Endlessly, Boking

AT LAST, at last, at long last!

Pockets of jubilation spread through Mabalacat City at the news screamed by the banner headline here Wednesday of PHL’s longest staying mayor ordered evicted. Taken further to ecstatic heights with the kicker Comelec en banc decision unanimous.

Making the eviction seeming all-too definitive in the poll body’s 7-0 affirmation of its First Division’s resolution of August 3, 2016 cancelling the certificate of candidacy of the incumbent mayor and ordering the local board of canvassers to “reconvene, annul the proclamation of Marino P. Morales, proclaim the candidate with the next highest votes, and effect the necessary corrections in the Certificate of Canvass and Proclamation.”
Victory! Claimed one sore loser in the last elections, instantly grabbing all credit for “Boking’s downfall,” the half-dozen supporters joining in.

Cautionary, rather than celebratory though, is the air around the man who stands to gain the most – Crisostomo C. Garbo, misnomered as second placer according to the Comelec resolution, given Morales’ disqualification to run ab initio and therefore of no account in the political exercise, no matter the avalanche of votes to his name.

Garbo – along with the greater part of the city constituency – knows Boking only too well, the optimum prime in the mayor ever rising out of the direst of circumstances, out of the worst of crises he periodically gets sunk in.         
Boking agonistes. How many times have I made that a title in my columns chronicling the mayor’s innumerable “defeats” whence emerged him ultimately triumphant?

The end of Boking. Can there be a worse ending than his being included in the President’s list of narco-politicians? That, Duterte himself announced in early August last year.

And Boking has since been chosen by the Duterte government – according to an uncontested city government PR, at least – as one of the local government executives sent to Washington D.C. for a study on federalism; awarded for outstanding performance in social services, fiscal management, education, and – surprise, surprise – in the campaign against illegal drugs.

That is getting to the end of the story though. Meanwhile…

The end of Boking. Political pundits readily wrote the mayor off in the 2010 elections when his own daughter Marjorie Morales-Sambo ran most acrimoniously against him, airing all the dirty family linen in public.       

Here’s a take from a Zona at that time: …Mayor Boking’s projection, nay, sincere portrayal of a father pained to near-devastation by a daughter’s betrayal but still forgiving, still loving her, and remaining hopeful, pining for her requited love.
But real, all too real was Mayor Boking’s pain. The Parable of the Prodigal Son, albeit transgendered and transposed in Mabalacat, unraveled here.

And Boking won the elections by the widest margin ever.

The end of Boking. Months leading to the 2004 elections, Marino P. Morales – having served as mayor since 1995, and therefore, beyond the three-term limit – was struck off the official list of candidates for mayor of Mabalacat.

Premature was the celebration of his rivals when barely three weeks before election day, Morales’ name was re-instated in the ballot. And, as expected, all the other candidates were reduced to also-ran again.

The end of Boking. Yes, indeed, the Comelec declared Morales loser to perennial rival Anthony Dee “via protest” in the 2011 polls, albeit the decision issued a month before the next election, enabling Boking to seek and get a TRO preventing the luckless Dee from assuming the mayoralty post even but for a second. This “loss,” along with a six-month suspension from office, provided Boking the “legal” ground for his continuance in the mayorship despite the term limits.

The end of Boking. Five days after filing his certificate of candidacy in October 2016, Boking withdrew in favor of his wife, Nina Manipon-Morales, who was nominated by the local Kambilan party.

His solemn declaration: “I’m withdrawing my candidacy for city mayor...I already served my cabalen for the past 21 years with humility and dignity at gusto kong pasalamatan ang mga kababayan ko sa lahat ng suporta.”

That valedictory in October turned salutatory in December, just before the deadline for the filing of COCs, thus: “Uli na ning lugud cu queng canacung indu, ing lugud cu queng canacung pamilya at lugud careng memalen, ing tune igpa ning siyudad Mabalacat, magbalic cu pung pasibayu para magserbisyu quecayu, (For the love of my mother, my family and my constituents, as the real father of Mabalacat City, I have decided to return to serve you anew).”

And Morales, under the Aksyon Demokratiko Party, winning again with 40,147. His closest pursuer Garbo garnering 17,710 votes.

Argued Garbo: “Though he won by a landslide… he cannot override the constitutional requirements,” referencing the three-term limit that prompted him to file a quo warranto case.

The Comelec resolution though was on the petition of Pyra Lucas, fourth placer in the mayoralty contest, seeking the cancellation of Morales’ COC and to disqualify him from running for mayor “since he had already been elected and had served for three consecutive terms for the same position from 2007 to 2013.” 

The end of Boking. In five days’ time, gloated the bitterest of his enemies. The legal remedy open to him – to seek a TRO – said to lapse five days from the issuance of the Comelec order, that would be Friday, June 3.

Knowing the man in the mayor though – just like Garbo and the greater people of Mabalacat – I will refrain as yet from singing swan songs for him.

