No mere footnote to history

TEACHER’S HEROISM Day, January 30, opens Kaganapan 2018, the 17^th Cityhood Charter Celebration in the City of San Fernando.

A most auspicious event to start the coming-to-fulfilment – that’s what “kaganapan” precisely means in Pilipino -- of whatever promised greatness for this capital city and its people.  

But for a select few in-the-know at city hall itself, who is even remotely aware of the meaning of that day? Of what heroic act the teachers accomplished and are now celebrated for. Or, who these teachers even were.

So, I noted at Monday’s press conference with Mayor Edwin Santiago, VM Jimmy Lazatin, members of the city council and chiefs of offices, and the event executive committee, following the unveiling of Kaganapan 2018’s calendar of activities.  And promptly shared the little that I have retained in memory about that event of 38 long years ago. (Expanding with some late remembrances here as I write).

The “Rape of Democracy” it was called by the mosquito press – the intrepid underground publications and tabloids of the time – as it merited little if any play-up in the mainstream Marcosian media, especially in its flagship broadsheet Daily Express which was derisively punned and fittingly panned as the Daily Suppress.

So, the electorate was allowed to vote freely in the local elections of 1980. But the manual counting and canvassing of their votes was an altogether different matter.

Sensing imminent wholesale defeat for the administration’s Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) candidates – yes wholesale, as bloc-voting was prescribed by the Commission on Elections itself – even at the onset of the counting, operatives of the party in-power let loose their armed goons upon the polling precincts, taking the ballot boxes and all election materials, and – when they resisted – the teachers themselves.

Fading memory now notwithstanding, it was in the small barangay of Malpitic that the news of the “snatching of ballots” and “kidnapping of teachers” first came out, and spread fast across town with reports of similar incidents occurring in practically all barangays of San Fernando.  

Herded at the municipal hall and under pain of death, the teachers were forced to play the charade of vote-canvassing – first reading “KBL,” then tallying the vote in the designated KBL box of the canvass sheet, regardless of what was written on the ballot.

No mere urban legend were the stories of the teachers – in fits of nervousness and intense stress – peeing in their skirts and, perhaps on impulse of courageous defiance, reduced to stuttering “LBK,” “KLB,” and “BLK,” everything but the acronym they were forced to utter.

Truly, a stuff of legend though was the fearless stand of the teachers led by Madam Tess Tablante to publicly expose the ordeal they went through that forced the regime to nullify the election results – acknowledging that the teachers were “threatened and coerced into making spurious election returns without regard to the genuine ballots in the ballot boxes” – and unseated the Comelec-proclaimed winner, re-electionist Armando P. Biliwang.

In the interregnum ensued an unprecedented rule of succession with a Philippine Constabulary officer, Col. Amante S. Bueno, deputy commander for administration of the 3^rd Regional PC Zone at Camp Olivas, taking over as OIC-Mayor, and succeeded by lawyer Vic Macalino, on the recommendation of the Honorable Estelito P. Mendoza, governor of Pampanga, secretary of justice, solicitor-general, among other titles.

The political impasse coming to an end with the special mayoralty election in 1983 won by Virgilio “Baby” Sanchez, who was Biliwang’s predecessor.

That this: the teachers defending – with their very lives if needed – the sanctity of the vote at the height of the dictatorship when elections were a mockery of democracy, was damned heroic.

That in all of the Philippines where electoral terrorism was wanton practice, such heroism had to happen in San Fernando could only speak of redoubtable courage, a testimony to true grit of the local teachers.

January 30, 1980 in San Fernando is no mere footnote but a shining milestone in the history of the Filipino struggle for democracy, coming as it is full six years before the EDSA People Power Revolt that finally ousted the dictatorship.

More than just being opening event to the annual celebration of Kaganapan, Teachers’ Heroism Day needs to be memorialized – in stone, as in a monument to the courageous teachers; in book form, as in an oral history of the personal accounts of the teachers themselves.

In this era of fake news and forged histories, that task for the city government is as much incumbent as urgent. As much for the teachers, as for patrimony of the Fernandino.

Last farmer of Telabastagan

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – The impressively massive concrete edifice of Central Luzon’s newest SM mall – set to open this May – caps the total transformation of Barangay Telabastagan from lowly bucolic to highly urban.

By accident of geography, Telabastagan is sprawled right at the tri-boundary of this capital city, Bacolor town and Angeles City. 

By land use practicality, the barangay has long served as catch basin to spillovers from the industrial, commercial and housing developments in these contiguous localities. Totally negating an agricultural past, which, in the first place, was primarily single-cropped, that is near-absolutely sugarcane.

With neither sad lamentation nor angry outrage accompanying its passing over to the industrial divide, it comes as total, if most pleasant, surprise to find one last farmer in Telabastagan. And prospering, at that!

Meet Marcelino Musni.         

Refusing to join the diaspora of his fellow tillers from abject slavery to the soil, Marcing soldiered, okay, farmed on, struggling even harder after each unrewarding harvest, many times barely breaking even in his one hectare-plus home-farm he planted to rice, corn and vegetable crops.

Sheer serendipity then for Marcing to participate three years ago in a farmers’ training of Kabalikat sa Kabuhayan (KSK), a nationwide program of SM Foundation Inc. – SM yes, in what some may see as a twist of irony – in partnership with the Department of Agriculture, Department of Social Welfare and Development, local government units and the Harbest Agribusiness Corp.

Under the KSK, marginalized farmers, including beneficiaries of the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) undergo a 12-week training on innovative methods and technologies in high-value crop production, seed selection, organic fertilizer, even distribution, primarily for the urban market, whether through SM suppliers or direct to market vendors.

For starters, the application of his KSK training weaned Marcing from almost-total dependence on synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. He has since used animal manure as well as produced his own fertilizer from composting weeds and other organic materials.  On his own, he had also learned ways of weeding out weak seeds and started making his own stock of strong resilient seeds. 

Said he: “You learn a lot from farming experience.  Farmers should also learn to innovate and find new ways.”

