, if not altogether invisibility, from public scrutiny.

We should know as media requests for copies of CDC contracts were responded to with the quietude of the sanctum sanctorum, especially those signed with former Pagcor chair Efraim Genuino, with “businesswoman Nora Bitong,”and one citizen Bert Lina, who later was appointed and up to this writing still is Customs chief. Ditto the contracts with the controversial Capilion Group of Companies and Honda Car Philippines which location all but strangled the main entrance to the Clark Freeport.            

And for that CDC was awarded with the Seal of Transparency, which it proudly displays in its website and proclaims at every opportunity.

Yes, the business leaders can take Tugade’s word on government contracts as gospel truth: in his belief and by his deeds at Clark, so seemingly sanctified these are as to befit a spot in the Ark of the Covenant itself.

And therefore inviolate as to submit to public scrutiny. The interest of the people be damned. Public office devolved to private trust. 

A fisherfolk's narrative

IT TAKES a village to bring in the catch for the day. Buoyed by shared hope, and simple dream, of each one having but enough from the sea’s blessings.

And maybe, just maybe, a little more for the selling. Or for some grains or bread bartered, that the meal at the family table be more filling.

Heave-ho, heave-ho, the net from the waters now emerging, anticipation ever growing

– Dashed dreams. Disbelieving. But no denying.

John 6:9 “… and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”   

For the miracle of loaves and fishes, now pining. Desperately so –

Walang himala. Ang himala ay nasa puso…nasa puso nating lahat. Tayo ang gumagawa ng mga himala.

Thus, the net is rolled again.

The village to strive, harder – with renewed hope – for another day. For as long as the sea is there – who knows, Christ may just walk on the waters again.

And “…they were not able to haul (the net) in for the multitude of fishes.”    

The Word is kept. In times much worse, all for the better.

As, in the godly scheme of things, man lives not on fish alone.

La Paz, San Narciso, Zambales/6:31a.m. June 18, 2016.

Lest we forget

A NARRATIVE of victory over the direst of adversities.

That has come to be the Pinatubo story of the Kapampangan, told and retold at each anniversary of the second greatest cataclysm of the 20^th century. Naturally, finding greater, if dramatic, resonance at its 25^th year this month.

Never forget, Gov. Lilia G. Pineda urged her constituency, the valuable lessons learned, the values imbued with the Pinatubo experience: “They should be kept alive for future generations to learn from."

Indeed, worth remembering: that which has been hailed as “the triumph of the indomitable courage and resiliency of the Kapampangan,” as much celebrated in books – two I was privileged to have cobbled: Pinatubo: Triumph of the Kapampangan Spirit (2008) and Agyu Tamu: Turning Tragedy into Triumph subheaded The Pinatubo Story of Angeles City (2011) – as already impacted in the cabalen’s collective consciousness.

That, which President Fidel V. Ramos, hailed as proof positive of the can-do spirit of the Kapampangan, the Filipino too, which will serve him in good stead "to work harder and strive higher" to help make the Philippines a first world country.

“Kaya! (We can)” thundered – okay, in the spirit of the moment, erupted – across   the LausGroup Events Center to the challenge of the former President, the guest of honor at the "Celebration of the Triumph of the Kapampangan's Unity and Resiliency" Wednesday night.

We survived the worst. We can do the most. What can stop us?

The feel-good atmosphere permeating the province at each anniversary of the Mount Pinatubo eruptions and the aftermath do indeed make the strongest motivation to aspire for some higher level of development in the quality of life of our people.

So, must we go on in our celebrations so that, as 25^th anniversary execom chair Levy P. Laus put it, the “wealth of experience from the calamity will not be lost to young people today, most of whom were born after the eruptions.”

“A community is supposed to have a collective memory of significant times and events in its life from which it can celebrate and erect memorials for posterity,” Laus said in his message.

A collective memory, indeed, of that which drew the best from us during the worst of times. But not a selective memory so as to consign to oblivion that which drew the worst from us during those damned times.

For the Pinatubo story is as much of triumph as of turpitude.

