Yet another May Day

“THE HISTORY of all hitherto existing society…”

On one hand: Labor, exploited, struggling to live in dignity – to work in order to live.

On the other: Capital, keeping Labor barely to live in order to work – unsatiated even by spiraling profit.

Then, the government always long in promises, ever short in deliveries of “packages” to ameliorate the state of the working man.

The May Day tableaux since forever: “Capital is dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking blood from living labor.”
Resurrected to life annually the twice-dead Marx – in 1883, mortally; in 1991, ideologically with the demise of the Soviet Union.

That line in Das Kapital finding manifestation in the poetic protest of Shelly’s Song to the Men of England, fittingly the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and therefore the polluted fountainhead of labor:
“Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.
Sow seed – but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth – let no impostor heap;
Weave robes – let not the idle wear;
Forge guns – in your defense to bear.”

This, finding close parallel – hence, affirming the universality of the sufferings of workingmen – in the poignancy of the lines of poet-patriot Ka Amado Hernandez in his Bayang Malaya:
“Bisig na nagsaka’y siyang walang palay;
Nagtayo ng templo’y siyang walang bahay;
Dumungkal ng mina ng bakal at ginto ay baon sa utang;
Lingkod sa pabrika ng damit ay hubad ang mahal sa buhay.”
(The arm that farmed is one without the crops;
The temple builder, without a house;
The one who mined for iron and gold, deep in debt;
The sewer, whose loved ones are naked.) 
Lest, it be still misconstrued – as indeed it has long been – that the workingman’s struggle is pure communist thingy, the Church has had its own take on uplifting the laboring mass. As indeed, Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum of 1891, to wit:

“The following duties . . . concern rich men and employers: Workers are not to be treated as slaves; justice demands that the dignity of human personality be respected in them, … gainful occupations are not a mark of shame to man, but rather of respect, as they provide him with an honorable means of supporting life.
It is shameful and inhuman, however, to use men as things for gain and to put no more value on them than what they are worth in muscle and energy.“

Further back into history, St. Ambrose, the fourth century bishop of Milan, took the Parable of the Dives with this censorious swing at the rich: “The earth was established to be in common for all, rich and poor; why do ye rich alone arrogate it to yourselves as your rightful property?   
“You crave possession not so much for their utility to yourself, as because you want to exclude others from them. You are more concerned with despoiling the poor than with your own advantage. You think yourself injured if a poor man possesses anything which you consider a suitable belonging for a rich man; wherever belongs to others you look upon something of which you are deprived.”
Deprivation is the eternal state of the worker. That is fated in capitalist societies, engrossed as they are in “…production not merely the production of commodities … (but) essentially the production of surplus value.”
As Marx furthered: “All surplus value, whatever particular (profits, interests, rent) it may crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labor.”
As it was, so it is: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”

May Day, mayday, Marx evermore!

To the manor born, to service bred

THERE IS something about Pogi Lazatin. And for that matter, about his brother Jon too.

For one, both carry the name of their now dearly lamented father, Carmelo, aka Tarzan: distinguished by Jr. for Pogi, the Angeles City councilor and mayoralty bet; and II (the second) for Jon, the re-electionist Pampanga first district congressman.

Bearers of an illustrious name, Pogi and Jon are by right inheritors of wealth which immensity is measured in acreage, in property, in commerce.

Of even weightier substance and greater significance though, Pogi and Jon are heirs to a legacy of goodness, if not greatness, in public service.

That legacy bequeathed directly to them by their father, that which he built in his four terms as representative of the first district of Pampanga, and three-term mayor of Angeles City, and yes, as chair of the city’s premier barangay Balibago.

That legacy inherited by their father from their grandfather Don Rafael Lazatin, dubbed in his time as “the grand old man of Pampanga politics,” for his unparalleled political career as governor, assemblyman, and city mayor through the most tumultuous periods of history from post-WWII, through the Huk rebellion, the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship, the euphoria of EDSA, abutting to the Mount Pinatubo devastations.           

