Tarzan roars

HE TURNED the youngest 83 on Wednesday, June 28, raring – and roaring – to get in the political ring again.

That same day, Carmelo “Tarzan” Lazatin was reported to be eyeing the Balibago chairmanship, if the barangay elections push through this October, and is equally set to reclaim the Angeles City mayorship in 2019.

While he holds the distinction of being the first three-term mayor of the city, it is his being three-term-congressman-plus-two-more that impacted most in the people’s mind. Hence the honorific “Cong” forever twinned to his nickname Tarzan, as fitting a term of endearment as a title of utmost respect.

For the best of reasons, the least of which found in this sketch of the elder statesman in a piece dated June 12, 2011.

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.”
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.
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.

Train to Clark

“THIS BIG project, it used to be just all talk. But under the Duterte administration we will make it a reality. For the first time, a rail project will connect Manila to Central Luzon and it will be completed under the Duterte administration.”

No, Transportation Secretary Arthur P. Tugade, this is not the first time that a rail project will connect Manila to Central Luzon. As late as 1975, trains of the Philippine National Railways served the Manila-Central Luzon line and extended up to San Fernando, La Union far north.

Our Tatalonian Toughie – the moniker we inflicted Tugade with as Clark Development Corp. top honcho, as much for his roots as his demeanor – was correct though that pre-Duterte, the northern express was “just all talk.”

Shortly after President Ramos declared Clark as the country’s premier international gateway in 1994, reports of exploration talks with some Spanish compañía de los ferrocarriles over a Clark-Manila railway ensued. Yes, all talk it turned out to be. 

Indeed, the Clark-Manila railway had become a matter of course in just about every plan – always grandiosely mastered, ever failing to take off – for the Freeport.

It was in the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo though that the talks were concretized in the North Rail Project.

From the original concept of a commuter service and airport express link to Clark, the North Rail sought to revive the old PNR line with a conventional commuter train system. Project implementation started with the gargantuan work of clearing the old line of the informal settlers that occupied its whole length, at the equally gargantuan social engineering cost of their resettlement in clusters of housing developments generically named NorthVilles 1, 2, 3, ad nauseam.

The massive pillars for the railway had reached up to Malolos City when the BS Aquino administration took over from the disgraced GMA. They have remained there since.

The North Rail Project deemed unworthy of, aye, an anochrinism to, the BS’ Daang Matuwid, enmeshed – allegedly – as it was in corruption – what with its funding of $400 million loaned from the China Import-Export Bank, and incompetence – on the part of both local implementors and the mandated Chinese contractor Sinomach, formerly China National Machinery and Equipment Corp., with little, if any, experience – allegedly – in railway construction.

This is neither apología for GMA nor acquiescence to the purported corruption: Unarguably, the North Rail Project stoppage is the greatest disservice of the BS presidency to the people of Central Luzon – Aquino’s own people – as well as those of the North. Think of the travel convenience we should all now be enjoying had it been allowed to proceed to completion to its target date of 2015. Corruption be damned!

Where the BS epically failed, the Davao Mayor now stands to gloriously succeed.

This Monday past, the P255-billion Manila-Clark Railway went into first gear with the marking of the first five of its stations – Marilao and Meycauayan in Bulacan; Valenzuela, Caloocan, and Tutuban in Metro Manila. The other stations are Solis, Bocaue, Balagtas, Guiguinto, Malolos City, Calumpit, Apalit, the City of San Fernando, Angeles City, Clark Freeport, Clark International Airport and New Clark City.

Funded by official development assistance (ODA) from Japan, construction works are set to begin in the fourth quarter of this year, and, at the promised 24/7 pace, project completion is expected in 2021.

Yes, well within the term of President Duterte as Tugade said.

