Unheroic

“WHO ARE the persons whom you consider a genuine Filipino hero? You can name up to five persons.”

Five years ago, with neither prompting nor proffered list, the Social Weather Station asked 1,200 respondents in a nationwide poll. 
The top choice, as expected, was Jose Rizal gaining the nod of 75 percent of the respondents. Second, as expected too, was Andres Bonifacio, but with a rather dismal 34 percent.

Third and fourth were the Aquino couple: Ninoy with 20 percent, and Cory with 14. Their son, the BS, being freshly-minted president at that time may have contributed to their relatively high ranking.

In a tie with Cory was the Sublime Paralytic, Apolinario Mabini. Then followed four presidents – the purported first, Emilio Aguinaldo (11 percent), the ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos (5.1 percent), the “Guy” Ramon Magsaysay (4.3 percent) and the Castilla Manuel Quezon (3.8 percent).

Rounding the Top 10 was the very first Filipino historical hero Lapu-Lapu with 3.7 percent. 
Just out of the Top 10 were Tandang Sora, Melchora Aquino (3.2 percent) and La Solidaridad’s Marcelo H. del Pilar (3.0 percent).
President BS Aquino III at 2.9 percent edged the “Brains of the Katipunan” Emilio Jacinto (2.8 percent), who was followed by pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao at 2.6 percent.
More historical heroes followed: Gabriela Silang (2.6 percent), the hero of Tirad Pass Gregorio del Pilar (2.2 percent) and the painter Juan Luna (1.9 percent), capped by Mar’s lolo President Manuel Roxas (1.8 percent).
Why, even former President Joseph Estrada figured with 1.8 percent of the respondents, followed by President Diosdado Macapagal (1.6 percent) in a tie with presidential candidate actor Fernando Poe Jr. whom his daughter Gloria bested in the 2004 presidential derby.
Alas, seemingly obliterated from the collective memory of the Filipino people are some other national heroes: the martyred priests Gomez-Burgos-Zamora, the propagandist Graciano Lopez-Jaena, the rebels Diego Silang, Francisco Dagohoy, Macario Sacay, the martyr Jose Abad Santos. What do they teach for Philippine History in schools these days?

Yes, even the military genius Antonio Luna, the only “real” general in the Philippine-American War, merited not even a passing fancy by one percent of the respondents. Wonder how he would figure were another survey of this kind be undertaken now, given his nascent popularity with the box office success of his biopic Heneral Luna last year. And conversely, Aguinaldo – the contra to Luna’s bida. Ah, puñeta!

That the despised Dictator earned an honored place in the Top 10 and the disgraced and convicted but ultimately pardoned plunderer merited a place at all in the survey manifest some reconsideration in our general understanding of heroism. Aye, just see how the nation is now engaged in a paroxysm of raging bitterness over the Marcos burial at the national heroes’ cemetery.

Yeah, how did Marcos and Estrada – both driven out of power by their own people – ever become heroes?

Some symptoms of a damaged culture patently manifest there.

Unhappy is the land without heroes, so some wag once wrote.

Unhappier though is the land with fraudulent heroes.

But unhappiest is that land that cannot distinguish the real from the falsified in its pantheon of heroes.

So what does it take to be a hero?

A debate had long focused on the question: Are heroes born or made? Is heroism inherent in a person or does it rise out of circumstance? The latter has traditionally been the preferred position buttressed by historical epochs.
Without the American Revolution would there be a Washington? Without the Civil War, a Lincoln?
Could Turkey’s Ataturk have arisen without the Ottoman persecution? Or Lenin sans the Romanov’s enslavement of Russia?
For that matter, Rizal and Bonifacio without the Spanish colonization?

If memory serves right, I think it was the historian Toynbee that provided the synthesis to hero-born versus hero-made contradiction, to quote liberally (from faded memory): “When he has in him to give, and the situation demands of him to give, he has no other recourse but to give.”
The essence of heroism inheres in the person and is drawn out from him by the circumstance. Both born and made is the hero then.
Even if one possesses all elements of heroism in him – generally thought of as intelligence, honor and integrity, courage, selflessness and commitment to a cause, self-sacrifice and love for others, if there is no situation that will warrant the extraction and expression of these elements – a triggering mechanism of sort – the hero will not come out of him.
As in the classical Latin tradition, it is via Fortuna that virtus, pietas, dignitas, and gravitas – the established Roman virtues – find their ultimate expression.
Else, the lamentation in Gray’s Elegy in a church courtyard: “…Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air…”

Heroism. ‘tis said, is the summation of a life.

