Now rise the son

"I LEARNED from the best.”

It could have been a telegraphed eulogy for his father that Angeles City councilor Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin Jr. remarked at the mayoralty candidates’ forum hosted by the local association of hotels and restaurants last Nov. 21., three weeks to the untimely demise of the elder Lazatin.

“I had the best teacher who taught me very basic principles: Huwag mang-aagrabyado, huwag magnakaw, huwag gumawa ng hindi maganda sa kapwa.” Core values that have become family heirloom bequeathed by the patriarch – Don Rafael Lazatin, governor of Pampanga, mayor of Angeles City, member of Batasang Pambansa – to the son – Carmelo “Tarzan” Lazatin, congressman and city mayor in his turn.

“From my grandfather, to my father, a very important lesson has been passed down – leadership with compassion and love for this city and its people,” averred Pogi.

With the death of Cong Tarzan, the buzz about the city is how Pogi – 1^st District Rep. Carmelo “Jonjon” Lazatin II, too – will fare in the coming elections. (My apologies to the congressman, transfixed as I am with his brother for now.)  

Of greater interest to the electorate, I think, is how close has Pogi hewed to the Lazatin template of service with a heart.  

As the apple falls not too far from the tree, so it appears with Pogi. Well said, I’d say not without conceit, of this August 3, 2016 piece, aptly –

Pogi points.  

TAKING AFTER his accomplished father, Angeles City Councilor Carmelo Lazatin, Jr., better known as “Pogi,” has embraced housing for the urban poor as personal advocacy.

In his time at the mayoralty, the elder Carmelo, famously known as “Tarzan,” succeeded in providing decent housing to 15,000 poor families.

“I would like to continue that,” the son now promises, and has set the stage for its fulfilment by filing the Housing Program Funds Allocation Ordinance which calls for the mandatory allotment of 10 percent of the city government’s total annual budget for housing programs for the city’s urban poor.

Rationalizes Pogi: “Rapid urbanization is a sign of a city’s development, however, it also has its drawbacks. As a city becomes urbanized, more people are drawn to it because of the job opportunities and this tends to lead to the disproportionate growth of the population relative to housing.” With the urban poor ending at the short end of the stick, as usual.

The Fund, Pogi’s ordinance stipulated, “will be solely used to finance land acquisition for socialized housing…as well as the development of community sites such as road networks, pathways, and drainages.”

And strictly, “no expenditures arising from the hiring of personnel and release of salaries and other similar privileges shall be appropriated from the Fund.”

With the further proviso that the Local Urban Poor Affairs and Housing Office and other concerned departments be engaged by the city government in the allocation and usage of the said fund.

TAKING AFTER his illustrious grandfather, Pogi is championing the cause of education for all.

Don Rafael Lazatin achieved the rare feat of having served as provincial governor, city mayor and assemblyman – in the old school of straight and clean governance – but is best enshrined in the hearts of his people as founder of Republic Central Colleges that opened educational opportunities to the poorest sector of the community.

Last July 12, Pogi refiled an ordinance – first presented to the council in September 2013 but unacted – amending the charter of the City College of Angeles City, for the college to cease collection of tuition from its students, and for the city government to grant full subsidy of the same.

The proposed ordinance likewise directs the city government to allocate five percent from its general fund, five percent from its Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA), and five percent from its collection of market stall fees to CCA’s annual budget appropriation.

Based on the city’s Local Expenditure Program for 2015, Pogi said the local government can fully subsidize the tuition of CCA students, citing the general fund at P913 million, the IRA at P591 million, and the city collection for market stall fees estimated at P10 million. And from there could be allocated P68.5 million subsidy for the CCA.

Yes, Pogi is doing as well in his math too.

A CHIP off the old block, Pogi makes, indeed.

Like both his Lazatin elders, contentious politics for Pogi starts with the campaign and ends with the election. Where the public good takes precedence over personal rivalries.

The lone opposition in the city council, Pogi is most ardent in his support to Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan – much, much more than hizzoner’s own aldermen – in seeking funding for the city worker’s additional benefits, specifically the salary adjustments and bonuses to government employees covered by Executive Order 201-S2016 signed by President Aquino last February.

Late last month, Pogi, filed a resolution “respectfully requesting the City Mayor thru Local Finance Committee to provide the City Council an update on the status of the implementation of the first tranche compensation adjustment in Local Government Units (LGU’s) as provided under the Executive Order 201, Series 2016”.

That, with the commitment to the city workers to “do my very best to ensure that the benefits that are due (you) will be provided by the city government.”

In fine: Unconditional support where the executive agenda hews with public interest. Principled opposition where it is inimical. Clear-cut role for the council fiscalizer.  

Now, where other political scions as keen as Pogi in living up to the demands of the post they sought and to which they were elected. Rather than engaging in some egoistic epal­-ities, Facebook mediocrities and Instagram inanities to vainly seek pogi points for the next polls…

Wheeling and dealing

“ONE OF the most valuable sectors in the society (for they) contribute a lot in the economic development of the city.”

So hailed Mayor Edwin Santiago of the local transportation sector as he feted members of the Federation of Jeepney Operators and Drivers Associations in the capital city with a “Mass Transportation Program” Dec. 3.

Per the city hall PR, Santiago principally did two things during the event: 1) He “presented the city’s upcoming plans including the establishing of malls and centers for senior citizens and youth wherein they can use them for recreational activities; and 2) “He also expressed his support to the federation’s plans and programs including the forming of cooperative and extending financial assistance to their children through a scholarship program.”

Of the first, leisure – of the transport operators and their kin -- appears to be paramount in the mayor’s mindset vis-a-vis the city’s ever increasing, ever expanding shopping malls.

Even as the PR said the event was an “Information Education Program,” there was no mention if the mayor made even but a passing reference to the social costs his constituents suffer with every mall, heavy traffic for one where the drivers directly contribute and are themselves adversely affected, socially as well as economically.

Of the second, praiseworthy is the mayor’s expressed solidarity with the group, socio-economic inclusivity its intended effect, thus: “Lagi kong sinasabi, na walang maiiwan dito sa Syudad San Fernando, hindi natin hahayaan na habang umaangat ang iba, ay may naiiwanan. Hindi maituturing na progresibo ang isang lugar kung iilan lamang sa mga aspeto at sektor nito ang umaangat. Dito sa Syudad San Fernando, hangad ng mga nanunungkulan na makapagbigay ito ng pantay-pantay na serbisyo sa mga mamamayan, lalo na’t kayo ang isa sa mga susi kung bakit magpa-hangga ngayon ay lumalago at umuusbong ang ekonomiya dito.”

