Anak ng Ama: Sino ba talaga?

 
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 ANAK NG Ama. Mula sa Pampanga. Alay sa Masa.

Ito ang bansag sa sarili ng kandidato sa pagka-gobernador na si Danilo “Boy” Baylon, naging punongbayan ng Candaba sa isang termino, nakilala sa mga manok na ipinamamahagi hindi lamang sa kanyang bayan kundi sa buong lalawigan. 

Higit na kumintal sa kaisipan ng balana ang kanyang iwing pagka-makadiyos, sa kanyang mabuting pangangaral katuwang ang kanyang maybahay na si Apo Aniway na kandidato naman sa pagka-punong bayan ng Candaba.

 

Dios. Dignidad, Disiplina. Ana nga ng kaniyang bansag na kawikaan. At ayon na rin sa kanya, “atas ng Paginoon” ang kaniyang pagtakbo sa pagkagubernador.

“Ang wika ng Ama, sa araw daw na mag-file kami ng COC ng aking asawa, panalo na raw ang maraming taong naghihirap sa buong Pampanga, maging sila man ay nasa kabilang panig pa!” aniya sa kanyang Facebook page.

“Kaya anuman ang aming maranasang paghadlang, hirap, paninira at pananakot... ang lahat ng ito ay hinahandog namin sa mga tao at higit sa lahat...Sa Dios!!!,” dagdag pa ni Baylon. 

At ito na nga ang nangyari: Inihagkis sa kanya, “Bulaang propeta,” sigaw na kumalat hanggang mamaos sa social media. Pinag-iingat ang mga manghahalal na Kapampangan na huwag maging hangal at maniwala na lamang sa mga “nagsisilapit sa inyo na may damit tupa, datapuwa’t sa loob ay mga lobong maninila.” Mula Mateo 7:15-16, mismo.

Lalo pa ngang tumimo sa kaisipan ng balana ang babala laban sa mga mababangis na lobong nagdadamit tupa sa mga naging pangyayari sa Amerika kung saan inihabla ang isa pang nagpahayag ng sarili na “hinirang na anak ng Diyos” – si Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, tagapagtatag at pinuno ng Kingdom of Jesus Christ, the Name Above Every name at mismong espirituwal na tagapayo ni Pangulong Rodrigo Duterte – sa patong-patong na mga kaso ng “sex trafficking of children, sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion, marriage fraud, money laundering, cash smuggling and visa fraud.”

Lubha mang napakalayo ni Baylon kay Quiboloy, sa isip ng marami ay hindi pa rin ito ganap na maihiwalay sa kapahayagang “bulaan,” bunga na rin ng kanilang eksklusibong kapatiran bilang mga bugtong na “Anak ng Ama/Diyos.”

Hindi. Hindi ko sinasabi, lalo’t hindi naniniwalang bulaan si Baylon. Ang pagsama sa kanya ni dating Gubernador Reberendo Ed Panlilio, ang talunan sa pagka-gobernador na dating alkalde ng Bacolor Jomar Hizon, dating alkalde ng Masantol Peter Flores, dati at muling bumabalik sa pagka-mayor ng Floridablanca Eddie Guerrero, at higit sa lahat dating Candaba Mayor Kuyang Jerry Pelayo ay sapat na para sa akin na hindi maitatatwang katibayan na hindi palsipikadong mangangaral si Baylon.    

Ang maikling sanaysay na ito ay hindi pakikisali sa madaliang paghusga sa kapwa. Ayon na nga sa Mateo 7:1-2 – “Huwag kayong hahatol upang hindi kayo hatulan.

 Ito ay sapagkat sa hatol na inyong ihahatol ay hahatulan kayo. Sa sukat na inyong ipinanukat ay isusukat sa inyo.”

Ang alalahanin ko lamang ay ang pagbansag ni Baylon sa sarili bilang “Anak ng Ama” at ang pinagkakahulugan nitong siya ay “sugo” ng Panginoon sa pagtakbo niya sa pagkagubernador – upang akuin mula sa kadiliman (?) ang lalawigan Kapampangan.  

Tiyak naman na aral si Baylon sa Banal na Aklat gaya ng mga ipinahihiwatig sa nakita kong bidyo ng kanyang pangangaral. Ang hindi ko matanto ay ito: Nabasa kaya niya sa kanyang sipi ng Bibliya kung sino ang tuwirang tinukoy – sa mismong pangalan nito – na “Anak ng Ama”?  

