Where Pampanga goes wrong, it can only be San Simon

I PASSED the sun, the sea, and finally I reached the moon. Where am I?

No grade school quiz on geography but simply-simonistic riddle of our boyhood in somnolent Sto. Tomas, that verbal pun on our neighboring town.

But on-spot were the images evoked of warm sunshine and romantic moonlight, the expansive wetlands making do for an absent sea. Were, as in vanished along with San Simon’s rusticity of long ago.     

These days one can only moan at the mention of San Simon. Read the news and see where and when Pampanga can ever get wrong, the dateline is San Simon.

Flooded, rutted highway

San Simon – Motorists passing through this town have to bear with stalled traffic along a section of MacArthur Highway due to knee-deep and slow-to-subside floodwaters at every instance of heavy rains.

The CDCP junction of the national road and the NLEx is a strategic entry point of motorists and commuters going in and out of San Simon and other fourth district towns, remains hardly passable for light vehicles after the rains.

Once the flood subsided, the highway is pockmarked with deep potholes that, again, results to heavy traffic with slow-moving vehicles risking breakdowns due to the deep ruts.

Accidents resulting to injuries and damage to vehicles have been reported…    
Sub-standard steel

San Simon -- The Department of Trade and Industry’s Fair Trade and Enforcement Bureau sealed several bundles of sub-standard steel bars manufactured by a Chinese-owned factory…

“Apparently the plant has been previously warned of product standards violations,” the DTI said…

Fake cigarettes

San Simon – The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) seized millions of pesos worth of cigarettes with fake tax stamps in a raid of two warehouses being rented by Chinese businessmen at the San Simon Industrial Park…

Three machines apparently used to produce cigarettes were found in one warehouse along with boxes containing 33.5 million filters, 20 bales of acetate used to make filters and packaging materials.

The second warehouse contained boxes of counterfeit cigarette brands.

The tax stamps recovered from the warehouses did not have BIR marks, indicating they were fake…

Gun-toting tanod

San Simon – A barangay tanod chief was arrested by police for alleged gun-toting and indiscriminate firing here.

The suspect, identified as Fernando dela Cruz, 45, chief of the village peacekeepers in Barangay Concepcion here, was reportedly drunk when he accosted three residents, including a minor, accusing them of being into illegal drugs…  

Stink of shit

SAN SIMON -- A poultry farm here was served with a notice of violation from the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources for allegedly violating the environmental code. 
D’ Meter Fields Corp., located along Quezon Road in Barangay San Pablo here, has been a perennial object of denunciation from residents here for the stench of its poultry farm.

The EMB reported that its personnel conducted an on-site inspection to address the complaints of the residents.
Right at the gate of the farm, foul odor met the inspectors. Further inspection proved that the establishment exceeded the allowable capacity for its operation as stated in its environmental compliance certificate, the report read. 
The emission of foul odor of the poultry farm is a violation of PD 1586 otherwise known as Philippine Environmental Impact Statement System, especially as it is located in a residential area… 

High levels of pollution

San Simon -- Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu ordered the investigation of three steel smelting plants here for violation of Republic Act No. 8749 or the Philippine Clean Air Act.

The Melters Steel Corp., Real Steel Corp., and Wan Chiong Steel Corp. were subjected to air quality tests on Dec. 11 to 15 last year. Commissioned by the Clean Air Philippines Movement Inc., the tests confirmed that the plants emitted high levels of pollution.

The EMB’s air quality management section found that the plants also violated the terms in their environmental compliance certificates (ECCs)…

San Simon is uncontested ground zero of environmental degradation in the whole province of Pampanga. No other municipality or city comes anywhere near the town as most adversely impacted environmentally.  

It does not take a dyed-in-the-wool eco-activist to see this. A leisurely pass-through Quezon Road opens up to everything wrong in the town.

Ah, how our beloved President Manuel Luis Quezon must be spewing his crispy puñetas from the grave at the desecration of his illustrious name by appending it on a veritable corridor of dust.         

The road that cut through vast wetlands in his time was the Castilla’s favored route to the invigorating springs of Mount Arayat. That virtual waterworld of verdant flora and exotic fauna now lay buried deep under the monstrosity of smoke-belching, toxin-emitting factories and warehouses, a number of which have been raided by authorities for illegal contraband. Fake cigs now, can shabu be far behind?

