Gifted artist gives back gift of Faith

GIVING BACK the gift of Faith after 500 years.

No simple, if expanded, paraphrase of the theme of the quincentenary of the Christianization of the Philippines – “Gifted to give” – but its very actualization obtained Saturday afternoon at the Santiago Apostol parish church in Betis, Guagua, Pampanga.

A “despedida a la virgen” was held for the image of Sta. Maria del Sagrario that will make its way to Malaga, Spain by the end of March, to be enshrined at the Parroquia de Nuestro Padre Jesus de la Verdad in the barrio of Carranque.

“Anxiously awaited to be welcomed,” the parroquia said of the image that is also set for an exhibit also eagerly awaited by the Philippine consular office in the area.  

The bust of the Sorrowful Mother sculpted by foremost ecclesiastical artist Willy Tadeo Layug of Betis will be fitted to its body sculpted in Spain.

“Coming full circle in our Christian journey in 500 years,” said local historian Francis Musni who organized the event. “A revisit of the gesture of the gesture of Ferdinand Magellan in gifting Raja Colambu, shortly after being baptized and taking the Christian name of then prince and later King Carlos III, with the image of the Sto. Niño.”       

“We were gifted with the Holy Infant Jesus, we are returning the gesture with the gift of the Holy Mother,” Layug said.

The five-century gap between the events seemingly bridged with a fragment of tindalo de Carcar wood – of the same variety recorded to have been used by Magellan for the cross he erected after the first Mass in the Philippines in Masaua on March 31, 1521 – that was encased at the base of the bust of Sta. Maria del Sagrario. The wood was earlier touched on the original Holy Infant image with the permission of the rector of the Basilica of the Sto. Niño de Cebu.

The encasement rite, as well as the blessing of the image, was presided by San Fernando Archbishop Florentino Lavarias and Archbishop Emeritus Paciano B. Aniceto with the parish priest Fr. Raul de los Santos.

Opportunity

Last year, the Grupo Parroquial de Nuestro Padre Jesus de Verdad ante Caifas y Sta. Maria Santissima del Sagrario commissioned Layug to sculpt an image of the Virgin upon instruction of the archbishop of Malaga.

“I asked why it was me that they chose when there are many sculptors in their region,” Layug recalled. “They said I was referred to them by the renowned imaginero Francisco Romero Zafra under whose tutelage I came during my studies in Spain.”

“I sensed immediately that they were short of funds to commission Spanish sculptors, especially when they noted that the image that would be retired and replaced by what they were asking me to do was a donation,” Layug said.

Seeing the project as an opportunity to give back for what he learned from Zafra and his Spanish sojourn, Layug accepted the commission – for free: “It would not be a gift if I get paid for it…and where’s the blessing there?”

Aside from his mastery of his art, Layug is also well known for donating his church works, the retablo at the Pontificio Collegio Filipino in Rome, the cross for the Luneta Mass of Pope Francis, and the image of the Virgin in Palo, Leyte just to name three.

Prayerful journey

There is a more personal aspect to his acceptance of the commission, Layug said.

“On the very first Holy Week procession I joined in Sevilla (Spain), I was awed at the devotion of the people, as well as the beauty, aye, the holiness evoked by the images. Right then and there, I wished, I hoped, I prayed that someday one of my very own obras will be part of the procession,” Layug reminisced.

This Holy Week comes the fulfilment of his prayer: Sta. Maria Santissima del Sagrario will be processioned through the ancient streets of Carranque in Malaga, Spain.

Never ever, again

EDSA UNO gifted the world with “people power.” The phrase was readily accredited to Cardinal Sin after he went on air to call on the nation “to use your power as a people” initially to “save” the embattled mutineers led by Enrile and Ramos from sure annihilation by the Marcos forces.

I do not mean to pull the rug from under the now dearly lamented, almost sainted Sin. Neither do I claim the gift of prescience or prophecy, but in the April 8-14, 1984 issue of The Voice – two months short of two years before EDSA Uno – the phrase already appeared in my Ingkung Milio column, thus titled:

People Power and the Filipino

IN THE annals of political struggles, war included, people power has long claimed its rightful place as the major determining factor in the outcome.

This power received its utmost glorification in the social philosophies of Marx as embodied in his Communist Manifesto and put to empirical application in the Soviet and Chinese revolutions and countless other uprisings in those moulds, as well as in the failed Allende experiment in Chile.

That great Asian, Mao Tse-tung, summed up the potency of people power in various quotations in his Little Red Book, most prominent of which was: “The people are the ocean, we are the fish that swim in that ocean.” There too was his stratagem of marshalling the people from the countryside toward the encirclement of the cities.