So we remember…

At the American-abandoned Clark Air Base, what the wrath of the volcano failed to destroy human greed plundered.

Someone named “Hacot” – as all H-overminding Kapampangans say it – cleaned and cleared Clark not so much of the ash and sand that buried it but of anything of value that remained in it, not even the toilet bowls and kitchen sinks spared.

The CAB Hospital, reputedly the best-equipped in the Asia-Pacific region reduced to a ghostly apparition.

A most profitable, if novel enterprise, that arose from the devastated base: the total demolition of damaged buildings, the scrap – galvanized iron roofing, wood panels and ceilings, parquet and tile flooring, steel beams – contracted out to junk dealers, at neither cost nor profit to the government.

The initial engineering interventions to stem lahar flows – from sabo dams to earthen dikes, from re-channeling and dredging rivers to scraping their banks – collectively derided as “ampaw” – ever short of the project specifications thus shorn of any effect; prime sources of corruption, birthing the so-called “Pajero Gang” among the contractors and contactors most favored by public works officials.

How about local government officials finding profit from the devastation? From the donations – in relief goods and cash – diverted from the intended beneficiaries, or replaced with more of the same already-nauseating 555 sardines and cheap noodles.

Local government officials too moonlighting as real estate brokers in the negotiation for the resettlement sites, and thereafter as sub-contractors, if not main contactors, in the construction of houses where again the sub-standard became the operational norm.

No, “tumubo, tumabo sa Bulkang Pinatubo” was no idle blabber. It was gospel truth for those times. The enterprising turning huge profit from the capital that was the misery of the people.            

And lest we forget, how about those who called for the abandonment of the province “to let nature take its course” and uproot the population to “new Kapampangan communities” in Mindoro, Bukidnon, and some other parts of Mindanao? Why, one most esteemed cabalen even went on local radio to sound that call from the national government.

Yes, they too are remembered in every Pinatubo Day celebration. With even greater recognition, loftier accolades, than those who actually suffered, struggled, survived and excelled.

Twenty-five years after, the Pinatubo story is still evolving.     

     

  

It was the worst of times

JUNE 10, 1991. Angeles City awakened to its worst nightmare: the American dream was over.

Dashed was the hope – against hope – that GI Joe would stay, come what may. A belief borne by the new concrete wall around the base perimeter that had just been completed, the frenzied base housing construction seen as a sure sign of increased troop deployment, and the second runway built reportedly to serve as alternative landing site for the space shuttle Columbia. All coming to nought.

Before stunned eyes passed the very end of the city’s economic being: By car, bus, truck, American servicemen and their dependents started their exodus from Clark – jamming the North Luzon Expressway in a three-mile long convoy – to Subic where US warships and troop transports awaited them for the long journey home.

Their departure from Clark was for the Americans a less than stoic acceptance of the impending repudiation by the Philippine Senate of the bases treaty – to ultimately come in September – than a hurried, harried flight from certain catastrophe.

June 11. “16,000 evacuated from Clark” bannered the Stars and Stripes, with the subhead: “Major eruption feared from Mount Pinatubo volcano.”

The rumblings of the hitherto hardly known volcano starting to get frequenter and stronger by the hour.

June 12. Philippine Independence Day. For the first time in 90 years, Angeles City was thoroughly free of a foreign occupation force. The meaning of the day though was utterly lost to Mayor Antonio Abad Santos whose speech before the city hall alternated between carping – “overacting,” he called the American abandonment of the base, and comforting – that the greater number of Angelenos need not panic, being outside Pinatubo’s immediate 10-kilometer radius that was initially tagged as danger zone.

Thunderous explosions cut Abad Santos in mid-speech, a giant plume of ash shot up 20 kilometers in the sky, immediately followed a rain of hot ash and pumice stones. It was 8:51 in the morning.

Panic – people froze in their track, eyes in the sky and mouth agape, shocked and awed by nature’s might.

Then pandemonium – the rush for home, hither and thither like headless chickens, amid the cacophony of frightened shrieks, nervous prayers, screeching tires and blaring horns.