There’s just much too much to this endless ending of Boking.  

Twisted

LAST FRIDAY, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines publicized an open letter to the Philippine News Agency, the news service of the government of the Republic of the Philippines under the care of the Presidential Communications Operations Office headed by Sec. Martin M. Andanar.

This concerned the obvious “creative interpretation” -- read: twisting – of the facts obtaining from the recent Universal Periodic Review in Geneva, Switzerland of the country’s human rights record.

The letter reads:

WE ARE writing about the posting of at least two almost identical news items that were posted on the Philippine News Agency site on May 15 (http://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/987860) and May 20 (http://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/989437) about DILG Assistant Secretary Epimaco Densing’s claim on the supposed position of 95 of the 105 countries that participated in the recent Universal Periodic Review in Geneva, Switzerland.

Please treat this letter as both an inquiry as well as a protest into the use of what we have always considered a legitimate news agency to “legitimize” the blatant manipulation of the truth, a charge that, ironically, has repeatedly been leveled at other media outfits by no less than President Rodrigo Duterte, his spokespersons and other government officials, thus fueling anger among administration supporters that has led to the harassment and threatening of journalists.

While we do not question your editorial prerogatives and do understand that you face certain limitations as a government-run news service, we do wonder how Mr. Densing’s comments, which apparently run counter to all other accounts of the positions the participant-countries to the UPR actually registered, could have been reported so uncritically.

Worse, these were reported not once but twice, with slight rewriting in the second version, as witness below, in an apparent (to our mind) attempt at slightly shifting the focus from that of the first article, which was so obviously – we are sorry but there is no other term applicable – fake from the get-go:

95 nations in 3rd UPR convinced no EJKs in PHL
MANILA, May 15 -- Ninety-five out of 105 countries that attended the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in Geneva, Switzerland were convinced that extra judicial killings (EJK) is non-existent in the Philippines.

DILG Assistant Sec. Epimaco Densing, in a press conference on Monday, said the Philippines received congratulatory messages as they noted that this is the first time they heard that the figures reaching them were “spoiled and rotten information.”

PHL's human rights situation commended at UPR
MANILA, May 20 -- A total of 95 of the 109 attendees of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) held in Geneva, Switzerland early this month commended the Philippines for its improved human rights situation.

Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) Assistant Secretary Epimaco Densing said majority or 87 percent of the participants praised the Philippines after the team presented the human rights-based development programs of the government and the measures adopted to fulfill its obligations to the eight international treaties ratified in the past years.

We do understand the need for PNA and other state-affiliated outfits to project as strongly as possible the government’s side on current issues and controversies. But does this include peddling falsehoods?

That what Densing professes to be the truth is clearly not is evident even with a cursory reading through the Universal Periodic Review’s official Database of Recommendations (https://www.upr-info.org/database/index.php?limit=0&f_SUR=137&f_SMR=All&order&orderDir=ASC&orderP=true&f_Issue=All&searchReco&resultMax=100&response&action_type&session&SuRRgrp&SuROrg&SMRRgrp&SMROrg&pledges=RecoOnly).

It has not helped that the first PNA story has already been picked up and exploited by fake news sites, which peddle Densing’s canard to counter the international concern over the current human rights situation in the country and to further smear mainstream media outfits that have reported accurately on the REAL position of the countries that attended the UPR.

Our concern over the use of PNA to legitimize fake news also stems from the possible implications this poses on the professional reputations and yes, the safety of our many upright colleagues who work for the venerable news agency and continue, despite the challenges they face, to keep it reputable and worthy of people’s trust.

As a media organization and as citizens of this Republic, we demand and expect an answer from a news agency funded by our taxes and which we, therefore, technically own.

Looking forward to your response, we thank you very much.

(SGD.) THE DIRECTORS
National Union of Journalists of the Philippines

Joe Pavia

SO, WHAT would have Joe Pavia said?

Asked me ABS-CBN News’ Jojo Pasion Malig in a tag on the NUJP letter.

Joe Pavia was the most respected long-time general manager of the PNA and no-nonsense editor of a number of publications from the pre- to the post-martial law eras, as well as chair of the Philippines Press Institute.

To say that Joe Pavia is a pillar of Philippine journalism is an understatement.

I’ve been so privileged to have come under his tutelage while still in college as stringer of PNA-Pampanga Bureau. And honored at having been invited by him, along with my former PNA immediate boss Fred Roxas and friend Peping Raymundo, to be a co-founder of SunStar-Clark in 1995 that latr morphed to SunStar-Pampanga.

So what would have Joe Pavia said?  

Melasac ne sa ing editorial desk qng dugdug na; mengaclac no ngan qng gulisac na (The editorial desk would have been shattered by the slam of his fists; everybody there would have had blasted eardrums with his scream).

The mantra every journalist fortunate enough to have been mentored by Joe Pavia is “Accuracy. Accuracy. Accuracy.” Be it in a news story on in an headline.