With the wetlands filled up and compacted with earth, San Simon irretrievably lost its natural catch basins for overland flow during heavy rains. Wonder now why floodwaters are higher and recede slower?

The graver consequence of this is that the grounds where stand the factories are much higher than the adjacent North Luzon Expressway. With water seeking the lowest levels, the tollway is a floodplain wanting, not waiting, to happen.

That San Simon has to come to this, this dire strait...and its local government is all too nonchalant, aye, indifferent about it, simply beggars reason.   

What’s wrong in San Simon? Could it be Wong? It can’t get any simpler than that.       

Road hogs

INCONSISTENCIES, SO pointed out Angeles City alderman and mayoralty aspirant  Pogi Lazatin of certain laws addressing the plight of tricycles along national highways.

On one hand, there is DILG Advisory No. 2019-0016 that bans tricycles and pedicabs. This is but an iteration of DILG Memo Circular 2007-001, which in turn sprang out of Section 10 of Presidential Letter of Instruction No. 1482 Series of 1985 – harking back to Marcosian times – that tricycles are “prohibited to operate along the national highway or any road which allows maximum speed of more than 40kph, especially on well-paved, high-speed roads, unless special tricycle/bicycle lanes on the shoulder are provided, except to cross.”

On the other, there is Section 37a of City Ordinance No. 423 Series of 2017 which allows tricycles by providing that “a dedicated lane for all two- and three-wheeled vehicles and other slow-moving vehicles shall always be on the rightmost moving lane, in case of multiple-lane roads with two or more lanes on each direction.”       Whichever, the consistency lies in the constancy of tricycles occupying all lanes of national highways – not simply belittling but totally belying the efficacy of those measures.

The impotency of local government units tasked to enforce the law, even the very ordinances they themselves enact, displayed for all to jeer at. And that’s only for the TODAs. As virulent are the JODAs.    

It has become so recurrent a refrain in this corner that it sounds now a broken record, but this road rage in print remains relevant 24/7.   

Basta driver…

FIRST AND foremost in my gallery of people fit for abomination are passenger jeepney drivers.

Last and least in my list of people warranting even but the minutest semblance of esteem are tricycle drivers.

Maybe some hasty, generalized prejudgment there. But certainly, grounded on empirical knowledge. On first-hand experience. As a long-time, law-abiding motorist around the San Fernando-Angeles area. Of course, there are always specific exceptions to the general rule.   

Most surely, even the most casual of observers have noted how the JODAs and TODAs routinely flout the law with the impunity usually attributed only to the very rich and the all-too powerful.

No Loading/No Unloading zones are not even suggestions to be considered, much less rules to strictly follow as passenger jeepney drivers drop and pick up commuters right under the very noses of traffic enforcers.

Passenger jeepney drivers keep to the road instead of “ramping” on the shoulders to load and unload commuters at any point of the highways.

Passenger jeepney drivers – again! – take the outermost lanes and zoom through red lights right on plain sight of traffic enforcers.

Passenger jeepney drivers – again, again! – keep their vehicles’ headlights off in the dark of night. That’s no simple driving with reckless imprudence, that’s wanting – not waiting for – an accident to happen. So, where’s the LTO?

Tricycles traverse stretches of the national highways in direct violation of the law, being confined only to crossing them.

Tricycles keep to the innermost – and therefore, fast – lane at processional speed holding traffic and raising blood pressures of drivers behind them.

Tricycles are loaded to the roof with passengers and goods as they ply their merry way along the major roads and highways.

Tricycles have made street corners, many times even whole streets as their terminals, complete with sheds and karaokes.   

Include in this group too, the padyak-sikels who lord it all over city streets – making terminals atop bridges, counterflowing traffic at will, do pick-and-drop passengers wherever, whenever.

Want to undertake a study of anarchy in Pampanga’s principal cities?

Go downtown San Fernando from 6:30 in the evening onward and drive through a maze of jeepneys, tricycles and tri-wheelers parked, idling or slowly moving in all directions, in utter contempt of the right of way.

Drive through the obstacle course of rushing people and parked vehicles at Angeles City proper starting 5:30 p.m. 