Heroism, ‘tis held, is a verdict of history.
So what’s Marcos doing in that list of “genuine heroes”? Estrada too, and for that matter the BS and Pacquiao?
Ah, yes, I remember reading someone writing somewhere: “Anyone is a hero who has been widely, persistently over long periods, and enthusiastically regarded as heroic by a reasonable person, or even an unreasonable one.”        
Woe, I can only think of the “unreasonable” ones getting them there. 
But then, who am I – a second rate pedant – to even think so?

Shame. 

(Updated from a Zona Libre piece dated April 11, 2011)

7 years hence, still in mourning

AS THE grief has remained the same, so this mere update of the speech I delivered on the first anniversary of the Ampatuan Massacre.

IN PAIN. In sorrow. In rage. Today, November 23, 2016, we solemnly observe the seventh anniversary of media’s own day that will live in infamy. Nowhere in the world, not at any time in history had there been 32 media workers killed in one place, in a single day. Not to mention the 26 other civilians who perished along with them.

The evil of that day impacted in our minds, the tragedy befallen our colleagues inscribed in our hearts, the heinousness of it all troubling our very souls.

Seven years have passed. In the Filipino tradition, the period of mourning has already ended six years ago. That life has moved on.

But not to us.

Seven years have passed. With the pain, the grief over our loss only increasing by the day. The nation embittered by the slowness of the justice system.

Seven years have passed. And still counting.

But there shall be no forgetting.

The mourning continues.

The struggle for justice remains unceasing.

The fight to end the culture of impunity that caused and effected the massacre unwavering.

Heed us then the call to arms: “Do not go quietly into that good night…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

To us the living is reposited that sacred duty until justice is done and the victims of the Ampatuan Massacre, as well as all the martyrs in the cause of press freedom shall truly rest in peace.

Pitong taon na ang lumipas. Subali’t hindi pa rin tayo makakapag-babang luksa.

Patuloy ang panaghoy, kaakibat ang pagpapaigting sa pakikibaka. Hanggang ang katarungan ay ganap na makamtan.

Ang paglimot sa adhikaing ito, ang paglihis sa tungkuling ito ay paglapastangan sa kadakilaan ng pagbuwis ng buhay ng mga martir ng Maguindanao.

Matapos ang pitong taon, wala pa rin katapusan ang pagluluksa.

End Impunity. Justice Now!

NOVEMBER 23, 2009 is a day that will forever live in infamy, not only for the Philippine media community, which lost 32 of its own in what is now acknowledged as the single deadliest attack on the press on record, but also the for the country’s body politic, for which the slaughter was the worst incident of electoral violence in the country’s recent history.

The massacre of 58 persons seven years ago on a hilltop in Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman, Ampatuan town, Maguindanao showcased everything that is wrong in the rotten system of governance and disposition of justice in this country, where clans of warlords, criminal kingpins and corrupt politicians wield virtual powers of life and death in what amount to fiefdoms, their thievery and corruption tolerated by the centers of power that have to court their favors to effectively rule over the archipelago.

It is a testament to how entrenched this system of governance remains that, in a country that never tires of proclaiming itself the freest and most democratic in this corner of the globe, seven years after the orgy of violence, justice remains elusive for the Ampatuan 58 as on the day gunmen commanded by a madman who would brook no challenge to the almost absolute rule he and his kin enjoyed over their poverty-stricken province mowed them down in a hail of fire and steel.

Not even the shock and revulsion with which the carnage was greeted not just here but around the world has served to prod government to ensure that this blot to the nation be erased by the swift administration of justice to the dead and to those they left behind.

If anything, the State, which by rights should have taken on the burden of seeing to the futures of the widows, widowers and orphans of Ampatuan – after all its agents were responsible for this most heinous of crimes – has abandoned most of them, particularly those of our colleagues who were their families’ breadwinners, to lives of misery and uncertainty, reduced to wondering where to get their sustenance from day to day.

One orphan, that of Gina dela Cruz, died of illness because the family could no longer afford the treatment that would have saved its life. And her mother, Nancy wasted away alone after being left with no other choice than to make the grandchildren she could no longer support wards of the state.

This heartlessness of the State, this unconcern for the plight of the people whose grief it is primarily responsible for, is also what feeds the impunity that has emboldened those who seek to silence those brash enough to seek to unveil their abuses. It is, of course, the same kind of impunity that has marked the murders of hundreds more of our compatriots whose only crime was to dare speak truth to oppressive power.