No, he would never settle for simple fact-checking. It had to be checked, rechecked, cross-referenced with all possible sources for a final check.

And then, Joe Pavia had this never-the-twain-shall-meet rule with news vis-à-vis opinion writing. At SunStar-Clark, he expressly enjoined me to lay off news stories as I was already writing a column and the editorials. Precisely, as news is bound by facts, and columns/editorials stand on opinions.

Yes, with this fictive turn at the PNA, Joe Pavia could only be turning and tossing in his grave.  

Golpe de Duterte

I AM not religious but for the love of God, please enlighten me how some people, especially from progressive, liberal and leftist backgrounds in the Philippines, can be livid at Trump's ineptitude and stupidity yet support the same sick values championed by Duterte (no need to explain anymore to non-Filipino friends who Duterte is as he is now a household word in progressive circles here in the US for the wrong and f--ing embarrassing reasons)?

Do not make it a competition please on who is worse, as Filipino culture is wont to do (like, eh si Trump ganito, buti pa si Duterte ganito because that is motherf--ing bullshit). Both are a disgrace to humanity. Am I missing something?

Posted on Facebook our former colleague in local journalism, the then very young S. Chandler Ramas III, now well-established in the US of A as labor union organizer, political strategist and social activist.   

Even as he pulled no punches, Chandler ceded some benefit-of-the-doubt objectivity: I try to see the light in this twisted position, maybe disliking Trump and supporting Duterte is better than supporting Trump and Duterte altogether?

To no avail: Now, that is f--ed up, lol.

Conflicted values, somebody made a shout out at this same-same-but-love-one-and-hate-the-other complexity. Or should that be dichotomy?

Mindful inconsistency – whatever that means – cried another.

Deviant intellection – whatever that is – howled one more.

Whatever. As they flock together, birds of a feather get to be plucked just the same way. Falsity goes the truism embedded in that oft-cited idiom as instanced here: Trump and Duterte posited as one of a kind, but totally different just the same. Oxymoron played out there too.  

Harrumphed Chandler: Kung makatuligsa ke Trump, wagas, which the orange buffoon deserves I know. Pero pag makapuri at magdepensa sa kabulastugan ng a--mal at hay-p na Duterte, daig pa sa wagas. Lalu na ang mga pulitiko na dating lumaban sa diktadurang Marcos, ano kaya, nakulam ba (ang) mga ito?

No, Chandler. Neither kulam nor barang, not even the most potent voodoo spell, might have been cast on these politicians self-aggrandized as having been “forged in the crucible of the Marcos dictatorship,” arrogating unto themselves the honorific “champion of human rights,” bequeathing to them and them alone the monopoly of the people’s struggle against martial law, and gaining for themselves and for their extended kin more than enough political capital stock to both rule and reign in the public domain.      

They are those the unrepentant, unrecognized aktibista of the old order spit at as queso de bola – as much for the color: bloody red on the outside, royal, if craven, yellow inside, as for their propensity for beguiling the masa with their…what else, pambobola. Cheesy as they can get, and stinking too.

Yes, they are the first and noisiest to cry Nunquam Iterum! – Never Again! – clenched fist up in the air, every September 21, in somber remembrance of the day Marcos snuffed out democracy in the country, ever reminding their audience of their role in the struggle which gets ever bigger through the years.

Conversely, theirs too were the first and loudest shouts of “Yes, Yes Yes” last May 23, the day Duterte put terror-besieged Mindanao under martial law, if only to please their current patron.

So, ferociously they fought Marcos’ martial law.

So, totally they support Duterte’s martial law.

Glaring inconsistency glossed over, unreasoningly, as “different stand for different fellas in different times.” The irrationality all too conspicuous in Duterte himself proclaiming affinity of his military diktat to the Marcosian martial misrule: “So kayong mga kababayan ko, you have experienced martial law it will not be any different from what President Marcos did. I’ll be harsh.”

Harshness, Duterte justified thus: “I have to do it to preserve the Republic of the Philippines.”

Instantly evoking the Dictator’s similar justification for his: “I did not become President to preside over the death of the Republic.” 

Indeed, as Marcos’ martial law was grounded “as a last defense against two grave dangers to the state. One was a rebellion mounted by a strange conspiracy of leftist and rightist radicals. The other was a secessionist movement supported by foreign groups,” so is Duterte’s against the strangest conspiracy of drug lords founding a terrorist group backed up by right-wing coup pals and supported by foreign Islamists. And that is but the most recent permutation of Duterte’s casus belli for his martial (mis)adventure.

Still, the red-once unceasing in their hallelujahs to Duterte’s golpe de gulat. Proving not so much the depth of their supposed immersion in dialectical materialism as the obvious perversion in their diametrical contradiction. Indeed, their corruption of historical materialism most manifest in their acquiescence to the revision of Philippine history, and their reduction of a Marxist philosophy to plain human greed. Ay, the much heralded conscientization of their youth ageing most disgracefully to unconscionability. Anyare, kasama?