With all these leftward tendencies of people power-harnessing, populism has come to be identified with the communist prescription of wresting power from the ruling circle.

In its essence however, any move, be it parliamentary or revolutionary, has to mobilize people power to reach its successful or liberating end.

While we have seen people power in the collective anguish and indignation over Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, we have yet to see it in terms of concrete moves directed at our socioeconomic and political liberation.

Our history as a people is so replete with the kisses of Judas that they have become part and parcel of the Filipino psyche.

The betrayal of the Katipunan, Vicos to Diego Silang, the Macabebe scouts in Tirad Pass and Palanan (a still-debatable issue), the Makapili during the Japanese Occupation, not to mention the American boys and unconscionable cronies, are glaring examples of the quislings who have always sold their country and their people in exchange for personal gains.

More glaring even are the current events related to the coming Batasan polls.

The Opposition is united only in name – the first word in its acronym UNIDO. Beyond that, there is not even the finest thread that holds them together.

True, they all have an aversion to Marcos. Truer yet, they all draw “strength and inspiration” from the martyred Ninoy Aquino. Truest tough, there is no clear-cut, selfless, and nationalistic ideological basis for all their actions.

Rather, it is a case of everyone to his own selfish motive and ambition.

Invoking guidance from the sacrifice of Ninoy, they aspire – conspire may be the apt word – to move the people to exercise their potency for change. Not for the people’s own welfare, in the ultimate analysis, but for the advancement of their personal political ambitions.

It is Robespierre and his manipulation of the French masses in the 1790s all over again. Nearer home, it is the Tejeros debacle restaged in a not-totally dissimilar setting.

The fault however does not solely lie in these opportunists. Much of the blame is traceable to the people themselves.

The people, in all naivete and perhaps due to their fatalism bred by colonizers, foreign and home-grown, have been so accustomed to their hapless state that they could not see a power greater than the gun or the peso, even the devalued one. Bonifacio’s walis tingting has yet to form from the countless coconut ribs lying for the picking.

For a mere pittance, even those who wailed the most at Aquino’s wake and funeral found themselves like sheep herded to provide an audience to some ruler’s folly.

We will see more of these idiocies until May 14. To impress the greater mass of voters, politicians would pay for every shout of “Mabuhay!” and for every wearer of a vote T-shirt, for every trumped-up attestation of love for a candidate.

People power? In many a Third World country, this is the new order of things. In the Philippines, it is seen more in the powerlessness of the people to rise, stomp their feet, and state that enough is enough.

Ah, yes, despite all these, there is people power in this nation of cowards, to quote Mansfield. To us, that power is the people’s strength in crying out in pain for years, and their power to bear all sorts of insults and injustice. And their powerful refusal too to transform anguish into a fiery zeal for their own liberation.

Ninoy, you may have been wrong. It seems the Filipino is not worth dying for. AND THEN came EDSA Uno.

And, as the cliché goes, the rest is but a repeat of history – a people dumbed, a nation damned.

Nunquam iterum?  Duterte Imperium!

Diwa ng Himagsikan

ISANG MADUGONG pakikibaka tungo sa pagbagsak ng naghaharing uri. Ito ang klasikong bigay-kahulugan sa katagang rebolusyon o himagsikan.

Kahulugan na umusbong mula sa pagkalas sa Inang Inglatera ng 13 nagkaisang kolonya ng Amerika noong 1776, at sa pag-aklas sa Pransiya laban kay Louis XVI noong 1789.

Naging modelo rin ng klasikong kahulugan ang himagsikang Sobyet ni Lenin noong 1917, ang digmaang sibil sa Tsina noong dekada ’40- ‘50 na pinagwagian ni Mao, at ang tagumpay ni Castro at Guevara sa Cuba noong 1959.

Hindi natatapos ang himagsikan sa pagbagsak ng naghaharing uri. Sa kaisipang Marxista-Leninista-Maoista, nakaukit ang pangangailangan ng isang patuloy na himagsikan, kaipala’y upang harangin ang likas na pagnanasa ng mga ibinagsak na makabalik muli sa poder at sa rurok ng pamamahala sa estado. Sa wikang Ingles: the need for a continuing revolution to block counter-revolution by the reactionary forces, both foreign and home-grown.

Ang reaksyonaryong puwersa ang pinakamasidhing kalaban ng himagsikan.

Ito ang sagabal na bibigo, sisilat o kikitil sa kaganapan ng tagumpay ng himagsikan: ang pagtaas ng antas ng pamumuhay ng masa.

Na matutupad lamang kung ang liderato ng pamahalaan ay manggagaling mismo sa kanilang hanay.