Jeepney. Tricycle. Basta driver, law breaker.

How did this come to pass?

Blame the laxity of law enforcers rising out of their fellowship – in Tagalog, kapalagayang-loob – with the drivers as members of the same socio-economic class.

Blame the timidity of local government units to enforce the law in view of the “solid votes” of the TODAs and JODAs. Which, in actuality, is more myth than might.

A case in point, Mayor Tirso Lacanilao – God bless his soul – standing up to the threats of Apalit’s TODAs after he regulated not only their number and routes but the way they dressed – no more sandos and slippers – and daring them not only to vote for his rival but even actively campaign against him. Tirso won by landslide in his three runs for the mayorship.

In an old piece here on the culture of impunity (Immunity index, June 21, 2012) pervading the nation, we cited the jeepney and tricycle drivers as templates. We wrote:   

Culturization though starts small, petty things, which often repeated, graduate to big things. Like the culture of the lie attributed to Goebbels: If a lie is repeated often enough, it becomes the truth.

Hence, if a wrong is done often enough, it becomes not necessarily right, but altogether tolerated, aye accepted as a no-wrong…

…[Jeepney and tricycle drivers] flout the law with nothing more than their stupid grins to flaunt, but nobody dares apprehend them. Not even reprimand them. And these are but the “small folk” far below the ladder of power and influence in local society.

If, in their “lowness” they can get away with these small violations, so can the high and the mighty get away with bigger violations…

…Ending the culture of impunity in this country should be invoked at each unpunished illegality, no matter how seemingly trivial.

Ending the culture of impunity in this country demands the draconian exercise of political will. By all persons in authority. With full respect to the rights of the people, but of course.

Will. Will not. A whale of a difference in the nut.

Put those TODAs and JODAs – come to think of it, their very names bespeak of their characters – in their proper place. 

SO, I raged here in December 2014. So, I still rage now, the traffic situation having even worsened, recorded for posterity in my almost daily upload on FB of the state of disorder on our highways.

And yes, then as now, the authorities just don’t care. Maybe, just maybe, some sort of vigilantism makes the solution here. No, not the tok-tok, bang-bang-bang kind though.

Gov. Edna de Ausen-David

SHE WOULD have been a diamond girl, at 70, this Jan. 24. But she has been up there in the bosom of the Lord since Nov. 9, 2010.

Although her performance as long-serving member of the provincial board is well-known, but a few of the Capampangans knew that se once served as their governor.

Edna de Ausen-David’s legacy of public servanthood lives in her children, Board Member Fritzie David-Dizon and Porac Vice Mayor Dexter Albert David.    

Here’s but a sketch I drew about her in July 2009 that eventually served as my eulogy for her.   

“WITH UTMOST dedication and efficiency,” she served Pampanga as its acting governor from January to July 1999, and gave “merit to her office and honor to the province.”