Marcos is dead!

Marcos is buried!

Marcos is resurrected,

Duterte, long live!

Unlearned of our past, we are a people dumbed. We are a nation damned.

Santayana, alas!

Rosary-driven

THE OUTCRY has dissipated. The Department of Transportation has deferred the implementation of RA 10913 or the Anti-Distracted Driving Act.

So, all’s well?

Not quite to this corner. Especially as the deferment is but a temporary relief to allow some fine tuning, not to the law, but to its implementing rules and regulations.  

With the ADDA, the government agencies impacted with that universal notoriety for corrupted imbecility – read: drivers’ licenses and registration plates paid for but unreleased for years, colorum buses and way-out-of-line jeepneys proliferating unchecked, the fixity of fixers in their premises, etc. – exercised sound judgment finally, albeit, as it turned out, with no finality.

For, not even one who is in his sanest least dare see driving safety in texting, or hand-held phoning. And yes, in sipping your Starbucks concoction too. Much, much less in women – and others – making the rearview mirror for a Max Factor or Revlon compact.

The DOTr agencies are absolutely right in pushing the ADDA to make driving safe, and the road safer. Honest.

And, contrary to the shrillest opposition to the implementation of the ADDA, I find rosaries dangling from rearview mirrors as indeed distractive. The most distractive, in fact, of all possible distractions to driving. Honest.

But do I wish that rosaries be included among the ADDA prohibitions? Nah!

As theirs is the distraction that is not in any way destructive, and, au contraire, most constructive, indeed holy-istic.

Instinct turns ballistic at a loaded gravel and sand dump truck that nearly runs you to the gutter – by a mere glance at the rosary comes a remembering of la primera de las siete palabras of the Man hanging there – “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.”

Homicidal thoughts at jaywalkers crisscrossing the highway, unmindful of the danger they pose to motorists and to themselves, totally mindless of the safety provided them by pedestrian overpasses –

Murderous rage at jeepneys routinely stopping in the middle of the road to load or unload passengers, turning the outermost lane under overpasses into terminals, complete with callboys, er, barkers, insensibly oblivious to the changing colors of the traffic signals there –

Premeditation of pulverizing all tricycles hogging the fast lanes holding traffic to a crawl in national highways –   

Amid all that, traffic aides either looking the other way or in absolute toleration if not active encouragement of the blatant violation of traffic rules and regulations!  

All these ruminations of mayhem, the rosary appeases with that same salvific plea for the ignorant, the idiots and the imbeciles on the road.

Then there’s that reckless daredevil of a motorcyclist that cut across your lane forcing you to a screeching, jolting halt just a kilometer back now sprawled like a bloodied broken ragdoll across the road, his big bike a tangled mess smacked into an acacia tree. Serves him right! Less schadenfreude than malevolent glee one feels at his karmic deserts – turning into instant remorse, the rosary reminding one of the prayer He taught us: “…forgive our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And pray more for his full recovery and fast healing. 

Caught in a traffic jam kilometers-long under the noonday sun of a sweltering summer – sheer suffering meriting the worst damning. Just about to take on Duterte’s pu…ina spiel, lo and behold, the rosary – and come to mind the Sorrowful Mysteries, daggers that pierced the very heart of the Virgin Mother. Aye, what doth thou suffereth now but the lightest of the crosses to bear in one’s quest to be His follower.

And in that air-conditioned torment, find sudden empathy with the sun-grilled traffic enforcers desperately trying to untangle the gridlock: Theirs is the sufferance, mine but a slight inconvenience. God bless them!

Distracted from road rage, by the rosary, delivered from sin as well. There’s the one distracted driving we should all engage in.

Be there ADDA or the usually useless DOTr agencies’ ada-da-da, ado-do-do inanities.          

Boracay, still

NO WAY it’s Boracay.

Friends frantically called, instead of just texted, in utter disbelief at the photo – an expanse of pristine white beach lapped at by clear baby blue waters, verily all to myself – that I uploaded on FB.

Were I not there, neither would have I believed it’s Boracay.

Fixed as we have long been on the overcrowded beach at Stations 1, 2 and 3, the slime of green from algae maculating its whiteness, the monstrosity of topsy-turvy build-build-build-anywhere edifice complex totally obliterating the very core of what once was hailed, fittingly, as the world’s most beautiful beach.

And fixity is one tragedy of the tourist mindset. So, it has become unbelievable that old Boracay’s primeval grandeur and pristine glory still obtain in the island.

Yes, they do. As my photo showed. Newcoast at the northern side of the island makes one believe again.

With 4-star Savoy Hotel – the first of three – as current centerpiece, Newcoast is press released as “the first and only master-planned leisure-oriented community in Boracay.” The PR fleshed out in a two-day stay at the place that lived up to its blurb, “Color your experience.” 