The results were immediate – his low eight-ton per hectare harvest pre-training almost doubled to an outstanding 15-ton per hectare yield post-KSK.

High-value crops

“I realized that I was not producing high-value crops (HVC) the right way.  The training with KSK of SM Foundation’s opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities,” Marcing said.

According to the Department of Agriculture, the volume of harvests outweighs the cost of production with HVCs, thereby making them highly profitable. That makes a most suitable proposition to urban farmers limited in land to cultivate and short in farming inputs.

Marcing is proof positive of everything good said about the HVCs, including what he called “complementation with the location” of urban farmers like him.

He explained this as “proximity to the demand side” providing them easy access to the food supply chain in the city public markets as well as supermarkets and the malls – all within short distance of his Telabastagan farm. 

Marcing is one of the biggest suppliers of radish at the Pampang Market in Angeles City. Aside from radish which production tripled after his KSK training, Marcing grows corn for industrial purposes – animal feeds, earning him P150,000 per cropping.  

From Telabastagan, Marcing has “branched out” to still-very-agricultural Magalang town with his purchase of a 1.3-hectare farm.

Far from his “primitive” ways of farming before his KSK training, Marcing in Magalang is equipped with farm machineries – his old damulag has long been sold – and irrigation equipment, sourced with the assistance of the city government and, of course, by his own resources.

As in his early beginnings though, farming remains a family affair for the Musnis – his wife and all seven children doing their share of the hard work: two of them having graduated with degrees in electrical engineering and information technology

Poster boy

Wednesday last week, KSK’s Rural Farmers’ Training opened in Barangay Maimpis.

“Ito na yung pang-156 batch ng KSK, kung saan sila ay tuturuan sa tamang pagtatanim ng mga iba’t-ibang klase ng gulay na makikita sa isang pinakbet dish. Sa ganitong paraan ay natutulungan natin sila upang tumaas ang kanillang produksyon para guminhawa ang kanilang pamumuhay. Tutulungan din sila ng SM Foundation na i-market ang kanilang mga produkto,” said SM Foundation Inc. assistant vice president for outreach programs Cristie Angeles before some 200 participants from the city’s different barangays.

Taking centerstage at the opening program was Marcelino Musni, poster boy of KSK success as both program of SM corporate service responsibility, and the socio-economic uplift of those in the urban peripheries.

For Marcing, it was payback time. Having undergone the same program three years ago in Barangay Del Rosario and benefited so much from it.

With his sharing his best practices, if not the secret of his success, KSK is bound to harvest more Marcings, ensuring that Telabastagan’s last farmer would need not be the other barangays’ last one too. 

“There should be more urban farmers.  Farming can exist in the urban set up,” he said. Marcing did not have to point to himself, he only needed to stand there to prove his point.

    

Everything outside of outstanding

YOU DESERVE the award – that is great. But greater yet is when it is the award that deserves you.

On both counts, the UST Alumni Association’s Thomasian Alumni Award for Government Service handed to presidential communications office Asec Mocha Uson miserably failed.

In practice, as in theory, awards of recognition are still primarily grounded on outstanding, exemplary, if not heroic, deeds not merely presumed or perceived but proven. Documented even.  

Uson – as truth-twister, peddler of fakery, purveyor of illogic, not to mention mangler of the English language – has proved herself, beyond the proverbial iota of doubt, everything outside of outstanding.      

Catholic sense and sensibilities, Uson infamously affronted with the prurient displays of her body in men’s magazines, her public distribution of condoms, her scathing rants on the Church. Definitely, anathema to the Thomasian values.  

So, the USTAA issued the sorry excuse of an alibi that one need only be a graduate of UST and in government service to be considered for their recognition.

So, the USTAA thereby perverted the very essence of its award, supplanting meritocracy with mediocrity.     

To be fair though, as there is nothing noble, so there is nothing novel too in the USTAA misdeed in its award to Uson. The recognition of mediocrity having long seeped into the Filipino culture. The lamentation here in June 2007 said as much  

Rewarding mediocrity

THIS COUNTRY is not going to the dogs. It has long gone not just to the groomed de rasas but to the mangy askals. That is not a Lacson original but a paraphrase of somebody whom I can only remember as having a Ph.D attached to his name.

The state of things Filipino is damaged. Heavily damaged. Someone who said we have hit rock bottom and thus have no other way to go but up is an illusionary idealist if not a delusional optimist with a supreme underestimation of the capacity of the Filipino to burrow even deeper into the shithole he has thrown himself in.
Blame this for our penchant to lower the grade whenever faced with difficulties. Instead of striving for excellence, we seek the easiest way out. Even if it meant short circuiting processes, circumventing rules or breaking laws.
So long inured in such practice, we have adopted the characteristic of water – seeking the lowest levels.
Thus, those congratulatory streamers perfunctorily put up by politicos for passers of just about any examination hereabouts: “Congratulations Iska for passing the CPA Board Exams.” “We are proud of you Tecla for passing the teachers’ examinations.”
What is so extraordinary in the mere passing of an exam that calls for all those congratulations? It won’t be long when we would behold something like “Congratulations Jokjok for passing the entrance exams to the Paaralang Elementarya ng T. Tinio.”
During our time – now long bygone, the passing grade in examinations – from the shortest quizzes to the longest periodicals and the dreaded orals in-between – was 75 percent, not a fraction less. Today it is said to be 50. With bonus points for writing the teacher’s first name and title – two for Attorney and Doctor, three more for Professor, and with a Ph.D after the comma, plus two more.
Fifty percent, to put it plainly, comprises just half of the total amount of learning required. It does not take an Einstein to understand that half-full means half- empty. Which, by no stretch of the imagination, could ever be deemed exemplary. There is nothing outstanding here. There is everything mediocre here.
During our time, a 75 was a mark of shame. Derisively dismissed as sampay-bakod, if not pasang-awa. Today, it is a cause for celebration proudly heralded in big bold-lettered streamers.
What have become of our sense of honor, indeed, of our sense of shame?
Speaking of streamers and shame, I remember one that was put up at the McDonald’s side of the Dolores Junction sometime in 1999, on the very day Governor Lito Lapid reassumed reins at the Capitol after serving the six-month suspension imposed on him by the Ombudsman consequent to the quarry scam.
“Welcome back Gov, we are proud of you.” Proud of Lapid for earning the dubious distinction as the first ever suspended governor in the history of Pampanga?
There is no pride here. There is only shame here.
Congratulatory streamers are by no means purely shameless showcases of inflated unimportance. The thing here is to make them hew substantially to their very purpose. Only to the best should they be posted, say bar and board topnotchers, winners of international or national contests, really outstanding citizens.
It is excellence that must be rewarded; mediocrity be damned. That is a sure way to raise the level of national intelligence which at present is but a notch above that of a moron.

