To the point

BEING AT odds with publishers/owners is an all-too-common predicament among editors, including presumptive ones like me, who strongly adhere to the dictum: “Publish first, truth always, be damned later.”

Owners have their corporate interests to preserve, protect, and promote which, in many cases are at variance with the editor’s fundamental duty to publish Truth, no matter the cost.

No way is this more articulated than in Read All About It! The Corporate Takeover of America’s Newspapers by James D. Squires, a former editor of the Chicago Tribune, thus: “The marriage of corporations and journalism is an unnatural, unhappy union. The best journalists are naturally skeptical individuals with a healthy disrespect for authority, pomposity and ruling classes. They understand and appreciate the ideal of democracy that one man’s vote and voice are as important as another’s. And they have a well-honed apparatus for detecting two staples of the corporate culture – bullshit and insincerity.”

You will know who wears the pants in that unnatural, unhappy union with but a cursory browse of the pages of a newspaper – the owner, when his photographs and news about the most banal of his activities pepper the pages, page one not excluded. Yes, there are publishers who simply love to publish themselves, when even the least of their business endeavors crowd legitimate news out of the pages, in effect reducing their papers to nothing more than company journals.

In such set-up, even the best editors can only do their worst. As the great Arthur Krock, winner of three Pulitzer Prices and once “Dean of Washington newsmen,” wrote: “A hired journalism, however zealous, however loyal, however entrusted, however brilliant, cannot be great because it speaks through the mist of subordination.”

The editor having the upper hand? When the publisher subordinates his interest to the “sanctity of the desk.”

As in the early days of journalism, newspapers are published to 1) indulge the whims and caprices of the publisher; 2) promote his businesses; and 3) serve the political causes he espouses. Civic duty is a thoroughly alien entity to the greater number of publishers.

To paraphrase from memory what I read somewhere, the title of the material I cannot immediately recall: If you told that kind of publisher that he had a duty to the public to print the news objectively and accurately, he would have asked what kind of duty some other kinds of businessmen had. His newspaper being a business enterprise, news to him would be the same as cars to a Levy Laus, or house and lot to a Nestor Mangio, or tocino and longanisa to a Lolita Hizon, even halo-halo and pancit luglog to a Razon.

News being no more than a commodity to sell, a product to be packaged and presented in whatever way that will be most appealing to his customers and thus will bring him most profit. Even at the expense of integrity.

But commercial viability and editorial integrity are not mutually exclusive.

This is best exemplified in The New York Times, unarguably the number one newspaper in the world.

A well-known lore: At the time of World War II, faced with newsprint rationing, the Ochs and Sulzberger families that owned the Times chose to print news over advertising, thereby sacrificing much-needed revenues that the latter offered. The act singularly established their paper’s moral ascendancy over all other newspapers in America.

With the Times emerging – and remaining to this day – the most influential newspaper in the USA, if not in the whole world. That good decision of the owners proved to be good business sense too. High-mindedness returned better profits in the long run, so the moral lesson of the Times ­story instructs us.

Perhaps, Punto!’s publishers have read that same story. Hence, their express policy of editorial integrity first, profitability second.

So I wrote ten years ago. So I rewrite on this the eleventh year of Punto!, with my appreciation to my publishers for putting up with my prejudices even when they do not always share them.                      

Abe, absolutely

CLASS WAR is not only imminent but imperative in the coming Angeles City mayoralty contest. If, indeed, it has not started yet.  

Partido Abe Kapampangan endorses Alex Cauguiran.

Screamed our banner story of Sept. 18, reporting of the assembly of some “500 card-bearing party leaders representing the city’s 33 barangays” held Sept. 13 in Balibago that elected the party’s new set of officers and declared its president, Cauguiran, as party standard bearer in the Angeles City mayoralty race next year.

Even as Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan was re-elected party chairman, he was most obviously absent in the assembly.

Partido Abe Kapampangan selects Bryan-Edu tandem.

Headlined our online page on Sept. 23, reporting of “another” assembly held Sept. 20 of “about 800 delegates” where they selected Vice Mayor Nepomuceno and councilor Pamintuan as official candidates for mayor and vice mayor respectively in elections next year.