Notwithstanding Tugade’s penchant to bite off more than he can chew – Didn’t he say government won’t spend a single cent for the unified MRT-LRT terminal that now stands to drain the public coffers of billions? Didn’t he brag of solving the MRT mess, the LTO inertia, even the EDSA traffic conundrum within the same time span his beloved classmate Duterte vowed to end the drug problem that is all of three to six months? And while at this, what about his cable car installation along EDSA for traffic decongestion, ha ha? – still, I cannot help but invest some faith in his word.

For too long, we have held on to this vision of tracks to Clark – and beyond, to the great North. Anything or anyone that promises the tiniest spark to the realization of that vision we readily take to our hearts.

So, we believe, keeping our fingers crossed for a miracle this time coming out of the mirage.

       

       

  

Oversight

“BAKIT BA tayo palit nang palit? Amazing Thailand has been there for a long time, Malaysia Truly Asia. Sinabi ko na sa kanila 'yan, hindi naman nakikinig. Ano naman gagawin ko?”

Rued Sen Richard J. Gordon over the “Sights” campaign of the Department of Tourism shot to smithereens by just about everyone for its copycatting a 2014 South African tourism ad. 

Huwag naman tayo mangopya. Magaling naman tayong mga Pilipino eh. Actually, pwede na pero hindi maganda pakinggan na ginagastusan ng pera, ang laki ng pera. Ako ang ginastos ko sa advertising nung panhon ko, wala, wala akong ginastos,” Gordon said.

The DOT signed a P650-million contract with McCann Worldgroup Philippines for its Experience the Philippines campaign, of which “Sights” is then first installment. The contract has been cancelled following the controversy.

It was not the first time that the DOT has been accused of plagiarism in its campaign collaterals.  Its “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” at the early years of the BS Aquino presidency was virtually lifted off a Polish campaign template.

Why, even its later, highly successful “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” was predated by some decades by the more rhythmic “It’s More Fun in Switzerland.”

Understandably, it was not the first time too that Gordon took issue on this DOT penchant for change-for-change’s-sake in its campaign slogans.

Dusted off our Zona files is this piece of Nov. 22, 2010, titled Unwowed.      

WEALTH OF wonders. Invoking the Mayon Volcano, Pinatubo, Hundred Islands and the rice terraces. The tarsier and tamaraw too. To cite but a few.
Warm over Winter. Images of splendid Boracay and secluded Caramoan. Of hundreds of beaches, to speak but of two.
Walk our Walls. Of historic Intramuros.
Watch our Whales. In Donsol, Sorsogon where the butanding (whale shark) roams.
All translating to “WOW Philippines.” A catch-phrase that really captured the imagination of the world and brought in hordes of tourists to the country.
Then followed, in quick succession: Amazing Thailand. Incredible India. Malaysia, Truly Asia. Our Singapore.
Great presentations all on global television. Impacting their singular message of enticement to the international audience: Come, indulge the senses, find fulfillment.
And now – gone full circle: Pilipinas, Kay Ganda.
Uninspired, and dispiriting. Insipid, or to take the fire straight from Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s mouth: “Just ignorant, and ignorance is boring.”
Then some more flak: “Let’s think of something else. Let’s start some neurons in our brains working. Their (tourism officials’) neurons are not working. They’re not on full eight cylinders ... only two cylinders.”
Rejoinding, thus: “We have to find our niche because we have many competitors in Southeast Asia. We cannot just have ‘a beautiful country’ because everyone says that.”
Still, to the Department of Tourism – most naturally – Pilipinas, Kay Ganda is most inspiring.
“It raises awareness. It inculcates pride in our identity.” So was one Evelyn Macayayong quoted by the Agence France-Presse. Displaying before the whole world the drought of brain at the DOT.
Madame, branding here targets the international market, therefore language is a premium.
As Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri said: “…let’s come up with a more understandable slogan throughout the world. I have nothing against our Filipino language if the target market is the local market.”
Don’t dare DOT, Sir Migs, its brain(less)trust may just whip up “Philippines, So Beautiful.” Yuck!
Senator Loren Legarda for her part sees politics in this change in brand of the country’s tourism campaign: “We fix what doesn’t need fixing. We always think that what the past administration did was wrong,”
Yeah, so what was wrong with “WOW Philippines”? Just because it was conceived and birthed during the Macapagal-Arroyo administration made it all bad?
Truly unhappiest at the brand change, as Inquirer reported, is the progenitor of “WOW Philippines,” former tourism secretary, former Senator Richard Gordon who deemed Pilipinas, Kay Ganda hard to sell to foreign tourists. Even as it was a good way of luring balikbayans to rediscover the homeland.
“You have to sell the language first, but it takes time and the budget is limited.” So was Gordon quoted as saying. “We have little money and we don’t let our branding grow…I am not saying that ‘WOW Philippines’ is the best because I made it ... but simply because it gained attraction in spite of limited resources.”
While conceding that packaging something with a long name like the Philippines was a challenge, Gordon said “WOW” provided a nickname for the country that helped to communicate the message quickly.
Yes, in whatever language, “Wow!” says it all.
Too bad the cretins at DOT could only understand “Oww?”