With the acrid smell of sulphur wafting in the ash-laden air, masks – surgical and industrial – ran out in the city’s drug and hardware stores. The surplus biochemical masks from Desert Storm which found their way to the PX stalls of Dau and Nepo Mart had been snagged, wholesale, by some very enterprising profiteer much earlier.

Braving the cloud of ash, President Cory Aquino flew by helicopter to Clark to see the situation first hand, and dropped by the Angeles City High School where the eruption’s very first evacuees of 2,000, mostly Aeta tribesmen, have taken refuge.

“This could only be the beginning.” So warned Dr. Raymundo S. Punongbayan, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) of the June 12 eruptions.

June 13. Phivolcs recorded more eruptions, the volcano gushing greater clouds of ash and gases 25 kilometers in the sky. “Phenomenal eruptions,” Punongbayan called them, and declared: “This is already the Big Bang. I can’t see any other eruption that will exceed this.”

June 14. Dark clouds blanketed the city, ominously dimming the garish neon lights of Balibago.

June 15. A much Bigger Bang that proved Punongbayan’s declaration deadly wrong.

The Great Eruption that turned bright day – starting at 8:15 in the morning – to darkest night. The roll of thunder, the flash of lightning, the rain of ash and stones, and the tremors of the ground foreboding the very end of days.

The city’s secondary economic lifeline – next only to Clark Air Base – furniture and handicraft manufacturing totally collapsed, literally, from the weight of ashfall: Factories – roofs, beams, posts and walls – crashing down on machines, equipment, supplies and finished products.

Collapsed too, as many houses in the city, was the roof of the Philippine Rabbit Bus terminal downtown, killing two waiting passengers and injuring scores of others. Later in the day, the city’s very icon of the finest Chinese cuisine – Shanghai De Luxe Restaurant – burned to the ground after its roof collapsed on the liquefied petroleum gas tanks in its kitchen.

By 2 in the afternoon, steaming mudflows – soon to enter the lexicon as the terrifying “lahar” – sprang from the foot of Pinatubo, rampaged through the Abacan River, destroying in succession Friendship Bridge that led to Clark, Hensonville Spillway, Abacan Bridge, where MacArthur Highway traversed and Pandan Bridge that led to Magalang. Scouring the riverbank and gobbling up houses and buildings, including the remnants of the collapsed Angeles City General Hospital.

It was the city’s first taste of the devastating power of lahar – a horrific byword sending people to higher ground at the slightest drop of rain.

West of the city, the lahar-swollen Mancatian River swallowed its eponymous bridge cutting off Angeles City from Porac town. Mudflows overtopped the Sapang Balen Creek and spread steadily across the city proper. The public market and commercial area of San Nicolas and the business district, indeed the very heart of the city, Sto. Rosario where city hall, the “big church,” the enclaves of the rich, as well as the city’s and Central Luzon’s biggest private school, Holy Angel College were all sited, all inundated by steaming mud.

There, a long established tale belied: As the elevation of Angeles City is levelled with the very spire of the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Fernando, any flooding in the city would mean the capital town under at least 30 feet of water.

On Doomsday itself, no flooding was recorded in San Fernando.

With supplications to the Almighty drowned by the rumble of the volcano, with the onslaught of mudflows and the rain of ash unabating, it was hegira for the Angelenos.

All the roads leading south of the city were filled with dazed and dazzled refugees, on foot, in cars, on buses, on truck: seeking relative safety in the homes of relatives and friends, finding temporary shelters in evacuation centers, the first of which was Amoranto Stadium in Quezon City provided for by Mayor Brigido Simon, Jr., a Kapampangan himself, who also brought buses to the very ramp of the Angeles exit of the North Luzon Expressway to ferry more evacuees.

Buried in ashes, reduced to a virtual ghost town, Angeles City and its twin basetown, which also bore the initial brunt of the eruptions, made easy picking for the moralists’ sermon of the wrath of God heaped upon Sodom and Gomorrah. The host cities to the US military bases long known as deeply mired in decadence and debauchery.

But erased from the face of earth like the biblical sin cities, Angeles City refused to be.

(From this columnist’s book Agyu Tamu: Turning Tragedy into Triumph, 2011.)