Suriin natin ang ilang aspeto ng kasaysayan.

Hindi natapos ang himagsikan sa Amerika nang isuko kay Washington ni Cornwallis ang lahat ng puwersang Ingles sa Yorktown, Virginia noong 1781 gayong ganap nang naglaho ang tangan ni George III sa 13 nagkaisang estado.

Bagama’t itinadhana ng Declaration of Independence ng mga estadong ito na ang lahat ng tao ay nilalang ng Diyos na pantay-pantay, hindi kasali dito ang may 650,000 aliping Itim, 250,000 aliping bayad-utang, at 300,000 katutubong Amerikano o Indian na noo’y naninirahan sa mga kolonya.

Pati na ang mga kababaihan ay hindi sakop ng pahayag ng kasarinlan.

Kinailangan pa ang Emancipation Proclamation ni Lincoln at ang digmaang sibil noong 1861-1864 o kulang-kulang 100 taon mula Himagsikang 1776 upang mapalaya ang mga Itim sa pagka-alipin.

Kinailangan pa ang martsa ni Martin Luther King at ang kanyang talumpating I Have a Dream sa Washington, D.C. noong 1963 o 100 taon na naman mula kay Lincoln upang maging ganap ang pagsasa-batas ng kalayaan ng mga Itim at maging kapantay ng mga Puti sa mga karapatan.

Ang kada-100 taon na mga kaganapan na yaon ang maituturing na milestones in the continuing revolution sa Amerika.

(Na masasabing nagkaroon ng sukdulang kaganapan sa pagkahalal kay Obama bilang unang Itim na pangulo ng Estados Unidos noong 2008).

Iba naman ang kinahinatnan ng himagsikan sa Pransiya.

Pinugutan ng ulo si Louis XVI at kanyang reynang Marie Antoinette.

Ang mga naghahari at nagpaparing uri – monarkiya at simbahan – ay binawian ng poder, ari-arian, pati na rin buhay.

Burgis

Sa pagkawala ng aristokratang hanay, uring burgis ang namayani, naghari at nang-api sa masang Pranses. Ginipit ang mga unyong manggagawa, sinupil ang karapatan ng mga maliliit at tuwirang nilapastangan ang adhikain ng himagsikan – liberte, egalite, fraternite.

Naghari ang lagim, namayani ang sindak sa reign of terror – na kumitil sa buhay ng daan-daang mamamayan mula sa iba’t ibang sector ng lipunan.

Sumiklab ang pagaalsa at malawakang kaguluhan na nagbigay daan sa isang golpe militar na nagbunga sa pagbulusok ni Napoleon Bonaparte na siyang nakapagpatahimik sa bansa at nagpanumbalik sa monarkiya sa pamamagitan ng kanyang pagkorona sa kanyang sarili bilang emperador.

Si Lincoln at Napoleon, pati na rin sina Lenin, Mao at Castro – magkakaiba ng pananaw, paninindigan, pamamaraan at landasin subalit lahat sila’y tinaguriang mga bayani ng kasaysayan dahil sa kanilang kahalagahan sa critical moment sa buhay ng kanilang bansa.

Ito ay ayon sa Kanluraning kaisipan na pinasikat ni Arnold Toynbee sa kanyang A Study of History. Tunghayan naman natin ang sarili nating kasaysayan.

Sa isang talata ng kanyang epikong Bayang Malaya ay ipinaloob ni Ka Amado Hernandez ang kasaysayan ng Pilipinas: “Nagsuot ng kalmeng bigay ng Espanya, kalmen nang lumaon ay naging kadena. At itong Amerika na bagong katoto ang dala’y de-lata, laya ang kinuha, ininom ang bayang parang Coca-Cola.”

Isang naunsyaming rebolusyon ang Himagsikang 1896 dahil bago pa man inagaw ng mga Amerikano ang tagumpay mula sa ating mga Pilipino, inagaw na ng mga ilustrado na kinatawan ni Aguinaldo ang himagsikan mula sa masa na nagpasimuno nito sa katauhan ni Bonifacio.

The Unfinished Revolution – ang palasak na pagtawag sa Himagsikang 1896 – ay nagkaroon ng kaganapan noong Setyembre 21, 1972 – ayon mismo kay Marcos, sa pagpapantasya sa kanyang batas-militar bilang isang “rebellion of the poor” laban sa naghaharing oligarkiya.

Wagas na kabulaanan, sa harap ng mapaniil na diktaduryang kanyang isinakatuparan.

EDSA

Sa EDSA noong 1986 ay ipinangalandakan din na nagkaroon na ng kaganapan ang 1896. Maliban sa pagkarambol lamang ng mga numero, ito ay isang paglapastangan sa kasaysayan.