Alas, solidarity – inclusivity too – is a two-way street. Mutuality, not only in benefits, but moreso, in responsibility and accountability, makes a defining element of solidarity.    

So, the mayor reached out to them. So, did the transport group respond in kind?

Like, expressing their solidarity with the city government in its traffic management efforts even if only by promising to strictly observe road rules and regulations?

Sadly, there was nothing of that sort from the transport side, per the published accounts.

It was all from Santiago, who went on to exhort his constituents to “continue to promote and preserve jeepneys as daily modes of transportation by maintaining the tradition of riding on it.”

Elevating the jeepney – like the horse-drawn rig – to the same foundation the city itself is grounded on: “Maliban sa kalesa, isa sa mga tradisyon ng Fernandino ang pagsakay sa mga dyip, kung saan sumisimbolo ito sa isang simpleng buhay ngunit kung pagmamasdan ay matibay ang pundasyon nito, gaya ng Syudad San Fernando, isang simpleng lugar ngunit matibay ito sa pagtatag at pagpapalaganap ng mga makabuluhang programa para sa kapakanan ng bawat isa.” 

For all those laudations Santiago lavished on the transport group – aye, precisely because of it – the Mass Transportation Program served nothing more than an early campaign stage for the re-electing mayor.

Indeed, a counterfoil – to his rival Barangay Dolores chair Vilma Caluag who is said to have the city’s federation of tricycle drivers’ associations in her deep, deep, oh-so-very deep pockets. The group – banners and all – merrily, if loudly, accompanying her when she filed her certificate of candidacy. Her tarps of MAY isang salita. ORA mismo ang gawa have since becoming installed accessories of their trikes.

Caluag owning the tricycle operators and drivers on one hand, and Santiago having the jeepney operators and drivers on the other, effectively reduced the election contest in the city to the simple, indeed simplistic, equation: Vilma, TODAs. EdSa, JODAs.

Alas, whither the Fernandino goeth?

The candidates apparently hostaged to the wheel, so to speak, is nothing new though, but in fact a tradition in San Fernando elections.

Where the jeepneys and trikes are now, the calesas used to lord over. Their support a premium prize for the mayoralty candidates, most specially.

I remember then-Mayor Armando P. Biliwang unveiling the association of cocheros as his secret weapon after each victory in the polls.

In his contest though with then-comebacking Mayor Virgilio “Baby” Sanchez, Cong Mando made peremptory disclosure of having not only the calesa drivers but also the jeepney drivers as solid supporters.

To which the witty Baby riposted: Wa, queca la reng driver. Cacu no man deng paserus. (Yes, the drivers are yours. But the passengers are mine). And Sanchez won by the proverbial mile.

     

  

Standing out

THE ANNUAL week-long celebrations of the Aldo ning Kapampangan culminate on the day itself, Dec. 11, with the Most Outstanding Kapampangan Awards (MOKA) – Ing Tala ning Kabiasnan at Kayapan ning Kapampangan, the trophy proclaims – extolling the year’s crop of the best and the brightest in various fields of endeavor that gave honor to that race that rose from the riverbanks.

By uncanny happenstance, mayhaps by cosmic design, in the week immediately preceding this year’s celebrations, a number of “MOKAs” took centerstage in, and still remain hogging, the national scene. For good, or bad, depending on where one stands in the great political divide.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, 1996 MOKA for National Government Service, shepherded – not a few says railroaded – the House she heads towards the passage of a draft bill for a federal system of government that she herself authored, to the consternation of the nation long-led into believing in federalism’s demise made unceremonious by that ipepe-idede-pepe-dede-ralismo vulgarity of Mocha Uson and her partner Drew whatever.

As though this were not enough to shock, a second whammy GMA inflicted upon the nation with the P2.4 billion worth of projects her House allotted to her district, coming to light only with the expose of Sen. Panfilo Lacson. (As much as we share the same family name, he is neither a relative nor a Kapampangan.)

Why, Lacson powerpointed, P500 million was earmarked for farm-to-market roads alone! How blessed are the towns of Lubao, Guagua, Sasmuan, Porac, Sta. Rita and Floridablanca with these fruits of development! Conversely, how accursed are already poor districts throughout the Philippines made even poorer after being deprived of these same benefits?

Even as Malacanang has made public its stand that GMA should explain the P2.4-billion realignment to her district, all the explaining so far (as of this writing, Dec. 11) has been done by her factotum, House majority leader Rolando Andaya Jr.

No, it was not the will, not even the wish of GMA to get the lion’s share of the pork…okay, “infra funds,” in the national budget. The largesse came about from the "misguided generosity” of the Speaker’s minions.

For her to further explain what her House has already wrought maybe much too much below the Speaker’s stature. Truly, Gloria in excelsis.
Satur Ocampo, 2002 MOKA for Social Justice, along with comrades on a humanitarian mission were arrested and detained in Davao del Norte for alleged kidnapping and human trafficking.

No less than Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. who served in Congress with Ocampo vouched for him. Going against the Malacanang grain, Teddy the Boy took to Twitter: "Human trafficking? Bullshit. I won't even bother to get the other side. I know Satur. We protected him in our Congress against warrants of arrest.”   

So, how many times has Ka Satur been arrested, indeed “stockaded” militarily and tortured? Every time emerging from it stronger and with the greater resolve to push his advocacy for social justice, for democracy.

Bishop Pablo Virgilio S. David, 2010 MOKA for Religion, makes the President’s bete noire, if not his worst nightmare, of the moment.

The rabidity, aye, the stench, of Duterte’s verbal diarrhea – maligning David of pocketing Church funds, even the faithful’s offerings of fruits; maliciously insinuating the bishop, for his night rounds, could be into drugs; and going ballistic with murderous rage against him and other bishops, thus: Patayin niyo! walang silbi! – could have come out of Gehenna itself.

Only to be met by the bishop of Kalookan with the Christian response: “I think it should be obvious to people by now that our country is being led by a very sick man. We pray for him. We pray for our country,”    

In reaction to Duterte's “kill the bishops” drivel, David turned to Luke 6:27-36: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic...Do to others as you would have them do to you. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same... But rather, love your enemies and do good to them... then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as also your Father is merciful.”

Pray hard that Among Ambo be not the first Kapampangan martyr of the Catholic Church.

Justice Ma. Theresa Dolores C. Gomez-Estoesta, 2014 MOKA for Judicial Service, made the Kapampangan proud – by the accolades showered her way in the web – for her dissenting opinion in the acquittal of former Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla, Jr.

“One need only turn a discerning eye, and not look the other way,” wrote Estoesta. “The unexplained wealth of Senator Revilla is one glaring fact, left unrelated, to gloss over.”