As the life and times of Cong Tarzan are too recent – and too good -- to recede in the public memory, it is the era of Apung Feleng that needs refreshing. As much for the generation that came after his passing, as for Pogi and Jon, if only to impact upon them that legacy they have to live up to – the Tatak Lazatin they were born with.     

Not much of a stirring, much less encompassing, eulogy is this Zona Libre column in The Voice published in its November 21-27, 1993 issue. It passed muster though as a tribute then, and maybe as aide memoir now.           

A noble man

AN ANOMALY in the Philippine political setting: the absolute antithesis to the patented Filipino politico. He abhorred pomposity, shunned power, disdained aggrandizement.

He was fiercely loyal to his God; staunchly defended, cared for his people; loved deeply his city.

He was a patrician in every sense of the word. Born to the local aristocracy and bred in that class that gave the world the despised caciques, the heartless hacienderos and the vainglorious bourgeoisie. In that world, yet he was never of that world.

He loved the soil and its tiller, carrying on a lifetime affair with the grains, the beasts of burden, and the trees. Marxist or otherwise, he was a “traitor” to his class.

His ultimate “betrayal” monumentalized with the foundation of his school that catered to the bright and promising sons and daughters of the dispossessed, empowering them with respect, the dignity and the means with which to rise from the curse of want to which the feudal system condemned their forebears.

It was not a stroke of gimmickry that his election token came to be a big red heart. It came from a grateful people who swept him to the Pampanga Capitol in the ‘50s, to the Angeles City hall in the ‘70s and the halls of the Batasang Pambansa – even as a septuagenarian bagets – in the ‘80s.

This is not to say that he never lost a battle. Magnanimous in victory, he was also most gracious in his political defeats.

But the principles by which he lived were unbending. As ramrod-straight as his posture. As hard as the kamagong cane which he periodically wielded to assert hizzoner’s authority over recalcitrant lawbreakers and recidivists.

A man of peace, he did not find any need for even a single guard. Moving around, even at the height of the Huk movement, by his lonesome. Why, he was said to have routinely taken public transport going to his office at the Capitol.

An administration devoid of the crudest plan to rehabilitate a devastated constituency and self-satisfied with empty mouthings of Philippines 2000 ought to be shamed by the reality of an Angeles Year 2000 Plan, crafted at the behest of this visionary in the mid-70s. (I should know, being a representative of a national government agency at the Regional Development Council then, where the plan was presented, approved and incorporated to the Central Luzon Medium Term or 25-Year Plan).

The pettiness and inanities of local officials in their vain efforts to exude power find glaring magnification when ranged against the simplicity of this man.

He was a millionaire many times over, but on his induction as director of the Philippine Air Lines in 1987, he promptly took the bus to Manila after finding his old reliable car had broken down.

While the crop of local raiders, er, leaders, would rather die than get caught riding in something less than a Galant Super Saloon or a Vanette, he regularly made the rounds in a battered pick-up truck. Sic transit Gloria mundi?

It is often said, and said so rightly, that a tribute is always inadequate. It can never encompass the true greatness of the man. It can only focus on what was in the man and his deed that touched the tribute-giver deeply.

Many men, even the few good ones, enter politics, get enmeshed in its corrupting power, and leave maculated beyond moral recognition. His was a reversion of that vicious routine.

Don Rafael Lazatin entered politics and ennobled it. Only goodness followed his long political trail. There impacts Apung Feleng’s greatness.

At his burial, I, who have met him less than ten times, and perhaps one he would not even remember, was moved to shed a tear or two.

Not so much for one man’s passing, but for the extinction of a most noble breed. Of whom, this city, this province, and this country seem forever deprived.

APUNG FELENG. Cong Tarzan. Pogi and Jon. The Lazatin legacy has been passed to a new generation. It shall not only be kept, but upheld. On high.  

Preordained, enshrined, as it is in the Tatak Lazatin – to the manor born, to service bred.  Hence, the heart – for the people, of the people.

Entrepreneurial politics

RUNNING INDEPENDENT. That is what is generally reported of Hizon siblings wannabe governor Jomar, city vice mayor-wishing Angie, city council aspirant Ricky, and Bacolor mayoralty hopeful Derek.