Ubiquitous, monopolizing even, was the elder Pamintuan’s presence in the latter assembly.

What gives? Same party. Distinct candidates.

Pamintuan makes all the difference.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. So, it has been clichéd. 

But as much as so metaphored, houses don’t make political parties. Hence, even when fissured or factionalized parties still stand, albeit tottering to the slightest wind. In the process developing wings – as in LP-Kalaw Wing versus LP-Salonga Wing, and NP-Roy Wing in some distant past; like the LP-Atienza-Defensor Wing and LP-Drilon-Pangilinan Wing of the PGMA era.

So, takes the same route Partido Abe Kapampangan now, with PAK-Cauguiran Wing and PAK-Pamintuan Wing, as deduced Ashley Manabat in our online story’s very lead paragraph?

No. A farce Partido Abe Kapampangan makes of its very self, if it does so.

Abe – comrade, in Capampangan – makes both the party framework and the ground upon which the party is founded. On an even loftier plane, Abe is the very soul that animates the party.

Thus, cleaving the party to two factions – if only for fairness and equity to Cauguiran and to Pamintuan – is not Solomonic, but rather moronic. As this snuffs out the very essence of its life.  

There can only be one, as there is but one, Partido Abe Kapampangan.  

It is that “multisector grassroots mass organization” founded on the ideals – members committed themselves to – “..iisang uri ng pinanggalingan na dapat mabigyan ng puwang at pagkakataon ang kinatawan ng ordinaryong tao at wakasan na, kahit pansamantala kung hindi man panghabang panahon, ang paghawak sa panunungkulan na lagi na lamang sa mayayaman at malalaking politiko.” Long and winding articulation concluding no blunter than: From the masses, by the masses, for the masses. The ruling elite be damned!

The two-wing contradiction that has seemingly befallen Partido Abe Kapampangan is neither dialectical nor diametrical, as one unrepentant Marxist contextualizes it. In fact, it is not even a contradiction but a perversion.  Of the ideals that make the party’s raison d'être.

To declare as standard bearer of Partido Abe Kapampangan the very dynast of the “mayayaman at malalaking pulitiko,” precisely against whom the party was founded, is not just an insult to the party members but an abomination of everything that the party stands and lives for.

Here is a case when principles – reduced to principals – are debased to prejudices. Of the plutocratic fallacy of governance as sole domain of the propertied, the have-nots as mere subjects. 

Here is an instance when comradeship is subjugated to exigency, and subordinated to expediency. When the interest of the party is subsumed to those of the self.  

Thereof, a class war, in all its classicism, with all its romanticism, is an imperative for the Partido Abe Kapampangan.

First from within – to cleanse it from the bourgeois decadence that has most manifestly infected its body parts.

Then to the age-old struggle of “the history of all hitherto existing society…”

On one hand: the landed gentry, the feudal lords, the political dynasties and their lackeys embodied as the immovable object -- preserving the status quo, keeping their socio-economic and political stranglehold of the city.

On the other: Partido Abe Kapampangan of the working classes, the barrio folk, the intelligentsia, the greater mass of Angeles society -- banded as the irresistible force to crush bourgeois domination.

Only one forged in the anti-dictatorship struggle, conscienticized in the grassroots pedagogy on the imperative of the rebellion of the poor towards their ultimate liberation, steeped in dialectics, possessed of rhetorical skills can embody Partido Abe Kapampangan. One with proven leadership and managerial capabilities on the side.

We don’t have to look far to find him: As he is us, so we are him.

Sana'y maulit muli

ANG MATAGAL nang tahimik na bulung-bulungan sa kalunsuran ay sumambulat – kahit sa social media man lamang – nitong nakaraang araw: Ibalik si Mayor Oca!

Sa tawag ng panahon sa kabisera ng lalawigan Kapampangan, ang magiting na mambabatas at premyadong World City Mayor si Oscar Samson Rodriguez ang akma at natatanging kasagutan. Ito wari ang mithiing namutawi sa internet, Setyembre 19, mismong araw ng kanyang kapanganakan.

Muli, ang pananariwa sa mga mamayan ang matatag na paninindigan, ang malinis na pamamahala, ang kaayusan at kaunlaran ng Lungsod San Fernando sa panahon ni Mayor Oca.