Ang pagkakaroon ng EDSA Dos ang malinaw na patunay na wala ngang himagsikang nangyari noong 1986. At wala ring himagsikang naganap sa EDSA nitong 2001.

Hindi dahil sa walang dumanak na dugo.

Kundi dahil walang naganap na pagbabago. Lalo’t higit walang pagbuti sa antas ng buhay ng mga mamamayan.

Ang naganap ay isang rigodon lamang kung saan mukha lamang ang nagkaroon ng palitan sa liderato ng bayan.

Mula sa isang naghaharing uri, isinalin ang poder sa kanilang kauri.

Sabi nga ng aktibista noong 1986: “Kumaripas ng takbo ang lahi ni Barabas, pumalit nama’y lipi ni Hudas.”

Ano ang nagbago?

Sa panguluhan ni Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, nakapaligid ay sabwatang militar-trapo. Wala ni anumang puwang sa pamamahala, dili kaya’y sa kaunti mang biyaya, ang mga karaniwang mamamayan, pesante’t proletaryo, silang umaklas at umalma upang mapatalsik si Estrada.

Tinungo ng rehimeng Arroyo: globalisasyon – ang bagong bihis ng imperyalismo. At ano baga ang nahita ng mga tao sa muling paghahari ng aristokrata’t oligarko sa panguluhan ni Benigno Simeon Aquino III?

Tama si Mao. Ang masa, ang masa lamang ang tunay na bayani. Ito ang Asyanong paninindigan na umiiral din sa mga bansang Third World na gumigiyagis sa tindi ng kahirapan at panunupil sa mga karapatang pantao na hagkis ng mga papet na tigreng papel ng globalisasyon, ng mga berdugo ng kapitalismo, ng mga enkargado ng pyudalismo.

Ang tanong: Kailan pahahalagaan ang kabayanihan ng masa at gawing puhunan sa pambansang pamunuan tungo sa tunay na kalayaan, pagka-pantay-pantay at ganap na kaunlaran ng bayan? Sa isa pang EDSA? Gasgas at pulpol na ang kaisipang ito. Kailan pa tayo matututo?

Bulaang Mesiyas

Sa pangakong pagbabago, kapit-bisig at taas-kamaong binalikat ng masa tungo sa panguluhan si Rodrigo Duterte. Hindi lamang kaganapan ng 1896 ang ipinagdiwang sa tagumpay nito, ang ipinangalandakan ay ang mismong pagdating ng mesiyas na tutubos sa Pilipinas!

Subali’t sa loob lamang ng unang taon ng panunungkulan ni Duterte, hindi manunubos kundi mang-uubos ang bumulaga sa sambayanan – ang ipinagbunying mesiyas, kaipala’y may sayad na Herodes sa walang pakundangang pagpapatay sa mga inosente’t walang malay.

Sa kanyang mga pangakong napako, bunton ng sisi’y sa iba’t ibang tao – mula sa pinaka-abang tsuper hanggang sa mga pinagpala sa lipunan, ang mga may tangan ng kalakal, media, at simbahan. Sa kanyang walang katapusang kapalpakan, hagkis ng mura’t panlalait ay sa kabi-kabilang dako – mula Amerika hanggang EU at UN.

At upang ganap na mapagtakpan ang iwing kahinaan, imbing kawalang kakayahan sa panunungkulan, pumapailanlang ngayon – mula sa kanyang tsuwariwariwang lumpen na kawan – ang sigaw ng Revolutionary Government.

Muli, ito’y isang panghahablot kundi tuwirang pagnanakaw sa tinig ng kasaysayan – “Sigaw ng Bayan: Himagsikan!”
Revolutionary Government? Sino ang patatalsikin? Sino ang magpapatalsik?

Si Duterte ang kasalukuyang naghahari. Si Duterte ang muling maghahari.

Hindi lamang ito isang kontradiksyon. Ito ay kahangalan. Ang golpe de estado na maniobra ni Marcos sa kanyang martial law, golpe de gulat ni Duterte ngayon sa kanyang revolutionary government kuno.

Ay, di baga’t diyos-diyosang sinasamba nga ni Digong si Macoy?

Wala kay Duterte ang himagsikang Pilipino. Pagtibayin ang puso, kasama. Tungo sa panibago at pina-igting na pakikibaka.

(Isinapanahong salin sa pinaglumaang yugto ng kasaysayan, hawi sa lukut-lukot na pahina ng dyaryong dating pinagsulatan, petsang Pebrero 19, 2001.)

