People Power and the Filipino

EDSA UNO gifted the world with “people power.” The phrase was readily accredited to Cardinal Sin after he went on air to call on the nation “to use your power as a people” initially to “save” the embattled mutineers led by Enrile and Ramos from sure annihilation by the Marcos forces.

I do not mean to pull the rug from under the now lamented Sin. Neither do I claim the gift of prescience or prophecy, but in the April 8-14, 1984 issue of The Voice – two months short of two years before EDSA Uno – the phrase already appeared in my Ingkung Milio column, thus titled:
People Power and the Filipino
IN THE annals of political struggles, war included, people power has long claimed its rightful place as the major determining factor in the outcome.
This power received its utmost glorification in the social philosophies of Marx as embodied in his Communist Manifesto and put to empirical application in the Soviet and Chinese revolutions and countless other uprisings in those moulds, as well as in the failed Allende experiment in Chile.
That great Asian, Mao Tse-tung, summed up the potency of people power in various quotations in his Little Red Book, most prominent of which was: “The people are the ocean, we are the fish that swim in that ocean.” There too was his stratagem of marshalling the people from the countrysides toward the encirclement of the cities.
With all these leftward tendencies of people power harnessing, populism has come to be identified with the communist prescription of wresting power from the ruling circle.
In its essence however, any move, be it parliamentary or revolutionary, has to mobilize people power to reach its successful or liberating end.
While we have seen people power in the collective anguish and indignation over Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, we have yet to see it in terms of concrete moves directed at our socio-economic and political liberation.
Our history as a people is so replete with the kisses of Judas that they have become part and parcel of the Filipino psyche.
The betrayal of the Katipunan, Vicos to Diego Silang, the Macabebe scouts in Tirad Pass and Palanan (a still highly contentious issue), the Makapili during the Japanese Occupation, not to mention the American boys and unconscionable cronies, are glaring examples of the quislings who have always sold their country and their people in exchange for personal gains.
More glaring even are the current events related to the coming Batasan polls.
The Opposition is united only in name – the first word in its acronym UNIDO. Beyond that, there is not even the finest thread that holds them together.
True, they all have an aversion to Marcos. Truer yet, they all draw “strength and inspiration” from the martyred Ninoy Aquino. Truest tough, there is no clear-cut, selfless and nationalistic ideological basis for all their actions.
Rather, it is a case of everyone to his own selfish motive and ambition.
Invoking guidance from the sacrifice of Ninoy, they aspire – conspire may be the apt word – to move the people to exercise their potency for change. Not for the people’s own welfare, in the ultimate analysis, but for the advancement of their personal political ambitions.
It is Robespierre and his manipulation of the French masses in the 1790s all over again. Nearer home, it is the Tejeros debacle re-staged in a not-totally dissimilar setting.
The fault however does not solely lie in these opportunists. Much of the blame is traceable to the people themselves.
The people, in all naivete and perhaps due to their fatalism bred by colonizers, foreign and home-grown, have been so accustomed to their hapless state that they could not see a power greater than the gun or the peso, even the devalued one. Bonifacio’s walis tingting has yet to form from the countless coconut ribs lying for the picking.
For mere pittance, even those who wailed the most at Aquino’s wake and funeral found themselves like sheep herded to provide an audience to some ruler’s folly.
We will see more of these idiocies until May 14. To impress the greater mass of voters, politicians would pay for every shout of “Mabuhay!” and for every wearer of a vote T-shirt, for every trumped-up attestation of love for a candidate.
People power? In many a Third World country, this is the new order of things. In the Philippines, it is seen more in the powerlessness of the people to rise, stomp their feet, and state that enough is enough.
Ah, yes, despite all these, there is people power in this nation of cowards, to quote Mansfield. To us, that power is the people’s strength in crying out in pain for years, and their power to bear all sorts of insults and injustice. And their powerful refusal too to transform anguish into a fiery zeal for their own liberation.
Ninoy, you may have been wrong. It seems the Filipino is not worth dying for.

AND THEN came EDSA Uno. And, as the cliché goes, the rest is but a repeat of history – a people dumbed, a nation damned.  

For tomorrow, we die

DID YOU notice all those ash-smeared foreheads rushing from church to the nearest Jollibee and McDonald’s? And did you also see all those Champs and Quarter Pounders voraciously chomped but hardly quartered?