Furthered she: “The accused never even attempted to debunk the findings of AMLC [Anti-Money Laundering Council] in his own defense. He simply wallowed in his own defense of denial and forgery.”

And asked: “Why should the majority opinion now take the cudgels for him?”

To many, Lady Justice found flesh and blood in Estoesta there.

Atty. Estelito P. Mendoza, 1978 MOKA – among the very first awardees, the legal brains behind the defense of Revilla. Known for not having lost a single case in his storied career as solicitor-general and minister of justice during the presidency of Ferdinand E. Marcos, the erudite Apung Titong has not faltered the least in his winning skein.

Maraming salamat, Atty. Estelito Mendoza, dahil hindi ka sumuko upang tulungan akong mapalabas ang katotohanan. So, twitted an ecstatic Revilla.

This, even as continues to rampage online a tsunami of questions on truth, principally the absence of it; on justice, primarily the negation of it; on accountability, mainly the perversion of it in the Revilla acquittal.

Ours is not to pass judgment here on our MOKAs and the issues they caused or effected. We are but taken by the serendipity of it all, in time for the Aldo ning Kapampangan. Adding to the MOKA mystique and all.      

From this 2005 MOKA in Mass Media, congratulations to this year’s batch of kabiasnan at kayapan ning Kapampangan.  

            

Little classics in local politics

MAN UP!

So, Alexander S. Cauguiran dared his rival for the Angeles City mayorship VM Bryan Matthew C. Nepomuceno to make a “full disclosure” of the whys, whereases, and wherefores relative to the P1.2 billion loan the city government contracted for a sports complex, a new city hall, and equipment.  

Man up! ‘Wag na pong ilihis ang usapan. ‘Wag nang idaan sa papogi-pogi. Lahat na lang ba nga bagay, Let it BE?

Cauguiran’s are but the latest soundbites in the current political discussion, but way above in intellectual decibel over the all-too pedestrian Pogi ka, pogi ku, pogi tamu, or the cryptic MAY isang salita ORA mismo ang gawa that have so far surfaced in the campaign.

Whether sublime or ridiculous, election blurb and blabber have a way of becoming classics in the course of years. As proof, not necessarily positive, I share here this I wrote over five years ago.   

“THAT’S VERY politics.”

A classic heard around Pampanga and beyond – as it was aired over dwRW – in the early 2000s. The sayer – a mayor known for his pugnacious ways and pugilistic means – reacting to the litany of perceived anomalies and corrupt practices he purportedly committed which his vice mayor was reciting in Perry Pangan’s radio show.

“No can do. Never say die.”

His yet another classical phrase, a corrupted take on the Kapampangan “E yu agawa yan. Mikamatayan tamu” and the Tagalog “Hindi n’yo puwedeng gawin yan. Magkakamatayan tayo.”

The hizzoner shouting at the onrushing wave of policemen led by the regional commander axing and smashing their way into his barricaded office where he holed himself in for two weeks to prevent the police from forcibly unseating him. This after the Comelec ruled it was not him that won the election in 1995.  

A case for Ripley’s: Our man landed third. The second-placer filed an election protest but before the case was resolved to his favour, he was incapacitated by a massive stroke. And third-placer took the mayoralty seat, which prompted the initial first-placer to protest too, and, after a rather long period of hearings, was declared winner.   

His outrageous murder of the King’s language notwithstanding, the mayor could rise to some rarefied air of eloquence when forced to defend some profitable enterprise, as when he was threatened with charges for illegal extraction of sand in his municipality, to wit – delivered in his unique way: “There is no quaaarrrying in (his town). There is ooonly the scrrrraping of the volcaaanic debrisss from our agricultural laaands, pursuant to our noooble oobjective to renew theiiir prrroductiiivity.”

For all his barako, some even say – lovingly –pusakal persona, this man had a pusong mamon to his friends and needy constituents.

Another mayor – Apalit’s Tirso G. Lacanilao, God bless his soul – was, by, of, and in himself a classic.

Possessed of a mug he himself claimed not even his own mother could love, he was ridiculed for being – political correctness, now – aesthetically-challenged. His election posters were stamped “Pangit!” by his opponents.

Right there and then, he found the stock-in-trade with, and by, which he won his three terms, easily. He simply capitalized on his ugliness, to be blunt about it.

“Sinasabi po ng mga katunggali ko na ako ay pangit, na ako ay mukhang kabayo. Sinungaling po sila. Kayo na rin ang makakapagpatunay na hindi ako mukhang kabayo. Mukha akong tsonggo.” (My rivals say I am ugly, that I look like a horse. They are liars. You see for yourself that I don’t look like a horse. I look like a monkey.) So spake Tirso on the political stage, so the crowd roared in delight.

Then his segue to: “Alam ng buong bayan na matatapang at nakakatakot ang aking mga kalaban. Hindi po totoo yan. Hinahamon ko sila ngayon, kung sila’y talagang matapang at walang takot, sige nga, magpalit kami ng mukha!” (The whole town knows that my opponents are brave and fearsome. That is a lie. I challenge them now, if they are indeed brave and fearless, let us trade faces!)

A campaign rap was even composed for Tirso: “Y Tirso mayap ya / Maganaka ya pa / Andyang matsura ya” (Tirso is good / He is kind-hearted / Though very ugly). To the sound of which Tirso pranced on the stage like an ape. Again, to the paroxysms of delight of his audience.

A laughingstock, Tirso made of himself. An undefeated mayor, the people of Apalit made of Tirso.

Tirso could have served the very template for one other politician who never retreated, never surrendered, but never won the seat he coveted all his life.

Instead of making positive his un-aesthetics, he despised any mention of it.

The now-lamented Ody Fabian – God bless his soul – was slapped with a case for grave slander after he nonchalantly said in his radio commentary over dwGV-FM “Masuwerte ka, mababait ang mga kababayan ko, at pinapayagan kang gumala man lang diyan. Hindi mo ba alam, bawal ang pangit sa bayang yan.” (You are lucky, my townmates are tolerant and they allow you to roam around. Don’t you know my town is off-limits to uglies?).

They don’t make politicians like these anymore. How I miss them! 

The vote commodified

IT IS still  some six months to the 2019 polls and already, one candidate – I need not tell you who, in a city – I need not tell you which, is assessed to have spent, as of mid-November yet, some P70 million.

A virtual exodus – that’s how a neighbor puts it – of the magnitude of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments is showing daily at the upscale enclave where the candidate’s high-walled estate miraculously opened up as one promised land, luring the multitude to the manna for easy picking there.

For the Christmas season alone, friends swear to the heavens, the candidate will give Santa a run for his gifts with a budget of P30 million.