Whatever that experience. But mainly transcendent, this one press junketeer found in the kilometer-long white beach at the foot of the estate. Recalling past state of mindfulness the island once begot, re-incanted now:

…The coconut palms sway, nay, sensuously sashay to the gentlest breeze.
Soft, fine grains, a divinely white bed the sandy beach does make – refuge to the body battered by endless toil…
The waters, yes, the waters. I sit, squat in the waters. Neck deep, arms outstretched to the undulating waves. Ah, life is the sea.
In a trance now. A fish, small, pesky, cautiously now, curiously poking, probing my left hand, the fingers one by one. A second, bigger fish comes, going about like the first one. Then, a whole school of fish around both hands, arms, back, stomach, legs.
A twitch, so sudden. All the fish gone as sudden.
The waters, the waves, the sea. On me. All around me. In me. The sea becomes me. The oneness of being. Nirvana, here.
That quietude of om, its resultant spirituality dissipating not so gently, aye, in fact  imploding in the sheer sensuality of the Boracay we all know – the endless spectacle of bodies of all shades, shapes and sizes in varied state of undress, the ear-splitting music blaring from those humongous loudspeakers right at the beach, the paraw sails now parading company logos, the banana boats and parasails, the hawkers of just about anything consumable or collectible.

The iconic rock – the coral formation that rose from the depths, dead from sun and wind, hardened to host new life in small trees and shrubs, de-natured and with a man-made grotto to the Virgin Catholicized – still top draw, not so much for pilgrims – is there any in Bora? – as for the obligatory we-wuz-there selfie or groupie shoot.

A hedonistic Eden this part of Boracay has remained, since its “discovery” by cash-strapped European backpackers in the early 1970s. I first set foot on the island in the mid-1980s, when Pink Patio marked the edge of the “developed” area, when buildings did not rise beyond two floors and built of local materials, when one-piece swimsuits – only the bottom part – were the fashion du jour.  So much – in infrastructure – has changed. So much – in cross-enculturation – has stayed.   

Of culture, say what one must, will or can. Say whatever. Still, the tourists flock here.

All the way, that’s Boracay for them. Not so much for the worse, as for the better. And for my discriminating friends, if only for a greater appreciation of Newcoast and the finer lifestyle of leisure it offers.

Yes, beyond the Divisoria-Greenhills-Makati of old that morphed to Stations 3, 2 and 1 segmented options for the tourist, Boracay now offers its choicest cut in the Newcoast Station.     

And a bonus for us, both daughters and sons of beaches: Boracay is now but a short hour-and-20-minutes away from Clark, via Cebu Pacific. Daily. On time. Even ahead of time, on our return flight. Swell.  

  
         

Over da bakod

 "AFTER THE elections, 115 congressmen were voted into office as Liberal Party members. But the attraction and admittedly the benefits of being part of the good graces of Malacañang were hard to resist. Thus, the exodus of party members to the fold of the new ruling party."

So lamented LP president Sen. Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan of partymates who jumped ship for the gravy of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan of President Duterte.

Exodus, indeed, as the husband of Sharon Cuneta aced it: “Unto the land flowing with milk and honey…” the Holy Book defined it, translated to perks and privileges exclusive to the powers-that-are.

"Wala pong pangako na mga benepisyo, walang dagdag proyekto, walang dagdag budget. Ito po talaga ay boluntaryong pagsapi namin na sa PDP."

So protested Quezon City 2nd District Rep. Winston Castelo of Pangilinan’s rationalization of their over da bakod stunt. 

"The best way to achieve our oath of office and deliver the services that we promised last election is to go in this direction and join the administration's party...So walang promise of additional budget kung hindi ang overriding factor po nito ay suportahan ang legislative agenda ng ating Pangulo at ma-deliver 'yung serbisyo na ating ipinangako sa taong bayan," Castelo said. He may have articulated as well the reasons of his fellow fence-jumpers like Bataan Rep. Geraldine Roman, Lanao del Sur Rep. Ansaruddin Adiong, North Cotabato Rep. Nancy Catambo, and Quezon City 5^th District Rep. Alfred Vargas.

Off hand, we would like to posit: Walang dagdag…so, it means mayroon naman in projects, in budget for the good of the constituents. Ain’t that enough to serve them?

Suportahan ang legislative agenda ng ating Pangulo: This is by no means exclusive to the ruling party, opposition members having crossed party lines – as in the death penalty bill, as in the Gina Lopez confirmation hearings, etc. – pursuant to the President’s agenda. So why change parties pa?

Still, we cannot and will not fault Castelo, et al for abandoning LP, especially as he invoked that it was the people they are sworn to serve that moved them to cross to PDP-Laban: “Nagpunta po kami sa aming mga constituents. At ang napag-alamanan po namin na itong desisyon na ito ang direksyon na makakatulong sa kanila." Not merely implying but verily Impacting there a principled stand grounded on the will of the people. Aye, representative governance at its best here. Kuno.