Shocked, rather than awed are a number of cerrado Catolicos at these all-too patent transgressions of Church commandments.  

Yeah, it makes one wonder if the Catholic faithful at-large still know the significance of Ash Wednesday, indeed, of even just the dictionary definition of fasting and abstinence. Or, they just don’t care.   

“Remember man that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.” So, we are reminded by the priest as we enter the season of prayer, penitence and sacrifices.

But for perfunctory rituals and prayers, what sincere penitence or true sacrifices do we engage ourselves in to partake of the great mysteries of our Faith?

Reminded of our mortality, we readily retreat to our humanity rather than repent, rise above our sinful selves and keep to the way of salvation.

Reminded of our mortality, pain or suffering is impacted upon us. And that is how we take of sacrifice, of fasting and abstinence. Hence, the deadening of its effect, if not its avoidance at all cost.

There, mayhaps, lies the instinctive rush to Jollibee and McDo right after the Mass of Miercoles ce Ceniza. And there too the fastfood outlets disserving as the last stops – for satisfying gratification, in effect obliterating whatever sanctifying grace obtained – in Maundy Thursday’s visita iglesia.

Thus, Boracay season cresting during the Holy Week.

The abhorrence of suffering most manifest in the satiation of the senses.

Hedonism

For sheer incongruity with the times, I cannot forget reading – of all things -- The Hedonism Handbook one Lenten season so many years ago. The author is one Michael Flocker, best known for his bestseller The Metrosexual Guide to Style.

Now, I beg your indulgence in my reprinting here reflections from those times.

Hedonism makes a moralist’s worst nightmare. Take the standard dictionary definition of the word: “pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the senses.”

As a philosophy, hedonism is “the ethical doctrine holding that only what is pleasant or has pleasant consequences is intrinsically good.”

In psychology, it is “the doctrine holding that behavior is motivated by the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.”

“Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily.” So said the Greek philosopher Epicurus, which may have formed the basis for his eponymous philosophy of “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die.” Which, rightly or wrongly – all the latter never the former the moralists would howl –  evolved as the hedonist’s article of faith.

So, a hedonist is one who seeks pleasure and avoids pain at all cost. But, ain’t all humans that way? Human, all too human, as Nietzsche put it. 

Argues Flocker: “But are the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain really such bad things? Don’t babies, universally considered to be the purest of all beings, gravitate to the warmth and satisfaction of the bosom? Don’t they wail at the discomfort of a full diaper and an itchy bunghole? Of course, they do. They haven’t been programmed to discipline themselves into a ridiculous, unnatural and miserable state of Spartan self-denial.”

Postulates Flocker: “Pleasure is good. Eden was fun. Excess may be bad, but self-deprivation is just stupid. To live a life consisting only of hard work, virtue, sacrifice and self-discipline is to be a martyr, and martyrs make lousy lovers, friends and party guests. Of course, any good thing taken to the extreme inevitably turns bad, but when the true principles of hedonism are employed on a daily basis, the result is a happy person. Granted that happy person will undoubtedly piss off the martyr next door…”

Irony of all ironies, amid these happy hedonistic thoughts came the call to martyrdom in the Passion Sunday sermon of my parish priest in St. Jude Village, the Rev. Fr. Raul de los Santos, better known as Padre Bayong.

The end of suffering

Suffering ennobles the man. On that basic Christian principle, the padre premised the definitive way of observing the Holy Week.

Ang paghihirap ay hindi tinatakasan. Suffering is not to be shunned. It is human nature to avoid pain. Even Christ in Gethsemane asked his Father “to let the cup pass.”  It is precisely pain that provides the crucible that cleanses the human character. So, we should indeed welcome suffering into our lives?

Ang paghihirap ay hindi ipinapasa. Suffering is not passed on to others. It is accepted, as Christ indeed accepted His cup thus, “Thy will be done.” A happy acceptance of suffering is a most Christian virtue.

Ang paghihirap ay iniaalay. Suffering is an offering. To the Almighty, in remorse, in penance for human failings; in prayerful thanksgiving for grace and blessings, in praise for His love of humankind. Suffering is an act of consecration – of oneself to Christ, mayhaps, even of oneness in Him in His very salvific act.

Thus, Luke 9:23: “And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.”