Today, even as we commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Ampatuan Massacre, we see a resurgence of threats and assaults on the independent Philippine press fueled by the open contempt and hostility of a leader who would brook absolutely no criticism of his person or his policies, not even if these have opened the floodgates to an orgy of bloodletting unprecedented in its savagery and its utter disregard for the rule of law and human rights.

Seven years after Ampatuan, we fear that the worst is yet to come and the seekers of truth will be faced with ever more danger from those who see our work as anathema to their pursuit of an order built not on compassion but brute force, not on the realities we all face but the distorted picture they would force us to accept. 

Yet even as we worry, so do we affirm that these are the best times to be journalists, to be the bearers of the knowledge and free thought that the centers of power would seek to suppress. It is in these times, as in the darkest days of the unlamented dictatorship, that the independent Philippine press is most needed by the people. We do not doubt that the Filipino journalist and the independent media community will prove themselves worthy of the calling.

(NUJP Statement on the 7th Year of the Ampatuan Massacre, November 23, 2016

Reference: Dabet Panelo, secretary general)

The legal bind

ME, I am just being legalistic about it. President Marcos was a President for so long, and he was a soldier. That’s about it.

Thus, President Rodrigo Duterte justified his decision, aye his initiative, to bury former President Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. This upon his arrival in Lima, Peru for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. This in the face of protest rallies at home.

Duterte made it as simple as it can ever get, perfectly within legal bounds.

There was no prohibition to the dictator’s burial at the Libingan because the 9-5-1 decision of the Supreme Court on Nov. 8 upholding the President’s decision also lifted the status quo ante order issued by the tribunal in September.

So said Supreme Court spokesperson Theodore Te in a text message to media. 

A clear majority of the magistrates ruled that the President did not commit grave abuse of discretion when he allowed the burial of Marcos at the Libingan, qualified as he was – to Duterte – to lie among dead soldiers and Presidents like him.

Te furthered that the petitioners opposing the burial had not filed a motion for reconsideration.

As to Duterte, so to Te. Marcos’ burial at the Libingan fully adhering to the rule of law.  

Ay, the rule of law. How many crimes have been inflicted upon the people in its name?

To prevent anarchy in the streets and restore the rule of law, so Marcos precisely predicated his declaration of martial law. And let loose lawlessness upon his hapless people.  

A co-opted Supreme Court then – the Chief Justice at one time reduced to being the Imeldific’s umbrella holder – upholding the Marcosian martial reign via presidential decrees and commitment orders, of letters of instruction and implementation, as the very exercise of the rule of law.

For all his unjustifiable one-man rule, Marcos has been bequeathed justice through that majority decision for his burial now. What perversion of justice obtains there?

The High Court’s 9-5-1 vote allowing the dictator’s interment in the heroes’ cemetery makes less the rule of law than the rule of numbers.
No, I am not a lawyer. Not even close. And I do not have the least conceit to posture like one. But here comes to me, incurably bookish and avidly observant,  a consideration of certain universal givens.

Stripped to its essentials, Law is a “function of Reason,” as Aquinas put it. Kant furthered: “the expression of the Reason common to all.”
Law is “the rational or ethical will” of the body politic; “…the principal and most perfect branch of ethics,” as the British jurist Sir William Blackstone wrote in his Commentaries.
Thus, in the Marcos burial case, the subsumption of a moral inquiry, nay, its apparent nullification on mere technicality – Marcos was President and soldier according to Duterte; No MR filed versus the burial, per Te – no matter how “legal,” still comprises a travesty of the Law. As factored in the above-given “truths.”

Said Duterte: “Whether or not [Marcos] performed worse or better, there’s no study, no movie about it, just the challenges and allegations of the other side.” Ay, there’s precisely the rub, Mister President. The most grievous insult to the gravest injury inflicted upon the martial law victims. The utter falsification, indeed, the worst perversion of Philippine history.

And, pray tell, Mister President, how did your “no movie about it” factor in the issue? No stretch of my creative imagination allows its least relevance to the issue at hand. Your interpretation, Andanar? Your translation, Abella?    

Then Aquinas anew, still in Summa Theologica: “Laws enacted by men are either just or unjust. If they are just, they have a binding force in the court of conscience from the Eternal Law, whence they are derived…Unjust laws are not binding in the court of conscience, except, perhaps, for the avoiding of scandal and turmoil.”  Touché.