                                

As with BS, so with His Rudeness

“FRIENDSHIP stops when the country’s interest is at stake.”

Outgoing President BS Aquino III gave short shrift to accusations of his tenacious loyalty to his friends. This, in what could be his exit interview with Rappler.

Of course, every Tuming, Carding and Aring in all corners of the archipelago knows only too well of the BS’s standard of selection for and preservation in his official family encoded in the Triple K – Kaklase, Kaibigan, Kabarilan – that’s classmate, friend, shooting buddy, for those outside the Taga-Ilog tribe.

The BS’s self-professed primacy given to the country’s interest over personal friendship falls flat as a thick-faced lie given the BS’s dogged defense of his doggone Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya amid his epic failures in the dysfunctional MRT and LRT, in the physical and moral dilapidation of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, and in the incredible scarcity of registration plates and driving licenses at the Land Transportation Office, but the more publicized ones.

To the history-steeped among us Taga-Pampang, Abaya has the dubious distinction of living up to his great grandfather’s abomination toward our Kapampangan nation. Aguinaldo’s burning of Macabebe town where women, children, the elderly were not spared from damnation with extreme prejudice at the time of the Revolution, transposed to Abaya’s stillborning at every turn any effort to make the Clark International Airport the country’s premier international gateway.    

How the country’s interest was ever served when the BS cleaved the supervision of the Philippine National Police from the then Jesse Robredo-headed Department of the Interior and Local Government and handed them over to his friend and kabalen Undersecretary Rico Puno – not the singer, but the former gun-and-ammo supplier – nobody but the BS can irrationalize.

Given, precisely so, Puno’s implication in the scuttled P408-million firearms deal of the PNP. The PNP declared a failure of bidding in August 2012 for the procurement of 1,500 units of M4 assault rifles worth P178 million, so we are reminded by Rappler.

So, the BS – after less soul-searching and more handwringing – let go of Puno? Officially, yes. But not fraternally, if covertly, if we go by the tittle-tattle still prattled in the home province.   

How about the close friendship between the BS and then-LTO chief and later Customs broker wannabe – allegedly over P100-million worth of smuggled sugar – Virginia Torres? The issue only rested with Torres’ passing to eternal rest.

No other instance in his presidency can the lie in BS’s paean to patriotism over friendship be bigger than in the Mamasapano Massacre.

Already suspended by the Ombudsman, PNP Director General Alan Madrid Purisima was allowed the BS to still play a key role in the police operations to neutralize international terrorist Marwan which led to the slaughter of the SAF 44.

And in the aftermath of the botched operations, the BS stubbornly defending Purisima, even against the overwhelming proof of his guilt as established in the Senate hearings.

As Mamasapano is in the country’s interest, so is Purisima in the BS’s. No brainer which really came first.

As we now bid the BS fare the well, so shall we see the riddance of vested interests in the presidency then? Ah, the promise is all there. Change is coming, ain’t it too often blabbered?

For country, period

"Let me be very clear, my friendship with my friends ends when the interest of the country begins. I would as much as possible make you happy if you are my friend, but I will not allow anybody to color my decisions in government. From now on it is always the interest of the people of the Republic of the Philippines that counts, period."

Declared Rodrigo Duterte, president-elect, at the time his good friend of over 30 years, the Pastor Apollo Quiboloy was reported to be hurting over his exclusion from the circle vetting candidates to the incoming Cabinet.

Soared to the highest firmaments Duterte’s iron-willed image. Here is a patriot at last! Why, if he can say an unqualified “NO” to the “Appointed Son of God” himself, there is absolutely no one he will not decline, aye, refuse, if the interest of his country so warranted?

I was beginning to feel remorse for all the negative opinions I held against Duterte. Until he was asked if he would follow the tradition of handing a Cabinet portfolio to the vice president, in this case Leni Robredo of the Liberal Party.

Quick, and as definitive, was Duterte’s riposte: “Non-committal ako diyan kasi kilala ko si Bongbong. I know Bongbong Marcos. I don’t want to hurt him. Leni will understand, she’s from the opposite side.”