YEAH, TEN years after this article, that level of national intelligence has sunk even deeper. Witness the imbeciles in Congress, the idiots in the executive department and the ignoramuses in the bureaucracy parading themselves as the best and the brightest.

No thanks to award-giving bodies like the USTAA for affirming, aye, enriching their collective delusions. To the sufferance of all of us thinking folks. 

Cha-Cha redux

…NOT A few citizens have gone to calling the Senate as a body of wimps. And hark back to the times of Recto, Tañada, and Diokno.

Towering intellectuals and nationalists all, theirs was the Senate that actualized the noblest elements of the national life, articulated the intellect of the nation, wielded the power of reason against the force of numbers, affirmed the “sanctity of right against the brutality of might,” preserved, protected and promoted the ethos of the Filipino.
Ours is a Senate of…oh, God, what grievous sin have we committed to deserve this punishment?

…With a House of Representatives cleaved, cowed and co-opted – some in the Opposition would deign corrupted – by the executive branch, the Senate – its infirmities notwithstanding – is called upon by the nation, if not by Providence, to rise above the vulgar plane of party politics and fulfill its primordial role in a republic: To “curb the propensity of a single numerous assembly to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions,” as The American Commonwealth plainly and so precisely enunciated.
As though written but yesterday, in the wake of the Senate-House of Representatives bitter row over the latter’s insistence of a constituent assembly – by themselves – to change the Constitution, the paragraphs above are actually part of a piece titled Creeping despotism in my Free Zone column in the Feb. 16-22, 2006 issue of the now defunct Pampanga News. Ah, what sameness do nearly 12 years still make! As in the time of Gloria, so too in the regime of Duterte. Kindred spirits do they make, indeed. To continue --  

Passions the administration so arrogantly tried to contain with its rule of law and majesty of numbers in a House that caninely pandered to every wish of its mistress, salivating at the prospect of pork from her table. (Make that term extension under Duterte).
House members filling the Cabinet – Andaya, Nachura and Puno, among the latest – comes to me though less as a payback for their solid support of the embattled Macapagal-Arroyo at the time of the impeachment, than a call to a more important – to Malacañang, that is – mission: Charter Change.

With Puno recycled at DILG, expect the local government units to be reduced to a Cha-Cha chanting chorus. So, they will, with utmost certainty, claim they hold the majority of the national constituency. Theirs though would be that majority described by Goethe as “…a few strong men who lead, some knaves who temporize and the weak multitude who follow, without the faintest idea of what they want.”
Millions of signatures from the yoked and herded masa, resolutions from all fawning LGUs, NGO collaborators and vested interest groups are set to be heaped upon the nation to tells us “what the Filipino people want.”
…George Washington, for all his intellectual inferiority to Jefferson and Adams, did one over his first two successors. Finding resonance and relevance today in the Philippines is a passage from his farewell address: “The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.”
Still on the current frenzied steps towards Cha-Cha, especially as concerned its primary party pusher that is PDP-Laban, this take from Free Zone in the May 4-10, 2006 issue of Pampanga News:

Party line
THE primacy of party platform over the cult of personality is one warranty of the parliamentary system. As practiced everywhere else. Thus, Israel’s Likud and Labor, Great Britain’s Tories and Labour too, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, Germany’s Christian Democrats, and for sometime, even Italy’s Communist Party.

The state of high development of the named countries makes the greatest argument for the parliamentary system. Conversely, the state of undevelopment of this country makes an irrefutable damnation of the personality-centered presidential system.
So we go parliamentary. So, we irreversibly go full blast in economic development. So, Chacha, hallelujah! Let’s party!
Something in the Filipino psyche had to be lobotomized though, for party politics to even set root hereabouts.
The master of politics himself, Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, knew this by heart. Thus, his immortal take on Philippine politics as “personalist, populist and individualist” upon which he founded his fuehrership, and, with his beloved Imeldific, propagated their Malakas at Maganda apotheosis.
All Filipino politicians come from the Marcosian mold of “personal, popular, individual.” All pretensions to party advocacy are, well, pretensions.
So Quezon ranted: “My loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my country begins.” God bless him.
Party loyalty is a contradiction in terms; loyalty to the country is as true as Judas’ devotion to Christ. Where politicos are concerned.
The pre-eminence of the individual politician over his party is inherent in Philippine political story. Thus, Nacionalista Party-Roy Wing, Liberal Party-Kalaw Wing, Liberal Party-Salonga Wing in the not too distant past.
Thus, a Liberal Party sundered by anti-GMA and pro-GMA flanks winging to Atienza-Defensor on the right, Drilon-Pangilinan, et al on the left. Poor Jovy Salonga, tottering at the fulcrum.
On another plane, witness how political parties hereabouts are hitched on the tides of fortune of their founders: the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan was an invincible monolith at the height of the Marcos dictatorship, only to crumble to dust after EDSA Uno. The sainted Cory took Mitra’s Laban to the promised land, then pulled the rug from under and emerged with El Tabako’s LakTao, that’s Lakas-Tao for you, that evolved into Lakas-NUCD-UMDP. And where is Erap’s Partido ng Masang Pilipino now? Or the Reform Party of Maid Miriam?
The Philippine political experience has made a mockery of party politics. A change to the parliamentary system is bruited about as the harbinger of political maturity, and consequently, the supremacy of a party’s platform of governance as the dominant factor in the choice of national leaders.
It is not bad to dream. But, kung mangarap ka’t magising, na ikaw ay ikaw pa rin, para anupa’t ika’y patulugin? Baka ka lang bangungutin.
Charter change? Parliamentary over presidential? Yes, we need systems change. But what we need more is a change of men. And what we need most is a change in men.