Really now, has conscience a place in Philippine political praxis? In the judicial exercise too?
Hence, the “rule of law” in its application in the Marcos burial case takes a primary place among those that a forgotten jurist said were “…laws of comfort adopted by free agents in pursuit of their advantage.” Again, this observation coming from a non-lawyer.
Hence, the Marcos burial case making a travesty of “the doctrine that the universe is governed in all things by Law, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.”

Alas, the martial law victims still crying for justice, aye, literally still searching for their disappeared kin, over 40 years after the crime.

The despicable dictator interred – with full honors – in the country’s pantheon of heroes.   

No justice, No hero. What rule of law?

Rewriting Marcos

OVER FIVE years in coming, but finally here. So we wrote in this very spot on April 15, 2011:

P43,200. THAT’S how much Filipino rights victims of the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos received as compensation after a protracted class suit in the United States.

So announced Robert Swift, the counsel for some 6,500 claimants. Another 1,000 represented by Rod Domingo have yet to receive their shares.

P43,200. That’s the price for the physical sufferings, including torture, deprivations, distress and emotional trauma of Marcos’ victims.

Meanwhile, the Armed Forces of the Philippines inaugurated last week its updated “Wall of Heroes: The Medal for Valor Awardees" on which was enshrined the name Ferdinand E. Marcos.

“Our official stand on this is that there are orders, giving him the Medal for Valor, so it exists. It’s valid, unless it’s either cancelled or revoked. These are deeds way before he became a political figure." So justified AFP spokesman Brig. Gen. Jose Mabanta of Marcos’ inclusion.

Much earlier, the House of Representatives made the rehabilitation, nay, the very transformation of Marcos from heel to hero a fait accompli with 216 congressmen signing the resolution to bury Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Leading the signatories to the resolution initiated by Sorsogon Rep. Salvador Escudero, who served as Marcos’ agriculture secretary, is the Imeldific herself, the representative from Ilocos Norte.

Other “notables” who signed are former President and now Pampanga 2nd District Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her sons Ang Galing Pinoy Rep. Mikey, and Camarines Sur Rep. Dato; Marcos’ nephew Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez; and celebrity congresswoman Cavite Rep. Lani Mercado-Revilla, wife of Sen. Ramon Revilla, Jr. and Leyte Rep. Lucy Torres-Gomez, wife of actor Richard Gomez.

Part of the resolution read: “Allowing the burial of Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani will not only be an acknowledgment of the way he led a life as a Filipino patriot, but it will also be a magnanimous act of reconciliation."

Swift and damning is the retort of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines, to wit: “Did Marcos really ‘serve’ the country? Was he truly until his death a ‘patriot’? While we cannot divine and judge his personal motives, the terrible suffering and damage wrought by Marcos’ 14 years of authoritarian rule is undeniable.”

Finding stage at the celebration of the Araw ng Kagitingan last week, the CEAP said that even as the nation “commemorate the heroism of those who fought fascism during World War II, let us not make a mockery of the service and sacrifice of Filipino war veterans by giving a hero’s burial to someone who is not only a fake war hero but was also responsible for undermining democracy and development during his long tenure as an authoritarian ruler.”

The CEAP reminded the people of that “elaborate tale of the Maharlika guerilla unit” that Marcos supposedly led during the war was “definitively exposed … as a total fabrication” by American historian Alfred McCoy in a well-researched study 25 years ago.

“Why should we now give the perpetrator of this lie a hero’s burial?” the CEAP asked.

Burying Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani would “desecrate” the People Power Revolution that ousted him in 1986 and made Filipinos famous worldwide for peaceful regime change which in turn was replicated in Eastern Europe and still resonates in the recent upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt.

A fact apparently lost in the short memory of the Filipino people, given the results of a recent survey of the Social Weather Stations which put Filipinos almost equally divided on the issue Marcos’ burial.

"To the survey question, 'In your opinion, is the body of ex-President Marcos worthy to be buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani or not?,' 50 percent answered Worthy to be buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, 49 percent answered Not worthy to be buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, and 1 percent had no answer," the SWS said.

Indeed, what does it matter that – as the CEAP correctly noted: “The recent compensation given to the many victims of martial law, though symbolic in monetary terms, is damning proof that the Marcos regime was guilty of gross human rights violations.”

So it shall then be ruled, Marcos is a hero and therefore is worthy to be buried at the heroes’ cemetery.