So read the Certificate of Recognition the provincial government handed to Board Member Edna de Ausen-David last Wednesday.
“Atsing Edna has been one of the most visible figures in public governance and we are honored to have her today as one of our previous governors even though it was only for a brief time.”
So hailed Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio of my ninang.
By operation of law, then Senior Board Member David took the reins of the Capitol after the Ombudsman’s preventive suspension of Gov. Lito Lapid and Vice Gov. Clayton Olalia over the quarry scam.
It was no walk in the park for Governor Edna. My Zona Libre column titled Let her be in The Voice, February 21-27, 1999 issue had this to say in part:
EDNA de Ausen-David is but a stop-gap fixture at the Capitol. Hers is but a transition governance. Fixed at six months. Unless something really damning to the suspendidong magka-kosa of Gov. Lito Lapid and Vice Gov. Clayton Olalia crops up.
But already Edna de Ausen-David is the object of a propaganda campaign which vile and venom make the bitterest election campaign like a romp through the bush.
The flak makes one conclude that overnight, Edna de Ausen-David has become not only gubernatorial timber but the very “man to beat” for governor.
Inadvertently, these propagandistang pulpol have achieved the very opposite of what they set out to accomplish. Instead of demolishing Aling Edna, they even raised her political stock.
Already, Aling Edna enjoys the full support of the Pampanga mayors. Of all but one.
Already, Aling Edna has been hailed as “a woman with balls of iron” with her singular devotion to pursue President Estrada’s uncompromising line against drug trafficking with her creation of an anti-drug and anti-illegal gambling task forces.
Already, NGO groups and the top religious leaders of the province have manifested their full support to the David administration. Their prayers too.
With the so-called Voltes V group of Mayors Benny Espino of Arayat, Jun Canlas of Bacolor and Frank Ocampo of Sta. Rita, and Board Members Rosve Henson who served as vice governor, and Dinan Labung forming her formidable core group, it was during Governor Edna’s short term that the seeds of the Central Luzon drug rehabilitation center in Magalang germinated.
In another column, Tailspin in the Angeles Observer issue of November 20-26, 1999, I wrote:
AT the recent medical-dental mission of Fil-Am doctors from Panhandle, Florida, USA held at the Bulaon Resettlement, former Gov. Estelito P. Mendoza lauded BM Edna de Ausen-David for working for the completion of the Rodriguez District Hospital at the site.
Before a throng of cabalens, Apung Titong reminded everybody that it was at the time of Gov. Edna de Ausen-David that the hospital became truly deserving of its name.
It was not lost on the people at the occasion that Apung Titong’s testimonial to Aling Edna was uttered in the presence of the returned Gov. Lito Lapid. If that’s not one pitik at the Bida, I don’t know what is...
...Aling Edna also received some accolades from the officials of San Simon town.
Azor Sitchon’s people take pride in pointing out that the fence around the town hall was constructed with funds extended by Governor Edna.
“Sa kokonting panahon ng panunungkulan ni Governor Edna, totoong marami siyang napagawa at natulungan. Hindi kamukha ng iba diyan. Maraming nagawa hindi para sa bayan kundi sa sarili lamang,” so said a San Simon official.
Yeah, Governor Edna de Ausen-David deserves her own niche at the Capitol. 

IN NOVEMBER, 2013 the governorship of Atsing Edna found that niche with its brass plate unveiled at the Capitol hallway, alongside those of the other governors and the sangguniang panlalawigan that served, from the martial law period to the present.

No mere historical footnote her “term” there, given the historical precedent of her assumption – the first ever, and so far only, suspension of a sitting Pampanga governor – Lito Lapid – for graft and corruption.

Passing out

CONGRATULATIONS what’s-his-name for passing the Driving Licensure Examination.

A good laugh netizens had over this one on Facebook last week.

Congratulations so-and-so for passing the gates of the university without showing an ID.

The laugh turned hysterical with this one.

Beyond the laughter though, the sting of satire obtaining in those messages of felicitation smarts. Really smarts.

Yes, to what ludicrous depths have we sunk.  

And I thought we have hit rock bottom when I predicted here almost 12 years ago: It won’t be long when we would behold something like “Congratulations Jokjok for passing the entrance exams to the Paaralang Elementarya ng T. Tinio.”
Rewarding mediocrity, I headlined that column of June 19, 2007 on the Filipino penchant to lower the grade whenever faced by difficulties. No, lowering the minimum age for criminal responsibility to 9 is a totally different story. (On second thought, it can be tied to this. Another column, maybe.)

In the era of instant convenience, the drive toward excellence sputtered. We resort to seeking the path of least resistance. Not only to shortcutting but even shortcircuiting the usual processes, circumventing the rules, and ultimately, breaking the laws.       