YEAH, AS that French wag said "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
In the currency of Philippine politics: the more things change, the more Marcos becomes Duterte.

The Prez vs. The Press

FERDINAND THE Great may have been the worst, but his successors too had had their own impositions of the heft of presidential power on the media. In varying degrees though far removed from the Marcosian extreme.

Why, even the sainted Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino was unchristianly unforgiving of the celebrated columnist Louie Beltran after he wrote Cory had “hidden under the bed” during one of the many coup attempts against her. She, going to the extent of lifting her bed covers to show the physical impossibility of her fitting under it – in her all too literal take of Beltran’s idiomatic usage.

Cory sued for libel and got Beltran convicted. Alas, “His Immensity” – as Beltran was fondly called by peers for his built – did not live long to see the triumph of the press with the reversal of the conviction by the appellate court.

A news photographer was banished from presidential coverages after the publication of his photo of Cory mouth agape while eating with her bare hands in some boodle fight in a remote military camp. 

Cory’s animosity towards certain women journalists, notably Ninez Cacho-Olivarez, was an urban legend that went beyond the confines of media circles.

It was nothing more than presidential pique that pushed President Joseph Ejercito Estrada to launch an advertisers’ boycott of the Philippine Daily Inquirer and his taking the Manila Times to court for libel.

Beset with rumors of military restiveness and one really serious attempt led by coup pals navy officers Antonio Trillanes IV and Nicanor Faeldon, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo went almost Marcosian with her Proclamation 1017 in the wake of the arrest of Scout Rangers commander Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim in February 2006.

Among the grounds of that proclamation was "reckless magnification by certain segments of the national media" of the “destabilizers’ claims” against the government.

Malacanang was quite explicit in its warning to the media: "It will be within the parameters of national security. For example, anonymous callers calling media without basis, or footage showing the formation of the Presidential Security Group, or a situation of media reporting that generals or military units are helping those who want to bring down the government. If media are used or allow themselves to be used to further the interest of these groups, then government will come in.”

So, the Arroyo government did not merely come in, it barged, sans any search warrant, in the premises of the Daily Tribune in the most ungodly hour of 12:45 a.m. of Feb. 25, 2006 and promptly padlocked the publication. (Come to think of it, Tribune publisher-editor Ninez Cacho-Olivarez holds the distinction of having had not-so-pleasant issues with the two women presidents of the Philippines!).  

Lest we forget, it was during Arroyo’s term that happened the biggest single slaughter of media workers in all the world, in all of history that was the Ampatuan Massacre. 

President Benigno Simeon Aquino III was never shy to publicly show, aye, to verbalize, his displeasure towards anyone he favored not, the now lamented Chief Justice Renato Corona included.

The BS’ in-your-face tirades against then-immediate past vice president broadcaster Noli de Castro while guest speaker at an anniversary event of ABS-CBN Network appears now but a precursor to the more virulent fits of pique at the media by his successor.

Thus, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte who has not had the least civility to mask his utter disdain for the media since the presidential campaign period, forcing its way out at every chance, indeed, finding ways, any way, to spew it out at the least opportunity invariably peppered with expletives.      
Coupled with his open emulation of Marcos, it makes me wonder why his tyrannical antics still get any surprise from all of us.

The shutdown of Rappler and its chilling effect on media but one manifestation of some systematic disordering, if not dismemberment, of the democratic space – integral to the Charter-change being shoved down the people’s throat by the rabid mongrels in Congress, the demonization of the Supreme Court, the bedevilment of the Ombudsman and the Commission on Human Rights, the co-optation of the Commission on Elections pursuant not so much for the dubious ends of federalism as for the installation of a Duterte despotism.

That is the tried, tested, and all-too-tired, way of all tyrants. And this makes Duterte not only different from, but most dangerous, of all the presidents apres-Apo Ferdinand. 

This then is no mere issue of freedom of the press and expression. This constitutes a clear, present, and grave danger to the Republic.  

Marcos, nunquam iterum! Never again!

So, we heed and join the people cry:       
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Mass most unholy

THE MASS de-liturgized. I wrote here on Dec. 22, 2016, thus:

WHEN IS it appropriate to applaud at Mass? To do so appears to reduce the Mass to the level of entertainment, but so many people do it nowadays that I'd like to know if the Church has any teaching about it.

So was posted in the FB account of my reverend friend El-Rey Guapo where affixed too what comes off as a reply with a photo of then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI: Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment.

Further clicks on the subject showed:

…(W)hen we come to Mass we don’t come to clap. We don’t come to watch people, to admire people. We want to adore God, to thank Him, to ask Him pardon for our sins, and to ask Him for what we need. Thus, Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments in Rome, cited in Adoremus Bulletin; Vol. IX, no.7, Oct. 2003.

The way the Mass is celebrated hereabouts, clapping appears to be the least of our worries over the Holy Sacrifice’s reduction in liturgical essence and its inflation with secular, aye, pedestrian, entertainment.

This early, I am already bracing myself for the usual unliturgical – to me – addenda in the Christmas Eve Mass.

Two years ago, there was this flash mob singing “All I Want for Christmas is You” at Offertory. Last year, there was the ballet-like (or is it mime?) dancing during the Gloria and the Pater Noster. With practically the whole congregation pulling out their mobiles to take photos of the performances. Presumably for later, if not instant, uploading on FB, YouTube or Twitter.       

No offense to my parish priest and his liturgist, but it was much too much for my conservative Catholic sensibilities – seeing in the first a paroxysm of secularity; in the second, the vestal virgins sans the sacred fire. There was no way I could fittingly worship in such a setting. I walked out of the church and went home.