YES, AND from the looks of it cretins never left the DOT, Duterte’s “change is coming,” notwithstanding. 

Odds evened

AN ERA ends.

Marino “Boking” Morales bowed out of the mayorship of Mabalacay City Monday, subjugating himself to the writ of execution served him by the Department of the Interior and Local Government.

“Cease and desist from performing the functions as mayor…” the writ so ordered. This, pursuant to the resolution en banc of the Commission on Elections upholding its First Division’s earlier resolution disqualifying Boking from running in the 2016 elections, having served beyond the prescribed terms of office.

It was the polls’ tail-ending mayoralty bet Pyra Lucas that filed SPA Case No. 16-0001 which led to Boking’s ouster. No, Lucas will not reap the top reward for her dogged determination to dislodge the mayor.   

It is Crisostomo Garbo who – sans Boking – garnered the highest number of votes at 17,710 that the writ ordered to be proclaimed by the special city board of canvassers as the “duly elected mayor of Mabalacat City.”

Garbo’s coronation set this June 27, 3 p.m., at the Comelec Session Hall, 8^th Floor of the Palacio del Governador, Intramuros, Manila.

An era begins.

Of a new political rivalry. Count Boking out at Garbo’s own peril.

Why, the so-called “Morales Doctrine” – of Boking having twice trounced the three-term limit, served one more after, and is into the first year of yet another, mercifully (or mercilessly, depending on where you stand) cut by Monday’s writ – stands out in any book of record, the Guinness’ and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not included.

A full generation of Mabalacquenos knows but one mayor – Boking. His twenty-two years in power is no mean feat in political longevity. Marcos, from his election in 1965 to his ouster in 1986, ruled twenty-one years. And he even declared martial law to keep himself in power!    

Interesting the coming political unraveling in Mabalacat City.

Nothing prescient but purely coincidental, if serendipitous, turns out now this Zona piece of April 19, 2016 titled Degla precisely on the Boking-Garbo rivalry.  

BOKING STILL winning.

So the surveys said, as reported in a story here by Ashley Manabat. 

But of course, dummy. So since when did Boking Morales ever lose?

Not since the 1992 polls, after we wrote in The Voice that piece that was cut-and-pasted in the old style, Xeroxed by the thousands, and distributed as a damning pamphlet by his rivals. Its head: Boking will not win!

In all the elections he entered hence, Boking never suffered defeat, notwithstanding the electoral protest of perennial antagonist, the now departed non-retreating-non-surrendering Anthony Dee, in 2001 decided to his favor only after Boking had served practically the whole term.

No election survey from 1995 to this latest one from some firm called The Probe ever indicated a loss for Boking. So, he’s set to sweetly smile and charm his way to city hall again?

Not yet. Even totally nullifying the formidable forces now arrayed against him. Aye, we go here by surveys too.