Apprised of the wannabe’s colossal campaign chest, the hanger-on reportedly bragged of P300 million at his disposal. To which, scoffed those in-the-know: Ninanu ya? Maluat nong megisan qng pamaniali nang gabun ding penaco-quitan na. (Crude translation: What money? That he amassed from his grafting has long been spent in his personal land-banking).    

Already gargantuan, those hundreds of millions of pesos allotted for a city campaign readily diminish to Lilliputian pittance vis-à-vis the Brobdingnagian P1 billion plus-plus bruited about as the campaign treasury the ambitious needs for a provincial run.

The ready assumption is that such astronomical sum could only come from congressional pork. But with the sitting congressmen smug with their expected coronation in their respective districts, the hunt shifts to… cholesterol pork?

Yes, P1 billion can be exacted from the piggy bank. But only from that little piggy that went to and dominated the market, turning out the province’s best.

If meatheads are to be believed, the P1-B++ campaign has already started in the riverine villages of Masantol and Macabebe with the sudden engagement of just about every sari-sari store in dealership of processed meat products bearing the brand and colors, not to mention the picture the greater Kapampangan carnivores are most familiar with.

As much for cold cash, as for cold cuts – especially this Christmastime – the 2019 election campaign will be enjoyed. Whatever, constant shall remain the commercialization of the vote. As I wrote about in campaigns past, updated to wit:

AN HONEST politician is one who, when bought, will stay bought.

Substitute “voter” for politician, and still holds that truism attributed to the American financier and politician Simon Cameron (1799-1889) who served a short year as Lincoln’s Secretary of War, deposed for corruption.

A caveat emptor though is necessary here: What is the warranty given the buyer that whom he/she bought stayed “honest” all the way to the poll precinct?

This becomes all too problematic given the exhortations of moralists: Kunin ang pera, sundin ang konsiyensiya! Kunin ang pera, iboto ang kursunada!

To get their money’s worth, what politicians and their strategists did in the business of vote-buying in manual elections past was to provide carbon paper – along with half of the pay – to the payee which he/she was required to sandwich between the ballot and a piece of paper. That paper was to be presented to the “coordinator” of the payer for the other half of the agreed-upon price for the vote. 
Technology upgraded voting with the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines. So was the carbon paper upgraded to the cell phone. The payee now required to take a photo of his accomplished ballot with his mobile to prove that he/she did his/her part of the bargain. (That was before mobiles were banned from the precincts).

Pre-election buying of votes has even less guarantees of “honest” returns. If a voter can sell his/her vote to one candidate, what prevents him/her to sell it to the rival candidate? As there are double deals in government contracts for so-called SOPs, so there are double sales in votes.

Indeed, long and loud are the lamentations of losing candidates over the waste of so much money on voters who just (re)sold out to the higher bidder. 

Wise to the ways of “dishonest” voters, a local candidate in the 2010 elections was reported to have corralled the voters that were purchased 30 hours before the elections, providing them with food and accommodations as well as bags of goodies, thereby preventing them from being bought back by the rival.

Before the precincts opened, the quartered voters were herded like sheep to their respected polling places.

Thus, the dictum: Secure, hide what you have purchased, lest they be stolen from you.

In the 2013 campaign, vote-buying is said to have taken a different turn. Voters are now asked, in exchange for cash, not anymore to vote for a certain candidate but not to vote at all.

A candidate knows the bailiwicks of his/her opponent. It is there that money is widely spent on the rival’s supporters for them not to bother voting anymore. Just to be sure that their money is spent wisely and the bought voter stayed honest, indelible ink shall be put on his/her forefinger on election day.

In one town, it is said that the going rate for the no-voter at this early is already P1,500.

That’s quite a sum compared to the paltry P300 per vote bandied about in the city. Which reminds me of the now lamented, dearly departed Tirso G. Lacanilao, three-term mayor of Apalit.

Campaigning for his second and last re-election, Lacanilao lambasted – on stage – voters who commodified their ballots thus: Mababa ko pa uri kesa karing babi. King P300 pisali yu pati kaladuwa yu. Ing babi halaga ne man libu-libo.(You have lesser value than pigs. For P300 you sold your very souls. The pig costs thousands of pesos at least).”

Shame before swine. Awfully shameless.

A consolation for those who don’t buy, who can’t buy, who won’t buy votes: One can only buy so much.

In a tight contest though, that so much can be more than enough to make the difference. Yeah, there’s a bargain sale out there.

Dogged loyalty

GOOD-BYE, Dugong Aso.

Thus, the erudite Robby Tantingco slugged his recent Facebook post, furthering:     

“Have you noticed? There is hardly any Filipino anymore who calls Kapampangans 'dugong aso'. We have successfully asserted ourselves and changed the conversation to the other narratives of the multi-layered story of our amazing people. So, once and for all, and to put the last nail on the coffin of this subject matter, let us stop blaming the Macabebe Scouts alone…for the capture of Aguinaldo in Palanan in 1901…”

And, with their corresponding mug shots and briefs of their dastardly deed, Robby laid the blame on Spanish Capt. Lazaro Segovia, Ilocano Cecilio Seguismundo, and Tagalog Maj. Hilario Talplacido as having betrayed Aguinaldo.

Lamented Robby: “And yet it was the foot soldiers, the Macabebes, who bore the brunt of the nation's anger which resulted in the unfair racial profiling of all Kapampangans as ‘traydor’ and ‘dugong aso.’"

Rightly, and reasonably, Robby: “How could the Macabebes, who never served in Aguinaldo's army and therefore could not have betrayed him, be branded as traitors, and not these three defectors? They were merely doing their job as hired soldiers of the American military, and were actually exacting vengeance on a man they hated with all their heart and soul (for killing Andres Bonifacio whose roots were in Macabebe, and for ordering the burning of the Macabebe church).”

I commented: From another perspective, the Macabebe scouts should even be hailed as heroes. Aguinaldo's messiahnic delusions deprived the revolution of its father, Bonifacio and its only real military brains, Luna.

While over a score liked what I said, the overwhelming majority of reactions were more of relief and gladness at Robby’s reasoned contextualization of a historical event in expunging from the Kapampangan race the canard of a canine bloodline.

Which instantly reminded me of something similar I wrote and updated here some years back, to wit:

…DOGS ARE clichéd as man’s best friend, yet they tend to get the choicest cuts in the worst insults. “Gone to the dogs,” for instance.

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago riled the usually cat-cool Sen. Panfilo Lacson not so much for calling him “Pinky” as for branding him as Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile’s “attack dog.” Warranting a reply in kind from the former top cop. A case of “dog-eat-dog” there?