So, we have adopted, indeed, adapted ourselves to the characteristic of water – seeking the lowest levels.
Precisely the lament over those congratulatory streamers perfunctorily put up by politicos for passers of just about any examination hereabouts: “Congratulations Iska for passing the CPA Board Exams.” “We are proud of you Tecla for passing the teachers’ examinations.”
What is so extraordinary in the mere passing of an exam that calls for all those congratulations? It won’t be long when we would behold something like “Congratulations Jokjok for passing the entrance exams to the Paaralang Elementarya ng T. Tinio.”
During our time – now long bygone, the passing grade in examinations – from the shortest quizzes to the longest periodicals and the dreaded orals in-between – was 75 percent, not a fraction less. Today it is said to be 50. With bonus points for writing the teacher’s first name and title – two for Attorney and Doctor, three more for Professor, and with a Ph.D after the comma, plus two more.
Fifty percent, to put it plainly, comprises just half of the total amount of learning required. It does not take an Einstein to understand that half-full means half- empty. Which, by no stretch of the imagination could ever be deemed exemplary. There is nothing outstanding here. There is everything mediocre here.
During our time – Jurassic by millennial standards – a grade of 75 was a mark of shame. Derisively dismissed as sampay-bakod , if not pasang-awa. Today, it is a cause for celebration proudly heralded in big bold-lettered streamers.
What have become of our sense of honor, indeed, of our sense of shame?
Speaking of streamers and shame, I remember one that was put up at the McDonald’s side of the Dolores Junction sometime in 1999, on the very day Governor Lito Lapid reassumed reins at the Capitol after serving the six-month suspension imposed on him by the Ombudsman consequent to the quarry scam.
“Welcome back Gov, we are proud of you.” Proud of Lapid for earning the distinction as the first ever – and so far only – suspended governor in the history of Pampanga?
There is no pride here. There is only shame here.
But then, Lapid went on to serve three full terms as governor, two-full terms as senator. Notwithstanding his defeat to Jejomar Binay in the Makati mayoralty contest of 2007 and his loss to Ed Pamintuan in the Angeles City mayorship in 2016, Lapid is a shoo-in to the Senate in this year’s elections, if we go by the false Asia and shh-shh surveys.

Throw in Bato de la Rosa and Bong Go into the mix, add plunder-branded Bong Revilla and Jinggoy Estrada. Indeed, to what ridiculous depths have we sunk, and wallow in.    

Congratulatory streamers are by no means purely shameless showcases of inflated unimportance. The thing here is to make them hew substantially to their very purpose. Only to the best should they be posted, say bar and board topnotchers, winners of international or national contests, really outstanding citizens.
It is excellence that must be rewarded; mediocrity be damned. That is a sure way to raise the level of national intelligence which at present is but a notch above that of a moron.

Else, it’s congratulations for passing out the day God showered the Earth with brains.

Following, blindly

LEADERSHIP – the word as well as its application – has been so much abused and misused that we now have a warped sense of it. So shallow is our notion of leadership that we automatically affix “leader” to any elected official, to presidents and chairs of just about any organization with at least two members.

So long as there is one to command and another to follow, there exists leadership. There too bogs down our concept of the word. For leaders and followers do not make the whole dynamics of leadership. There is the third element of goal.

From the book Certain Trumpets, the thesis on the nature of leadership by Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills, I quote: “The goal is not something added to leader and followers. The goal is the reason for the other two’s existence. It is the equalizer between leader and followers. The followers do not submit to the person of the leader. They join him in the pursuit of the goal.”

Wills further expounds “…the leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by leader and followers…all three elements (leader, followers and goal) are indispensable.”

Critical indeed is the requisite of a goal shared by both the leader and the followers in the holistic perspective, in the true nature of leadership.

Sadly, it is there – in the element of goal – that political leadership in the Philippine context is much, much wanting and thereby we the people almost always suffer.

More often than not, in fact as a matter of practice, the goal – as translated to interests – of the leader does not match, if not altogether contradicts, the goal or the interest of the followers.

No self-respecting presumptuous leader would ever accede to that. Thus, we all hear our so-called political leaders on the campaign trail vow their very “sacred honor” to the interests of the people. See those screaming streamers posted around: Bayan ang Bida, Serbisyong Tapat, Serbisyong Totoo, Serbisyong Todotodo, Paglingkuran ang Bayan, ad nauseam.

Behold what political leaders do after getting elected! Conveniently forgetting their campaign promises, dishonoring their very vows to work for the interests of their constituency.

While honor may still obtain among thieves, it is a rarity among Philippine politicians.

So how and why do they get away with it?

I mean thieves getting positions of leadership and robbing us, the followers, blind.

It is in the manner we choose our leaders.

Charisma

As a rule, Filipinos vote with their emotions, rarely with their intellect. Comes here the magic word charisma.

We are mesmerized by anyone with a flashy lifestyle: moviestars, entertainers, athletes, the pa-sosyal crowd, the perfumed set.