Mula sa ating About Oca: A Story of Struggle na isinulat noong 2005, ang buod at ubod nito, mula kay Ka Oca mismo:

Magsilbi Tamu

ARAL NG kasaysayan, at ng karanasan, na ang matapat na at makabuluhang ugnayan ng mga mamamayan at ng mga namumuno ang sandigan ng demoktratikong lipunan.

Ang mapayapa, matatag at maunlad na pamayanan ay nakasalalay sa tibay ng ugnayang yaon. Kaya’t lubos na napakahalaga ng ganap na katapatan sa isa’t isa ng mga mamamayan at mga pinunong lokal.

Higit sa mga namumuno kaysa mga mamamayan ang tawag ng katapatan, dahil na rin sa tindi at bigat ng tungkuling iniatang sa kanilang mga balikat, at saklaw ng kaakibat nitong kapangyarihan, tungo sa mithiing isang maaliwalas na pamumuhay para sa lahat.

Lubos ang aking paniniwala na sagutin hindi lamang sa bayan kundi higit sa Poong Maykapal ng isang namumuno ang anumang kahihinatnan ng pamayanang kanyang pinamumunuan. Atas ng pananampalatayang Kristiyano, o Islam man, at itinatadhana ng demokratikong tradisyon na ang masang mamamayan ay hindi sinasakupan, kundi pinaglilingkuran ng mga namumuno.

MAGSILBI TAMU, kung gayon, ay hindi isang hungkag na islogan kundi ang mismong matatag na saligan ng pananaw na makatao, panininidigang makabayan at pamamaraang maka-Diyos.

MAGSILBI TAMU – ang gumagabay sa lahat ng aking panuntunan at pagkilos bilang lingkod-bayan, sa aking panunungkulan bilang punong-lungsod.

Ang natatangi at takdang layon ng pamahalaang lungsod ay ang tapat at malinis na pamamahala. Tungo dito, bukas sa madla ang lahat ng mga tanggapan sa city hall at hayag ang lahat ng kasunudan o transaksiyon ng pamahalaang lokal sa mga mamamayan. Cuentas claras o transparency ang patakarang ipinaiiral sa lahat ng gastusin dito. Anf kaban ng bayan ay dapat na pakahalagaan – pinagbuwisan ito ng pawis at dugo ng mamamayan, at pakaingat-ingatan – lalo na ngayong taghirap ang buong bansa.

Hindi lamang likas na karapatan kundi takdang tungkulin din ng mga mamamayan ang makibahagi at maki-alam sa lahat ng gawaing pambayan, ang magpahayag ng kanilang kaisipan at damdamin ukol sa mga usaping panglungsod, ang magbunyag ng anumang katiwalian tungo sa malinis na pamamahala’t paglilingkod, at ang pakikinig at pagtugon – ng mga nanunungkulan – sa kanilang mga karaingan tungo sa ikabubuti ng kanilang pamumuhay. Tugon dito ang pagtakda ng mga pulung-pulong sa mga barangay kasama ang punong-lungsod, ang buong Sanggunian, sampu ng mga tanggapan ng lokal na pamahalaan.

Kabalikat ang pamahalaang lungsod sa mga gawaing bayan ang pribadong sektor, partikular na ang mga mangangalakal, samahang sibiko at NGO. Bunsod nito, sila din ay may mahalagang papel sa mga pagpupunyagi ng lungsod sa larangan ng pangangalakal, pamumuhunan at turismo; sa pagpapatupad at pagpapalaganap ng kaayusan, kalinisan, kalusugan at karunungan.

Sa pagtahak natin sa landas ng kaunlaran, ating inaagapayan ang kapakanan ng kapaligiran. Ang Sagip-Ilog, ang paghihigpit sa mga planta at pagawaan na bumubuga ng usaok at nagdudumi sa mga kailugan, ang pagapapatupad sa solid waste management ay ilan lamang sa patunay nito.

Ang pinakamahalagang pamantayan ng kaunlaran ng lungsod ay hindi lamang ang kasaganaan kundi higit ang pangkalahatang kalusugan ng mga mamamayan. Atas nito ang higit panga pagpapalakas sa outreach programs at pagpapalawak sa mga health services ng lungsod.