“Tuta ng Kano (America’s puppy).” So, the militant Left derided Ferdinand E. Marcos, Cory Aquino and all those who followed them to Malacanang down to Cory’s son BS.

Even the venerable Carlos P. Romulo, who served eight Philippine presidents – from Quezon to Marcos – and who himself sat as president – of the Fourth Session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1949-1950, was not spared of a similar epithet. No idle urban legend but a revealed truth to student activists of the First Quarter Storm was Chou En-Lai’s dismissal of Romulo as “America’s running dog” at the Bandung Conference of Asian and African nations in 1955 that helped crystallized the Non-Aligned Movement.

At the time of Cory too, I remember the Malacanang Press Corps raising a howl over a presidential factotum’s obvert reference to them as mongrels when he directed his staff to “feed the kennel” whenever his office issued press releases.

For too long a time, a collective insult, indeed, a curse, to the whole Kapampangan race is the branding “dugong aso.”

In 1981, the political leadership of Pampanga – from Gov. Estelito P. Mendoza, Vice Gov. Cicero J. Punzalan, down to the mayors led by the “Big 5” of San Fernando’s Armando Biliwang, Arayat’s Benigno Espino, Magalang’s Daniel Lacson, Sta. Ana’s Magno Maniago and Sta. Rita’s Frank Ocampo, along with Angeles City’s Francisco G. Nepomuceno, raged and ranted rabidly at then Olongapo City Mayor Richard J. Gordon for citing the Kapampangans as dugong aso in the context of regionalism’s ill-effects to nationalism in his nomination speech for Ferdinand E. Marcos in the KBL party convention at the Manila Hotel.

Actual physical threats were even thrown Gordon’s way in addition to some persona non grata resolutions. (Gordon’s topping Pampanga in the senatorial contest of May 2013, is some vindication of the forgiving-and-forgetting nature of this race.)   

Lapid

Even as dugong aso stuck to the Kapampangan, the insult accruing thereat has largely dissipated. This is owed to an extent to then Gov. Lito Lapid, as we wrote here sometime ago:      

“Ikinagagalit nating mga Kapampangan ang pagtawag sa atin ng ‘dugong aso.’ Subali’t ito ay ipinagmamalaki’t ikinararangal ko. Sa katapatan, wala nang mauuna pa sa aso: sa kanya iniiwan ng amo ang tahanan nito, pati na magkaminsan ang pagtatanggol sa kanyang pamilya. Subukin mong saktan ang amo, at tiyak, dadambain ka ng kanyang aso. Ang katapatang ito ang iniaalay ko sa inyo.” (We Kapampangans get slighted when told the blood of dogs runs in our veins. But I find pride and honor in this. When it comes to loyalty, none beats the dog: to it man leaves the protection of his home, at times even the defense of his family. Try to hit a man and his dog will surely attack you. This is the kind of loyalty I offer you.)
Before a beaming President Ramos at the Mawaque Resettlement Project site in 1997, Lapid pledged his loyalty in gratitude for the new lease on human decency, on human life itself that El Tabaco bestowed upon those the Mount Pinatubo eruptions devastated, displaced and dispossessed.
Thence, the Bida embraced FVR’s Lakas-NUCD with a fidelity his wife could only wish he committed to his marital vows with as much devotion, if not intensity.
Lapid there made a rarity: loyalty being an uncommon commodity in politics. So, what is it that makes politicians and adulterers one and the same as a dysfunctional radio? Low fidelity on a high frequency, dummy…

There too was Lapid giving a novel and noble meaning to the derogatory dugong aso impacted in the Kapampangan psyche, extolling it as the virtue of katapatan, of dogged loyalty to an elder, to a superior, to a friend. No mean feat for the uncolleged Lapid.

But for the title “Of dogs and men,” there is very little I remember of a column I wrote in The Voice in the late ‘70s. It would have made a most relevant read in the subject I am discussing here. The ending of that column though is something I cannot possibly just easily forget, having consigned it as much to the mind as to the heart and put out at every opportunity that calls for it, like now.

A lesson in loyalty – of dogs, as well as of men – perfectly captured in that blurb of an award-winning Lino Brocka movie: “Sa bawa’t latay, kahit aso’y nag-iiba. Sa unang latay, siya’y magtatanda; Sa ikalawa, siya’y mag-iisip; Sa ikatlo, siya’y magtataka; Sa ika-apat, humanda ka!” (At every lash, even a dog changes. At the first, it would learn. At the second, it would think. At the third, it would wonder. At the fourth, brace yourself!)

Caveat canis. Yes, there is more to what the Latins of old put up at their gates than its literal meaning.  

The Writer

DIGNITY IN quietude. In his life, in his writing, in his passing.

As he eschewed public acclaim for his excellence – declining my offer of nominating him for the Most Outstanding Kapampangan Award (MOKA) in Media on at least two occasions, so did he renounce any panegyric, indeed, shunned necrological rites, in the event of his death.

Thus, his passing hardly noticed by even the closest of his peers, his body immediately cremated sans the least semblance of a wake.

He would not have welcomed this, but I can never forgive myself for depriving him of his overdue recognition, if only in reprinting this piece I wrote over ten years ago to serve as a fitting eulogy.   

RAMIRO MERCADO makes us all local “writers” no more than pretenders to that title which the iconic Che Guevara called “the most sacred thing in the world.” 