Instantaneously, we stamp the word charisma on celebrity.

From the essential “divine grace,” the meaning of charisma has been so twisted that it is now a synonym to just about anything that is “attention-compelling” even to its essential antonym of “infamy”. Yeah, the infamous we now call charismatic.

And so, we appended charisma on Joseph Estrada. To invest “divine grace” in one who makes the grandest mockery of the Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Commandments of God is the most detestable sacrilege, the most damnable blasphemy. But did we know any better? 

Star-struck, blinded by the flash of celebrity, bewitched by their larger-than-life personae, we readily elect fame over capability, choose passion over vision, favor make-believe over hard reality.

So who lords over the poll surveys now? Lito Lapid, notwithstanding his utter silence in the halls of the Senate, Bong Revilla and Jinggoy Estrada, despite the their incarceration for cases of plunder!

Erap was deposed, tried, imprisoned, convicted and pardoned. Erap nearly won the presidency a second time, but for the death of the sainted Cory Aquino that catapulted her son to Malacanang. But Erap has since ensconced himself as overlord of Manila.  

As it was with Erap, so it is with Duterte. Charisma impacted in his very flouting of the Fifth and Sixth Commandments, and more -- wit in his misogynist rants, wisdom in his rages against the Church.  

Once more, Santayana’s damnation is upon us: We are a nation that cannot, that refuses to remember the past. We are a nation damned.

Marcos

In the 1970s, a great political mind distilled the nature of Philippine politics thus: “Personalist, populist, individualist.” Then he went on to arrogate unto himself all the powers that can be had, and more – elevating himself to the pantheon of the gods, assuming the mythic Malakas of Philippine folklore with, naturally, the beautiful Imeldific, as his Maganda.

A keen student of history, Ferdinand Edralin Marcos took unto his public persona semblances of the charismatic leaders of the past: his World War II exploits – later proven false – invoked Napoleon, if not Caesar; his political philosophies gave him an aura of the Borgia and Medici clients of Machiavelli; his vision of a New Society paralleled Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal; his patronage of the arts that of Frederick the Great of Prussia.

Marcos even exceeded himself in self-cultivating an image of being his country’s hero-in-history in the moulds of Napoleon of France, Bolivar of Latin America, Lincoln of the USA, Garibaldi of Italy, Lenin of the Soviet Union, Ataturk of Turkey and Mao of China.

A wee short of divine rights, Marcos took upon himself a Messianic and Mosaic mission for the Philippines: Save the country and its democratic institutions from anarchy, lead the people to prosperity.

Indeed, what other Philippine leader did possess “charisma” greater than Marcos? Still, what happened to this nation?

Why, over 30 years after the end of Marcosian misrule, the man remains a force to reckon with.

His Junior parading himself as the “truly elected” vice president of the republic, on the right trajectory to reclaim the family heirloom. The dead man himself, finally entombed in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Which only goes to show as much the abysmal quality of leadership as the blinded followership in Philippine political practice.

(Update of a piece first published here in August 2009)

Red tag

MEDIA RED-TAGGED. A number of tabloids bannered a few days back exactly the same canard of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines’s close links with the Communist Party of the Philippines.

So, what else is new?

The President himself has preached the same lie so often. About the same time last year, the NUJP is exactly the same strait as we wrote here, recalling our own direct experience at being splashed red.

Chilling effect

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

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

According to the official transcript:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His answer: “Talaga.”

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

Be not afraid. Rage.     

The fabric of redemption

FASHION FORECASTS make as much a part of the raucous celebrations into the new year as fireworks and feng shui in a world turning more and more materialistic through the passage of time.

Invariably, 2019 comes as more of the usual. After the flashy explosions, the crystal balls, and tea leaves, awash we are now in the trending threads, cuts, colors, and styles that will dominate the next 12 months.  

Clothes make the man – the woman, and the LGBTQ too, if only to be gender-considerate. So long proclaimed and still proclaims the gospel of GQ, so long read and still reads the epistle of Esquire of the dogma of the fashionista that worships at the altar of haute couture, replete with its own slew of prophets, if not its calendar of saints, in Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga, Hermes and Prada, Chanel and Gucci, Versace and Armani. Can’t afford the brands? What’s Divisoria for?