Where Boking polled 58 percent in The Probe survey, his most visible rival, Board Member Cris Garbo managed only 16 percent, falling even behind one Noel Castro with 17.3 percent.

Here’s the catch. Where Boking never lost in any survey since 1995, Garbo never won in any survey since he joined elective politics as municipal council candidate that year too. To the contrary though, Garbo never lost any election he joined – councilor, board member, vice mayor, board member. Despite what the surveys said, to iterate with emphasis and impress upon everyone Garbo’s own phenomenal political performance.

Truly interesting whom the degla impacts, inflicts in Mabalacat City this May.

Simply, degla means odds, defined as “the ratio between the amounts staked by the parties to a bet, based on the expected probability either way.”

It comes too as “the law of averages.” In the simplest application in cara y cruz or the coin flip: Rizal’s face has come up three consecutive times, the law of averages holds it’s the Bangko Sentral logo that’s due to show in the next throw.   

The law of averages is what mathematicians would rather call an “erroneous generalization” of the law of large numbers, which goes thus: “the frequencies of events with the same likelihood of occurrence even out, given enough trials or instances.”

Still, many Filipinos hold degla almost, if not quite, gospel truth. Witness the depth of study to which jueteng, ­er, STL bettors subject the salida-bola – the ledger of winning combinations dating to months on end – before they decide on their own combo…

SO THE odds went Boking’s way at the polls, but evened out for Garbo at the Comelec.

Beyond degla, I find something here worth the Graeco-Roman classical studies.

Boking’s dogmatic vox populi, vox dei – the voice of the people is the voice of god – clashing with Garbo’s deus ex machina – god from the machine.

Oh, you know what I mean.   

The end of days

“For posterity – that they who shall reap the rewards ever remember the trials, tribulations and triumph of their forebears.”

Thus, goes the dedication in our book Pinatubo: Triumph of the Kapampangan Spirit published in 2008 under the auspices of the San Fernando Heritage Foundation led by local magnate Levy P. Laus.

It is to posterity too that we reprint here our Pinatubo experience – at least the first few days of the eruption. This one written by the esteemed Ram Mercado in the said book.

The end of days

ONCE WAKEN, Mount Pinatubo gave vent to centuries of pent-up fury with a series of powerful eruptions, the biggest of which spewed a deadly cloud of ash and gases 25 kilometers into the sky on June 13.
“That is already the big bang. I can’t see any other eruption that will exceed this. What we are seeing now are phenomenal eruptions,” Director Raymundo S. Punongbayan of Phivolcs reported.
He cautioned though that: “The story of Mount Pinatubo is not quite over yet.”
Mount Pinatubo proved Punongbayan wrong – on the first assertion, and right – on the caution.
June 14 saw the dark clouds like the wings of a monstrous bird casting trembling shadows across Angeles City during the day and a strange gloomy spell that dimmed the lights of the city’s tourist district in Balibago.
Residents, confused as to the real danger became expectant of a distant calamity. Frightened by the frequency of mild quakes and the smell of sulfur in the air, they braced themselves for the inevitable.
The people with foresight started to leave; the fearful began long prayers at home and inside churches; the ignorant, as usual the powerless, waited in trepidation, ready to accept anything, even danger and destruction in sordid acceptance.
That was how the Mount Pinatubo eruption of June 15, 1991 came to Pampanga: with deathly fear, unfathomable anxiety, and widespread confusion that only plagues, war and the other scourges of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse could have wreaked anywhere.
Like an epic, graphic accounts of the Great Eruption varied in their dramatic and incredible description. Real life narrations and first-hand experiences of those who remembered the event are reinvented in every retelling.
Newspapers of the day were unanimous on the congruent conclusion that the volcano had awakened from a 600-year slumber, with accurate forecast of vast devastation, widespread socio-economic dislocation, and a heavy toll from the volcanic fury.
At the Zambales side was a group of media workers who quoted witnesses who said the skies darkened momentarily after the volcano erupted in the early morning of 15 June.
Newsmen reporting from Clark said Mount Pinatubo vomited scorching volcanic material in a violent outburst, then acrid ashes and gases oozed out of the volcano’s active vents. Like the explosion of the first atom bomb in Hiroshima which was timed officially by the US military, the Philvocs placed the Great Eruption at 8:15 in the morning of 15 June 1991. And thereafter, day turned into the blackest of night.
A tropical storm spotted a distance away from Central Luzon as early as 10 June moved in for the “kill” after the major explosion and developed into a full-blown typhoon.
Thus Typhoon Diding blew volcanic ash around Central Luzon. It spread and swirled the debris up to Metro Manila, and as far away as several countries that affected air travel for some time.
The midday darkness, the rumblings of the volcano, frightening quakes and aftershocks, lightning and thunder, howling winds and a torrential rain of pumice stones as big as golf balls, mud and ash did indeed presage an apocalyptic end of days.