It does not in any way mean that we believe him, or any of his ilk, though. Else, we accede to an insult to our intelligence.

Any politician invoking the “people principle” – most especially as cause for changing parties – ought to be shot…er, shouted, for hypocrisy.

For, as we cited here time and again with circumstances proving us right: In politics “no one acts on principles or reasons from them.”    

What with politicians being “…the vilest and the narrowest of sycophants and courtiers that humanity has ever known; their sole end basely to flatter and develop all popular prejudices, which, for the rest, they but vaguely share, never having consecrated one minute of their lives to reflection and observation.”
So wrote Monsieur Leroy Beaullieu of the French kind in the 1890s yet, but finding timeless and universal affirmation in all species of the political animal.

Expediency and convention, utility and interests – self-serving, vested interests, make the fundamental matters – we could not dare write principles here and desecrate the word – whence politics breeds.

“Itong desisyon na ito ay hindi naman abrupt decision. Dumaan po ito sa proseso.” Oh, spare us, Castelo.

Balimbingan, it is. The game of musical chairs, or the dance of changing partners, transposed to politics. So it is euphemized.
Butterflies flitting from one flower to the other, seeking the sweetest nectar. So politicos engaged in it are metaphored. And, put in simile, like rats abandoning a sinking, if not already sunk, ship, where the LP is now instanced.  
Political prostitution, so one wag once went graphically ballistic about it.
Strange bedfellows politics does indeed make. So, sworn foes today are the sweetest friends in the next polls. The party pooper in the last elections becomes the party boy in the next.
Opportunism being the elemental rule governing Philippine politics.
Thus, it was with Marcos’ Kilusang Bagong Lipunan – the political monolith at the time of the dictatorship, only to disintegrate with the ascendancy of the coalition centered on the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino bannered by the sainted Cory Aquino.

Thus, it was with Lakas-NUCD-UMDP with the FVR presidency, losing its members to Partido ng Masang Pilipino during Erap’s all-too-brief interregnum.

Hallelujah, it was Lakas-CMD at the time of Gloria, only to be abandoned – oh, so ingloriously – for BS Aquino III’s yellow LP.

So, it is now with PDP-Laban, drawing all political bees and butterflies, birds and beasts to the sweet scent of honey.

As it shall ever be for the Castelos, Romans, Adiongs, Catambos, and their ilk. Until the next party in power.

Can’t help now but think of Quezon – “My loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my country begins.”

Alas, the Castila did not live long enough to instill an incontrovertible truth to that truism.

Hence, party loyalty remains a contradiction in terms, and loyalty to the country, as true as the Iskariot’s devotion to the Christ.

Sex bombed

MANOMA – Makati north of Manila.

No idle daydream but a vision clearly in the offing for his beloved Mabalacat City is Mayor Marino “Boking” Morales’ compelling mission in this his umpteenth term as hizzoner.

And my, how he pursues that to near obsession with anything popping and everything upping in his city stamped “Manoma.” His latest leap: the city’s five-year, four-phased P3-billion development plan covering the bus terminal, the city college, a new-public market, and a techno-economic hub through private-public partnership. Oh, so Makati.

This, aside from major road networking through the Clark Freeport peripheries to be funded by the Clark Development Corp. Oh, not so Binay, thank you.

Boking has started channeling Duterte-as-mayor too, minus the body bags though, in a no-nonsense anti-drug campaign – himself setting the standard with periodic drug tests among local officials, the formation of citizens’ anti-drug abuse movements, providing the police with what it takes to successfully wage its war on drugs, pursuing the rehabilitation of reformed druggies, etcetera.

Aye, no clearer or wider a road to his legacy city than this being blazed by Boking.

Alas, only to be bombed out by the dailymail.co.uk with its take of the Associated Press story that burned the web Wednesday, kilometrically and graphically headlined Filthy mattresses, toddlers' shoes and dog collars: Inside the squalid Philippines home of 'sweating US predator who filmed the sexual abuse of children for international online pedophile ring.'

The Philippine Daily Inquirer did the London daily even better, devoting half its front page to the banner photograph of the “sweating predator” with the screaming headline CYBERSEX DEN BUSTED bulleted: “The arrest of David Timothy Deakin shows one of the darkest corners of the internet, where foreign pedophiles pay facilitators in the Philippines to sexually abuse children, directing their moves through online livestreaming services.”

The story datelined: MABALACAT, Pampanga. The raid dated April 20.
“Vile images” wrote AP of what were found, noting: “Children's underwear, toddler shoes, cameras, bondage cuffs, fetish ropes and stacks of hard drives can be seen scattered throughout the two-bedroom townhouse.”

Calling it “…potentially the largest ever seizure of illicit digital content in the country…the authorities reviewing about 30 hard drives, as well as numerous computers, to find suspected buyers and victims…In his computer files, videos and images of children engaged in sex acts were allegedly found.” 