Taking on ABS-CBN

OLIGARCHIC “VALUES” permeated society all the more easily because the rich controlled the press and radio-TV. The press particularly became the weapon of a special class rather than a public forum. The newspapers would noisily and endlessly comment on the side issues of our society, but not on the basic ones: for example, the question of private property.

The oligarchic propaganda was that somehow, with the election of “good men” – good men who please the oligarchs – mass poverty would come to an end. The search for “better men in politics” and not institutional change; a “higher political morality,” and not the restructuring of society – this was the oligarch’s ready answer to the question of change.
Thus, Ferdinand E. Marcos in his slim volume Revolution from the Center rationalizing his war against the oligarchy, read: the Lopez family that owned the power that was Meralco and the glory that was ABS-CBN. That which “the state” confiscated immediately upon his declaration of Martial Law in Sept. 1972.

And that which, upon the fall of Marcos, the succeeding revolutionary government of Cory Aquino promptly handed back: the Lopezes, including a new generation of them, returning to the country from their comfortable American exile to reclaim everything they previously owned, and – if we believe the allegations at the time – even much, much more.
So still wonder how ABS-CBN virtually turned into an instrument of the state during the Cory presidency, and not-too-long thereafter the domain of daughter Kris, queenship of all media arrogated unto her?

The patronage of the sainted Cory highly considered, doubtlessly, ABS-CBN maintained some modus vivendi during the Ramos presidency.

Whatever tempest – no bigger than that in metaphorical teapots – that obtained between the station and the abbreviated Estrada presidency quieted with the marriage of an Ejercito bride to a Lopez scion. This did not prevent ABS-CBN though from taking an active role in the events leading to Erap’s ouster with EDSA2.

Meralco

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took the Lopezes to battle in a front other than ABS-CBN. In what she herself termed as a “tough legal fight” for the control of Meralco.
Unlike Marcos though, GMA neither went by her lonesome nor impacted all the power of the state against the Lopezes. She enlisted some other power players in her campaign. If only to project a broad-based front against a powerful enemy and avoid the issue’s reduction to purely personal vendetta against a perceived conscientious dissenter to her administration.
“Please be there with all your legal luminaries because this is going to be a tough legal fight and you will be the beneficiaries, your workers will be the beneficiaries, your consumers will be the beneficiaries, the Filipino people will be the beneficiaries,” GMA enjoined the Federation of Philippine Industries and the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industries Inc.
Her casus belli wisely couched with populist appeal: the bid to lower the high electricity rates.

GMA apparently winning her match in the not-too-long run, the Lopezes ultimately ceding ownership of Meralco to Manny V. Pangilinan, or whoever or whatever interests he represented.

The BS

His mother’s established patronage of ABS-CBN and his sister’s queenship over the network did not dissuade any Benigno S. Aquino III from sniping, not at the station itself, but at its stalwarts, notably Noli de Castro.   

“May naitutulong po ba ang mga walang-basehang spekulasyon?…Kung alam mong opinion-maker ka, alam mo rin dapat na mayroon kang responsibilidad. Sana po, sa tuwing sasabihin nating, and I quote, ‘magandang gabi, bayan,’ ay totoong hinahangad nating maganda ang gabi ng bayan.” So, the BS infamously said at the very celebration of the 25^th anniversary of TV Patrol.

Segueing to what he called “daily negativism” in media, Aquino analogized reporting to a local horror film: “Kung isa po kayo sa 10 milyon nating kababayan na nagsasakripisyo sa ibayong-dagat, gaganahan kaya kayong bumalik dito kung mas nakakasindak pa sa Shake, Rattle and Roll ang balita sa telebisyon?”

Marcos again

No cinematic horror can compare though with the real terror Rodrigo Duterte has unleashed against media in general, the ABS-CBN in particular.

Other than Marcos, it is only Duterte that expressed obsessive desire to obliterate ABS-CBN. The idolater truly befitting his adulation of his deity there.

So, how will Duterte fare?

At the time of the GMA-Meralco conflict – nearly 12 years ago – I quoted here from the venerable Amando Doronilla’s Inquirer column Analysis, thus:

The oligarchy scapegoat is no longer the same as it was during Marcos’ and (the elder) Macapagal’s times. The Lopez oligarchy and Meralco’s structure have changed since the demise of the Lopez patriarch, Eugenio Lopez Sr., who, in his time, called the political shots with his sugar bloc in Congress.
The heirs of the defunct Lopez “oligarchy” have embedded themselves in post-EDSA corporate structures, less overt in their political interventions than their Grand Old Man. They have changed colors, but Ms Arroyo is fighting the Lopez family with the weapons that Marcos and Macapagal failed to crush the Lopez dynasty.
Above all, she does not fit into the armor of a populist. She is not her father’s daughter. As a sedulous ape to Marcos’ authoritarian model, she is a clumsy and pathetic protégé.