I wonder how many of us in that congregation could ever live up to that sermon. Even if only in the Holy Week. As for so many of us, it is Christ – if only for snatches of Him – this time of the year, and all-Epicurus at all other times. 

Taking the best of both worlds, bipolarization in a sense. Cafeteria Catholicism, essentially.

Man of the Year: Alexander S. Cuguiran

AS 2017 turned out, the unfolding story of the Clark International Airport may well be timelined B.C. and C.E. Not of the Christ-centric old, and the all-too-secular new, dating systems though. But one oriented in Alexander Sangalang Cauguiran, president-CEO of the Clark International Airport Corp.

Simply put, Before Cauguiran – for well over a decade – the Clark airport was at best a long-held promise epically failing short at every try of delivery.

Flights were a matter of coming and going, and going, going, unreturning. Destinations, both domestic and international opened, and just as quickly closed. Locally, Cebu City made the only entry in the Clark flight board. Cebu Pacific and Aseana, the only mainstay airlines, later joined in by Cathay Dragon and Jin Air.  

Nowhere though was the shattered showcase of promises for the Clark airport more manifest than in its terminal. As presidents – of the Republic and CIAC – came and went, so did the grandiose plans – more schemed than mastered, all never implemented – to build the airport terminal.

Arroyo

In the incumbency of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, came first the P3-billion Terminal 2 to be jointly funded by the Manila International Airport Authority, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., and the Bureau of Immigration, among other agencies.

Next came the $1.2-billion proposal from ALMAL Investments Co., a subsidiary of the Kuwaiti mega developer M.A. Kharafi Projects, to build not one but three airport terminals.

Thereafter followed a group of major government-linked and private firms in Malaysia called Bristeel Overseas Ventures, Inc. (BOVI) offering to infuse at least $150 million in foreign direct investment for the terminal.

Deemed by the CIAC Board as “superior” to the BOVI offer, the proposal of the Philco Aero Inc. came to consideration,

At the close of her presidency – three days before she stepped down – all that Macapagal-Arroyo managed to inaugurate was a refurbished terminal with two airbridges that have since been more idle than used.  

Aquino

Two years into the presidency of Benigno S. Aquino III, CIAC signed a P1-billion loan facility with Land Bank of the Philippines for what it said was the Phase II expansion of the passenger terminal and other support infrastructure of the CIA, including navigational equipment.

Shortly thereafter, CIAC announced it was seeking some P8 billion for a low-cost carrier terminal, soon after upgraded to P12 million.

Then, in October 2013 CIAC said the construction of the proposed P7.2-billion budget terminal at the Clark airport would likely start in the second quarter of 2014 and is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2016.

No groundbreaking, much less any completing of any Clark airport terminal to the final minute of the BS’ toehold on the presidential office.

Cauguiran Era

Himself afflicted with this “terminal fever,” having served as CIAC executive vice president at the time of Arroyo, it was indeed incumbent upon Cauguiran – on the very day he assumed office in August 2016 – to immediately serve notice of his express priority to pursue the construction of the low-cost carrier passenger terminal as designed by Aeroport de Paris.

(Made possible through a grant from the French government, the Aeroport de Paris design was shot down by the Aquino administration for being “too grand” for Clark, recommending its re-design at a projected cost of P500 million.) 

As it was an imperative for the new CIAC chief too: “President Duterte’s order to the airline companies to transfer flights from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport to Clark is firm. It is final, knowing his style in leadership. We are anticipating growth and we must prepare for it.”

And the flights did indeed come – in droves. From a measly seven – Before Cauguiran – there are today 420 flights weekly, servicing 20 domestic destinations spread throughout the archipelago – Bacolod, Bagabag, Balesin, Basco, Busuanga, Calbayog, Cagayan de Oro, Catanduanes, Caticlan, Cebu, Davao, El Nido, Iloilo, Kalibo, Masbate, Naga, Puerto Princesa, Tacloban, Tagbilaran and Virac – and nine international destinations – Dubai, Hong Kong, Incheon, Busan, Macau, Pudong (China), Qatar and Singapore, with Osaka coming this March.

Sans direct service to Europe and North America as yet, Clark has been linked to these continents via the main hubs of Emirates, Qatar, Cathay Dragon, Asiana and China Eastern for passenger transit.      