Citing: “This relatively new crime, webcam sex tourism, is spreading rapidly…The United Nations describes ‘alarming growth of new forms of child sexual exploitation online’.”

Adding: “The FBI says it’s epidemic, and that at any given moment, 750,000 child predators are online…. With almost every case stems from the Philippines.”
The AP story veritably putting Mabalacat City right at ground zero of the child predatory epidemic. 

Least of Makati of the North for Boking’s city here; most of Sodom north of Gomorrah there.

Heritage of sin   

“Our culinary expertise is beyond compare. Let us claim it!”

Exhorted Angeles City Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan of the chefs/culinary experts that formed Culinarya Pampanga only last Monday, which “cements our claim that Pampanga, specifically Angeles City, is the country’s premier culinary destination.”

Cuisine is just the latest point in the heritage agenda being pursued by the World City Mayor Prize awardee to wean Angeles from its Sin City image born and bred by the American occupation of Clark Air Base and, with its end in 1991, preserved and cultivated by a host of other foreign nationals.

Only over a week ago, the city celebrated its main entrée dubbed “the world’s best pork dish” with the Sisig Festival, initiating its campaign for inclusion in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network for Gastronomy.

EdPam has all the reasons to be gung-ho in this cultural revolution he is waging. What with Angeles City claiming back-to-back triumphs for the Grand Prize in the Association of Tourism Officers of the Philippines-Department of Tourism Pearl Awards – for its entries “Revitalizing Heritage in Angeles City” in 2015, and “Safeguarding Angeles City Heritage: Success Stories and Beyond” in 2016.

Alack, the city readily reclaimed its “Sin” tag with the Washington Post’s in-your-face pictorial essay These photos show life for displaced typhoon victims forced into the sex trade first posted on April 28 but soon after gaining wide circulation and still trending as of date.

“Angeles City, dubbed the “Supermarket of Sex,” thrives with foreigners, and Filipina women making money in its bars. Its streets are filled with neon lights, high heels, lingerie and loud music…” making it the go-to-city for victims of disasters, Typhoon Haiyan in this instance.

The story chronicles some days in the lives of sisters Jojo and Gemma who “never planned to come” to Angeles but were forced by the hardship owing to the devastation caused by the super typhoon described as a “feast for human traffickers.”

“For many, leaving the sex trade is not an option. Jojo, like many of the matriarchs in Filipino families, believes she has a responsibility to support her family. She describes nights on the streets of Angeles City as affording small steps in rebuilding a home — going home with a foreigner can get her enough money for hollow blocks or a bit of plywood to repair her family’s roof.” 

But she says, “We have no plans to go back there. Here there’s at least some way to make a living. And here, there’s tequila.”

Some culture there, as much a part of EdPam’s city as its sizzling sisig; as hard to wean from it as from the dish.

Flores de Mayo

CATHECHETICAL INSTRUCTIONS started right after Labor Day. The first lessons: the sign of the cross and its meaning, the mystery of the One True God in Three Persons.
(Always the caveat: The Holy Trinity is a mystery of faith one cannot question. Not even the great Doctor of the Church, St. Augustine, unraveled it. Once Augustine was by the seashore wracking his brains over the mystery. He chanced upon a child cupping water with his hands and pouring it on a hole on the beach. What are you doing? Augustine asked. Transferring the water of the sea to this hole, the child replied. That’s impossible, Augustine was supposed to have remarked. More impossible is to find human explanation to what you are thinking about, the child retorted.)
Three weeks after – through the Our Father- Hail Mary-Glory Be, the Apostles’ Creed and the mysteries of the Holy Rosary, Salve Regina and the Angelus, the Mass, the Ten Commandments, sins – cardinal, mortal, and venial, and the Act of Contrition – came one’s first trip to the curtained box by the entrance of the church to pass the penitential rite.
The day that followed – always a Sunday – in immaculate white, down to the shoes, one skipped breakfast in order to prepare one’s body for the entry of the mystical Body of Christ on his first holy communion.
But not before one, along with all the other first communicants, lined up, flower in hand, singing Indung Alang Musing (Immaculate Mother) to take his turn at offering the blooms – of yellow zinnias and red gumamelas, fragrant white camia and pink roses, suntans in assorted hues and even the violet flowers of banaba – by the foot of an image of the Virgin Mary. (As indeed the catechism lessons always concluded with the same floral offerings, but on a lesser scale.)