Is it then sacrilege, indeed, blasphemy to take this frivolity, aye, vanity, to the realm of theology?

I fear not, sensed as I have and still do the extraordinary in the ordinary; felt and still do feel the supernatural in the natural. Indeed, found and still find spirituality in sheer secularity. All within the exercise of my Catholic faith.  

Hence, a dream most vivid, flowing into a reflection not so deep on clothes – not so much in the context of worldly fashion but in the divine act of human redemption. Triggered no doubt by the gospel of Epiphany Sunday.

Fabric – as cloth, as garment – I happened to read as some allegory of the fabric – in its meaning as “underlying structure” or “framework” – of redemption.

At the very birth of Christ, Luke 2:7, thus:  And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.  Luke 2:7.

In His ministry, Matthew 9:20-22, thus: Suddenly a woman who had suffered from bleeding for twelve years came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His garment. She said to herself, ‘If only I touch His garment, I will be healed.’ Jesus turned and saw her. “Take courage, daughter,” He said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was cured from that very hour.…

At the Transfiguration, Matthew 17:2-3, thus: There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.  Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

At His crucifixion, Matthew 27:35, thus: And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, "They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.”

At His resurrection, John 20:6-7, thus: Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷ as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen.

Birth. Ministry. Death. Resurrection. The drama, aye, the Truth, of His redemptive act, all-too apparent here. The inseparability, aye, the indivisibility of the human-and-divine nature of Christ verily manifest here too.

The Niño incarnate of the Virgin Mary, sharing in all our humanity – except in sin.

His mission of salvation, with miracles but punctuations of His divinity, affirmed at His baptism by John, in Matthew 3:17, thus: And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” and reaffirmed at Mount Tabor, in Matthew 17:5, thus: While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

Stripped of His garments, hanging to die at the cross, as much the ultimate humiliation of His humanity as the supreme purification leading to the glory of His resurrection.

Behold, His humanity in the swaddling clothes at his birth. Behold, His divinity off the burial linen at the empty tomb. Dominus meus et Deus meus. My Lord and my God.     

Sans any formal schooling in theology, absent neither pretention to spiritual enlightenment nor any affliction of delusion, with nothing more and nothing less than the simplicity of my Catholic praxis, there unfolded before me the fabric of Christian redemption.

“For the apparel doth oft proclaim the man.” So Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet.  Finding a deeper sense of spirituality in the purely literary. Grace, it can only be.     

A blessed year, 2019 promises to be.

In his image, what god!

WHO IS this stupid God? You created something perfect and then you think of an event that would tempt and destroy the quality of your work…

…I didn’t say that my God is stupid. I said your God is not my God because your God is stupid. Mine has a lot of common sense. Then now, why do you have to talk about religion? If I choose not to believe in any God, what’s the [expletive] thing about it? It’s a freedom to choose.

So, he crafted his god, in his likeness. In his own image, Duterte framed him. Thereby spewing from his own mouth his Iglesia ni Duterte, eschewing all iconography but of his very own:

Dito na lang kayo. I’ll give you one pat… ah isang patron na ano para hindi na kayo mag-pasyal. (Switch to this one. I’ll give you one patron so you won’t go out anymore).

Get hold of a picture of mine. ‘Yan ang ilagay niyo sa altar — Santo Rodrigo. (This is the one you should put in your altars — Saint Rodrigo).

Sheer contempt of the saints who, as he himself spat, were but idiots and drunkards. That is, if they even really existed:

Hindi nga natin alam kung sino ‘yang mga santo na ‘yon. Sino ‘yung mga gago na ‘yon? Mga lasenggo. (We do not even know who these saints are. Who are those idiots? Drunkards)…

…Even itong (this) Last Supper, who are the idiots there? Basta ginawa na lang santo ang mga itong nasa painting (They just made the people in the painting saints), San Isidro, San Pablo, Saint Jude, Santo Rodrigo, kung sino na lang (whoever)…

…Who is this guy San Isidro that every town fiesta we kill our cows, carabaos? Just to spend because it is the fiesta of San Isidro. San Pablo who were they?...