Unarguably, it was subsequent to Cauguiran’s assuming the CIAC presidency, if not consequent to Duterte’s order, that the Philippine Airlines, Philippines Air Asia, Air Swift, China Eastern and Jetstar Airways homed in Clark.

By the end of 2017 – the first full 16 months of the Cauguiran Era – Clark had recorded 103 percent increase in aircraft movement at 12,620 and 59 percent rise in passenger traffic at 1,514,531 passengers, surpassing the previous highest figure of 1,315,757 recorded in 2012.

In terms of total revenues, CIAC recorded in 2017 an impressive 21 percent increase totaling to P814.14 million as compared its take in the previous year.

For the period of January-December 2017, CIAC generated a total net income of P174.93 million or a 126 percent increase, as well as an EBITDA (earnings before taxes, interests, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of P357.84 million translating to a 32 percent growth as compared to 2016.

A creditor’s delight too – CIAC has no incurrence of penalty charges on the delayed payments or settlement of loan amortizations and interest payments to Philippine Veterans Bank and Land Bank of the Philippines.

Terminal, finally

Far from the low-cost carrier terminal that Cauguiran has always sought to pursue since his EVP days – indeed, a core issue of his Move Clark Now advocacy from the late 1990s to his championing ADAPT (Advocacy for Dual Airport Policy) in the recent years – what evolved is a massive P9.36-billion expansion project of the Clark International Airport.

And – unlike all those terminal dreams of BOVI, Philco Aero, ALMAL, et al of the Arroyo and Aquino administrations -- there is neither delaying nor denying Clark of its rightful terminal this time.

Soon as ground was ceremoniously broken by the honorable men and women of the national and local governments, backhoes and bulldozzers commenced construction targeted to finish by the first quarter of 2020.

Aye, the long-held Clark promise as the country’s premier international airport finally being delivered now. Only to spawn a bigger promise – as Asia’s next premier gateway.  

However, whatever that dream may come, Clark has taken its rightful niche in the aviation sky. And all it took for that to come to fulfilment is the incumbency – the grit and sagacity, naturally – of Alexander S. Cauguiran.    

 

At 64, going 50

WHEN I get older losing my hair

Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a Valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine.
If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four…

Whimsy. Utterly whimsy, this Fab Four hit of over half a century ago. That is, to me that turned that age in song this Saturday past.,

No, I haven’t lost my hair – not as yet anyway. The curly locks of burgundy-brown though turned more salt than pepper now. The last drop of dyeing henna having dried up over six months ago.    

Okay, birthday greetings do still come – surprisingly much more this late in time than say, when I was a young 24 or even at established 34.

Bottle of wine? Friends would rather care than send one, knowing full well I am a teetotaler. Not by choice but by constitution, physically that is:  I get all red hot and bloated at the mere whiff of alcohol.         
Out till quarter to three? Never in all these 64 years, 10 p.m. being way past my bedtime. Sleep post midnight turns me not into some loveable Cinderfella but into a grumpy Grinch.

Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four…

Now, I’m listening. Gardening being a lifelong devotion. All the more with the son’s acquisition of a small farm last year. A most pleasant work-in-progress is the orchard of mangoes, papayas, bananas, and guayabanos, with the addition of coconuts, duhat, tamarind, chestnuts, and avocados. And a vegetable patch to boot – having already harvested chilis, sigarillas, string beans, and eggplants. Not by the tiklis but only by the supot though.  

For ornamentals, red and white bougainvilleas climbing up the trellis by the little farmhouse, and all around it: potted roses, calachuchi, fragrant sampaguitas, air-purifying aloe vera and sanseveria, better known as mother in-law’s tongue; a host of lush hostas, ferns, and mosquito-repelling citronella and lemon grasses.

Pampacabang bie – life extender – ‘tis said of a garden. And yes, the renascence of youth ever felt right at the gate to the farm.

Digging the weeds though is a totally different story. It landed me to the ICU in a nearly fatal bout with pneumonia only last September.

Impact of age

Alas, there lies the impact of age – badly on the body, worse on the ego, best for the soul. It’s no defining moment to 64 – at least in my case – but the annual reaffirmation of some cumulative accumulation that started at 50.

It is a wonder why and how 50 is ever dubbed the “golden year” when it presages, indeed, immediately precedes the darkening ages of man’s worldly life – the epochs that are the Age of Aches and the Age of Don’ts.