Ram so excels in the craft that I feel oftentimes reduced to that caricature so perfectly sketched by the19th century English writer William Samuel Lilly thus: “All men who can write grammatically – and many, indeed who cannot – seem to think they have a call to express their ‘views’ on all subjects, human and divine. And their views will be found, in the vast majority of cases, to consist of shreds of information, generally distorted and often erroneous, claptrap phrases picked up at hazard, and dignified by the title of ‘principles’, preferences and predilections, always unreasoned, and not seldom unreasonable.”
To append the tag “journalist” to Ram is a supreme insult. For he has never been one. Not in the usual sense of day-to-day reportage bounded by the cold, cold “objectivity” of the who, what, where, when, why, and how of events-of-interest to the reading public.
Ram is too sensitive a person, too good a writer to be a journalist. A chaff-from-the-grain distinction: The intellect, of course, is essential but it is heart that truly makes the writer. And Ram is all heart.
That is most evident in the columns he has churned out through the years through all those publications he has written for, from The Voice to his very own Pampanga Eagle to Sun-Star Pampanga.
That is most manifest in his first book First Person just off the press.
More than a simple anthology of his past columns, First Person is a travel through time, a lingering look-back at a past made perfect by a tense present. The good old days, when the skies were bluer, when the grass was greener, when the sun was brighter as that song of long ago went.
One can’t help but wax romantic with Ram’s paeans to the Dalagang Kapampangan; and nostalgic with his reminiscences of places, celebrations and even our American past.
Ram makes us laugh at our own foibles as a people. Even as, befitting the true son of Mexico, Pampanga that he is, he impresses upon us our inherent social consciousness.
A still life, a portrait, a landscape, a moving canvass of Kapampangan life in the brightest of colors did Ram masterfully paint in First Person. 
Sub-headed “A memoir of life in small town Philippines,” First Person draws out of the Kapampangan psyche, like a long-buried heirloom, the soul of a place, the zeitgeist of an era irretrievably lost to the new generation of his race.
And like the true literary treasure trove that it is, First Person is a jewel to the enrichment of Kapampangan culture. Had I the authority, I would have made the book required reading in all schools in Pampanga. If only to impact upon our youth the ethos of a recent past for a clearer appreciation of their time and place.
In just his first book – and hopefully not his last – Ram has already his defining opus. I, who have come out with four books, am most envious of him. For I still am in search of that which shall define me, which shall truly make me what I now pretend to be. 
I have my own anthology of columns dating back to the early 70s all-ready for encoding for over two years now. I even have a working title for it, not without some dose of my characteristic conceit: “I Write: I Am.” 
First Person took the wind out of the sails of my self-importance. Now, I am more inclined to just leave my material as it is now – in yellowed, tattered clippings. 
Notwithstanding the platitudes Ram heaped upon my person in his handwritten dedication to the copy he sent me – “Distinguished journalist and author, leader of media, social philosopher, the original rebel” – I will be – to use that overwrought cliché in a Sharon Cuneta movie – “nothing but a second-rate, trying hard copycat.”
Ram, the writer, is one tough act to follow.

Moments with my father

I WAS in Grade 2 when I decided to stop schooling altogether to devote the rest of my life, or to the limits of what I perceived as life at the age of 7, to play, play, and play all day.

I was cajoled by my mother, received the rod – actually the carabao whip – from my father to force me back to the classroom but the farthest I went was to the rice fields and the creeks around the Sto. Tomas Central School where my cohorts in the school-sucks-play-is-all juvenile mindset spent all hours of day.

No amount of persuasion from my mother, spanking from my father, and bribery from my doting grandmother made me go to school.

Until one day, what my young mind could only thought was a miracle happened: my father said he had acceded to my “decision” and would allow me to stay out of school permanently.

How heaven opened its very gates to me that day! Lolled for as long as I wanted in bed, actually on the dase over the bamboo-slatted lande, hardly taking any pandesal for breakfast before running off past the school grounds to my gang’s hideout nestled among camachile and palapat trees by a bend of a river called Lacbangan.

Swam until sawa, swang from the branches of the trees, raced with the biseros, dug for paros-paros, raided the shrimp traps called ango, and took our finds to a nearby kubo where an elderly farmer and his wife cooked them along with some biya and tilapia, that with the abundant kangkong and camias they whipped into delectable sinigang.

More play, swim, run and carabao racing till sunset bade us to go home.

The following morning, darkness was still about when father woke me up. No, he won’t ask me to go to school, he said. He handed me threadbare hand-me-downs of shorts and shirt to change to. Then told me to load bamboo poles to the banca by the creek at the back of our house.

Once loaded, he gave me an oar, nearly as tall as myself, to tandem with him in paddling the banca to the farm he tilled some 30 minutes away by muscle power.

At the farm, he told me to unload all the bamboo poles, thereafter shoved a shovel nearly as tall as the paddle to my hands, commanded me to dig foot-deep holes along the pilapil that bounded the paddy, and emplace the bamboo poles.

Grueling labor to a grown-up, hell’s punishment itself to a 7-year-old. I could barely raise the paddle on our way back home.

Despite the exhaustion, I made it a point to wake up earlier than my father the next day. He had not even gargled when I begged him not to take me to the farm again, promising to go back to school for as long as it took until I finished with a diploma.

And I have kept to my end of the bargain ever since, finishing salutatorian at my elementary graduation, salutatorian again in high school, consistent dean’s lister with a second full scholarship due my editorship of the school publication throughout college.

Rather than barked instructions of do’s and don’ts, my father’s way of educating me, as well as all his six other children, was by experiential learning. He made us feel what we had to know. And, on hindsight now, we ended up the better for it.

He did not finish grade school, and for that he suffered the harshness of manual labor. Not that he abhorred farm work; producing food to feed his brood, not to mention other people, was his elemental ideal of nobility. He just wanted, to the best he could, for as long as he could, to keep his children from the bondage of the soil that he felt he was hemmed in due to his sheer lack of school education.

That learning was his fervent wish for his children manifested the very day I was born. He made the only book available at home – a tattered dictionary long stripped of its hard covers – the pillow he rested my head upon. Maybe, that was the origin of my life-long love of reading. All too certainly though, it damned me to be a sapad for life – the back of my head is as flat as a plywood wall. Yeah, the long hair is a way of concealment first, a matter of style only second.

Intellectual arrogance fired up by the affectation of revolutionary zeal in college burned down our communication lines, especially where concerned what I decried as the native docility, the inherent timidity of his class to confront the exploitative land tenancy that damned him – and his family – to abject poverty.

In one highly charged diatribe of a monologue one night, I impressed upon him the magnitude of my activism, the criticality of my writings in the struggle to liberate him and his kind from the slavery of the soil.

He merely listened. Not a word came out of him. I hurried to bed, shaking my head.

It was nearly dawn, I reckoned, when nature called. On my way to answer, I saw the light over our dining table still on, my father hunched over copies of The Regina, our college publication I edited, his hand on the page where my column appeared. He looked at me, and smiled meekly.

How I wept at the realization of my insolence, how I hugged him for his forgiveness.

“You make me proud.” That was all that he said.

How I weep now, in remembrance of this. How I wish I can still hug him, tell him how he made me proud, how blessed his children are to have him for their father. If only for one last time. Tatang, dacal pung salamat.          

                 

An obit for an era

SO SAD to read the news of the passing of former Sta. Rita Mayor Frank Ocampo last Thursday at the age of 79.

Ocampo belonged to that group of Pampanga mayors who kindled reverential fear among their constituents, and equally instilled mortal dread among their enemies. Far from negatively, it was understandably, even justifiably so, theirs being the desperate times when the province was caught in the vise-grip of the communist insurgency, from the old Huks onto to the New People’s Army.

Their brave common stand against the “Red Tide” (in)famously memorialized in that original template for the state’s para-military unit called BSDU – Barrio Self-Defense Unit, later morphing to the CHDF – Civilian Home Defense Forces, and demeaned to CAFGU – Citizen Armed Force Geographical Unit.