On record, that – independent – could very well be what is entered in the party affiliation slot in their individual certificates of candidacy.     

But far from independent are the Hizons, as much politically as economically, if we go by their campaign posters. And farthest yet are they from being partyless.  

Witness the trademark of the family owned Pampanga’s Best in all their campaign collaterals, whether collectively or individually.   

In effect, Pampanga’s Best logo takes the spot in all the Hizon candidates’ posters where in their contenders’ and counterparts’ usually and prominently enshrined are the yellowed LP, the red-green-white Hugpong, the blue Lakas-CMD, the orange PMP, the green Kambilan, and the myriad colors of other political parties as well as partylist groups.

A political party there, unto itself, is Pampanga’s Best. Running on the platform of tocino and longganisa. And does the established political parties even better.

Hereabouts, political parties inhere in personalities. Thus, the KBL in Marcos, LDP in Mitra, Lakas-CMD in Ramos, PMP in Erap, PRP in Miriam, NPC in Danding. Of currency, Hugpong in Sara -- without the H.

None of those politicos though, great as they were, had their mugs impacted in the logo of the parties that owed their very existence to them. But not Pampanga’s Best, what with the founder’s beatific countenance making up practically a fourth of the label.      

Shorn of the least subtlety, in all its in-your-face directness, Pampanga’s Best in the Hizons’ posters thereby conveys a truth about the real point at issue – politics as mere adjunct to economics. Entrepreneurial politics is more, much more, than the commodification of the ballot. Pampanga’s Best just took it to another level – soft-sell its product, hard-sell its candidates. If its candidates lose, at least their company got advertising mileage.  

Comes here too yet another affirmation of the timeless universality of the Golden Rule – He, who has the gold, rules. In this case of Pampanga’s Best, it is a she – not the sister Angie though – that rules.

The face – the whole persona, indeed – of Pampanga’s Best, both literally and metaphorically, is the matriarch Doña Lolita Hizon.     

Seeing her very being in all her offsprings’ campaign materials makes an attestation to another truism: Mother knows best. In all of life’s vicissitudes, economic foremost, as in running a household so in funding an election campaign.

As it was the Doña – her old gentleman Apung Jun aside – that made the empire of tocino and longganisa, so shall the Doña be the builder of her progeny’s political domains.     

Pampanga’s Best is glorious manifestation of Doña Lolita at her best. So, shall the province – the capital city too – be at best with her children at the helm, naturally nourished as they were, and still are, with her “bestness.”

Where the Doña failed in giving Pampanga the best with the one she herself proclaimed “like her own son” – the reverend governor Among Ed Panlilio unheeding her counsel, virtually disowning her after assuming office – she may yet succeed with her real flesh-of-her-flesh Jomar. The dutiful son that he is, as impressed in the public eye, at least.

Ay, there’s the rub.

The Doña’s demanding full acknowledgment, if not exacting recompense, of her million-peso contribution to the Panlilio campaign chest after the governor spurned her does not exactly bode well in a Capitol with her son as chief executive. If ever.

Alas, while it is no foreboding, certainly forbidding is the strangest thought of a Jomar ruling – what with a Doña Lolita de facto reigning -- the province of Pampanga.    

Pampanga’s Best to make Pampanga best?

Not by longest mile, if we listen to the barriofolk of Arayat town, still smarting from braving the heat during a Jomar sortie only to be doled with a solo unbranded chicken breast, instead of even but a kilo of Pampanga’s Best tocino or longganisa,    

“Pampanga’s Best ang ipinapangalandakan, ulilang petso ng manok ang ipinamigay.” So went the collective lamentation of an audience feeling deceived.

Yeah, Board Member Atty. Jun Canlas may just need to amend the case of vote-buying he said he would file against Hizon. To incorporate trickery and deception, as in false advertising, maybe even estafa.       

But I am no lawyer, so what do I know about the law, eh Jomar?  