The first, instanced in creaks in the knee and elbow joints, stiffening fingers and stiffed neck, frozen shoulders, rheumatic hands, gouty feet, back pains that make it longer and more difficult to get out of bed in the morning. And that’s just for the easy part!

The second, and more cruel, the proscription of the spice, the salt, and the sweetness of life as a forbidden lot. Bawal ang lahat ng masarap.

Cruelest, most insufferable of all though, is the quenching of the once raging conflagration in one’s loins. Sans Pfizer’s petrifier, sex at 50 starts becoming mostly a matter of gender, least an affair to lust.

As I wrote it then, so I write it now – 64 being but an extension of 50, albeit of diminishing intensity – in matters worldly, on one hand; of deepening spirituality, on the other. The choice is in the individual though.

A most politically-incorrect, if chauvinistic, joke told and retold in this corner: “When a woman finds herself unattractive to men, she turns to God.” But that was before nip-and-tuck cosmetic procedures. Hence, the once plentiful manangs in church shedding their blessed velo in favor of the doctored Belo.

Men, in turn, finding themselves unattractive to women, turn DOMs – instantly transforming to azucareras de papa. Rejoicing in a manhood resurrected in Viagra. A caveat to aged Lotharios:  A novel entry in the coroner’s report: stiff staff in advanced state of rigor mortis. Died hard, ignominiously.
As I wrote, the choice is in the individual, having been divinely gifted with free will.

Epiphany

So, epiphany comes at age 50 too – as one finds the grace of spirit that trumps and triumphs over weak, worldly flesh – and continues to 64, 65, 66, 67… from season to season, in some spiraling spirituality, at once renewing, reconciling, and reaffirming one’s being to His Being.

No, this does not – need not – come in the splendor of Saul’s conversion at Damascus’ Gate. That’s but one for the Book. All it takes is to feel the silent stirrings in the heart that invariably sears the very soul, even in the most mundane things.

Like the daily walk at the village oval turning into a joyous occasion for worship. The golden rays of the early morning sun shining through the canopy of trees, the singing birds perched on their branches, the fluttering butterflies among the wild flowers – all living testaments to the goodness of my God. And for these and all other blessings, I thank you, the Lord Most High.

As I have long written, so still obtain in me now.      

Songs stir the soul ever more – mournful strains as the theme of Schindler’s List draw – along with a cascade of tears – images of the least of God’s children, in the Sudan, in Somalia, in Syria. Sharing – albeit spiritually – their sufferings, solidarity with them in their sorrows, is an enrichment to the soul.

So, is it not written, “As ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me”?

Weddings become more than mere organized events for fellowship and food but actual partaking, a communion, in the celebration of love. Ah, how they make me cry, even when it’s not my kids, nephews and nieces being wedded. Copious tears of joy, For All We Know and Sunrise, Sunset always bring.

The fullness of love before the altar renews, refreshes all that is reposited in the heart, seeking an expression of its own through sharing, most especially with the unloved.

So, who was it who said: “The love in your heart was not put there to stay. Love isn’t love till you give it away”? As good a thought there on one’s birthday as on Valentine’s Day. 

As in weddings, moreso in funerals – tears. A sign of the cross, a tear or two for the loss, a short silent prayer for the repose of his/her soul at each encounter with a funeral procession. That I don’t even know the dead matters not. All that counts is a fellow human being having passed, and the hope that God judged him/her worthy of His kingdom.             

Thence the dreadful thoughts of morbidity – again, first felt at 50 – recede to some sense of immortality that comes astir with the 60s, to wit: Less the legacy one leaves to posterity – mine neither much nor great, in the first place – than that which one shall carry on his passage, to present before the mercy and compassion of his God. Aye, in His judgment, I shall most surely fail. So, His forgiveness, I most humbly beg.

On turning 60 four short years back, I wrote how aptly named is 50 as the Golden Age – in which to pass through the crucible of spirituality to earn a rightful passage to the Diamond Age where celebrated the purity of the soul. Praying: With the grace of God, how I long to come to that dazzling threshold.       

September last year, I teetered right at immortality’s edge. Birthed anew at 64, I can only go on, joyfully, with my pilgrimage.   