The BSDU came as the reactionary measure of the state – as much in the Marxist context as a strategic counteraction – to the killings of Pampanga officials, notably mayors Levi Panlilio of San Fernando and Joaquin Pineda of Sto. Tomas in a matter of days; and, much earlier, Anastacio Gallardo of Candaba, who also served as president of the anti-Huk Mayors League of Pampanga.    

Though collective the effort in its foundation, it was San Fernando Mayor Armando P. Biliwang that provided the face, if not the character, to the BSDU which was cinematized in the mostly bang-bang, less kiss-kiss, eponymous actioner Biliwang ng BSDU, top-billed by the celluloid’s smooching king Tony Ferrer, a Capampangan native himself, by then past the peak of his popularity as Tony Falcon, Agent X-44.

Biliwang was the unofficial leader of the group, if only by virtue of his being the president of the Mayors League of the Philippines during the Marcos regime.

The so-called “Rape of Democracy” in San Fernando in the 1980 elections – when the teachers were herded to the town hall for the counting and canvassing of votes exclusively for the ruling Kilusang Bagong Lipunan – ingloriously ended electoral politics for Biliwang.

But his anti-communist fervor flared up even more thereafter with his godfathering – allegedly – the right-wing vigilante group Angelino Simbulan Brigade that engaged the NPA urban guerrilla unit Mariano Garcia Brigade in a war of attrition in Pampanga and Angeles City in the late 1980s.

Lingering illness complexed with diabetes beat rebel bullets in claiming the life of Biliwang a decade after.

The NPA though officially claimed credit for the killing of two of Biliwang’s anti-communist confederates: Sta. Ana Mayor Magno Maniago, assassinated while attending the open-air first misa de gallo at the church patio in December 1985; and Magalang Mayor Daniel Lacson, ambushed on the way to his farm in his town within months after his unceremonious replacement by an OIC-mayor in the wake of the 1986 EDSA Revolution.

Surviving a number of ambuscades by both communist rebels and political rivals alike was Arayat Mayor Benigno Espino who served as the group leader from the time of Gov. Estelito P. Mendoza up to his death some two years ago, if memory serves right.     

Aside from bullets, Espino also survived the OIC onslaught of the Cory Aquino regime, successfully returning to the mayorship and holding on for a couple of terms, before stepping down to serve as chairman-administrator of the Central Luzon Rehabilitation Center that he, along with Ocampo and then-as-now Board Member Rosve Henson and then-Bacolor mayor now-also-BM Ananias Canlas Jr., and a few others established with the support of the Philippine National Police and private donors during the Joseph Estrada presidency.

Like Espino in Arayat, Ocampo also managed to win the mayorship of Sta. Rita again in the post-EDSA period.

After Espino’s death, Ocampo took the mantle of responsibility at the rehabilitation center. Serving until sickness took the greater side of strength out of him.

Ocampo’s death has diminished to one – Floridablanca’s Pedro Capulong – the living remnant of that distinct band of men that stood defiantly tall during one dark period in our history.

Making a brief return to the town hall in the 1990s, Capulong has since opted for a quiet retirement.

There passed, irretrievably, an era in Pampanga politics when mayors were measured for their balls of iron forged in the crucible of the war against communism.

Biliwang. Maniago. Lacson. Espino. Ocampo. And the living Capulong too. Alas, they don’t make mayors like them anymore.

  

They just lie there...

ONA is the first, if not the only, refuge of thousands of city residents who need to be hospitalized. With its inadequacies in space, medicines, and medical and laboratory supplies, many of our residents have to go to the Jose B. Lingad Hospital in the City of San Fernando.

It’s a shame that we could not take care of our own, particularly because other LGUs like the Province of Pampanga, under the administration of Gov. Lilia G. Pineda, do provide quality health and hospital services to the province’s more than 500 barangays. Why can’t we do the same for the city’s 33 barangays?

ONA, if you still don’t know, is Ospital ning Angeles. On target, as usual, is this latest Alexander S. Cauguiran broadside at the sitting administration.

Far from the modernized medical center that gained centerpiece status in the first few SOCAs of the Pamintuan mayorship, ONA has apparently reverted to that sad, sorry state of public health facilities that has come to be euphemized as “Mona Lisa” hospital – not so much for Da Vinci’s masterpiece as for the lines in the song it inspired, to wit: They just lie there, and they die there... not so much for the dreams laid on La Gioconda’s doorsteps, but for the patients taken at ONA.

A case in point – fortunately, the patient lived to tell his story – happened just before All Saints Day.

A middle-manager of a posh hotel at the Clark Freeport was on his way home in the vicinity of First Street when riding-in-tandem hoodlums grabbed him and demanded that he gave his bag to them.

Yes, you may have my bag but let me just get the key to my house so that at least I could go home, he pleaded.

Whereupon, one of the thugs stabbed him in the chest, and as he slumped on the ground, his bag’s strap caught on the crook of his arm, the assailant slashed him on the chest.

A Good Samaritan of a tricycle driver took him to ONA – the victim just asked that he be taken to any hospital as he is new to the city – where, upon arrival at the emergency room was given some gauze the staff asked him to press on his wounds. Other personnel there witnessed doing their routinary ER functions of furiously texting and idly chatting.

Long minutes passed without any emergency procedures being administered. To his reckoning, it was over half an hour before he was told that he had to be evacuated to JBL Hospital in the City of San Fernando. And was taken to a waiting ambulance.

Long waiting inside the ambulance prompted him to plead to please – as he was already gasping for breath – rush him for treatment. Only to be told that the ambulance had to wait for one more patient before it could go. (In much the same way as a passenger jeepney waiting to be filled before it could go, wow!)

Long story short, he was taken to JBL and from there – his hotel having by then learned of his stabbing – taken to Medical City where he is still recuperating from a punctured lung.

In case of emergency? ONA is the last place to be. They just lie there, and they die there. Indeed! Makes one wonder if the true mission of ONA is primarily to give business to the funeral parlors and memorial parks of the city, like… Holy Mary. If you don’t get the drift here, your political naïveté is admirable.  

JBL as go-to hospital for the people of Angeles City is a stinging slap – walang kasing-hapding mariing sampal, in the immortal words of the other Rizal, Policarpio, the dearly lamented newsman of the city – to the Pamintuan administration.

It is truly a shame that the city could not take care of its own, as Cauguiran grieved.

The greater shame though is that LGUs other than the Province of Pampanga, with even lesser resources than the highly urbanized Angeles City, are not only capable but even excelling in the provision of health care to their constituents.

One need not look farther than the City of Mabalacat, which, under the helm of Mayor Cris Garbo, entered into MOAs with private hospitals as far as Angeles City and as “classy” as the Medical Center-Clark guaranteeing payments for the medical bills of its indigent constituency.