Basa:

At noo'y sila'y may isang bilanggong pusakal na tinatawag na Barabbas. Mateo 27:16

At mayroong isa na kung tawagin ay Barabbas, na nakapiit kasama ng nangaghimagsik, mga taong nagsipatay ng mga tao sa panghihimagsik. Markos 15:7

Datapuwa't silang lahat ay nagsisigawang paminsan, na nangagsabi, ‘Alisin mo ang taong ito, at pawalan mo sa amin si Barabbas.’ Lukas 23:18

Sila nga'y nagsigawang muli, na nangagsasabi: ‘Huwag ang taong ito, kundi si Barabbas.’ Si Barabbas nga'y isang tulisan. Juan 18:40

Datapuwa't inyong pinakatanggihan ang Banal at ang Matuwid na Ito, at inyong hiningi na ipagkaloob sa inyo ang isang mamamatay-tao. Gawa ng mga Apostoles 3:14

Ang ipinagpalit ng mga Hudyo kay Kristo -- si Barabbas, mula salitang Aramaic na Bar Abba na ang tuwirang salin sa Ingles ay “Son of the Father” at sa Tagalog nama’y “Anak ng Ama.” 

Ang akin lamang katanungan: Magmimistulang mga Hudyo ba ang mga Kapampangan sa araw ng halalan at pipillin ang nagtanyag sa kaniyang sarili bilang si Barabbas?

Maghunus-dili naman tayo.

(Mga larawan mula sa Facebook)

Campaign notes

IT IS still a looongg way to the official campaign period but already incumbents, wannabes, has-beens, and never-bes are just about everywhere and anywhere inflicting themselves upon the hapless electorate.

Time anew to take out of the old baul this piece of 2006 vintage with some updated refurbishing.

You have no money? Dream on running, even winning. It won’t cost you a thing. But never wake from that dream and live the nightmare of political realities here.

Even as a candidate, you have already been claimed by the voters to be their personal one-way ATM: no deposit required but ready to dispense cash anytime of the day or night for their power and water bills, cost of hospitalization, expenses for weddings, baptisms and funerals, birthday parties and fiestas, tuition for their kids, even milk for their infants. And yes, loads for their mobiles.

I remember the dearly lamented undefeated mayor of Apalit Tirso Lacanilao who, in one campaign sortie, was asked by a constituent for money to pay for the hospital bills of his wife.

Tirso was already fishing out P500 bills from his wallet when he happened to ask what caused the wife’s hospitalization.

“Menganac ya pu,” came the reply.

“Putanaydamo,” raged Tirso. “Anyang magpacanyaman cang gagawan me ing anac mu e mu na cu man cayabe. Oba’t ngeni cacu mu papabayad ing cayang pamanganac?” Classic Tirso.

You have money? Use it wisely.

Find some free lessons in this costly experience of a board member who ambitioned for a House seat in the 2004 polls.

Well beyond a year to the elections, BM was already crowing that P30,000 was doled out daily to his needy constituents even before the cock crowed in the morning. Into the campaign period, BM upped the ante to P50,000 per day. Still, he ended up in the kangkungan against one whose win earned him the title “Con-doctor.”

His 2004 experience unlearned, BM did the same route in 2007, upping his daily doles to P70,000, only to be picked out of the pansitan against one Cong Dong.

A dilemma: Identified as a generous giver in elections past, BM stands to lose a lot of the ground he covered in 2004 and 2007 if he tightens even just a bit his publicly-perceived-as-enormous campaign chest. Dati kang nagbibigay ng tig-500,  bigla kang magbibigay ng tig-100, magiging masama ka pa sa iyong binigyan. 

The flash of wealth is more a liability than an asset. Still remember Don Pepito Mercado? Throwing money like there’s no tomorrow, the Don soared in the people’s imagination as a mighty, invincible eagle in 1994 only to be reduced to a pitiful pipit in the 1995 gubernatorial polls. Principally because he just stopped being outlandishly generous at the time it counted most – in the middle of the campaign period.

Being official candidate of a party, even of the party in power is no sure-fire guarantee to victory.

In 1992, Marino “Boking” Morales did the unprecedented: He was the official candidate of the two dominant parties at war for the presidency. President Cory Aquino and candidate Fidel V. Ramos of Lakas-NUCD graced Boking’s proclamation rally. At Boking’s miting de avance, it was candidate Ramon V. Mitra that anointed him as the main man in Mabalacat of the LDP.