It is not only at the Misa de Aguinaldo that the essence of liturgy has been diluted. Indeed, there is in every offering of the Mass a diminution of its spiritual value.    

Ten years ago, I wrote here:

A pharisee speaks

I AM looking for a Catholic church that gives true expression to the essence of the Mass as the Holy Sacrifice.

Frankly, I don’t think I can find any here, but, perhaps, in the quiet solemnity of cloistered monasteries.

No den of thieves – as yet – our houses of prayers have become everything but temples of worship on Sundays.

I find in them noisy playpens for children – complete with popcorn and balloons, spilled milk and soiled diapers. With distraught mothers frantically running after hyperactive juniors weaving in and out of pews, or nonchalantly unbothered even if their kids run up and down the aisle in wild abandon.

Navel-gazing yogis will have a blast with our churches, having turned too into modeling ramps for fashionistas in hanging blouses and hip-hugging low-rise denims, or in bra-showing halters and thigh-baring mini-skirts. Displayed sensuality, nay, vulgar sexuality takes over spirituality here. Isn’t there some kind of a dress code to Mass? Perhaps, we need some versions of the Saudi’s cane-wielding mutawa to knock some sense of propriety into some flirty heads.

Find the nearest country club too expensive, gentlemen? Come to church and be one with the boys in their exchanges on the latest in business, politics and sports – all in their exclusive enclave at the back of the church.

To a number of ladies, the church is a gossip parlor with all the juiciest morsels in entertainment, liposuctions and facelifts, or about their non-Church-going neighbors.

And the churchyards? Showrooms of wealth, honest or ill-gotten. So manifest in the flashy cars and SUVs churchgoers take to Mass. The Church of the poor I truly long to see. And see it I do, in manicured diamond-ringed fingers dropping coins into the collection baskets. Truly an unchristian paradox: So much to show to man, so little to give to God.

On to the Mass. The joy of listening to the Word of God gets suddenly snatched by the shrill cry of a child whose cotton candy a playmate just snapped. Deprivers too of the bliss in one’s immersion of the Gospels are those who make grand entrances to display their tardiness. The church doors ought to be slammed on their faces.

Given these realities, where lie the solemnities? All professions of belief become nothing but utter hypocrisies.

You truly believe that the unleavened wafer becomes the real body of Christ and the wine the real blood of Christ at the consecration? How come you neither kneel in adoration nor cease from conversation during their elevation?

Communion – the closest encounter of the holiest kind, taking Christ into one’s whole being – requires the purest heart, the most immaculate of mind. See the jostling, hear the idle chit-chats at the communion lines? (Of late, I have noticed too communicants texting as they wait their turn to receive the sacred host).  There is no respect, much less veneration here. This is sheer sacrilege. Even with no consideration of the communicants’ state of grace, or disgrace as is often the case.

Come to think of it, how many of those taking communion have really gone through the sacrament of reconciliation? I have never seen lines forming at the confessionals in direct proportion to those at communion. As a matter of observation, I do not see any line at all at the confessionals except during the Holy Week. We must really have a saintly people packing our churches.

It is my misfortune that I am not one of them. So, I write pieces like this. Or – unlike them sainted ones – have I just become pharisaic?

TRUE THEN. Truer, and gone for the worse, now. The secularization of the Mass. So, the Church has to adapt to modern times?

The Church always seems behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer. It keeps the key of a permanent virtue. Thus, G.K. Chesterton.

And, lest we forget: Christus Heri, Hodie, Semper. Christ Yesterday, Today, Always.

Simbang Baliw

THEN, JUST this Christmas season past -- the way the Mass is celebrated in the parish of Dila-Dila in Sta. Rita, Pampanga, clapping and all those distractions did indeed appear to be the least of our worries over the Holy Sacrifice’s reduction in liturgical essence and its inflation with secular, aye, pedestrian, entertainment.

Under the unpastoral direction of parish priest Eduardo de Leon blue-painted bodies ala-Avatar danced in gay abandon right at the chancel, De Leon in his priestly vestments swaying and sashaying with them.

Then, there were three men costumed as the Three Magi ultimately un-garbed to but beach towels covering their bodies. Yes, right at the area of the altar.

These scenes, and more, going viral to the utter shock of netizens. (Find them best, er, at their worst, at The Pinoy Catholic New page).

Blasphemy! Sacrilege! Simbang Baliw! Madness! So, went most of the comments. “Do not judge,” one or two said, swiftly bashed by tides of righteous, if not moral, indignation.          

Satanistic! Some went so far as saying.

Come to think of it, the celebrations did really have some semblance of the so-called Black Mass, that is the inversion of the traditional Latin Mass. In this wise, the biblical context of the season subsumed to parodies using modern images.

This harks back to medieval times when the celebrations turned totally heretical with Deus (God) supplanted by the pagan Decius (god of dice, thus gambling) and Bacchus (god of wine) for incantation, invocation, supplication and adoration.

No Black Mass yet, yes. “Blue Mass” – what with those blue-painted bodies – maybe.

Still, we sense grave irreverence here at the least, some perversion of the Holy Sacrifice even. Maybe heresy, if unwittingly.   

Whatever, a serious breach of Catholic tenets has been clearly committed. Some crisis of faith – principally in the parish priest -- needs to be addressed.

We await the word of the Most Rev. Florentino Lavarias, archbishop of San Fernando.

   

Now, on track

AND SO, it has begun.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency last week commenced the detailed engineering design for the second phase of the Philippine National Railways’ Clark North Project. So, announced Japanese Ambassador Koji Haneda.

JICA takes center stage in the project as the lion’s share – P93 billion – in its P150-billion funding will come from the agency – a direct result of President Duterte’s second official visit to Japan in October last year, so it was emphasized in some press release. The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is likewise committed to extend Official Development Assistance to the project, disclosed Haneda. Banzai! Doumo arigatou gozaimasu.