…’Yong iba, ‘yong mga Santa Catalina, Santa Ana, Santo Tomas, San Sebastian, Santo Rodrigo, wala iyan… ‘Di ko nga kilala ‘yan. Look, those documents were written – if at all – 3,000 years ago. Anong pakialam nila sa buhay natin? 

Who is Saint Thomas? We do not know who he is. Perhaps it was just a name of a camel then.

Alas, his profanities against the saints, he himself negated with his All Saints’ Day message thus:

We Filipinos welcome the month of November with open hearts as we remember our saints and our dearly departed loved ones, whose lives have deeply inspired us to grow in faith, hope, and love.

Together, let us emulate our saints, pray for the eternal repose of the souls and deepen our engagement with our communities as we work for real and lasting change.

Pseudo

Deconstruction of his self-proclaimed doctrines inheres, most apparently, in Duterte’s pseudo-theology.   

No hell: My religion does not limit anything. All you can do is...Do not believe in hell. When you die you are just a piece of carcass and that's it. There's no more hell. Burning in hell? You cannot burn a soul.

When you use God to say that I'd go to hell, you know my God never created hell because if he created hell, he must be stupid God. My God is not stupid to create man just to burn him in hell. Hindi ako naniniwala ng ganon (I don't believe that).

No heaven too: I do not believe in heaven because if I do, only a fraction of you in this crowd will ever enter in heaven. All of us makita ko, lalo na 'yung mga may dalawang asawa dito, tig-tatlo dito, 'yung mga playboy, lahat tayo sa impyerno magkita. But that is fiction.
But then: Pero kung mapunta ako ng impyerno, hindi ako magpa-lugi. Hindi naman talaga ako ’yung – napasubo lang. Eh papuntahin mo ako impyerno. Unang sipain ko si Satanas, umalis ka diyan. May bagong tigas dito (If I go to hell, I will not let myself get pushed around; I just got into this. If I go to hell, I’ll kick Satan out and tell him, ‘go away I’m the new toughie here)’.

Evoked there the choice of Lucifer: “To reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.” Primping himself as out-devilling Satan himself, Duterte can only descend to graver blasphemies, to outright heterodoxy, aye, to heresy. That, deemed by not so few, as sheer lunacy.

Fallacy

There’s only one God, period. You cannot divide God into three, that’s silly.

His rejection of the Holy Trinity not only lapsing into the Arian heresy of the homoiousious Son – similar but neither identical nor consubstantial with the Father – but moreso hewing closely to the fallacy of his long-time Davao buddy, the self-proclaimed “Appointed Son of God” and “Owner of the Earth.”

So, is it to Duterte then, that there can be no Son of God other than his cohort Quiboloy? Hence, his disbelieving disparagement of the divinity of Jesus Christ:

‘Yung Diyos mo, pinako sa krus. ‘Tangina. Nakakawala ng bilib. Ako ang Diyos, tapos ipako mo ako? Putangina. Sabihin ko, ‘Lightning, ubusin mo ito. Sunugin mo lahat ng mga erehes. (Your God was nailed on the cross. Son of a bitch. How unimpressive. I’m God and you will crucify me? Son of a bitch. I’d tell them, ‘Lightning, finish all of them. Burn all the non-believers.')

God, in the image and likeness of Duterte, in all his haughtiness. But one more antithesis to – way too puny to be the anti – Christ. He of all humility, of total submission to the will of the Father.    

Ako ang Diyos, tapos ipako mo ako? Putangina. Redemption ridiculed. Salvation scorned.

How Catholics, indeed, all Christians take these blasphemies not so much with the proverbial grain of salt as with a grin-and-bear-it toleration, if not amusement, is beyond the pale of reason.

Intimidation? I look at it more as an act of faith, Rightly, and righteously, the Christian response prescribed in Luke 6:27-28: “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”

And leave it to God. Ours. Not his, fabricated as it is in his own image and likeness.

So, what he denigrates as 3,000-year-old fiction, we believe as Gospel Truth.

Taking consolation – and hope – in Luke 1:52: Deposuit potentes de sede, exaltavit humiles (He hath put down the mighty from their seat, he hath exalted the humble). 

Keeping confidence with the injunction in Proverbs 16:18: Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Strengthened in our faith that they shall pass. As God – ours – promised.