Iloilo in my heart

CITY OF Love it is, indeed. Having found love in Iloilo City in 1976 yet and remained steadfast with, in, for that same love in all these years.

Dare I declare then that there’s nothing unloveable in Iloilo City, notwithstanding Duterte’s unfounded and therefore unwarranted canard of it being the Philippines’ “most shabulized city.” Yeah, hogwash most sloppy!

As much a matter of fact as a matter of heart that every coming is an occasion to fall in love with the city anew, and at every going, a yearning to return again. And again.

As did I and a group of Pampanga media just this weekend past, taking part in Philippine AirAsia’s inaugural Clark-Iloilo flight.

In essence, Iloilo is two cities at once: Old World and millennial. At its grand and glorified, edifying and enriching best in both.  

The city’s legacy of faith is not merely displayed but all-too abiding in its magnificent churches, arguably grander than Pampanga’s own edifices of faith.     

The San Jose Church, locus of the city’s signature Dinagyang Festival. 

The seat of the Archdiocese of Jaro that is the Nuestra Senora de Candelaria Cathedral with its separate belfry.

The Sta. Ana Church of Molo, so-called “feminist church” for its exclusive array of santas for veneration.

At the city’s periphery is the most ornate, if not the grandest, of Iloilo’s churches that is the Sto. Tomas de Villanueva Church, better known as Miag-ao Church. 

Predominantly baroque, local elements – coconut and papaya trees among native flora – are incorporated in the façade of yellow ochre limestone, making it a one-of-a-kind church, at least in this part of the Catholic world, meriting no less than a UNESCO Heritage Site status. 

Even more unique – “of all churches in the whole of the solar system,” as our tour guide West Visayas State University Prof. David Quimpo put it – is the San Joaquin Church.

Instead of the usual images of Jesus Christ and patron saints niched or in relief motif on the façade, the church has a battle scene – inscribed Rendicion d Tetuan – celebrating the victory of Catholic Spain against Moors in the Battle of Tetuan in Morocco in 1860. War as centerpiece theme of a holy edifice. Where else in the universe, indeed!   

A commonality among all these legacy churches of Iloilo is their dual purpose of being places of worship as well as fortresses against marauding Moro pirates. Hence the massiveness of their walls and foundations, which has served them well in times of earthquakes and other disasters, both natural and man-made. Pity that its is churchmen themselves that have been reported to have irretrievably damaged the antiquity of some churches in their vain pursuit of rehabilitating and modernizing them.

Majesty

The city’s rich cultural heritage is not merely showcased but actually lived in its stately mansions, unarguably more majestic than Vigan’s.

Straight out of epoca bella and still resplendent are the villas grandes bearing the names of the local aristocracy – Ledesma, Lizares, Locsin, Lopez, Consing, Montinola, Javellana. Add Nelly’s Garden there too.

If only for a night, Capampangan pesantes had a fill of the sumptuous comida del haciendero complete with the turn-of-the century ambience at the Camina’s Balay nga Bato. Five kinds of ensaladas and pancit Molo for starters, four kinds of rice and a stream of pork, fish, chicken dishes for entrée, fruits and chocolate de baterol for a most gratifying gustatory finis.

Pampanga prides itself as the “culinary capital of the Philippines” but Iloilo cannot be far behind.

While famous for its signature gastronomic fares of La Paz batchoy – the best at Netong’s inside the public market – pancit Molo and chicken inasal, there are a lot more in the Ilonggo menu to sate even the most finicky gourmet. Like KBL -- ­for kadios, baboy, langka soupy vegetable dish – kinilaw nga isda, sinugba nga baboy, and sisi – blanched small oysters dipped in sinamak, a mixture of vinegar, chili peppers, garlic, onions, ginger and turmeric. Best served at Tatoy’s Manokan and Seafood, and at Breakthrough by the Villa Beach.

All comfort foods that have withstood the invasion of the American hamburger, the Korean kimchi and the Japanese sushi. Not to mention the German bratwurst and the English scones and sandwiches.

Beyond malling

All coming in droves with the “malling” of Iloilo that commenced with SM City and transformed the once swampy area and saltbeds around the old airport into a virtually new city still in a flux of construction with the country’s big names in commerce and industry – the Ayalas, Megaworld, Villar, Gokongwei – aside from the Sys and the local boy Mang Inasal founder Edgar Sia getting into the development frenzy with hotels, condos, BPO hubs, and shopping malls in the works. I

Injap Hotel which 21^st floor restaurant gives a 240-degree view of the city will not for long be the tallest building in Western Visayas. Its very neighbor, SM Strata stands to be a storey or two higher.                 