(Un)reasoned he: “Kaibigan ko si Bongbong. That is the political reality. My father (Vicente) was the Cabinet secretary of the late father [of Bongbong], besides, I won in Ilocos Norte.”

Too bad, neither Duterte’s myrmidon Panelo nor his mind-filler Cayetano contextualized his declaration so as to avoid any misinterpretation of it as: Bongbong over Robredo, and above the country’s interest.

Made even more absolute with Duterte’s strong approval, rather than acquiescence, to inter the remains of Marcos Senior at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

So Duterte’s friendship ends where the interest of his country begins. How can anyone but the unreasoning take his word, when under the same breath he says, again on giving Robredo a Cabinet post: “Sabi ko, I have not considered anything for her because I’m more worried about where I would place the friends that nagkautang ako ng loob…I should not be looking beyond my borders yet.”

Sicut erat in principio et nunc…As it was with the BS, so it is with His Rudeness.

Same shame. Change is coming?

No, I won’t be so shameless as to dignify here parallelisms being now proffered between an egressing abnoy and an ingressing d’gunggong.    

Murder he wrought

THE QUESTION asked of the President-elect was: “What is your policy about journalist killings that the Aquino government failed to act (on)?”

His answers: “Alam mo hija, ganito yan. Kung papatayin ka, papatayin ka talaga. (You know kid, it’s like this. If you’ll be killed, you’ll really be killed.) There is no way to know that the next victim will be a journalist.”

“Sa karamihan, pranka-pranka, may nagawa yan. Kasi hindi ka naman papatayin dyan kung wala kang ginawa, eh.” (Mostly, to be frank (about it), (the victims) did something. Because you won’t be killed if you did (nothing wrong).)

“Yung mga exposé, bad words against us, wala yan. Ako, I’ve been mayor…, okay yan… praktisado kami… pero may mga tao … you go private, tapos hiyain mo ang anak, babuyin mo, papatayin kang ka talaga.” (Exposé and bad words are nothing to us politicians. We’re used to that. But there are people…then you shame his child, abuse him, you will really get killed.)

“Pero karamihan dyan, alam nyo na, nabigyan na tapos (But most of them, you know it, they’ve accepted bribes, then) … especially if you want to take sides. Nabayaran mo na tapos you play. Yan ang karamihan namamatay. Or tumatanggap na sa mga sugarol, tapos bira pa rin (They are those usually killed. Or they receive money from gambling lords, yet go on attacking them). You really want the truth, yun ang truth.

“There is still corruption sa inyong side. Marami iyan. Hindi lang … ang binibigyan niyan, hindi lang police. Yun si Pala, binibigyan yan, kumokolek, harap-harapan kung sabihin, kumolekta kami. Tapos sa kabila, babanatan mo ako. Yun, that is the best example kung bakit namamatay itong mga journalists.

“Kasi kung journalist ka lang na tama, wala man gagalaw sa iyo. (If you are a good journalist, nobody will touch you.)

“Especially if it (exposé) is true. You cannot hide the truth, by the way…I do not diminish memory but he (Pala) was a rotten son of a bitch. He deserved it.”

“That is the reason. You are asking why… that is the reason. Now, sinabi mo hindi dapat, you have to debate with the killer, not me. Of course I know who killed them. Kasi binastos nya yung tao eh.

“Most of you are clean. But do not expect that all journalists are clean.”

 “It’s not because you’re a journalist, you are exempted from assassination. Ang premise mo kasi, journalist siya, bakit papatayin siya. (Your premise is, he’s a journalist so why should he be killed.) It’s all wrong.

“Kasi kung journalist ka lang na tama, walang gagalaw sa iyo (if you are a good journalist, nobody will touch you.) Yung freedom of expression will not save you if you have done something wrong to the guy. Do not believe it hook, line and sinker, that freedom of expression will save you.

“Just because you are a journalist you are not exempted from assassination. If you are a son of a bitch… ako praktisado. Humanap ka ng sundalo, sabihin mo ang asawa mo kaliwete, papatayin ka. Subukan mo, hindi madala ng free speech yan, hija. (I’m practised. Try to find a soldier and tell him his wife has cuckolded him, he will kill you. Try it, free speech won’t save you, kid) The Constitution can no longer help you pag binaboy mo ang ibang tao (if you humiliate other people.).”