So it shall be as Santayana rued: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

As we are a people keen on forgetting, so we are a nation damned.

Marcos, Marcos, Marcos pa rin.

Marcos, Marcos, Marcos pa rin.

Travel time

THE SHORTEST distance between Clark and Hong Kong is a Cebu Pacific Air flight.

Come to think of it, HK-Disneyland is much nearer Clark than that local theme park that seeks to approximate – even if only remotely – the former’s magical splendor. Physical distance these days measured no longer in kilometers and miles but in hours and minutes.  

So, how short does it take to fly from Clark to HK Disney? Minus two hours – 1.5-hr flight time and 25-minute land transport.

On the other hand, how long does it take to drive from Clark to Laguna? Double that time, on a good day at that. On a bad one, it’s nearly triple the trouble. So where’s the fun in wasting so much time on the road, at the expense of enjoying enchanted moments?  
And that is the long and short of it. Sorry, hard to resist the urge to be idiomatic; hoping though that it did not sound idiotic.
Anyways, your local media folk did Hong Kong this weekend past. And sure enough, we had a fast flight both ways. On-time departure of CebPac from Clark was precise. On-time arrival in Chek Lap Kok, though was not. Flight 5J-150 was over 12 minutes ahead of ETA.
The return flight – 5J-149 – was as time-perfect: departure on-time, and arrival 10 minutes less ETA.       
Which, both ways, worked best for us. Having come earlier, we were ahead of the hordes of tourists, and therefore got the best and most of Disney. And home earlier, we melted into our jobs right away. Aye, CebPac gives full meaning here to that saying “it’s not the destination but the journey.” But Hong Kong makes it both.
Been there. Done that.  
Quite a number of times, as a matter of fact, from pre-handover to post-Luneta hostage crisis and beyond. Still, there is something in, and of, Hong Kong that bids one to come back.
That “happiest place on earth” is an ever-refreshing spring of age: everyone from 1 to 92 being the same kid all over again, and again. Yeah, whoever has not loved marching bands and parades? Balloons, rides and choo-choo trains? Mickey, Minnie and Pluto, Goofy and Donald – not the Trump though, Chip and Dale? And then there’s Snow White and her castle, Cinderella and Tinkerbell – all in the flesh. Throw in Woody and Buzz, the Lion King, Lilo and Stitch too. And that magnificent fireworks display to cap a spectacular day! Truly magical!

A rickety tram ride to a different high at Victoria Peak where all Hong Kong lies beneath your feet. The view from the top affords everyone the spectacular sight of the skyscrapers around Victoria Harbor.
Amid that edifice complexity, still stands – let the inner eye find it – the yin and yang of concrete jungle and forest green, of the duality that makes the once British colony whole throughout its history.

Alas, my heart broke at the irretrievable loss of one of my favorite spots – the Avenue of the Stars – in Kowloon overlooking the skyscrapers of Hong Kong Island across Victoria Harbour.

Where I used to sit at Starbucks on the waterfront, shooting the breeze and watching the spectacular light show, is now being built a titanic corporate monolith. Bruce Lee’s statue and those of Run Run Shaw and Anita Mui uprooted and placed on an upper promenade. Along with the handprints of the other stars like Jet Li and Jacky Chan.                        

Why, even the lights seem to lack now their dazzling brilliance of before. Yes, the once most prominent marquee lights of Hitachi are no more. I remembered them well, serving as signposts to where my son lived for over two years before moving to Tokyo.   

Alack, no night marketing at Mongkok or street food-tripping can compensate for my sense of loss for the Avenue of the Stars. Assuaged somewhat though by a visit at Madame Tussauds, with photo-ops galore with the powerful – from Mao and Deng to Gandhi and Obama, the great – from Picasso to Rembrandt to Shakespeare, the famous – in music like Gaga and Madonna, The Beatles and Freddie Mercury; in sports like Ali, Ming, Sharapova and Beckham; in film like Depp and Bogart, local boys Jacky Chan and Bruce Lee, plus Marvel heroes Spiderman, Wolverine and The Hulk.

None can compare though to a make-believe sit-in breakfast at Tiffany’s with the lovely Audrey Hepburn, smitten by her all my life since watching her Sabrina, filmed the year before I was born.    

Then, an even greater emotional high. The rush of tourists has not the least diminished the meaning to my every coming to Ngong Ping for the Big Buddha and the Po Lin monastery.