Easter spectacle

EASTER SUNDAY has always been the centerpoint of the observance of the Holy Week in the small town of Sto. Tomas, just seven kilometers south of the capital city of San Fernando,.

As a matter of course, Easter Sunday is celebrated as the fiesta of Poblacion, taking precedence over the official July 3 feast day of the patron St. Thomas the Apostle.

Or yet again, the resurrection an occasion of celebration for the apostle too with his affirmation of the divinity of the Risen Christ thus: Dominus meus et Deus meus (My Lord and my God).

Over the years, Thomasians have gladly acknowledged and observed Easter Sunday as the feast of all feasts. Those who already reside abroad or other nearby provinces always find time to go home and be with their cabalens (townmates) in commemorating the Maleldo (Holy Days).
So it has always been from the 19th century – said old folk – that Easter Sunday is celebrated with pomp and pageantry unique to Sto. Tomas.
While the salubong – the first meeting between the Virgin Mother and the Risen Christ – is celebrated in all Catholic churches, here the event is spiced up with a puso-puso – a multi-layered heart-shaped funnel (resembling an inverted flower) that opens up layer by layer after each chanting of the Regina Caeli Laetare, raining confetti and petals on the image of the mourning Virgin Mother below until a little girl dressed as an angel descends from it on a calo (a tiny swing-like contraption) to take the black veil off Mary. At this point, the curtain that separates the Mother and her Risen Son is opened for their joyful salubong.
The Easter procession then begins, with the town’s fairest maidens in their best ternos and formal gowns as sagalas – three ciriales, the cross and candle bearers at the lead; a banderada, the bearer of the Vatican flag, twelve pretty lasses called estabats (after their melancholic hymn Stabat Mater Dolorosa) who sing praises and shower with petals the Atlung Maria (Three Marys) symbolizing the Virgin Mother, Mary Magdalene and Mary Cleofas. By tradition, the center – the spot of the Virgin – is reserved for the most beautiful of the three sagalas. 
The procession ends in church with a High Mass. By noontime, the faithful congregate anew at the churchyard for the burning of the effigy of Judas Iscariot.
Atop a scaffolding, Judas – garbed in red, sporting a Van Dyck and FPJ sideburns since the ‘60s – is ignited by pyrotechnic ravens and then twists, turns upside down, rotates and starts exploding from the legs up the arms, the body, and finally the head with the loudest bang. (In the town’s farming past, the bang of Judas’ head was taken an augury of the year’s rice harvest – the louder the blast, the greater the harvest; a dud foreshadowed utter disaster).   

That used to cap the annual Holy Week celebrations in Sto. Tomas. In 2009, a new tradition was birthed in the Sabuaga Festival. 
Sabuaga comes from the combination of sabuag (scatter) and sampaga (flowers) – the sagalas’ showering of petals on the image of the Virgin Mary in “veneration of her keeping the faith and oneness with her Son in His sufferings, thus her rewards in His joyful resurrection.”
Hence, petals and confetti will literally rain on the processional route around Poblacion, starting 2 p.m. of Easter Sunday as revelers join groups coming from the town’s seven barangays in street dancing. 
At the town plaza where the revelry culminates, the groups in their most exotic costumes reflective of the product of the barangays they represent – pottery for Sto. Nino, caskets for San Vicente, fish for Poblacion, garments for Moras de la Paz, tinsmith for San Matias… -- will each do its own interpretative dance presentation, on the theme sabuag sampaga, naturally. Judges coming from the arts, culture and tourism sector will proclaim the winners. 
Sabuaga has since served as a fitting climax to the Holy Week celebration in the province. Indeed, the Maleldo in the City of San Fernando highlighted by the actual crucifixion rites in Barangay Cutud on Good Friday finds culmination in the joy of Easter Sunday’s Sabuaga in Sto. Tomas, which for the longest time was but a barrio of the capital town until its weaning in 1952.

A week least holy

HE HAS crossed to the great beyond for nearly two years now but the poet-columnist Ed Aguilar, aka Macky Pangan, has remained a constant presence to me during the Holy Week. This piece that appeared here in April 2014 says why.  

