Dogged loyalty

GOOD-BYE, Dugong Aso.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lapid

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Writer

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moments with my father

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                 

An obit for an era

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

They just lie there...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shame. Shame. Shame.

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

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

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

Shame, indeed.     

Sacraments for sale

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

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

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

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

Selling salvation  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edifice complexed

P1-B LOAN for AC’s future.

Can it get any nobler than that?

It’s for a new city hall. Angeles City is perhaps the only highly urbanized city in the entire country with an old city hall that is not even senior citizens- and PWD-friendly.

It’s for the IT equipment for all the offices which is also needed for the new city hall.

It’s for a multi-level parking building for the taxpayers and those transacting business at city hall.

It’s for police mobile vehicles and motorcycles.

It’s for a sports complex for the athletes of the city. Angeles City has lagged behind in sports competition because of lack of facilities to develop the athletes who compete in CLRAA, Palarong Pambansa, Batang Pinoy and other sports competition to bring glory and honor for the city.

It’s also for 33 mini-dump trucks for solid waste management as required by existing environmental laws.

It’s also for various heavy equipment like payloader and backhoe for the city engineer’s office.

It’s also for new dialysis machines for the renal care unit at the Ospital ning Angeles.

So, itemized the city government the impact projects to be funded with the colossal loan it contracted with the Development Bank of the Philippines.   

Indeed, can it get any more sublime than these?

How dare now Alexander S. Cauguiran crying “Inconsiderate!” and calling out Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan and Vice Mayor Bryan Matthew Nepomuceno on these “extravagant projects”!

So lamented Cauguiran: “How can we in conscience put the convenience of LGU officials over and above the need for medical services of our residents, most of whom cannot afford to go to the private hospitals?  Build a sports complex, or provide more opportunities for free quality education? If you are truly responsive to the needs and priorities of our fellow Angeleños, please listen to the people and stop your extravagant projects.”

The projects will benefit tens of thousands of Angeleños. So, the Pamintuan camp asserted. Where’s the extravagance there?

Never mind Cauguiran saying: “The city government will be heavily burdened for the payment of these loans over a period of 15 years and will add up to the previous borrowings of the LGU… that last year alone, the city government appropriated P176 million to service its outstanding loans.”

Or that “two-term loans were signed between the city government and the DBP, one in the amount of P1,043,000,000, and another at P183,800,000 for a total of P1,226,800,000.”

What matters most is that – as Pamintuan averred – the loans are for securing the city’s future.  

Be that as it may, there is a deeper wellspring – hugot, more aptly – to Cauguiran’s indignation than what he impacts as Pamintuan’s insensate prioritization of his edifice complex over the complicated needs of his constituents. If only for two things, aye, twin complexities for which the city had come to grief, though its citizens have so indifferently come to grips with. Cauguiran’s peeves, precisely.  

1.    City hall

What is now the Museo ning Angeles served for the longest time as city hall. At the time of Mayor Rafael “Apung Feleng” Lazatin, a new city hall was planned in the vicinity of Barangay Pandan, whence rose the now misnomered City Center.

At the turn of Mayor Francisco “Mang Quitong” Nepomuceno, the new city hall was proposed – and indeed construction started – in Barangay Pampang. With its then-princely budget of P19-million – if fading memory still serves right – all that was erected were the pillars, girders, and beams, infamously meriting the tag “monumental ruins to corruption,” as the now-dearly departed mediaman Sonny Lopez denounced it, earning for him the lifetime wrath of the Nepomuceno patriarch.

It was Mayor Antonio “Bubusuk” Abad Santos that succeeded in actually relocating city hall to its current site, but fell far short of occupying it, having lost to Edgardo Pamintuan before its full completion.

2.    Sports complex

The original Angeles City Sports Complex was a brainchild of Mayor Francis “Blueboy” Nepomuceno, for which the city contracted an P800-million loan with the Philippine Veterans Bank to cover the purchase of the lot in Barangay Mining and the total construction cost.

It was opposed primarily on two points – 1) the access road to the site built virtually for tricycles; 2) the valuation of the site, given to speculation, raising so much suspicion of corruption.   

Envisioned to wean away the city youth from drugs and nurture a culture of sports excellence in the city, Nepomuceno considered his “sports stadium…an impact project and a legacy for the future of young Angelenos.”

Said he then: “This is a major point for our administration and we will be remembered for this project.”

It would seem now that only Pamintuan remembered, having revived the project which feasibility, if not (ir)regularity, he himself questioned earlier in his term. Why, did he not start the construction of the City College of Angeles (CCA) with an allocation of P300 million from the P800 million his predecessor loaned for the sports complex?

Prudence, said Pamintuan in his SOCA of that time, dictated that an education facility can better address the felt and urgent needs of the Angeleños than a sports complex.

Ask not where the remaining P500 million of Nepomuceno’s loan is now. Ask rather if the educational needs have been so sufficiently addressed by the CCA, that the idea of a sports complex has ceased to be imprudent and has become an imperative. Which Cauguiran very much doubted.

Drift

Got the drift in this recollection of even but snatches of the city hall saga and the sports complex story?

The public suspicion of corruption attendant to both issues – separately – was just too strong, too pervasive to be dismissed as balderdash. It has, in fact, spelled political doom to their key players.    

That these now come – at once – with a P1-billion price tag, at this time immediately preceding an election, can only stir the nastiest suppositions of fund-raising, the unkindest speculations of loot partition among thieves, and the blackest suspicions of plundering the public coffers. Malice, concededly, rearing its ugliest head there.

Or, utter disbelief. Of the World’s Best Mayor even dipping but a finger in the cookie jar, as with his name etched in the narco-politicians list of his beloved President. No. It did not happen. It will not happen. It cannot happen.