The 25-minute cable car ride over mountain and sea affords the inner self to see the transience of life, the ephemeralness of beauty, amid nature’s majesty. Calm, inner calm, sets in at the very sight of the Buddha, still afar, shrouded in mist over mountains of green.

Hence, no unpleasant distractions but moments of mindfulness then are the cacophony of tongues, the whirr of videocams, the clicks of DSLRs, the flashes of mobiles up the 286 steps to the Buddha.

So did you hear a bird singing in your hear by the concrete incense holders leading to the monastery? Then, the Buddha bids you to come. Om ah om mani padme hum.

Tai O village is not in your usual tourist itinerary – as Tondo can never make it as a Manila tour destination. But it draws its own the droves of tourists. The warren of houses on stilts and wooden draw bridges over a little lagoon draining to the open sea where sightings of China’s white dolphins are recorded, plus its streets lined up with stalls selling fresh and dried sea bounties make the very attraction to this quaint fishing village.

(Maybe, Navotas and Malabon in Metro Manila, as well as Hagonoy in Bulacan and Masantol and Sasmuan in Pampanga can pick it up from there.) 

And going back by ferry to Tan Chung where commenced the Ngong Ping tour beats a bus ride anytime. An added thrill -- passing between the piers of the 45-kilometer bridge connecting Hong Kong to Macau now under construction.

Now, there’s a tour package in the offing -- Hong Kong drive to Macau.

Which merits yet another comeback.
I heart HK. And CebPac even more. Obvious ba?   

         

Blind side

WE SHOULD have seen this coming.

As early as the presidential campaign, Rodrigo Duterte already declared he would allow the burial of the long dead Ferdinand E. Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, if he won.

And he was voted into office with that funerary agendum a priority in his immediate to-do list. Maybe not by a majority, but just as convincingly.

President Duterte has never wavered in that position, proffering various grounds on which he stands: from familial connections – his father being a member of the pre-martial law Marcos Cabinet, to his sense of gratitude particularly to Ilocos Norte Gov. Imee Marcos for her role in his victory – didn’t he, at one time, say the Marcos firstborn was a top campaign financier?

As firm, if not even firmer ground, is Duterte’s unshakeable faith in the greatness of Marcos as a Filipino, and his worthiness to be buried at the national cemetery for heroes being not only a soldier but moreso a President, fully subscribing to all the laws and regulations prescribed for interment therein. Why, did not Duterte himself dictate the Department of National Defense to lay the groundwork for Marcos’ burial, even as that was challenged by anti-Marcos groups?        

The law – Duterte earlier reminded the Supreme Court – not emotions must make the sole basis for its ruling.

Thus, it came to pass that Marcos by a 9-5-1 decision of the High Court gets to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Instant was the resbak ­– “Marcos is no hero” and “Marcos Traydor sa Bayan” protest rallies at UP, Ateneo, Quezon Memorial, in the cities of Baguio, Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, and yes, Davao.    

Onli in da Pilipins. That a “reviled dictator” ousted by his own people will now be buried in hallowed grounds exclusive to the nation’s heroes!

As elsewhere, tyrants get their right dues – Fascist Italy’s Benito Mussolini shot, trampled upon and hung upside down with mistress Clara Petacci; Romania’s strongman Nicolai Ceausescu and wife Elena shot by firing squad; Iraq’s Saddam Hussein hanged; Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi impaled then shot.

Yeah, only in the Philippines that an abominable despot gets accorded with heroism.

Along that same vein, only in this country too that failed coup plotters get elected to office. Or have we forgotten the couple of coup pals still holding on to their Senate seats after losing in the last vice presidential race? 

As elsewhere, these types of renegades get death either by hanging or firing squad too. Or at the least, long sentences of hard labor.

Which, if only from these two instances, the global normal becomes but an aberration to us.

We should have seen this coming.

School textbooks glossed over the excesses of Marcos’ martial rule, with  outlandish claims of the infrastructure development it brought about, of rice sufficiency and even exportation, of poverty eradication. Absent absolutely human rights violations.   

The historical revisionism spread in social media of martial law as one golden age of the republic, of the full flowering of the culture and the arts, of the Imeldific’s “the good, the true and the beautiful,” of a socio-economic development paradigm which, had it not been for the EDSA Uno interference, would have certainly made the Philippines as great, if not even greater than Singapore.

We should have seen where all that could be leading.  

With Marcos Jr. almost winning – he still believes he is the real winner – the vice presidential race. An undisputable show of a nationwide political mass base there.