Unlike GMA, Duterte is the quintessential populist, no simple ape to but the very clone of Marcos, as capable if less intelligent, pathetic yes, but more demonic.

Hence, fear not for ABS-CBN or the Lopezes. Fear not only for the freedom of the press. Fear for the whole nation.

Fight that fear then we all must. Else…  

Sana all...

“Nakakalungkot…lahat ng pinuntahan ko puro na lang kontra, kontra yung komunidad…Sabi ko ‘Sinong mangangalaga sa kapwa natin Pilipino kundi Pilipino din?’ Hindi naman kako natin aasahan ang ibang tao na mangalaga sa mga Pilipino tapos tayo mismong mga Pilipino hindi natin sila bibigyan ng pangangalaga.” “

Thus, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III lamented the rejection by local communities of hosting places to serve as quarantine for Filipinos to be repatriated from China.

Rued he: “Sayang yung spirit of bayanihan, kilala tayo diyan. Papayag ba tayo na mawala ito? Magpakita tayo ng patriotism.”

While Duque did not name the rejecting communities, the sangguniang panlalawigan of Nueva Ecija last Monday passed a resolution requesting the Department of Health to reconsider its plan to make the mega Drug Abuse Treatment and Rehabilitation Center in Fort Magsaysay a quarantine zone, “in representation of the sentiments of the people of Nueva Ecija who have readily expressed fear and opposition to the plan.”

Earlier, NE 3^rd District Rep. Rosanna Vergara separately called on the DOH to “consider a better equipped facility.”

“We have the Center for Disease Control located in Las Piñas — might this facility be better equipped to handle the coronavirus as it was built precisely for cases like the coronavirus and it has the medical personnel trained to handle cases like this,” she said.

The sound of Duque’s announcement of the Athlete’s Village in New Clark City as the chosen quarantine area for the Filipino repatriates had not fully faded but Capas Mayor Rey Catacutan, in a visit in Germany, already tweeted his “appeal in behalf of all Capaseños” to President Duterte and Duque “to consider another place or facility as isolation area.”

Rallying round the mayor, the Capas sangguniang bayan unanimously approved in an emergency session a resolution objecting to the use of the Athlete’s Village as quarantine site.

That display of NIMBY – not in my backyard, dummy – in Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija and in Capas, Tarlac is, most apparently, stimulated by the fear instinct. Magnified mainly with all the hysteria surrounding the reportage on the novel coronavirus, further inflamed by the twisted narratives in the social media.

It did not help any, in fact it hardened the opposition, that the DOH did not make any coordination with the LGUs before coming out with its announcements of the proposed quarantine zones.

Said Catacutan: “I feel perturbed by the fact that [DOH] did not at all, in any way, involve the Capas LGU in its last-minute decision for New Clark City Capas to be used as quarantine zone for these persons under monitoring (PUMs).”    

Distrust of the DOH accumulating there. Thus, even with the DOH dishing the correct information that: the virus is not airborne, thus beyond three meters is a safe zone from catching particles from sneezes, coughing from the infected person; that face masks are not necessary for people with no respiratory issues,  the fear of the people could hardly be allayed.

Indeed, the fear instinct distorts focus, as some author wrote. Worse, it perverts reason.   

Amid the seemingly blurred perspective and blinded unreason of the LGUs – no less eased by their attestations of love for their fellow Filipinos coming from Wuhan, but… -- stand clearly, brightly, patriotically Gov. Dennis G. Pineda and the people of Pampanga.

To thunderous applause of thousands of barangay health workers in assembly last Wednesday, Pineda declared Pampanga open as quarantine area for Filipino repatriates: “Kadugo po natin sila kaya bukas po ang Pampanga para sa kanila…They are hailed as heroes so they should be helped when they’re in need of help. I see this as a call of duty.”

Duque’s Friday lamentation: “Who will take care of our fellow Filipinos but Filipinos themselves? We cannot expect others to take care of our fellow countrymen if we ourselves would not take care of them” has been pre-responded by Pineda two days before.

No mere sense of kapwa or patriotism inhering in Pineda’s declaration, but also one of reasoned judgment.
And no mere rhetoric for Pineda here. Having much earlier coordinated with DOH representatives of health facilities in Pampanga meeting up to the needs of quarantine; and Clark freeport and airport authorities on preparation for landing the repatriates.

On Saturday, a 40-foot container van converted into and fitted by the provincial government as an isolation chamber, along with two mini-buses fitted as containment transport have been dispatched to the Clark International Airport, ready for the repatriates.