PNR Clark North Phase 2 runs 69.5 kilometers from Malolos City, Bulacan to the Clark International Airport, taking off from the 38-kilometer Phase 1 Tutuban-to-Malolos span.

In his usual bite-more-than-he-can-chew verbosity, Transportation Secretary Arthur P. Tugade crowed: 1) Phase 1 will be completed in 2021, ahead of its 2022 original target completion; 2) the entire PNR line from Tutuban all the way to the Clark airport will be an electrified, fully elevated and standard gauge railway; 3) Phase 2 is specifically being built to serve the new terminal of the Clark airport which construction has also started and set to be finished by 2020.

Tugade, thank God, did no iteration of his take on the Duterte work ethic at the start of this administration when he referenced on the MRT mess they inherited: “Ang taas ng expectation…ang hindi mag-perform, katay!”

Well, the toughie from Tatalon ain’t yet butchered, not even the least pinched, with the MRT getting even messier under his watch.

Anyways, I can still take Tugade anytime over his predecessor Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya, where Clark is concerned.

One of the greatest disservices to the Filipino nation, unarguably the gravest sin  of President Benigno Aquino III against his own people of Central and Northern Luzon was, and still is, not so much his failure but his refusal to develop Clark, most especially the scrapping of the North Rail Project of the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

At BS Aquino’s assumption of the presidency in 2010, the whole length of the North Rail Project from Tutuban to Clark have been cleared of informal settlers, relocated to the so-called Northville subdivisions not in some far-flung places but right in the cities and towns traversed by the tracks. So much social engineering impacted – and money expended – for that feat. 

The titanic pillars to support the overhead rails had been raised to as far as Malolos City. Again, no mean feat there.     

And then the BS scuttled the whole project, crying “Corruption!” finding no way to continue with it side by side an investigation of any and all irregularities related to it. (Come to think of it, but for the settling of accounts with the Chinese funders, what else came out, ultimately, with the supposed North Rail probe? We did not read or hear of anyone ever being indicted, did we?)  

It takes no rocket scientist to think how much – in the more than seven years since the project was stopped – could have been accomplished were it allowed to continue.

Why – measured against Tugade’s timeline – the GMA-driven north railway would have been by now way into Mangaldan or Dagupan in Pangasinan, the traditional northern main stops in the old PNR system. Think of the trade, travel and commerce that would have come with the riles there.

More importantly, for us in Central Luzon, the Clark terminus would have already been serving its purpose as decongestant to Metro Manila, and the Clark airport already a premier international gateway.

Yeah, to the highest heavens, it really stinks. That of all people, it had to be BS Aquino to kill the dreams of his own people. Ay, it really takes a BS to be the BS. As it can ever be.

And the salvager – fittingly, that word – of that dream had to come from faraway Davao!    

So, I rejoice for now. Even willing to give Thugade the hug. Until Ramon Ang’s new Manila International Airport rises in Bulacan.

Then, it’s katay season anew. The butchering all ours.    

          

On my daughter's wedding day

IT IS that time again –

the last, at last! – to give

a daughter’s hand in marriage.

Self-made a tradition it has become

for this, the father of the bride,

to say his piece in poetic verse,

though unrhythmic, unmetered

is most often the case. 

Hence, as it was in 2004 with Majalia Krista, 

so, it was in 2009 with Maria Iona Katrina. 

So, shall it be today, finally, with Mia Maneekah.

Poignant – as in bittersweet –

memories of the kids we keep

that almost always come unleashed

only on the day of wedding bliss.

Remembering now, like it was but yesterday –

taking Mia by pedicab to kindergarten

memorizing – “The first part of our program

is a vocal solo by Ana Criselda G. Cortez.”

Her repetitive rote, from home to school, unbroken.

In early grade school she wanted to change her name –

to Henessy or Gwendolyn,

taken from some telenovela of early fame.

So, what was wrong with her given names?

Nothing with the Maneekah, she said.

But, the Mia stunk and smelled –

“Mia-tutan,” one naughty boy started to tease her.

Oh, how we laughed hearing this.

Ah, how she threw temper tantrums for it.

At the risk of being accused that Mia is my favorite –

which her siblings have openly suspected all these years –

dare I still say she has the sunniest disposition of all my kids.

Quick to dance at the drop of a beat; quicker to sing at whim.

In her girlhood, her song-and-dance routine –

“Open the door, get on the floor, everybody, walk like dinosaur…”

So much was the laughter the young Mia brought us.

Less – thank the Lord – were the pains, and fears.

As when at 5 she had trouble with her kidney

needing hospitalization at pricey UST.

Happening during the family’s most hungry years,

but by the grace of God, did we surpass this.

Speaking of fears, let me now disclose

that which, for the longest time, in my mind is poised:

Of Mia living her life in singlehood,

as a number of old maids

in both sides of the family did for good.

So, I thank you so much Raphael –

now that my foremost fear is allayed. 

Comes then this father’s fervent wish

For his dear daughter’s wedded bliss --

Mia, Raphael:

I pray – the Lord to bless and keep you in His care

For you to treasure every moment you share

For love to triumph over any heartbreak that come your way

For you to ever be happy as you are today.

But then, as marriage is not all moonlight and roses,

Having its full measure of dimness, of thorns and thistles.

So, you must in those unhappy times

Come back to this, your day of days

Refresh, revive, renew yourselves

And then –

Let go. Live love. Love life. Let God.

And your lifelong commitment to each other

Will be even stronger than ever.

The life we shared with you, remember too

And all the love your mom and I have for the two of you.   

Deliverance

NO, MY life did not flash before my eyes.

Consolation, if little, that nowhere near-death was the complication I instantly fell into, rising out of a bout with pneumonia “of a differently dangerous kind.” The variation less a viral mutation than something owed to age and body abuse, as my pulmonologist diagnosed. 

But I started seeing, hearing, sensing things far removed from the reality everybody else around me was experiencing. Like swarms of flying black insects, from the size of gnats to cockroaches, darkening Room 208 at the Mother Teresa of Calcutta Medical Center, until but a shaft of light was all there was and that slowly dimming too.