Itinatadhanang tungkulin din ng pamahalaan ang buong-pusong pagkalinga sa mga nakatatanda. Ating pinapahalagaan, itinatangi’t pinaglilingkuran ang ating mga senior citizens. Ang yaman ng kanilang karanasan, ang karunungang kanilang naimpok ay mahalaga sa kagalingan ng bayan.

Ang hanay ng mga kababaihan ay may sariling lakas at kakayahan upang maging ganap na kabalikat sa paglilingkod-bayan. Tugon dito ang ang pagapapalakas sa programang gender advancement and development at ang matibay na pakikipag-ugnayan ng pamahalaang lungsod sa mga samahang kababaihan sa mga gawaing pangkaunlaran.

Magkakaroon lamang ng kaganapan ang pangakong binitiwan ni Gat Jose Rizal – ang kabataan ang siyang pag-asa ng bayan – sa pagbibigay sa kanila ng kaukulang pagkakataon na mapanday ang kanilang kakayahan, mahubog sila sa kagandahang-asal, at maging kabahagi ng usapin at gawaing pambayan. Hindi kailangang maging balakid ang kahirapan upang ang kabataan ay makapag-aral at makakuha ng pagsasanay na bokasyonal o teknikal.

Ang pinakamahalagang pamana ng lungsod sa susunod na salinlahi ay ang kalinangang Fernandino. Muli, kabalikat ng pamahalaang panglungsod ang pribadong sektor, ang mga pamantasan at dalubhasaan sa ating pangangalaga at pagpapalaganap sa kasaysayan, sining at kultura ng ating lipi.

MAGSILBI TAMU. Ito ang sandigan ng aking pananalig. Ito ang saligan ng aking paninindigan.          

Citizen Marni

NO FLOODBUSTER, literally – his official moniker “anti-flood tsar” of the City of San Fernando at the time of now much missed Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez notwithstanding – still, it’s Engineer Marni Castro that city residents in the know have come to turn to at every coming storm or heavy monsoon rain.

Thus, Saturday past with Typhoon Ompong still unleashing intermittent rains, Marni it was that I texted after a quick look-see at developing cracks on the small bridge to Phase 3 of St. Jude Village where I am domiciled.  

Marni had already assessed the bridge situation – the northern approach had caved in, onrushing water and mud already spilling on the flooded streets every which way, the nearby (uninhabited?) house of Mayor Edwin Santiago unspared  – by the time I returned from an errand with the wife to a nearby drugstore  I found him coordinating immediate response on his mobile – mobilizing a backhoe and dump trucks to take out tons of debris that impacted the bridge, sending advisories to city officials, etc.

Affected residents and a team from CLTV 36 were milling around Marni with myriad fearful concerns over the situation when Mayor Santiago and VM Jimmy Lazatin arrived at the site less than an hour later.

Quick was the mayor’s lamentation over what he said was the “opposition” of the Phase 3 residents to the construction of a new bridge over that same spot that should have started in February this year, with posted notifications around the village in late January.

(As quick was the bashing I got from a number of the Phase 3 residents when I posted on my Facebook page pictures of the collapsed bridge and the mayor’s lamentation. “Get your facts right,” one said. Of course, I stuck to the facts, citing only what the mayor articulated. That they said they did not oppose the construction was another, if related, story. That did not detract any the facts I cited in my post.)

Anyways, the mayor deferring to Marni’s recommendations on the immediate to-do’s about the bridge just showed how much confidence the city government has invested in its premier volunteer worker.

Indeed, a volunteer of the highest order Marni makes, shooting to prominence – of the selfless kind – in the lahar aftermath of the Mount Pinatubo eruptions.

His off-roading skills were put to good use in rescue-relief operations at each onslaught of lahar from Porac to Bacolor. And even broadened now: at the onset of every typhoon or habagat, he mobilizes his off-roader groups to be on-call for rescue operations.

He went beyond being among the strongest advocates for the FVR megadike systems to actually monitoring – daily – its construction from the digging stage, to the filling and the armoring. No, his did not wangle any contract in any phase of the megadike erection. Why, up to this time he routinely takes the megadike road just to check its condition.