Aye, amid all the illogical noise raised by the rejection of the Filipino repatriates by the LGUs – poor folk have even been agitated to stage protest actions – it is heartening to note the thousands of reactions in the web – veritably all positive – to the open-Pampanga declaration and subsequent actions of Pineda.

Affirming the malasakit and leadership he earlier displayed in his trail-blazing immediate response to the Taal Volcano eruptions, crafting in him the very template for good, caring governance – gravitas, dignitas, integritas, virtus, as the Romans of old defined leadership. In Delta now is raised the wish of local constituencies for their own officials: Sana all.

Ousting call

OUST DUTERTE! That may be well be the central theme of the EDSA 1 celebrations this month. At least to those who have appropriated exclusive authority, aye, arrogated unto themselves the sole right, over the upheaval that ousted the dictator.

As Marcos was ousted, so should Duterte too. Being no more than a second rate, trying hard, copycat to the former. So, the logic goes?

It is some eerie déjà vu that this ousting call cast upon me though, drawing out this sophomoric take of past political praxis paralleling the present, Beyond Marcos bylined Carlos El. Guerrero in the Oct. 23 – Nov. 5, 1983 issue of The Voice.       

HISTORY and political science have always referred to authoritarian regimes and dictatorships as one-man rules. The fact however is far from that historical given.
An authoritarian regime does not emanate from one, single individual alone. Rather, an interplay of some structures woven by that individual around himself gives life to his being a dictator.
It is from that point of reference that I deem current events in the country should be viewed.
The “Oust Marcos” campaigners are only half-right in seeking their end. And those who have made that cry the be-all and end-all of their movement; those who entertain thoughts that the ouster of Marcos would effect beautiful changes to the country – that everything would fall in its proper place as though by Divine Order, are as deluded as some members of the regime who still insist that all these mass actions are nothing but plain, simple, even childish, gimmickry.
Simply driving Marcos out of the presidency will not solve the problem. It may even compound it. Another Marcos, not necessarily his kin but just one with Marcosian tendencies or even worse, can just fill the vacant slot. Personalities may come and go. But the dictator’s throne stays. So long as the structures that prop it up remain.
So, it is of prime necessity to dismantle all structures that support the dictatorship, either as a prelude or an afterlude to the ouster of Marcos. This will guarantee that there won’t be any Second Coming for the Marcos regime or any regime in such mould.
First to do perhaps is to forget all about the Constitution of ’73 which we unwittingly ratified. Or were gypped to ratify. A return to the ’35 vintage would be alright but forging a new one more responsive to the times would even be better. What matters is that the concentration of powers in one man without the necessary checks and balances should be totally eradicated from any page of the Supreme Law of the land.
A totally different Supreme Court – in composition, in temperament, in bent – should likewise evolve. What we have now is something that caters first, foremost, and only to the Supreme Ruler of the land.
At least in one count, the nomenclature is fitting – the High Tribunal is the supreme court of the absolute ruler where jesters, pretenders, and other courtiers abound.
The military has to revert to being an apolitical entity. The uniformed man’s loyalty to his commander-in-chief must end where his loyalty to the Republic begins. And he must be made to understand that the chief is not always the Republic he represents. To effect this would need the resignation of all the top brass in the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Then too must be put to a final and definitive stop the multi-titled government men – the concurrent governors and ministers, ambassadors and ministers, ministers and corporate board members, etc. Aren’t they tired of such schizophrenic dichotomies? The Filipino nation has never wanted of intellectuals in all fields of endeavor. So, why not dispose of some posts to equally more deserving souls?
The cronies and dollar salters must be made to pay for their crimes. Their assets salted in some foreign banks and investment houses be frozen. A possible re-infusion of these into our economy will do wonders as dialysis does to someone with a malfunctioning kidney.
Lest we forget, to have a complete and thorough regeneration, foreign intervention must be resisted in all forms, at all costs. Thus, the need to dismantle the US bases in the country.
It has been categorically stated that the bases serve only Sam’s – he ain’t our Uncle – interests, never ours. We wonder why every Philippine president, despite protestations to the contrary, always played up to American interests.
Aren’t we fed up yet with US intervention in our affairs? Will we never learn from Dewey’s betrayal of our founding fathers? From Tirad Pass? Balangiga? Sacay? The mile-long convoy that never was in Bataan? The “wild boars” of Clark?
We are a patient people, yes. But is there no end to that? The masses are up in arms, so to speak, yes. But conscientization has not yet set in them. A full appreciation of the issues has not yet cascaded to the mass level.
Anger is a necessary ingredient, yes. But peaceful, non-violent revolutions – or for that matter, even the Jacobin prescription – cannot be launched, much less won, by anger alone.
Oust the dictator, that we must. But let us not in our mass personal anger forget to dismantle all that helped propped him up.