The pain – as excruciating as dull blades lacerating the chest, the abdominals, every inch of the back – intensifying at each gasp for air, short, shallow gasps at that, deep breathing already an impossibly human task.

Amid the pain, quasi-consciousness floated the body through climes – sweltering heat, crispy coolness, then sudden freezing iciness, and places – arid sandy wastelands, the beautiful Tuscan countryside, a horrifying jungle of jumbled thorns and thistles where nothing can penetrate. Surprisingly, nowhere was the fiery Gehenna as I teetered at mortality’s very edge.

No light at the end of a tunnel, but in that semi-conscious state a whisper of my name – “Caesar… Caesar…” – half-waking to the blessed presence of the good Apu Ceto, with sacred oil in hand just about to administer the sacrament of Sacram unctionem infirmorum as I knew it from my seminary Latin of long, long ago. Once called Extreme Unction, and in most cases, fittingly referred to as the Last Rites.

Concluding with an absolution from all my sins of commission and omission, and receiving a final episcopal blessing, I embraced, in full resignation, the impending inevitability of final passage. Coming to full consciousness the urban legend of Apu Ceto – in his holiness – expiating all traces of sin with his anointment of the very sick, facilitating the way to their eternal rest in the bosom of the Almighty Father.

Visa to heaven

Was it not I that quipped in one of those ex-seminarians’ fellowships with retired priests how the good archbishop emeritus of Pampanga hands out – to those he anointed and absolved – virtual visas to heaven? Meaning, sure happy death for them. 

A teardrop or two – not so much for remorse over sins past, as for salvific relief of the absolution present – at this realization of the apparent efficacy of Apu Ceto’s anointing. Don’t we all want to go to heaven? But, who would ever want going there ahead?

In a stupor, owing more to the double doses of antibiotics and painkillers than from the sin-cleansed sense of being, yet another whisper – “Classmate, I have come to pray for you…” It was the Rev. Fr. Larry Sarmiento, the only finisher to the priesthood in our 72-strong Infima 1967 batch of the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary.

Ah, I would continue my earthly life, after all. Fr. Larry making the contra-barata to Apu Ceto’s express lane to heaven. 

Vital signs greatly improved over those in my first 36 hours at the ICU – BP from a high of 180/110 to nearly normal 140/90, fever down to 38 degrees from over 40,     oxygen absorption capacity still a weak 80 but up from a weaker 60, the nose fully encased in an oxygen mask– my faculties reordered, I asked my doctor to prepare for me another treatment program should I stay a day more at the ICU.  

One for psychosis, I told him and he readily understood. Sheer uselessness, utter helplessness in a perpetual hallucinational haze – the ICU was the pits.  

With my vitals showing continuous signs of improvement, my doc remanded me to Room 208 anew for my recuperation and, a week after, signed my discharge to continue my recovery at home for another ten days.

That was in September last year yet, but I managed to write about it only at the turn of the year. Impelled, as though I was, by another confrontation with the frailty of human life, and thus, the significance, if not the imperative, of keeping to the Way.

Last Dec. 22, our group of former seminarians – “the unordained alumni of Mother of Good Counsel Seminary,” as Apu Ceto prefers to call us – had our Christmas luncheon, courtesy of Dubai-based George David, at the house of Boiti Portugal in Angeles City, far from our usual monthly fellowship locus that is Bale Pari at the SACOP Compound in the City of San Fernando. And therefore, we did not expect our formator-fathers or any of the usual reverends to be able to join us. 

Msgr. Mar

To our most pleasant surprise, Msgr. Mario Ramos came. Though looking far healthier than when we last had him at our October fellowship, Fr. Mar confided that he was scheduled for surgery at UST Hospital on Dec. 27. Some “bukol” in the intestines, he said, but no cause to worry.

As Christmas was but three days away, I said maybe we should take the opportunity to avail ourselves of the Sacrament of Penance with Fr. Mar as confessor. This, as our gift to the Lord.

Boss Tayag asked if the good father could just give us a general absolution.

“Mimua ya y Apu Ceto,” a smiling Fr. Mar said, his eyes reduced to slits.

Ashley Manabat proposed that we could just send by SMS our sins and he could text back his absolution and our penance, which made Fr. Mar guffaw.

Serious as I was to return to grace after yet another fall to sin, I asked Fr. Mar to hear my confession and we repaired to a room in Boiti’s house. Even sans the confesionario, the secret of the confession remains. Suffice it to say that God’s grace overflowed my way that afternoon.               

Reuniting with our brothers at the luncheon table, Fr. Mar was visibly moved when Nestor “Max” Alvarado handed him the little sum from the hat he passed around while he was hearing my confession.

“Menabala co pa. Pero, masaya na cu rin,” he said, and with a mischievous grin:  “Abayaran yu na la rin detang utang yu qng canteen seminaryu.”

During our time at MGCS, the young Mar was one of our multi-tasking helps – janitor, errand boy, canteen helper. It became a habit among the naughty boys to ask for change from Mar – which he obliged -- for anything they took from the canteen – usually soft drinks and biscuits – without even paying for them.    

He bid us adieu with a request that we prayed for him.

Exactly one week after, in his Facebook account, Fr. Felicito Sison requested for prayers for the eternal repose of Msgr. Mar Ramos.

Shock waves wove through social media, especially the accounts of ex-seminarians. Incidental to the condolences, prayers and sympathies expressed for Fr. Mar was my confession.

In our MGCS Kapatiran FB page, right after offering his prayers, Ashley posted:  Dela na ing kasalanan ng bong lacson keng banwa kasi meka pangumpisal ya anyang Dec. 22 kang kap boiti villa.

Retorted Boiti: Wapin masias ne i bong kanyan, sumbung ne kang apung Iru haha

Fr. Cito: Ah panen, miras na banua kanyan ing kinumpisal mu! Hehe

From Msgr. Salvator Meus: Cong Bong, e ca pa mu mangumpisal cacu ne. He he he.