Marni was likewise among the brain trust that birthed the San Fernando-Sto. Tomas-Minalin taildike that helped saved the southern part of the city and the two towns from more destructive inundations. As in the megadike, he now pushes for the taildike to serve as a major road to from the capital city to Minalin, thereby easing traffic at the old provincial road through Sto. Tomas.

For a number of summers now, Marni has quietly coordinated the declogging of waterways linking San Fernando and the two mentioned towns to immediate, though, as yet incomplete, results – floods are much lower and subside faster in the city.            

That Marni has done much for the city – and Pampanga too – at all cost to him and no cost to the government and the people is beyond an iota of doubt. Unreasonable, otherwise.

His mantra says it all: “I live for a cause, not for applause.”

Come to think of it, what has he got for it?       

This then is but an affirmation of the badge of citizenship long bestowed on Marni Castro. Can anything be more honorable than this?   

  

Weathering politics

PUBLIC SERVICE Announcement from Angeles City LGU:

After thorough discussion with the ACDRRMO and Vice Mayor Bryan Matthew Nepomuceno, I, Mayor Edgardo D. Pamintuan hereby declare the suspension of classes on ALL LEVELS (public and private) in Angeles City on Sept 13-15 (Thursday, Friday and Saturday) in anticipation of the adverse effects brought about by Typhoon Ompong.

BE safe, Angeleños.

There is full sunlight coming through my window as I started writing this – 7:35 a.m. Sept. 13, Thursday at St. Jude Village, City of San Fernando.

The expected – aye, predicted – over-200 kph winds and torrents of rain once Ompong entered the Philippine area of responsibility still a figment of PAGASA’s imagination. Or, mayhaps, this is but the proverbial lull before the deluge.

Still, and all, the Angeles City LGU is not taking any chances. Having been thoroughly drenched in public outbursts over class suspension – when the sun shone brightest, and non-suspension – when the city was inundated, with the onset of successive typhoons and the southwest monsoons only last July.

Sala sa lamig, sala sa init. The city government made there. This time, they know better. Maybe, even best. As they have taken out of their present announcement any reference to PAGASA altogether.

At the time of monsoons past, VM Nepomuceno, in his capacity as acting mayor while Pamintuan was in some official mission abroad, posted in his and the city’s official Facebook account:  

 July 18, 5:54 a.m. ADVISORY: Good morning po. Considering the 4 a.m. forecast of PAGASA that there will only be light to moderate rain showers in Angeles City, and the advice of our Disaster Risk Reduction Monitoring Team that there are no threats of flooding, classes in all levels have NOT been SUSPENDED. Please be advised to still bring umbrellas and rain coats to stay dry and safe. Thank you.

For PAGASA’s failed forecast – the skies opened up with the proverbial dogs and cats – Nepomuceno metaphorically drowned in the online deluge of denunciation and damnation by a citizenry drenched to the bone.

A sampling, I gathered and pasted in a column I wrote at that time:

Kaya kayo naba-bash kasi tanga mag-announce. Pag umuulan, may pasok. Pag di umuulan, walang pasok. Ayaw niyo may nagrereklamo pero ganyan dapat ninyo.

Itatanong ko lang po kung immortal po ba ung mga taga-Angeles.

Tagal namin naghintay ng announcement. Hindi sa ayaw namin ng walang pasok pero ba’t gano’n? Kaka-iba ya talaga ing Angeles.#AgyuTamungMabasa

Tindi mo naman Vice. NOT SUSPENDED? Pero hayan, mga school principals na ang nagsuspend ng classes dahil sila ang nakakaalam na mahihirapan ang mga bata sa ulan o baha!

Paano ba naman maiintindihan ng mga yan e rich kid sila e, di naman nababasa mga yan na nagko-commute kagaya ng karamihan. Laging naka-service, kulang nalang buhatin ng mga kasambahay nila.

So, feeling nyo concerned na kayo nyan? Stop being apathetic.

Napaka-unfair nyo. Nakaka-inis kayo, palibhasa kase sarap ng buhay nyo! Mga anak nyo kasi nasa magandang paaralan! Kapag nag cancel kayo may araw! kapag bumabagyo na dun may pasok.

This time, it was Mayor Pamintuan himself that declared the suspension of classes.