Dr. Catalino Domingo of the NPC drubbed Boking mightily. Thereafter, Boking though has done more unprecedented things. Like sitting as mayor beyond double the term limit, ultimately unseated only in 2017 – ruling all of 22 years. His attempt for a comeback in 2019, albeit for the vice-mayoralty, ended in a drubbing by his own kin.

In some twist of irony, Boking’s favorite whipping boy Anthony Dee’s no-retreat-no-surrender mantra may have rubbed off on him as Boking tries a comeback anew – for them mayorship in 2022. This time facing a more formidable opponent other than his nemesis, incumbent Mayor Cris Garbo, in his own former factotum Deng Pangilinan.

Barangay chairmen are prized – and highly-priced – acquisitions in elections. But like the party, they are no foolproof certainty to winning.

In 2004, Andrea Dizon-Domingo thrice paraded before the members of media 28 of the 33 barangay chairmen of the City of San Fernando as her committed campaigners.

She ended third placer to eventual winner Oscar S. Rodriguez who had no barangay chairman other than Do Santos of San Agustin in his corner.

Channeling Madame Didi, Dolores village chief Vilma Caluag was accompanied by a number of the 24 barangay chairmen purportedly already in her deep pockets when she filed her COC for San Fernando mayor in 2019. Lightning struck twice with women contesting the mayorship of the capital city.

At her filing for the city mayorship anew last October, Madame Vi was accompanied only by her family.

From organization, let’s shift to tactics.

The early bird does not always get the worm. Sometimes, because of his over-eagerness – read: gagad – he gets to be shot first.

Think Pampanga First District in 1998 here. The first pretender to the throne being vacated by Cong Tarzan Lazatin was businessman Beko Panlilio. Ah, how the barangay captains swarmed around him from late 1996, only to lose them to “Cong Rey” Guiao, whose own campaign sputtered when Atty. Ed Pamintuan left the Angeles City hall for the district. Of course, it was EdPam’s vice, Blueboy Nepomuceno who went on to win.

The early bird gets to be fed first to the hungry mob. Heed the Kapampangan adage here: Tauling kabit, manu. Last comes first.

Opinion polls are another matter to take real care of. Believe in published surveys at your own peril. There I go again.

In 2007, an alleged survey allegedly commissioned by the provincial government alleged that then-3rd District Rep. Rey Aquino in his comeback bid for the San Fernando mayorship led the incumbent Mayor Oscar Rodriguez 60-40.

So, what’s new here? Oca never won in any published survey since he entered politics at that point. Conversely, he had won all but one – 1992 – electoral contests he joined: 1987, 1995, 1998, 2001congressional races, and the 2004 mayorship.

And in 2007, Oca drubbed Rey to the tune of over 16,000-vote margin. Same margin of error placed in that alleged survey most certainly.

It was only in 2016 that the surveys proved correct – the incumbent Cong Oca losing to the man he beat in the same contest in 2013, his inaanak Dong Gonzales.

Like Oca, another one who never won in any survey but won all elections he entered is Cris Garbo of Mabalacat – as councilor twice, board member three times and vice mayor once. And board member again in 2007, 2010 and 2013.

So, Garbo lost – to Boking Morales as projected by the surveys in 2016. So, who’s been the mayor of Mabalacat since 2017 to date?

Surveys are meant to serve as campaign guideposts. Their efficacy for propaganda purposes – to gain some bandwagon effect – have long been lost because of surfeit and the incredibility of results.

Have you read of any published local survey citing its margin of error? If you have, did they tell you how they arrived at it?

End of lesson for now. Keep on running, dream on winning.

 

Punto @14

 

FOURTEEN YEARS. That we have come to this point – where a number of contemporaries in the local print media failed to reach even but a third of the way – is more than enough cause for celebration. Especially more so given, most grievously, the still ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Indeed, at the onset of the Q protocols in the first quarter of 2020, Punto! nearly came to what its haters – yes, we have them too --  so ardently wished it would be: Puntod! 

Forced by the circumstances as we were to stop altogether our twice weekly  print issue, reduce our office staff to the barest essential, limit our online coverage.

It is to the credit of our correspondents – the human infrastructure without which Punto! could not stand, much less excel; to their total commitment to the journalism profession fostering that unwavering sense of sacrifice that we have survived: All the salaries/allowances/fees from the GM, the office staff, the editor, columnists, correspondents, down to the last contributor were slashed by a whopping 50 percent.