We should have seen this coming.

The Supreme Court’s flip-flopping consistency in its decisions – from the tax cases of one of the country’s richest tycoons to the cityhood status of a score of municipalities.

Easy then for the SC to find no contradiction between its over 20 decisions naming Marcos a dictator and recognizing the human rights violations his regime inflicted upon the Filipino people and in its latest decision to honor him with a hero’s burial. Dictator-hero is no oxymoron. It is simply moronic.

Ayayay, as idiotic as that Chief Justice at the height of the dictatorship reducing himself to umbrella man of Imelda the Beautiful. Come to think of it, the SC has a slavish tradition with the Marcoses, no?

Indeed, we saw all these coming.

So we did our ritual sporadic whimpering. With the inevitability of the moment already at hand. Our proclivity for the eleventh hour ever pushing the worst in us.

Nunquam iterum. Never again. So, we now wail. So, we now weep.

Never again? Nay. It shall ever be all over again. And again. And again. And again.

Santayana in paraphrase now: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to an even worse dictatorship.  

No, we do not simply forget our past. We reformat it. And all the more are we damned.

Yes, the change promised to come is nut. We still laugh. Even as the joke is on us.    

Net worthy

QUARRY REVENUES have topped a whopping P1.919 billion by the end of October this year dating from the ascendancy of Lilia G. Pineda to the governorship of Pampanga in July 2010.

From January to October 2016, collections amounted to P311,420,000 – more than the quarry revenues from the full years of 2010 to 2013. Last month’s collection alone totaled P29,980,000 beating all October records in the past six years.

At the current rate of things, we have to agree with the Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office that the all-time highest annual total of P343,160,000 in 2014 will be breached this year. Well into reaching – with more than enough to spare – Gov. Pineda’s set target of P2 billion in quarry collections before she steps down in June 2019.

The quarry revenues long time euphemized as “the jewel in the sand” find their greatest sparkle in the programs and projects the Pineda administration poured upon Pampanga redounding to the socio-economic well-being of the cabalen constituency.

Yeah, no governor has ever collected as much revenues for the provincial coffers, and delivered as much services to the people other than the Kapampangan’s Nanay.  Indeed, as old time observers avow, the accomplishments of all past governors combine can only approximate but a third of hers.     

With such sound fiscal management of local resources, it comes naturally for Pampanga to be catapulted to the 10 Richest Provinces of the Philippines – the one and only from Central Luzon in that crème de la crème roster.

Based on the 2015 Annual Financial Report of the Commission on Audit – the latest from the constitutional agency – Pampanga has a net worth of P4.24 billion, out of assets worth P5.59 billion and liabilities of P1.35 billion. Truly worth the Seal of Good Local Governance bestowed upon the provincial government recently by the Department of the Interior and Local Government.    

The elite list is led by perennial topnotcher Cebu at P28.53 billion net worth,  followed by Rizal, P8.11 billion; Negros Occidental, P5.6 billion; Laguna, P5 billion; Negros Oriental, P4.96 billion; Pangasinan, P4.76 billion; Cavite, P4.59 billion; Batangas, P4.5 billion; Leyte, P4.45 billion; and Pampanga.

In the same COA Report, the City of San Fernando registered a net worth of P1.54 billion, commensurate to its elevation to the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s hall of fame as Most Business-Friendly Component City.

How the city government managed its resources though is not as clearly transparent as the provincial government’s. Why, this biased bystander sees the folly in that newly completed complete bridge leading smack to the back of a house in Barangay San Jose as single, greatest representation of the Santiago administration’s public spending.  

Highly urbanized Angeles City on the other hand notched P1.29 billion net worth, which does not do justice any to its No. 8 World Mayor Prize winner Edgardo Pamintuan. Nor to the city itself, long heralded as Central Luzon’s premier cosmopolitan hub.

Ain’t San Fernando – by the admission of Mayor Edwin Santiago himself – but a veritable subordinate suburb to Angeles in terms of development opportunities?

What gives with this sudden reversal of fortune, so to speak? I wonder what Northern Luzon’s premier business club – the Metro Angeles Chamber of Commerce and Industry – has to say on this seeming fiscal performance anomaly. 

I grant that Mabalacat City has still long ways to go playing catch-up with its fellow cities with its P546.44 million net worth.