This as much to keep his constituents safe as to save Nepomuceno from yet another political backlash as impacted upon his non-suspension of the same last July. Call me malicious, but I sense some political moves here.

BE safe, Angeleños. Pamintuan exhorted. Not so subliminal, but outright political the BE there. The tandem of Brian-Edu for 2019 pushed by you-know-who. As in those postings of BElievED in the web.

BE safe from them Angeles. Did I just hear ABEKa whisper?

Whatever, it’s now 8:30 a.m. and the sun is still brightly shining.        

Decongest Pampanga

FOR SO long, we cabalens have held this conceit of Pampanga being the best, if not the only, alternative to Metro Manila.

No less than the highly esteemed Pampanga Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PamCham) has, for as long, articulated this pride-of-place in the calls for the decongestion of the metropolis by relocating to Pampanga which was made most manifest in those tarps that mushroomed all over the Jose Abad Santos Avenue a few years back.

Why, only last February, former president and at that time not-yet-House-speaker Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself declared Pampanga as the “best alternative to Metro Manila,” whereby launched the Pampanga Megalopolis Plan (PMP) that, she said, has been allotted an initial P1.724 billion in the General Appropriations Act of 2018.

In that same GMA event, foremost architect Felino Palafox who crafted the PMP presented its final draft to Gov. Lilia Pineda. Oh, how the local business community and LGUs lapped up the prospect of Pampanga being niched among the tiger economies of the Asia-Pacific region.

And only last month, the imperative of Pampanga as alternative to Metro Manila found the greatest urgency with the Xiamen airlines incident at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

With practically all the flights, both domestic and international, diverted to the Clark airport, national attention tilted heaviest towards this side of the decongestion divide.

Carpe diem. PamCham president Jess Nicdao called on LGUs to seize the opportunity out of the metropolis’ adversity: “Strategize” to meet the influx of businesses head-on, grow and prosper, he hailed.

By accident of geography – smack right in the very heart of Central Luzon, the gateway to the North, etc. – Pampanga makes indeed the ideal alternative to Metro Manila.

The ideal though gets easily shot down with the real, the all too real.

Only two Fridays back, Pampanga – specifically the cities of Angeles, Mabalacat and San Fernando – did not make alternative any, but actually made Metro Manila, at its worst. Gridlocked – for hours – in monstrous traffic jams.

Ordeal

It can’t get any more experiential, ay, stressful, than my own ordeal.

September 7. Fetched the wife from the Clark airport at 4:45 p.m. Moderate to heavy traffic at Circumferential Road on Koreatown. Turned back to the Clark perimeter road and right to Malabanas, bumper-to-bumper traffic going to Hensonville, all the way to Pampanga Market. Right to Ospital ning Angeles, then Nepo Subd. Build-up along Holy Mary Memorial Park, squeaked through a gap in the traffic standstill along the Angeles-Porac Road and crossed to Proverbsville area. Entered Villa Teresa (Angeles Electric gate) and wheezed through row of stately mansions to the southern gate to Sto. Rosario. Carmaggedon started before the Carmelite monastery all the way through SM Telabastagan, to the crossing to Calibutbut along MacArthur Highway.

Multiple wheeler transport exiting Coca-Cola plant blocked all lanes of MacArthur Highway. The traffic light at Balite crossing rendered useless.

Respite for three kilometers, until Sindalan crossing where southbound traffic went beyond the BIR regional office. Stopped anew at the Del Rosario junction, barely 400 meters from Sindalan. Stop-and-go until total stop before the SACOP crossing, the traffic lights again inutile.

Snail paced from there – enormous volume of vehicles – through Vista Mall and Walter Mart to the Lazatin Blvd.-MacArthur Highway junction.

St. Jude home at 7:05 p.m. Two hours and 20 minutes. Distance through MacArthur Highway from Clark to my place is some 25 kilometers. With my detours, make that 30 kilometers at most.

And I was even luckier than those who opted to take the North Luzon Expressway. Traffic standing still there for hours with accidents at both the southbound and northbound lanes in the vicinity of Beverly subdivision and Lakeshore.

On any day, time travel between San Fernando and Angeles City – all of 17 kilometers – takes an hour on average. It used to be 35 minutes at most. I know, I have been driving this route almost daily over 10 years now.

