Standing out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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