LESS THAN three years after this was published, in February 1986, EDSA 1 happened. And the rest, as clichéd, is history…now poised to repeat itself?

Mark of the sparrow

MABUHAY ANG NPA! What has not been heard for decades in Pampanga reverberated anew mid-morning of Jan. 28 in Sta. Rita town, complete with its concomitant lethal volley of shots from twin .45s.

With the CCTV footage catching the scene of the crime – and witnesses attesting to the exultant shouts of the shooters – the NPA angle has become the primary focus in the police investigation of the killing of lawyer Anselmo “Sato” Carlos and his driver Marcial Mendoza. So, I heard from a source in the Pampanga police and verified from ace police reporter Jess Malabanan.

An old video footage of a protest rally by those displaced by the Ayala development in Hacienda Dolores, Porac wherein Carlos was seen arguing with the protesters and even seemingly slapping one of them also played up to the NPA angle in his killing, my source and Jess both opined.

To us veterans – I was correspondent of the Journal Group of People’s Journal/Tonight and Times Journal and stringer for the Associated Press – in the coverage of the insurgency war in Pampanga in the 1980s, Carlos’ killing did indeed bear what we coined as “mark of the sparrow kill,” meaning headshots from a .45, accompanied by the battle cry of the people’s army.  

The “sparrow” of course was a euphemism for the liquidation squad of the NPA whose primary targets were police and military officers, paramilitary units, informers, as well as anti-people bureaucrats and “abusive” capitalists and their “lackeys.”

 The urban partisan unit – the “official” nomenclature of the sparrows – operating in Angeles City and Pampanga in those times was the Mariano Garcia Brigade, named after the NPA commander with the nom de guerre “Garapon” who trained the unit in armaments, assimilation, and assassination.

Garapon was killed in an encounter with the Philippine Constabulary and the Philippine Air Force Combat Group in Barangay Camachiles, Mabalacat in 1987.

Before becoming the MGB, the local sparrows called themselves “Group Mazda” in the lead up to the simultaneous assassination of three US servicemen and one Filipino civilian mistaken for an American in Angeles City and Dau, Mabalacat on Oct. 27 1987.

“Mazda” referred to the car brand known to have been preferred by operatives of the Office of Special Investigation of the US Air Force in Clark, and the common denominator that linked the three American victims. Which made them, rather than specifically targeted, no more than targets of opportunity.

The MGB figured most prominently in the war of attrition with the PC, Army, Air Force and the right-wing vigilante group Angelino Simbulan Brigade – named after the San Fernando police chief the sparrows killed in his own house – in the last three years of the 1980s, memorialized in my “journalistic novel” Brigada .45 published in 2004, and capsulized thus: “Hagkis ng kaliwa. Bigwas ng kanan. Low Intensity Conflict. Mula Fields Avenue, ang pamosong kalsada ng kamunduhan, hanggang Nepo Mart, ang sentro ng kalakal; mula Area, ang palengke ng laman, hanggang sa mismong simbahan, walang piniling larangan ang digmaan sa kalunsuran, nanalasa pa’t nandamay sa mga karatig-bayan. Ito ang Lungsod ng Angeles sa huling tatlong taon ng dekada ‘80. Dito inukit ang maiksi nguni’t madugong kasaysayan ng Brigada Mariano Garcia.

The recorded kills – between the MGB and the police-military-vigilante front – topping 40 in May-June 1988 in Angeles City alone! The shooters’ signatures unmistakably impacted in the victims: .45 bullets in the head by the Left, multiple shots of all sort of calibers by the Right. And, in the case of the former, the postmortem statement itemizing the “crimes against the masses” for which the victim had to suffer the penalty of death.  

Mabuhay ang NPA! Hearing of it in the Carlos ambush sends chills down my spine anew. Absent any statement of the rebel group owning up to the killing, notwithstanding.  

That the NPA – long reduced here by the police and military as a “spent force” along with their declaration of Pampanga as “insurgency-free” – can still stage an ambush in broad daylight, on a busy road, in a crowded place, with the assassins unafraid to show their faces, should give everyone a rethink of the insurgency situation in the province. It could well signal the rebirth of the sparrow. A most terrifying proposition there, God forbid!

This is not to say that the police are not on top of the situation. As indeed, they are.

But then, let it not also be smug in dismissing the Carlos killing as an “isolated incident.”

I remember that was what the PC-INP said of the initial killings leading to the Maytime festival of death in Angeles City in 1988. Pray never again.