SABADO DOLORES at McDonald’s Dolores junction, over pancakes and meatloaf the esteemed writer Macky Pangan asked if I still practice fasting and abstinence during the Quaresma, most especially within the Semana Santa.

A sudden sense of déjà vu took hold of me. I’ve been in that same situation before, with the same Macky, other times called Dan U. Pan, opening discussion on this Catholic practice of self-mortification and me segueing to other rites and rituals for the Holy Week.

The past replayed in the present, indeed. Or could be us rutted in some vicious cycle. Consider what came out in this space in March 2008 and find it exactly re-happening again this Holy Week 2014.

“ONLY THE SICK, the vain and the faddists still fast during the Holy Week.”

So. the preacher-poet of Que Sio, Que Tal told me. And come to think of it, he is right. Fasting, and abstinence too, are not the only Holy Week practices that have gone to oblivion. Less a mark of religiosity than a sign of (old) age is that feeling of indignation at (mal) practices of not a few of the faithful (?) during these supposed to be the holiest of days of the year.

The kids instantly scoff at every incantation of “No, we did not do those when we were younger” when – aghast! – in-your-face with patently irreligious acts passed off as sublime spirituality.

Maundy Thursday’s self-reflection induced by the soft, angelic Cant Gregoria before the Blessed Sacrament in a dark corner of the village church is pierced by the flash and whirr of digital cameras and myriad ringtones of mobiles toted by the throngs doing their visita iglesia rounds.

The object of their faith: not the body of Christ exposed in the santissimo sacramento but the monumento where the little golden ciborium is mounted. Last year, of the many paparazzi, I took note of two Saudi-looking wives, read: jaundice-gold ornaments hanging all over them, prodding their little daughters to move further back to the monumento to get a more panoramic shot.

Beholding the photos, how papa would have drenched with tears the Arabian sands at this saintliness of his little darling! Oh God!

Then, there was this gay-looking gaily dressed quartet – I have noticed them for the past three Jueves Santos without fail – focused on the monumento from different angles while furiously scribbling notes and sketching on small notebooks like judges in some contest.

Come now, have we a monumento competition going on? The most nature-inspired, the most futuristic, the most, err, gay? Did those “visitors” ever come to pray if only for a minute? I very much doubt it. They – like the many others who barely bended their knee – had to rush to six or 12 other churches to complete their rounds of seven or 13.

For the indulgencia to be granted. In the scheme of things currently practiced however, the seventh or thirteenth church visited makes only the penultimate stop. The final – and longest – stop for the faithful is always Jollibee or McDonald’s. There in their own santissima cena, they feast on fries and burgers, spaghetti and chicken to stock on physical strength in anticipation of the requisite Good Friday fasting and abstinence.

Ah, how they fast and abstain from meat in the true (?) Catholic way – only one full meal on the day of days – a lunch of crabs and lobsters, prawns and oysters! Ah, Epicurus be praised!

Good Friday. My morning jog at the acacia-canopied village square has to take detours through the grass as the lane gets swamped by a horde of shirtless flagellants preparing for their penitential rite.

The plak-plak sound at the strike on the backs of penitents of the bundled bamboo strips at the end of their abaca whips provided the cadence to my jogging pace. This struck me as a paradox of the faith: not a few of the Kristo wannabes imbibing markang demonyo for strength to carry their assorted crosses, or survive the bleeding under the burning summer sun. Yet a number puff on cigarettes.

With their backs “bladed” literally, or scratched with wooden brushes having broken glass for bristles, the magdarame start – to the rhythmic plak-plak – a procession of blood, the cross bearers in front and a multitude of their families, barriomates, and usiseros bringing the rear.

Last year, being an election year, not a few of the flagellants sported arm bands, TODA sleeves, and headbands prominently displaying the names of candidates. “Penitential” politics be damned! Later in the day, after reverently hanging at the cathedral’s iron fence their black veils and crowns of woven vines of cadena de amor, the flagellants’ new spirituality gets further renewal with bouts of spirituous devotion to San Miguel, not the archangel but the blue one called GSM.