Then, there is the highly acclaimed Mexico Community Hospital established by Mayor Teddy C. Tumang in his first term, expanded through his three terms, and immediately upon his return to the mayorship, completed with a dialysis center giving free renal care to the residents, even subsidizing the cost of prescribed medicines.

Comparisons are always odious. But they can’t be helped.  

Garbo – mayor only since June 2017, and Tumang, a 2016 returnee, have taken so great a leap, so long a stride in providing for the well-being of their constituents that they are rarely, if at all, still referred to the Office of the Governor for assistance or taken to JBL. As ONA does, per Cauguiran’s lament, per the patients’ complaint.

Shame. Shame. Shame.

The greatest shame that ONA brings though impacts most upon the Pamintuan administration.

It not only does a grave injustice, but even negates all those accolades heaped upon Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan as World City Mayor awardee, etcetera, hall-of-famer Most Outstanding Mayor of the Philippines of Superbrands Marketing International Inc., etcetera, etcetera.

As they lie at ONA, so they lie too at city hall?

Shame, indeed.     

Sacraments for sale

“WOE TO transform the churches, the ‘house of God’, into ‘markets’, perhaps even with the price list for the Sacraments. Yes, I have seen it done a few times.”

So rued Pope Francis in his morning Mass in Santa Marta over the weekend.

Of the Lord’s “impetuous” reaction, Francis said: “The Son of God is driven by love, by zeal for the house of the Lord, (seeing that it has been) converted into a market, (where they sold) oxen, sheep and doves, in the presence of money changers, (Jesus) recognizes that that place was populated by idolaters, men ready to serve money instead of God.”  

So, what else is new with this papal lamentation, having been uttered virtually to the letter in November 2014? As we reflected here in March 2015, to wit:

Selling salvation  

“IT IS written," he said to them, "'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it 'a den of robbers.'"

Contemplating Luke 19:46 – also Matthew 21:13 and Mark 11:17 – Pope Francis rued how priests have turned their parishes into “businesses” by affixing price tags to the sacraments, to blessings, to Mass intentions.

When Jesus whipped the moneychangers out of the temple (John 2:15), Francis professed, it was not out of rage, righteous as it was, at them, rather He was “filled with the wrath of God and zeal for His house.”
That, Francis furthered, rising out of the Lord having “an issue with money because redemption is free; it is God’s free gift, He comes to bring us the all-encompassing gratuity of God’s love.”
Thus, with the practice of pricing the sacraments and church services, salvation is essentially on sale. With the parish priest devolved into an entrepreneur: capitalizing on God, profiting in cash. God and mammon served?   

Noted the Pope: “I think of how our attitude can scandalize people with unpriestly habits in the Temple: the scandal of doing business, the scandal of worldliness.”

Admonished the Pope: “It is interesting: the people of God can forgive their priests, when they are weak; when they slip on a sin, the people know how to forgive them.  But there are two things that the people of God cannot forgive: a priest attached to money and a priest who mistreats people. This they cannot forgive! It is scandalous…”
And the scandals have not subsided any, since Francis made that sermon on November 21, 2014 at the Vatican's Domus Sanctae Marthae.

For instance, there is this parish priest called “Father One-Five” for the uniform rate of P1,500 for the sacraments of baptism, confirmation when performed by the bishop in his parish church, and extreme unction, as well as Mass offerings.

It’s not “P1,500 all-in” however for the funeral Mass, with the usual “complimentary” final blessing of the dead priced with a separate P1,500. The poor grief-stricken folk the deceased left behind thereby pushed in an either-or bind. Forced to choose whichever of the funeral Mass or the final blessing they believe would facilitate faster their beloved dead’s passage through the Pearly Gates.

This same Father One-Five has another moniker, “Sobre,”substituted for the first two syllables of his three-syllabic name. Here’s how he got it:   

The intentions for every Mass, this father reads himself – in effect, as both personal and pastoral pious pleadings for the Almighty to grant them; in fact, to take note of the number of persons making the intentions. And cross-referencing them with the number of envelopes offered for the Mass. Woe unto him whose intention was read but failed to back it up with an envelope, filled and sealed, but of course.

There is even this story current in his parish of how he sent back an envelope to the Mass offerer after he found a measly P20 inside it.

Which reminds us of the lesson of the widow’s mite in Luke 21:1-4: “As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury.  He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins.  ^‘Truly I tell you,’ he said, ‘this poor widow has put in more than all the others.  All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.’”

It’s not an all-too-different modus for another parish priest. Unfixed but floating are his rates for administering the sacraments, depending on the number of ninong and ninang for baptisms and weddings: from P300 to P500 per capita for the former, from P1,000 upwards for the latter, conditioned on the luxuriousness of the church décor, the expanse of the wedding coverage, the “signatureness” of the wedding party’s apparel.      

Indeed, the Pope: “It is scandalous when the Temple, the House of God, becomes a place of business… [as though] the church was being rented out.”
Then there is yet another one who makes himself an ambulant vendor in offering novenas, going house-by-house in his parish to dedicate the household to a particular patron saint. The sealed white envelope expected, right after the final “Amen.”      

The rate, reportedly depending on the efficacy of the saint in wielding miracles: Saints Jude and Rita, the patrons of the impossible, at the top of the menu; St. Anthony of Padua, intercessor for anything and anyone lost, next; followed by St. Monica, for the reformation of wayward sons; St. Lucia, for clear eyesight; St. Apollonia, for toothache, etcetera. I’ve yet to hear though of a novena that good father celebrated in honor of St. Francis de Sales, the patron of journalists.

Salvation for a price. Sheer simony, first impacted in the Christian world with the sale of indulgences that factored primarily in Martin Luther’s revolt against the Roman Catholic Church embodied in his Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum, better known as “The 95 Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” he supposedly posted on the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.

Indeed, finding simony, along with the other issues Luther raised in his theses – nepotism, usury, pluralism, and other clerical abuses – still extant, along with the current clerical scandals of paedophilia, non-sacramented wives and unfathered children, a lifestyle anchored on materialism, I am tempted to write my own “100 Theses Disputing the Power and Efficacy of the Catholic Priesthood.”

Lest this be misconstrued as a sweeping indictment of the clergy, let me affirm that a large number have remained steadfast with their alter Christus persona. Like the good Archbishop Emeritus Apu Ceto, they make enough reason to keep faith in the priesthood.

Some feeling akin here to that in Genesis 18:16-33, with Abraham pleading with the Lord to spare Sodom: “…Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?  What if there are fifty righteous people in the city?...

…He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”

Come to think Pope Francis again: “Who am I to judge?”