THE QUESTION was clear enough.

The answer, circuitous as it was, was no answer. It was the expression of a mindset prejudiced to extremity against the working press.

Discord he reaps

MURDER IS no joke. Neither is press freedom. So reacted the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines to the statements of the President-elect.

“Mr. Duterte’s crass pronouncement not only sullies the names and memories of all 176 of our colleagues who have been murdered since 1986, he has also, in effect, declared open season to silence the media, both individual journalists and the institution, on the mere perception of corruption…

"It is one thing to recognize a possible reason for murder; it is a totally different thing to present this as a justification for taking life."

From the College Editors Guild of the Philippines: “The pronouncement made by President-elect Duterte is a faulty generalization in which he failed to understand how the intensifying culture of impunity perpetuates the killing of journalists and media workers in their line of duty…

“It is without denial that as journalists, the job description to expose the truth behind the general scheme of things is above all else.”

The Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines said: "Duterte's statement is a chilling reminder that journalists in the Philippines continue to live under threat, decades after (the association) was founded to fight for press freedom at the height of Ferdinand Marcos's dictatorship."

The Center for International Law: “As an incoming president and as a lawyer, you must surely know that the state has an obligation under international law and constitutional law to provide effective remedy to victims of human rights violations. Your remark is not only insensitive; by it you only show a cynical attitude toward what is a serious concern to the international community and a scourge to any society founded on democratic ideals.

“You also implied … that journalists are often killed because they had been corrupt. That is an insult to the memory of many journalists whose only mistake was being faithful to their professional calling to a fault.”

The International Federation of Journalists: “The Philippines is the second deadliest country in the world for journalists… Duterte needs to take immediate action to end the culture of violence and impunity against the media in the Philippines and support press freedom and freedom of expression.”  

The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility: “While corruption is undoubtedly a continuing problem in the press and media, journalists have been killed for other reasons, among them for exposing corruption in government…

Because a significant number of those accused of killing journalists are local officials, as well as police and military personnel, the killings also suggest that the slain had been successful in exposing official wrongdoing and collusion with criminal groups.”

And from the Committee to Protect Journalists: "Duterte's shocking remarks apparently excusing extrajudicial killings threaten to make the Philippines into a killing field for journalists. We strongly urge him to retract his comments and to signal that he intends to protect, not target, the press."

Damaged control

“TAKEN OUT of context, misinterpreted, and misunderstood.”

That was Duterte’s statement on media killings, according to his loudmouth Peter Lavina. “For instance, his example of most slain journalists as being corrupt or involved in shady deals was based on his own assessment of those killed in Davao City and not on the national scale. Certainly, Duterte has no personal knowledge on each and every single case of media killings in many parts of the country.”

No, Sir, your President did not make any distinction in his wholesale damnation of the media dead.  

“When Duterte said last night that members of the media become vulnerable to killings, it was because they were no longer seen as fair and neutral members of the media but because they have become partisan propagandists, deliberately using their media outlets in attacking or defending one party or another and collecting pay offs on both.”

So, their killing is justifiable, as impacted by the statements of your President.

All in context, Sir. Precisely worded. Perfectly understood.

Seconding Lavina is Sen. Koko Pimentel: “Do not mistake or misinterpret the statement of the President. Ang sinabi lang naman ng Presidente, we have freedom of the press but we also have to be responsible in exercising it and given the nature of the Filipinos, sometimes they resort to violence and the Constitution can’t protect you from violence.”

Nice take, Sir, but it is you that is misinterpreting the statements of your President.

“But what has not been stated is that these people who violate the law by employing violence must be brought to justice. ‘Yan ang importante. So media killing man ‘yan, or killing of a business person, or killing of an innocent person, all of these killers must be brought to justice. That’s very important.”

Important, yes, but your President did not say anything about it. Sounds like this  Koko just flew over the cuckoo’s nest.