Truly, bilog ang mundo. Maging sa penitensiya ng mga tao. Black Saturday, the faithful flocking the churches for the Easter Vigil are nowhere near in force and in determination with those at the cathedral of compulsive consumption – SM, its two-day closure “in oneness with Christendom’s observance of the holiest of days” only serving to further whet the shopping appetite of its own hordes of fanatical believers.

Rises anew, from the abyss of the apostasy of my youth, a poem I penned that ended thus: 

“comic calvary -- 

a joker made of jessie.

pray, wail, god is doomed

in the damp darkness

of nietzsche’s tomb.”

But, no. God is not dead, Zarathustra. So-called Christians have only put other gods before Him.

Tulauk

ON SATURDAY, April 13 at 7 p.m. the Kapampangan musical on the passion of Christ will be staged at Nepo Park.

I cannot instantly think of a more fitting start for the observance of the Holy Week than being there, not only to watch but be touched, be inspired, and be blessed.

Here is my take of its staging four years ago in the City of San Fernando, serving more as a personal testimony than a review.

Call to repentance   

TULAUK. IT cannot be any simpler as title of an original Kapampangan Lenten sarswela, taken though to dizzying religious high by its bill as “Greatest Story of Humanity, the Redeeming Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Written by Andy Alviz of Miss Saigon fame and Rev. Fr. Deo Kerr Galang, president of Teatru Kapampangan, with Randy del Rosario providing additional materials, Tulauk takes off from Matthew 26:34, to wit: “Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.” Aye, the Kapampangan term translates directly to the cock’s crow.

For all that sublimity in its blurb, the play, staged at the parking lot of Robinsons Starmills Saturday evening did not disappoint. In fact, it inspired.

The 20 original Kapampangan songs did, to still use a much-abused cliché, feed the soul. With most putting their biblical setting in current context. Or is it biblical context in current setting? Whichever, the lyrics and music simply seared the spirit, finding manifest in the deafening ovation that erupted at the end of each scene.

The cast led by the Rev. Fr. Ric Luzung in the role of Christ, Rev. Fr. Ted Valencia as Simon Peter, Rev. Fr. Homer Policarpio as John the Beloved, Rev. Fr. Jon Bartolome as James and Rev. Fr. Aris Maniago as Judas, along with the talents of ArtiSta.Rita and Teatru Kapampangan vivified characters that in many other productions, in both film and stage, have been reduced to wooden acting, to cartooned caricatures.

A revelation is co-worker in the Lapid Capitol and dear friend Cindy Lapid in her very first stage appearance in the role of Mary Magdalene.

Even as comparisons are said to be always odious and therefore unkind to indulge in them, I cannot help but think of another Magdalene key roler, Yvonne Elliman in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar.

Where Elliman’s I don’t know how to love him up-played Christ’s humanity, suggesting even romantic love in their relationship, Cindy’s rendition of the Magdalene purely sprang from remorse and repentance, recognition of the salvific essence of her Lord, and ultimate redemption. Indeed, a reaffirmation of our catechetical knowledge of this public-sinner-turned-saint. Truly, a negation of Dan Brown’s perversion of her.

Here we transcend the medium for the message. At least the message of Tulauk that most impacted my being.

While the cock’s crow is identified with Simon Peter, the rooster – along with crossed keys, throne and the triregnum or triple tiara – being an integral part of his representative image in religious art, Tulauk went beyond the Petrine perspective and reached out to the Iscariot issue.

Judas

Yes, Judas, the betrayer of Christ, figured as prominently as, if not more than Peter in this presentation. The pangs of a stricken conscience over his betrayal highlighted in a song immediately preceding his suicide.

And in the last scene, just before Christ’s ascension, it was Judas that was at the center of the dialog. To the forgiven Peter’s query of what had happened to Judas, the Lord replying that had the remorseful Judas sought forgiveness, he would have received His mercy.

Unlike Peter, alas, Judas had no cock to crow to remind him of his betrayal of his Lord. As indeed in Mark 14:72: “Immediately the rooster crowed the second time. Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken to him: ‘Before the rooster crows twice you will disown me three times.’ And he broke down and wept.”           