That was the Flores de Mayo I have known since youth. That is not the Flores de Mayo I see now.
Mixed with the other Maytime festivity that is the Santacruzan – a dramatization via procession of the search by the Empress Helena of the Cross with her son Constantine in tow – the Flores de Mayo has now evolved with its own sagalas -- rightfully called May queens in some cultures – in their finest evening and formal gowns based on the Filipino baro’t saya, parading through the streets under gaily decorated arkos.
From a religious ceremony in veneration of the Virgin Mary, the Flores de Mayo has been reduced, okay, secularized, to a competition of fashion and a contest of beauty. Indeed, de-Virginized!
At one media conference for a Flores de Mayo event in a mall, I asked the participants what Flores de Mayo meant to them.
The answers were invariable: a religious tradition they, as Catholics, would be proud to be part of; a piece of our cultural heritage that has to be celebrated so as not to be forgotten by the next generations; a celebration of Capampangan beauty.
So I queried, where’s the image of the Virgin Mary here? Everyone was clueless, giving me the glare that said: What Virgin Mary? This is Flores de Mayo, dummy!
I got the tiger look from one of the organizers, imparting: It’s for a good cause too, can’t you see? Its staging is for the benefit of hospital charity patients and poor, poor university scholars. Ain’t that enough for a religious reason?
I have not been invited to the annual staging of the event ever since.

On hindsight now, they were right: Flores de Mayo is a religious rite that is part of a cultural heritage that celebrated beauty. Not of our Catholic and Spanish heritage though, but way earlier in the march of time.
The way it is celebrated today, Flores de Mayo goes back to the pre-Christian era, way, way back to mythical Olympus itself and the worship of its pantheon of gods, in this wise, Bacchus and Aphrodite. Our sagalas taking after the vestal virgins, their couturiers after the eunuchs at the temples and palaces.
And as if these were not enough a desecration of the religious essence of the ceremony, there now are Flores de Mayo celebrations by, for, and of the gay community. One even sported the very funny and punned Flawless de Mayo. Which tortured the Philippine Catholic hierarchy no end.
Neither homophobe nor homophile am I, but a line’s got to be drawn between the unrestrained expression of rights and the disparagement of faith.
Or maybe, I am just a medieval monk lost in contemporary times. Call Grand Inquisitor Torquemada! Save Mother Church! Burn all heretics at the stake!
Good God, what has become of us.

(Reprinted from Zona/May 22, 2008)

May Day evermore

MABUHAY ANG uring manggagawa!

Sahod itaas! Presyo ibaba!

Cries as old as capitalism itself reverberated across the country anew Monday, with the addition of relatively newer hugot lines – End ENDO now! Wakasan ang lahat ng uri ng kontraktualisasyon!

But for the total absence of violence once intrinsic in the celebration of the day – heads bashed, limbs cracked and backs smacked at each strike of the truncheon during police dispersal of rallyists, molotov bombings, etc. – this Labor Day past made like any other of the previous ones.

The government still long in promises and short in deliveries of the “packages” to ameliorate the state of the workingman.

The labor sector demanding inherent rights to live in dignity, that is to work in order to live, rather than the other way ‘round.

The capitalists smug with their ever-spiraling profits.

Stasis. Raising to life anew the twice-dead Marx – in 1883, mortally; in 1991, ideologically with the demise of the Soviet Union. Thus: “Capital is dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking blood from living labor.”
That line in Das Kapital finding manifestation in the poetic protest of Shelly’s Song to the Men of England, fittingly the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and therefore the polluted fountainhead of labor:
“Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.
Sow seed – but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth – let no impostor heap;
Weave robes – let not the idle wear;
Forge guns – in your defense to bear.

This, finding close parallel – hence, affirming the universality of the sufferings of workingmen – in the poignancy of the lines of poet-patriot Ka Amado Hernandez in his Bayang Malaya:
“Bisig na nagsaka’y siyang walang palay;
Nagtayo ng templo’y siyang walang bahay;
Dumungkal ng mina ng bakal at ginto ay baon sa utang;
Lingkod sa pabrika ng damit ay hubad ang mahal sa buhay.”
(The arm that farmed is one without the crops;
The temple builder, without a house;
The one who mined for iron and gold, deep in debt;
The sewer, whose loved ones are naked.) 
Lest, it be still misconstrued – as indeed it has long been – that the workingman’s struggle is pure communist thingy, the Church has had its own take on uplifting the laboring mass. As indeed, Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum of 1891.
Further back into history, St. Ambrose, the fourth century bishop of Milan, took the Parable of the Dives with this censorious swing at the rich: “The earth was established to be in common for all, rich and poor; why do ye rich alone arrogate it to yourselves as your rightful property?   
“You crave possession not so much for their utility to yourself, as because you want to exclude others from them. You are more concerned with despoiling the poor than with your own advantage. You think yourself injured if a poor man possesses anything which you consider a suitable belonging for a rich man; wherever belongs to others you look upon something of which you are deprived.”
Deprivation is the eternal state of the worker. That is fated in capitalist societies, engrossed as they are in “…production not merely the production of commodities … (but) essentially the production of surplus value.”
As Marx furthered: “All surplus value, whatever particular (profits, interests, rent) it may crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labor.”
As it was, so it is: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”

May Day, mayday, Marx evermore!