It’s a daily ordeal. Compound it more whenever any of the four SM malls in the province, Marquee, Robinsons, S & R, even Jenra and Walter-Mart hold their sales!

As it stands, Pampanga makes no better alternative to Metro Manila. It is the metropolis now. The better call is to decongest Pampanga.        

  

 

       

Telltales, tittle-tattles

JUST LIKE the night at its darkest just before the break of dawn, rumors and speculations are at their wildest just before the filing of the certificates of candidacy in coming elections.

October filing for 2019 but a month away, the game of runs, hops, skips, and jumps gets the best in the local political scene. This goes without saying that there indeed are the already announced candidacies, though to be yet “officialized” with their stamping at the Comelec.

Like Angeles City councilor Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin Jr. this Wednesday declaring his run for the mayorship at the Talk Widus forum of the Pampanga Press Club.

Even earlier, much earlier, was Clark International Airport Corp. president-CEO Alexander S. Cauguiran announcing his own Rubicon crossing to get to city hall.

His followers have since intensified their social media campaign with slogans and posters – AC4AC, Alex is my next…etc., even as Cauguiran goes on with his now institutionalized “pagpag and bonding” barangay sorties.

Will Alvaro run for AC mayor? Asked our previous issue’s frontpage story of former city alderman now business mogul Dr. Irineo “Bong” Alvaro. The answers were more-here-than-there. Yeah, after the very successful IBA – as much for Inter-Barangay Amateur, as for his initials – basketball league, little, if any, politically-driven endeavors were heard of Alvaro. On the contrary, the business empire he lords over continues to spread, with a venture in Dubai being the most recent.

Let it Be, complete with a throw pillow bearing the moptop images of the Fab Four cradled by a beaming Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan sandwiched between son councilor Edu Pamintuan and Vice Mayor Bryan Matthew Nepomuceno uploaded on the mayor’s Facebook page and enthusiastically shared by his followers made as direct a declaration as an official announcement – Nepomuceno for mayor, Pamintuan his vice. Immediately ensued barangay day services of the city government with the highest visibility and maximum exposure for the chosen two.

While the vice mayoralty pool has thus far only Pamintuan Junior, it is furthest from being a monopolistic exclusivity. Just waiting to dive in are councilors Alfie Bonifacio, Jericho Aguas, even Jay Sangil, who, incidentally, are all losers in the city vice mayoralty races. Their common nemesis, former Vice Mayor Vicky Vega-Cabigting always makes a winnable probability.  Also, there’s former multi-term, beauty pageant multi-titlist, multi-talented Maricel “Marang” Morales -- a most lovely, not to say highly desirable, prospect for vice. The ladies are said to be in the Lazatin abbreviated list. 

It is not In Angeles City though, but in the City of San Fernando that Woman Power is poised to impact most in 2019.

That councilor Angie Hizon will run for vice mayor is already a given, right after the last elections.

What is news is that Vilma Caluag, wife of the Melchor, will give sitting Mayor Edwin Santiago a run for his money – more literally now than metaphorically. Enormous campaign war chests the issue here.     

Fresh from her conquest of the Association of Barangay Captains, thereby bestowing her a seat at the city council, Caluag’s pink posters with individual village chiefs have become ubiquitous in the more rural areas of the capital.

With the greatly missed former three-term mayor, former multi-term congressman Oscar Samson Rodriguez bruited about as her prime mover, Caluag at this early is primed as llamado in the mayoralty derby. 

Crises are set to strike Mabalacat City. The pun is much too much to resist, corn as it is.

Mayor Crisostomo Garbo is set to prove he can win an election outside the ambit of an electoral protest. Vice Mayor Christian Halili is as set to disprove him. Hopefully, these two “Crises” remain but in name and not mean the infliction of devastation to the once dubbed “Makati of the North.”

Even more worth watching here is once eternal mayor Marino “Boking” Morales already in the hustings for vice. One for Ripley’s really. Morales’ not-yet-announced-but-already-doing-the-rounds rival none other than his nephew – councilor Gerald Guttrie P. Aquino.

What else is new with Morales? Family feud redux. Morales once had his own daughter Marjorie, now ABC president of Mabalacat City, as rival for the mayorship. So, it’s back to his campaign tack “Respect your elders” for Boking, eh.