For the Iscariot, only the desperate cry: “My mind... is in darkness! My God... God, I'm sick! I've been used! And you knew! You knew all the time! God, I will never know why you chose me for your crime! Your foul, bloody crime! My God, you have murdered me! Murdered me! Murdered me! Murdered me! Murdered me! Murdered...” No passage from any of the four canonical gospels nor from the gnostic Gospel of Judas there but lines from Webber-Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar.

Remote from his rock opera persona, the biblical Judas was no blamer but even remorseful, as in Matthew 27:3-5: “Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, ‘I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.’ And they said, ‘What is that to us? See thou to that.’ And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.”

A deal – Judas delivering Jesus to the chief priests for 30 pieces of silver on the condition that he would not be harmed – gone sour when Jesus was lashed, scourged and crowned with thorns. Judas wanting out of the deal, thus returning the payment. The chief priests not biting. So went the reflection of some retreat master in my seminary past, seeding our young minds with a gentler, kinder consideration of the Damned One.

Which, verily the closing scene of Tulauk also imparted. To me.

Indeed, of Judas, who are we to judge?

Had he the same privilege as Peter’s with the cock, would he not have sought forgiveness from his Lord, remorseful as he already was over his betrayal of Him?

As it turned out, no mere reminder for Peter was the cock’s crow but a call for repentance and reconciliation. With the Lord’s forgiveness, mercy and compassion open to all who heed the call.   

Yes, as the good Apu Ceto said in his closing message last Saturday, Tulauk offered us one enriching spiritual encounter.  

  

Hizon con Panlilio

OUT OF thin air, the once reverend, once governor Among Ed Panlilio materialized last week in the political realm anew, raising the hand of gubernatorial bet Jomar Hizon of Pampanga’s Best.

Big deal.

What’s for real – Panlilio in flesh and blood, Hizon in all his bulk, caught in single frame at that! – touched on the surreal, given the sweet-then-soured bonds between the suspended-priest-turned-governor-turned-organic-farmer and the family empire tapa and tocino built.  

It was but a dozen years back – not too far off to recede completely to memory’s back burner – that Panlilio ascended to the Capitol as though on the wings of angels. “Miracle in Pampanga” as the Philippine Daily Inquirer solemnized what indeed was the phenomenon of the first Roman Catholic priest, albeit suspended, ever elected provincial governor.

Among the major wielders of that miracle – by her own account – was none other than Doña Lolita Olalia-Hizon, matriarch of arguably Pampanga’s best manufacturer of processed food products.

Taking semblance as it were to the biblical multiplication of loaves and fishes was La Doña’s infusion of funds in multiples of thousand-peso bills to the Among’s campaign chest. Not to mention doing a Martha in her provision of safehouses for him during the campaign period until his proclamation as winner, and subsequent sitting at the Capitol.

From Day One of the Panlilio administration, it was a Hizon – Darius, the SEA Games 2005 gold medalist in shooting – that took upon himself to provide Panlilio’s personal security detail, 24/7.

So mighty, indeed, was the bond adhering Panlilio to the Hizon clan that thunderstruck was the Capampangan when, within but four months into the reverend governor’s administration, Doña Lolita was already doing a mater dolorosa in print, on radio-TV, and at the sangguniang panlalawigan lamenting over the perceived waywardness of the Among.

Reference now my column of Sept. 23, 2007.