Amid all these strides to millennial modernity, the Old World charm of the city has not diminished any. In fact, one feels no jolting transition from old town to new metropolis, there obtaining a synergic complementation.

This is most palpable at the various bridges crossing the city divide – lush mangroves banking the clean, garbage-free river evoking some primeval pristine ecosystem, bordered by a serpentine red-brick walkabout pavement called The Esplanade. All in keeping with the laidback attitude, the unhurried pace of old provincial living in a cosmopolitan setting.       

Glorious past living in a grand present, making the best of both worlds. Who would not be in love with Iloilo City?

That free marketplace of ideas

“SABI NGA sa isang kaso: Kung walang fake news hindi natin malalaman kung ano yung true news. Kung hindi natin malalaman ang kasinungalingan, hindi rin natin malalaman ang katotohanan (As stated in one case: Without fake news we won’t know what’s true news. If we don’t know what’s a lie, we also won’t know what’s the truth) … So, let there be a free marketplace of ideas.”

Furious and fast was the torrent of denunciation and ridicule in the net heaped upon presidential spokesperson Harry Roque for what has been deemed as his spirited, if vain, attempt to justify the Duterte administration’s use of fake news as undeclared policy.

Roque’s statements on Jan. 28 at the sidelines of the Dinagyang Festival in Iloilo City even stirred a number of netizens to reference to a quotation in Mao’s little red book: “Let a hundred [not a thousand, as often misquoted] flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend…” Which, history shows, led to the extermination of all criticism of the communist system, with the extreme prejudice to the critics.  

As for me, it was John Milton’s Areopagitica that Roque may have wanted, but miserably failed, to channel, to wit: 

And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing or prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter.
As indeed, on Jan. 30, Roque did a passing mention of Areopagitica in an effort to convince us that fake news is neither encouraged by the Duterte regime nor has it any place in government policy.    

Spewing a slew of US jurisprudence on free speech, Roque cited the “conviction that the solution is never governmental censorship, but better journalism. It is an idea as old as John Milton’s Areopagitica.”

“So, let there be a free marketplace of ideas.” Really, Roque?

Where lies fake news in that free marketplace of ideas which, straight out of the Age of Reason, has always stood on moral grounds? Grounds that have through all these years withstood the twisted turns of evil minds.

G.K. Chesterton said it so rightly: “Right is Right even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it.”

That, but a re-phrase of St. Augustine: “Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.”

Indeed, nowhere but in the marketplace of the proverbial fishwives can fake news find – fittingly – its wrongful niche.  

Pope Francis puts it point blank: “Fake news is a sign of intolerant and hypersensitive attitudes and leads only to the spread of arrogance and hatred. That is the end result of untruth.”

Should we now hear Roque’s patron reprising his infamous “Pu..na ka, Pope!”?

Cry “Dilawan!” then and let loose the mangy mongrels out of Malacanang’s kennel that is the Presidential Communications Operations Office! 

Thus, the Pope: “This false but believable news is ‘captious’, inasmuch as it grasps people’s attention by appealing to stereotypes and common social prejudices, and exploiting instantaneous emotions like anxiety, contempt, anger and frustration.” 

Thus, the brags and blusters: God, I hate drugs! Shoot me if I extend my term. Magdasal ka na. Kill them. Bobombahin ko yan. Mamatay kayo sa hirap, wala akong pakialam.  Kapag hindi maipasa ang federalism, ‘wag n’yo ako sisihin. Magkakagulo, magkakamatayan.

Furthered His Holiness: "Disinformation thus thrives on the absence of healthy confrontation with other sources of information that could effectively challenge prejudices and generate constructive dialogue; instead, it risks turning people into unwilling accomplices in spreading biased and baseless ideas."

Thus, the demonization of mainstream media at every turn.  

Which brings me back to Areopagitica.

For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty. She needs no policies nor stratagems, nor licensing to make her victorious – those are the shifts and the defenses that error uses against her power. Give her but room, and do not bind her while she sleeps.

And -- even while wide awake – Rappler is being bound.