   

The Big Bang

ANXIOUS, APPREHENSIVE anticipation of an expected unknown gripped the people of Pampanga in the weeks leading to June 12, 1991.

Like the prophet of old – or the doomsayer, as a number who questioned his wisdom, if not his authority, were wont to deride him – Director Raymundo S. Punongbayan of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology had raised the alarm of the impending eruption. The signs and sounds upland and on the plains were foreboding.
Like the beating of distant drums that precede a conflict, the incessant rumbling sounds from the bowels of Mount Pinatubo rang the certainty of a coming catastrophe.
On June 10, all the roads out of Angeles City were jammed by hundreds of vehicles in the exodus of American servicemen and their dependents from Clark Air Base to Subic where US warships awaited them for their final journey home.
Up in the Zambales mountain ranges, Aetas, like frightened creatures sensing danger, had heard the initial rumbling and felt the unsettling tremors of mighty Pinatubo since April.
Several months back, the Philippine National Oil Company-Energy Development Corp. had drilled three giant exploratory pipes into the area around the slopes of the volcano in a bid to tap geothermal energy deposits.
The mountain tribesmen of Pampanga resented the exploration as an act of sacrilege and warned of rousing the wrath of the volcano’s mythical deity, Apu Namalyari.  Thereafter, the tribesmen reported of animals scalded by searing sediments and vents billowing hissing sulfuric fumes.
Pampanga residents proximate to the volcano did not sense imminent danger up to the second week of June 1991, but held their uneasy peace with the tumultuous fear of the Aetas’ belief about their disturbed god.
On June 10, ominous dark clouds enveloped Mount Pinatubo, casting an eerie darkening shroud over Clark Air Base.
The following day, tremors started shaking a wide swath of western Pampanga. There was a flurry of movement in personnel, aircraft, and transport units inside Clark. Save for a security contingent, the US Forces had completely abandoned the biggest American military installation outside continental USA.
June 12, 1991. Philippine Independence Day. There was no nationalistic sentiment in the speech of Angeles City Mayor Antonio Abad Santos that followed the flag raising ritual. He underscored the dependence of the city on the American forces, their abandonment of Clark he lamented as “overacting.” Whatever parade scheduled for the day was rained down – not by cold water, but by hot ash and pumice stones.
At 8:51 A.M., a series of thundering explosions shooting a giant plume of ash rising to some 20 kilometers high broke the 600-year slumber of Mount Pinatubo.
Bursting from the volcano’s crater was a gargantuan gray-greenish cauliflower cloud – not unlike the atomic blast in Hiroshima – that blotted out the morning sun. Volcanologists though recorded the first eruption at 3:00 A.M. and reported an avalanche of pyroclastic materials – searing gas with a temperature upwards to 1,000 degrees Celsius, how ash and molten rocks – that blanketed the mountain’s lush green slopes in a dark grey shroud…
…With Angeles and Olongapo bearing the first full brunt of the eruptions, the deeply religious discerned the wrath of God in Pinatubo: the rightful destruction of the host cities to the US military bases for the same sins as Sodom and Gomorrah’s.
But the devastation would not remain contained there; even holy sites as churches and chapels were not spared.
Punongbayan described the June 12 blasts as major eruptions but warned that Pinatubo still held plenty of built-up magma capable of more severe eruptions.
“This could only be the beginning,” he said, prophetically.