Her pound of flesh

…“I am not mad but I am disappointed. Not because of the money (that reportedly flowed from her immense treasure chest, not to mention the thousands of kilos of pindang and longganisa, during the campaign). He (Panlilio) can do much better if only he would consult us,” she was quoted as saying.  
Even as Panlilio gave the re-assurance on television too that he still looked up to Mrs. Hizon as a son to his mother, the situation between them appears to have gone beyond a simple spat in the family.
For one, the governor in a Rotary talk was heard to have gone unson-like, defying the age-old mother-knows-best truism in alleging that Mrs. Hizon did not know the real situation at the Capitol as she rarely ventured out of her hallowed corridors. The figurative hyperbole here mine, not Panlilio’s
Of still greater concern are some loose talks currently circulating at the Capitol picturing Mrs. Hizon as a Shylock demanding her pound of flesh. (To those who have forgotten their Shakespeare, Shylock is the ruthless, exacting usurer in The Merchant of Venice.)
This is most unfair to Mrs. Hizon – “the unkindest cut” to use another Shakespearean phrase – coming from the direction of one who has wallowed so much in her innate goodness.
Ingrato, is what some local coños have deemed the governor for “biting the very hand that fed him.”
Some self-anointed civil society hireling countered that Mrs. Hizon desired to “reign over if not rein in the Panlilio administration.” So, it was even more than a political payback that she most wanted.
From there we can most reasonably deduce that Mrs. Hizon was not a supporter but an investor in the Panlilio candidacy. The purported millions of pesos she poured into the campaign were not charitable donations but investments demanding instant returns once the Capitol was won. The time for ROI is now!
Indeed, a most unkind proposition given Mrs. Hizon’s defining persona as Mother Charity herself.
I wonder how her Conscience will take this. 

Recall

“One of my greatest regrets in life is helping the candidacy of Gov. Eddie,” Doña Lolita declared in a press conference in Aug. 2008 in her home in Barangay Cabalantian, Bacolor.

This, as she led hundreds of her IBACA congregation and members of her Conscience Inc. in signing the recall petition initiated by the Kapanalig at Kambilan ning Memalen Pampanga, Inc. against Panlilio.
“These are clear signs that there is something wrong with his administration,” she said, referencing to the people who bolted from the ship of the current provincial executive as well as his former supporters who have rebelled against him.
“I’m also starting to wonder if he is going to abandon his promises to the people, like he abandoned the highest calling of his vocation,” she added.
In prior TV interviews, Doña Lolita had openly called Panlilio “psychologically incapacitated” and “a liar” even to the point of suggesting some DNA testing in some widely alleged but unproved Panlilio biological fathering.

Perjury 

In early June 2009, the tocino queen filed with the city prosecutor’s office a case of perjury against Panlilio for allegedly “concealing” her P1-million campaign contribution from the Commission on Elections.

In her complaint-affidavit, Hizon said that on April 15, 2007, Pampanga’s Best contributed P1 million to Panlilio’s campaign kitty. But the receipt given her was not under her name and merely stated “anonymous” despite her request to Panlilio’s camp for correction.

She cited Section 7 (b) of Comelec Resolution No. 7794 that a candidate for governor without any political party and without support from any political party can spend only an aggregate amount of P5 million.

Panlilio allegedly declared only 57 contributors to his political campaign. Many of his supporters alleged that other donors were not listed in the report that he submitted to the Comelec provincial office.

Hizon accused Panlilio of violating Article 183 of the Revised Penal Code and the Omnibus Election Code.

Farce

The incontrovertible loss of Panlilio to Gov. Lilia G. Pineda in 2010 was as much a cause of celebration for the victor herself as a vindication of Doña Lolita, who, if ageing memory still serves right, tendered some feast for the Pinedas to mark the happy occasion.   

In his epic comeback failure in 2013, Panilio received at most some quiet apathy from the Hizons, enmeshed as they were in the re-election bids of daughter Angie for city councilor and son Jomar for Bacolor mayor.

The nearest thing to connect Panlilio with the Hizons post his governorship was his organic farm called Eden located in the Hizon bailiwick of Barangay Cabalantian.

What gives now with the politically dead Panlilio suddenly resurrecting to endorse Hizon?

Yet another attestation to the truism of the impermanence of foes and friends alike, and the constancy of interests in politics?

An instance of the mafioso take of the enemy of one’s enemy is one’s friend?

A case of the sins of the parent not visited upon the child?

Or, the Christian edict of forgiving seventy times seven one’s erring brethren?

Whichever, I remain fixed on those famous last words of the French humanist Francois Rabelais: “Bring down the curtain, the farce is played out.”