It was hard, it was painful, but it was the only way we could keep Punto! afloat, as it did, indeed.  

We owe it too to our advertisers, corporate and in government, for keeping their accounts as much as their trust in us, the economic crunch they too suffer, notwithstanding.

It is that trust – shared by our thousands of readers and followers – painstakingly built in the past 14 years with fairness in our news, fearlessness in our opinions, strict adherence to facts, in the service of the malayang Pilipino that we shall ever endeavor to keep unshaken in the coming years.

Guided as we are by what Joseph Pulitzer long ago articulated which at Punto! has come to be the very article of faith of a truly free and unfettered press:

…[F]ight for progress and reform,

never tolerate injustice or corruption,

always fight demagogues of all parties,

never belong to any party,

always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers,

never lack sympathy with the poor,

always remain devoted to the public welfare,

never be satisfied with merely printing news,

always be drastically independent,

never be afraid to attack wrong,

whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

Pointed, yes. As only Punto! can.

 (Editorial, Oct. 27, 2021)

 

 

Point of integrity

 

BEING AT odds with publishers/owners is an all-too-common predicament among editors, including presumptive ones like me, who strongly adhere to the dictum: “Publish first, truth always, be damned later.”

Owners have their corporate interests to preserve, protect, and promote, which, in many cases, are at variance with the editor’s fundamental duty to publish Truth, no matter the cost.

No way is this more articulated than in Read All About It! The Corporate Takeover of America’s Newspapers by James D. Squires, a former editor of the Chicago Tribune, thus: “The marriage of corporations and journalism is an unnatural, unhappy union. The best journalists are naturally skeptical individuals with a healthy disrespect for authority, pomposity, and ruling classes. They understand and appreciate the ideal of democracy that one man’s vote and voice are as important as another’s. And they have a well-honed apparatus for detecting two staples of the corporate culture – bullshit and insincerity.”

You will know who wears the pants in that unnatural, unhappy union with but a cursory browse of the pages of a newspaper – the owner, when his photographs and news about the most banal of his activities pepper the pages, Page One not excluded. Yes, there are publishers who simply love to publish themselves, when even the least of their business endeavors crowd legitimate news out of the pages, in effect reducing their papers to nothing more than company journals.

In such set-up, even the best editors can only do their worst. As the great Arthur Krock, winner of three Pulitzer Prizes and once “Dean of Washington newsmen,” wrote: “A hired journalism, however zealous, however loyal, however entrusted, however brilliant, cannot be great because it speaks through the mist of subordination.”

The editor having the upper hand? When the publisher subordinates his interest to the “sanctity of the desk.”

As in the early days of journalism, newspapers are published to: 1) indulge the whims and caprices of the publisher; 2) promote his businesses; and 3) serve the political causes he espouses. Civic duty is a thoroughly alien entity to the greater number of publishers.

To paraphrase from memory what I read somewhere, the title of the material I cannot immediately recall: If you told that kind of publisher that he had a duty to the public to print the news objectively and accurately, he would have asked what kind of duty some other kinds of businessmen had. His newspaper being a business enterprise, news to him would be the same as cars to a Levy Laus, or house and lot to a Nestor Mangio, or tocino and longanisa to a Lolita Hizon, even halo-halo and pancit luglog to a Razon.

News being no more than a commodity to sell, a product to be packaged and presented in whatever way that will be most appealing to his customers and thus will bring him most profit. Even at the expense of integrity.

But commercial viability and editorial integrity are not mutually exclusive.

This is best exemplified in The New York Times, unarguably the number one newspaper in the world.

A well-known lore: At the time of World War II, faced with newsprint rationing, the Ochs and Sulzberger families that owned the Times chose to print news over advertising, thereby sacrificing much-needed revenues that the latter offered. The act singularly established their paper’s moral ascendancy over all other newspapers in America.

With the Times emerging – and remaining to this day – the most influential newspaper in the USA, if not in the whole world. That good decision of the owners proved to be good business sense too. High-mindedness returned better profits in the long run, so the moral lesson of the Times ­story instructs us.

Perhaps, Punto’s publishers have read that same story. Hence, their express policy of editorial integrity first, profitability second.

SO IT was written here in October 2008 on the very first anniversary of this paper. So it still stands strong today – Punto’s editorial integrity.

(Zona Libre, Oct. 27, 2021)