---

SO, IT was 26 years ago as excerpted from Chapter 2 of Pinatubo: Triumph of the Kapampangan Spirit edited by this columnist and published in 2008 by the San Fernando Heritage Foundation.

Our continuing remembrance of those days-of-days in our next column with an account of the June 15 eruptions.

Whose voice? Which god?

“THE VOICE of the people is the voice of God. This means that if the people of Mabalacat voted for him in 2016, whatever case filed against him could be dismissed by the Supreme Court because the people have already spoken.”

So spoke last week top election lawyer Romy Macalintal, confident that his client Mayor Marino “Boking” Morales would remain fitted and fixed to the post he has occupied for the past 22 years notwithstanding the recent Comelec en banc resolution ordering his eviction.

Dare sayeth Macalintal further: “The Supreme Court may commit mistakes, but the people never.”

At Monday’s flag-raising, beyond merely mouthing Macalintal, Boking channeled his old self, putting the numbers – all of 40,147 votes – to the divine voice. As he always did in every election he won, invariably contested by the losers, and inevitably Comelec-ted, if not TROed, to his favor.    

In the current scheme of Boking, finds new relevance this piece from the now long dead Pampanga News, dated Jan. 6-Feb. 1, 2006.

The voice of our gods

IT is the favorite ejaculation of my favorite mayor: Vox populi, vox dei, with, perhaps, the least idea of its etymology: from late 15th century, the Renaissance abloom, and Il Papa’s sole proprietorship over God’s word challenged.
Most assuredly though, he – my mayor, knows full well the argumentative efficacy of his oracion, having invoked it at each of his questioned poll victories. Its potency proven most definitively in his unprecedented four terms – and still counting, making him a firm believer in the power of the vote, a firmer believer in the power of the Comelec, and the firmest believer, I would so presume, in the power of prayer.
So enshrined in our so-called democratic tradition is the sanctity of the ballot. From our youth, we were led to believe – and without question accept – the element of the divine in the exercise of suffrage. The curtained poll booth in the pre- and immediate post-Martial Law years even resembled a confessional. Thus, the affected infallibility of our election results: God speaking with the voice of his people. Blaspheming reprobate is he that dares question the word of God!
Vox populi, vox dei takes roots in the Book of Genesis, at the very instance of Creation itself, if I may advance so myself, neither knowing nor having read any priest, philosopher or political scientist having said it. (Let me know if I appropriated somebody’s statement so I can promptly and properly apologize.)
Read Genesis 1:26-27: “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, to our likeness…’ So God created man in his image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
What is it that makes man, and woman – to be gender-correct – unlike all of creation, in the likeness of his Creator? Will and reason.
The exercise of our free will is that we most share with the Divine. As voting is an exercise of our free will and use of our reason, our choice thus corresponds with that of God: our voice becoming God’s.
The cynic that I have become in things political now asks: Which god?
In the pursuit of our electoral exercises do we, as we should, to quote Baruch Spinoza, “… use in security all (our) endowments, mental and physical, and make free use of (our) reason”?
Reason, my ass. Reason is at its weakest when passion is at its strongest. This is borne in Philippine elections: always visceral, rarely, very, very rarely cerebral. There lies a chasm as unbridgeable as sin between man and God. So, what voice of God do we talk about in election results?
Fettered on patronage, the electorate makes the vote a commodity to trade for some favor, given or promised, or to directly sell for cash. The outrageous outburst of Gouverneur Morris at the time of the infancy of the American nation comes of age: “Give the vote to the people who have no property, and they will sell them to the rich, who will be able to buy them.” Not only able but willing and raring to buy them.
Factored on popularity, the electoral choices tax the intellect of the gnat. Were a brain pool of the country’s elected officials established, it most surely would fit the head of a pin.
Fault not the elected. Damn the electorate. So, we have clowns and idiots in the Houses, so we are clowns and idiots ourselves. An iteration ad nauseam: We just don’t deserve whom we elect. We are whom we elect. The booboisie, as H.L. Mencken put it, is us. And our vote, the “great right grossly abused, and has become, in practice, a grave wrong.”
Still, we adhere to the veracity of vox populi, vox dei.
But the voice of the people has become the voice – not of God – but of their gods: the lord of numbers, the lord of celluloid illusion, the god of goons, the glorious goddess of the tapes.
Aye, Alcuin, the English scholar and theologian of the 8th century, is right: “And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”