Cry louder. Call out more.

    

Sa muling tawag ng pakikibaka

OCA ON (sic) “period of discernment’

Sigaw ng banner headline ng SunStar-Pampanga nitong Lunes ukol sa umano’y lumalaking posibilidad na pagtakbong muli sa pagka-punonglungsod ni dating mayor Oscar Samson Rodriguez sa halalan sa 2019.

“Most nights I cannot sleep anymore. I know that there is responsibility for my party and most importantly, for the city. That is my dilemma right now. I am in a period of discernment and assessment.” Ayon mismo kay Mang Oca, sa ulat ng pang-araw-araw na peryodiko ng lalawigan.

Sa ating pagkakakilala sa kanya, tunay na hindi matatawaran ang bigat ng dalahin na pasan-pasan ni Mang Oca ngayon sa gitna ng malalim na pagmumuni-muni, ng malawak na pagninilay-nilay na tumitimo sa mismong kaibuturan ng kanyang puso, na tumatagos sa kailaliman ng kanyang kaisipan.

Pangako sa pamilya, na makailan na ring naunsyami? O tawag ng tungkulin, na napaunlakan na sa apat na dekada ng tapat na paglilingkod-bayan?   

Bagama’t personal – tanging sa kanya lamang ang pagpapasiya sa landasing kanyang pipiliing tahakin sa parating na halalan, manatiling manahimik o makipagtagisan man – ambag ko sa paglinang ng kanyang kapasiyahan itong pinaiksing talumpati na aking binigkas noong Setyembre 19, 2006, araw ng kanyang kapanganakan, kung kalian aming inilunsad ang aklat na pinalad kong naisulat –

Oca: Isang Istorya ng Pakikibaka

PINAGKAITAN SIYA ng kapalaran na maging martir ng armadong paghihimagsik upang kaipala’y biyayaan ng kasaysayan ng takdang papel na gagampanan sa patuloy na pakikibaka tungo sa ganap na kalayaan at pambansang demokrasya.

Pakikibaka – ito ang buod ng kasaysayan ni Oscar Samson Rodriguez.

Pakikibaka – ito ang mismong ubod ng kanyang buhay.
Buhay na wari’y sadyang pinilas mula sa pambungad na bersikulo sa unang kapitulo ng mapagpalayang ebanghelyo nina Karl Marx at Friedrich Engels – ang Communist Manifesto -- “Ang kasaysayan ng lahat ng naitayong lipunan ay kasaysayan ng pakikibaka – pakikibaka sa pagitan ng mga naghahari at pinaghahariang uri…”
Pakikibaka. Uring anak-pawis na ang kamusmusan ay tigib sa hagkis ng karalitaan, sa hagupit ng kalakarang piyudal, sa giyagis ng paghihimagsik.
Pakikibaka. Kayod sa araw, aral sa gabi. Sa limang kahig, iisang tuka. Kalam ng sikmura’y hindi na ininda. Sipag, sikap, tiyaga, tiis, tikis – pinuhunang pawis, luha’t dugo makatapos lamang sa pag-aaral.
Pakikibaka. Alab ng damdamin, puyos ng dibdib sumiklab, nagngalit mula paaralan tungo sa lansangan. Nagningas, lumiyab sa digmang bayan. Ka Jasmin isinilang, sa rebolusiyonaryong kilusan pumailanlang. Bartolina ang sinadlakan. Sa pusikit na kadiliman, isang dipang langit ang tanging tanglaw. Rehas na bakal na pampiit, paninindigang makabayan pinaalab pa nang higit.
Pakikibaka. Sandigan ng katotohanan, saligan ng mga karapatan, tanggulan ng bayan. Kampeon ng mga inaapi’t pinagkakaitan ng katarungan.
EDSA Uno. Bagong pulitika – paglingkuran ang sambayanan binuhay, pinairal sa Kapitolyo, sa bawat takbo sa Kongreso.
EDSA Dos. Atas ng kabayanihan muling tinupdan ng magiting na prosecutor ng bayan.
Pakikibaka. May hihigit pa kaya sa dusa’t pighati dala ng delubyo ng Bulkang Pinatubo? Sa gitna ng kawalang pag-asa, sa harap ng panawagan ng mga eksperto kuno, kasama na ang noo’y senador na Kapampangan daw, na hayaan na ang kalikasan at lisanin na ang lalawigan, matatag siyang nanindigan na ipaglaban ang lahing Kapampangan at hindi ito pababayaang mabura na lamang.
Pakikibaka. Patuloy na pakikibaka. Mula sa kanyang kabataan hanggang ngayon na ang timon ng pamahalaang local ay kanya nang tangan. Tangan tungo sa kadakilaan.
Ang istorya ni Oscar Rodriguez ay kaganapan ng pagsanib ng isang indibiduwal na buhay sa takbo ng kasaysayan. Na siyang piling pagkakataon ng kabayanihan.
“Ang mga bayani ay may kaukulang panahon, kung paaanong ang kapanahunan at mga pangyayaring umiiral ay lumilikha ng mga bayaning kailangan nila.” Ana ngang isang makabayang makata sa kanyang pagpapakahulugan sa konsepto ng “bayani ng kasaysayan.”
Ang istorya ni Oscar Rodriguez kung gayon ay marapat lamang na maisulat. Hindi para sa kaluwalhatian ng kanyang pangalan. Kundi sa mga aral na dulot nito – ang sidhi ng pangangailangan sa pakikibaka sa pagbabago ng lipunang Pilipino. At ang aral ng kasaysayan mismo: “Ang kahapon ay saligan ng ngayon, ang ngayon ay haligi ng bukas.”