Still, that the “engine of economic development of the country” that is the Clark Freeport Zone and all the peripheral developments it generates are shared in virtual duopoly by Angeles and Mabalacat, yet San Fernando beat them in terms of financial net worth bespeak volumes in interpretations, conjectures, even malicious speculations on management styles of their leaders. On their very integrity as well.

Else, they have to prove the 2015 COA Report got it all wrong. 

Performance challenged

A FEW days before Halloween, 306 local government units throughout the country were conferred the “much coveted” Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) by the Department of the Interior and Local Government.

Among the top awardees – if not the topmost – was Pampanga with the provincial government, its two component cities of San Fernando and Mabalacat, the City of Angeles, and 10 of its 19 municipalities as recipients.

At the awarding ceremonies, Interior and Local Government Secretary Ismael D. Sueno hailed this year’s celebration as a “huge milestone,” coming as it is on the 25^th anniversary of the Local Government Code which has been praise released as having “ushered in a new era of empowering LGUs to become partners in national development and conduits for grassroots-level democracy and community participation, vigilance and volunteerism in pursuit of local development.”

Said Sueno: “We find a deeper meaning in this year’s celebration because while we have achieved a lot in terms of empowering and making local government units more self-reliant, we need to set our sights on further strengthening local autonomy under a federal system of government.”

Hence, this year’s celebratory theme “LGC@25: Pagsulong, Progreso, Pagbabago,” that, Sueno explained, “is a call to all LGUs to continue their pursuit of performance excellence in local governance and development.”

And, as though to drive Sueno’s point even deeper, the SGLG award coming with Performance Challenge Fund, a financial incentive which can be utilized for the implementation of local development projects.

That only 306 of the country’s 1,672 LGUs earned the 2016 SGLG bespoke of the highest – not to mention, stringent – standards that guided the selection process.

Explained DILG-3 Director Florida Dijan: “To be conferred with the SGLG, an LGU must pass three core criteria: financial administration, disaster preparedness, and social protection as well as any of the following essential criteria: business friendliness and competitiveness, peace and order, and environmental protection.”

A cursory look at the roster of the Pampanga awardees, exempting the provincial government – the LGUs of the cities of Angeles, San Fernando and Mabalacat, and the towns of Apalit, Floridablanca, Guagua, Lubao, Magalang, Mexico, Minalin, San Luis, San Simon, and Sta. Rita – made not a few keen political observers and analytical coffeeshop habitues doubt: 1) the worthiness of the choices -- not all, but a number of them nonetheless; and 2) the soundness of the application of the criteria.

Well-timed, they said of the 2016 SGLG awarding rites pre-undas, suggesting ghosts and ghouls got into the act: Minulto na, namaligno pa.

So was the ratio between IRA (internal revenue allotment) dependency and locally sourced revenues factored in the aspect of financial administration? Ditto the approved budget against actual expenditure of the LGUs, the preponderance of supplementary budgeting, collection target accomplishments? Were COA reports on the LGUs considered?

Disaster preparedness covers not only incidents of calamities such as typhoons, floods and fires. Traffic is a current disaster in all the cities of Pampanga showing the LGUs’ utter unpreparedness to cope, much less to even just think of any solution.

Social protection? The tragedy of children begging, with or without their parents, of physically-challenged mendicants, of the mentally-lost, all roaming the streets makes a big joke of the SGLG bestowed upon the urban LGUs.

Business friendliness, indeed! What with investments taking precedence over the environment and the well-being of the populace. An already approved – reportedly – steel mill at the foot of Mount Arayat is but the latest expression of that business friendliness of an LGU.

Peace and order, wow! So how many shabu laboratories and warehouses have been discovered within the territorial jurisdiction of those SGLG-conferred LGUs?   

How many killings, both drug-related and not, are in their records?

And, in the case of Mabalacat City a pointed question: What are the ramifications of its LGU getting an SGLG vis-à-vis President Duterte’s allegations of narco-politics smacked at Mayor Marino Morales?

Environmental protection? So how and where do these awarded LGUs dispose of their garbage?  Any one of these in the list of the LGUs with open dumpsites that were taken to court by the Environmental Management Bureau? What is the state of their waterways? The cleanliness and greenness of their communities? The air pollution index of their skies?     

It really makes us wonder how the awardees – not all, but a number of them – low in general public esteem were able to pass the highest standards set for the SGLG. Performance-challenged, how can these LGUs be in any way worthy of that Performance Challenge Fund incentive?  

Here is one noble initiative at meritocracy foolishly devolved to mediocrity.    

Ay, here’s change scammed.