Another school year, same torment

STUCK IN a rut. Even more apt, caught in a time warp. This piece I wrote for the long defunct weekly Pampanga News June 9-14, 2006 issue in its original title.

So, what change has come? 

To kingdom come

DEPRESSING. Really depressing was all the news that came out of the idiot box Monday night June 5, the day schoolyear 2006-2007 opened.

There were the protest rallies of students and teachers against their own school principals in Quezon province and Taguig, for a lot of perceived misdemeanors and alleged malfeasances ranging from unauthorized collection of fees and the forced patronization of the school canteen to missing funds. That lingering shot of two schoolgirls carrying a basket of snacks to their room for sale to their classmates gives a new low to the commercialization of education in this country. It started with teachers doubling as Avon ladies, life-plan agents and Tupperware sales reps, then onto tapa, tocino and longganisa. Now this, tetra-packed juice and chichiria. By next year, it could be buchi and bananacue. Understand that Madam got a family to feed and school too.
In Sulu, ABS-CBN reported that at least two schools in Patikul town had not opened. There were no student enrollees, the residents having remained in some other towns they fled to two years ago to avoid getting into the murderous crossfire of the military and the Abu Sayyaf. In another school, the principal lamented the dearth of Arabic teachers.
In Bontoc, kids had to walk through a winding hilly trail for two hours to get to a school with no lights and toilet. And that is even the safe part. The trail turns to an impassable quagmire in the rainy season.
What hit me in the gut though was the crime story of the day. Two minors caught in a Paranaque police dragnet on known and suspected pickpockets, hold-uppers and snatchers that preyed on students. They robbed, they said, because they wanted to have money to resume schooling. One getting to Grade Four this year. Oh God!
Flash to National Capital Region Police Director Vidal Querol warning “huwag kayong manalbahe sa hanay ng mga estudyante” and unleashing a force of 5,000 policemen in Metro Manila to secure them. The students, not those in conflict with the law.

Oh Good God!
And then comes the piece d’ resistance – the annual fare of dilapidated classrooms where there are classrooms, the “open-air universities” where there are no classrooms, the dilapidated desks and the lack of desks, the dilapidated books and the lack of books.
Truly, the dilapidated state of education in this country. That gets further dilapidation with the fielding of teachers in subjects they have not specialized in, as – again as reported by ABS-CBN –in a librarian and a home economics madam teaching mathematics.
Depressing. What solutions have this government offered to remedy this situation? The presidential tempered 100:1 classroom ratio that dissolved in an instant the over 6,000 needed rooms for this year and effectively solved the shortage? That one is truly worthy of a David Copperfield.

Oh Dear God!
This administration has truly become magical. Remember the promise that if only we would be united and hold onto her, she would take us to the Enchanted Kingdom of the First World?

No, I would not want to be a second rate, trying hard copycat of Conrado de Quiros here. So, I would just say, at the rate things are going here – in education most especially – it is not to the Enchanted Kingdom that we are being delivered to. It is to Kingdom Come. And there is no fantasy here.