Upon seeing me for the anticipated Mass at St. Jude, Fr. Deo Galang: E na yata acargang Apung Mar ing bayat ding casalanan mu coya, he he he.

At Fr. Mar’s wake at the Bale Pari chapel, Apu Ceto: Personal na lang dela banua ding pengumpisal mu.  

I reminded the good archbishop of his absolution of my sins at Calcutta’s ICU last September, and he said he was happy in my keeping with the sacrament of reconciliation.    

The beatific smile of Fr. Mar as he lay in state said as much. Thanks, Among, for the grace.

    

    

Chilling effect

PRESIDENT DUTERTE’S sweeping and, as has often been the case, unsubstantiated claim that some journalists are members or maintain links with communist rebels is a potential death warrant against colleagues.

In an interview with a radio station on December 19, President Duterte claimed that some journalists are members of the Left.

According to the official transcript:

“I do not want to add more strain to what people are now suffering. ‘Yung kata****** ng NPA. Sinong NPA dito? Halika nga.

“Tapos pagtalikod mo, marami. Sige na, sige na. Walang hiyaan. Huwag kayo mahiya. Sino? T*** i*** ang ni sino sa inyo walang kamay ni isa. May alam ako mga journalists na Left talaga. O baka nagkadre doon sa Cordillera.”

We note that there is nothing wrong and even necessary to have links with all sectors, groups and personalities in and out of government, including the NPA, as news sources.

Apologists may again try to make light of Mr. Duterte’s latest drivel, but in a country that remains one of the deadliest in the world for journalists, there is cause to worry about the consequences of this irresponsible claim from the highest elected official of the land.

Specifically, Duterte’s claim directly endangers our colleagues who work in the Cordillera region but does the same for those elsewhere in the country.

At best, it is bound to cast a chilling effect on journalists who intend to cover the communist rebels in continuing efforts to better explain the roots and directions of the close to half-a-century old civil strife, at worst it would embolden those, including state agents, who seek to silence us by giving them the convenient cover of counterinsurgency.

With this penchant for such wild and dangerous claims added to his well-known aversion to those who do not agree with him, we fear it will not be long until Duterte directly targets the critical media in his government’s efforts to stamp out dissent.

We call on the independent Philippine media and all Filipinos who cherish our rights and freedoms to stand together in common cause and oppose all attempts to silence us.

THE STATEMENT above of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines dated December 24, 2017 impacted some déjà vu of the most terrifying kind. The chills down the spine ever recurring at every remembrance of that time in 1988 when three Pampanga journalists were tagged as members of the communist insurgent group, promptly included in the military’s order of battle, and in the death list of right-wing vigilantes.

Here’s an account those days of terror in my 1999 book Of the Press under the sub-head Rightists’ Rage.

THE “standing order for execution” was: Death within 24 hours. The names of the targets: Sonny Lopez, Bong Lacson, Elmer Cato. Their collective crime: Active supporters of the NPA urban partisan unit Mariano Garcia Brigade. Propagandists of the CPP-NDF-NPA. Enemies of the military establishment. This was in 1988.

Vigilante groups – they who waged that little war of attrition with the MGB partisans in Angeles City that summer, resulting to 40 fatalities – had our names etched in their hit list.

That we knew. Reportage about the Left – of NPA plenums, of statements of the MGB’s Aryel Miranda on the “crimes against the people” committed by those the partisans executed, of interviews in the partisans’ lairs – has been viewed by the Right as open support of, if not outright membership with the insurgent front. That we understood as part of the risks of the media profession.

What we did not know was the gravity and immediacy of the scheme the Right had laid out for us. “Extreme prejudice” was how the US Air Force’s Office of Special Investigation put it.

It was an officer of the 174^th PC Company – whom we have befriended in the course of our coverages – that alerted us of our impending execution. Separately, he hid the three of us for the most part of the 24-hour death watch. Even as he tried to argue our case with the dreaded Army Col. Rolly de Guzman, the purported godfather of the Right.

Entered Tatang Perto Cruz, furniture magnate and media benefactor, to our rescue. Learning of our inclusion in the death list, Tatang Perto lost no time in exercising his moral ascendancy over his friend Col. De Guzman and prevailed upon him to rescind the order of our execution.

Some weeks after, the PC officer whom we fondly called “Rapido” brokered our face-off with De Guzman. It was Rapido’s birthday and Sonny, Elmer and I were the only media guests at his party in his house in a village in San Fernando.

Sticking out like sore thumbs among cops and their assets, the three of us were all alone in one table laden with food and drinks when Rapido introduced to us a silver-haired businessman-looking gentleman who took each of our right hand one after the other saying “Ako si Rolly de Guzman. Kumusta ka…” mentioning our names. I nearly choked on my balls that suddenly lodged on my throat.

(De Guzman amplified the charges of us being CCP-NPA members/propagandists, by glorifying in our news reports the deaths of MGB partisans and NPA regulars as martyrdom while denigrating those of the military. He however “absolved” us before we parted ways.)        

That was the first and only time we saw De Guzman. Remembering the incident still gives me the creeps. De Guzman was gunned down by NBI operatives led by Capt. Jaylo at the Magallanes Commercial Center parking lot in the early ‘90s during a drug bust.

Even some years after, reminders of that execution order still come to haunt us.

At a luncheon in Tatang Perto’s home in 1992, a guest who introduced himself as a former vigilante told Sonny he was among those who cased him. When Sonny asked him if indeed we were set up for the kill, he vigorously nodded.

At the office of Porac Mayor Roy David sometime in 1995, I was surprised when an Army major I was introduced to for the first time told me matter-of-factly that he knew me well, my home, my family, my hang-outs, even the time I left and returned home during the late ‘80s. Yes, he was also a part of the vigilante army tasked to “neutralize all enemies of the state.”

I asked him, “Talaga bang papatayin kami noon?”

His answer: “Talaga.”

NEARLY 30 years after, it is the President of the Philippine himself that raised this same Red bogey to intimidate media.               

Be not afraid. Rage.