In the first district, graduating Angeles City Mayor Ed Pamintuan has made public his intention to contest the congressional seat getting an instant retort from national team coach Joseller “Yeng” Guiao that he shall retake his former post, no matter who shall oppose him.

The best possible scenario for the re-election of incumbent Rep. Carmelo “Jonjon” Lazatin II is a three-cornered fight with both Guiao and Pamintuan, the two virtually having the same electoral resources – from voters’ pool to campaign patrons.

Only last Monday, somebody from the rarefied heights of Olympus whispered to this mortal that the gods have spoken through the Delphic oracle: Pamintuan will not run.

Tattle for now, or telltale? Can’t wait for October.      

 

Catholic, unapologetic

EGO SUM Catholicus et exaltabitur cor meum. I am Catholic and my heart is exalted.

More than plain sloganeering, much less a political statement, but in fact a reaffirmation of faith, that emblazoned on plain white T-shirts we, alumni of the Mater Boni Consilii Seminary, have come to wear proudly, as defiantly, at every instance of unpresidential ululation Rodrigo Roa Duterte spews against our Mother Church.

Ego sum Catholicus…Greater that reaffirmation all the more with the recent spate of sex scandals rising to the heights…rather, descending to the depths of episcopal abuse.

There is nothing holy in this evil-strangled Catholic Church. So, what is there for you to stay? Asked a non-Catholic friend, hardly concealing some malicious glee.

I could only say: Bless you, my righteous brother. But didn’t Jesus Himself say He came to call not the righteous but the sinners?

But in my heart of hearts did indeed rise that indignation at this epidemic of clerical pederasty, and impelled the instinct to instantly denounce the predatory priests and complacent, if not complicit, bishops for their blasphemies, for their betrayal of the Church.

But then, blasphemer as I was for sometime, sinful as I am, who am I to join those who cast the first, second, tenth, hundredth, thousandth stone? Fittingly yet, will not the muck that I shall throw come from my own muddy hands?

Have I not myself maculated the Church as much?

Providential that while wrestling with my conscience over my own unholiness, came I across what can now be – in the wake of the current crisis besetting the Church – inspired prophecy of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in his Introduction to Christianity, written in 1968 – all 37 years before he assumed the Petrine ministry as Pope Benedict XVI.

The holiness of the Church consists in that power of sanctification which God exerts in her in spite of human sinfulness. It is the expression of God’s love, which will not let itself be defeated by man’s incapacity but always remains well disposed toward him, welcomes him again and again precisely because he is sinful, turns to him, sanctifies him, and loves him.

…This holiness expressed itself precisely as mingling with the sinners whom Jesus drew into his vicinity; as mingling to the point where he himself was made ‘to be sin’ and bore the curse of the law in execution as a criminal—complete community of fate with the lost… and so revealed what true ‘holiness’ is: not separation, but union; not judgment, but redeeming love.

Anew, Luke 5:27-32 – of Jesus’ call, not to the righteous but to the sinners for repentance:        

Is the Church not simply the continuation of God’s deliberate plunge into human wretchedness; is she not simply the continuation of Jesus’ habit of sitting at table with sinners, of his mingling with the misery of sin to the point where he actually seems to sink under its weight? Is there not revealed in the unholy holiness of the Church, as opposed to man’s expectation of purity, God’s true holiness, which is love, love that does not keep its distance in a sort of aristocratic, untouchable purity but mixes with the dirt of the world, in order thus to overcome it? Can, therefore, the holiness of the Church be anything else but the bearing with one another that comes, of course, from the fact that all of us are borne up by Christ?

I am a sinner. In a Church of sinners, called – and answering – to repentance. Thus, Ratzinger of the Church:  

She lives from the struggle of the unholy to attain holiness, just as of course this struggle lives from the gift of God, without which it could not exist. But this effort only becomes fruitful and constructive if it is inspired by the spirit of forbearance, by real love.

I am a Catholic. As one --

I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Creator of Heaven and earth;
I believe in Jesus Christ,
His only Son, our Lord,
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day He rose again.
He ascended into Heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Catholic Church,
the communion of Saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

 Amen.