Remembering John Paul II

IN CELEBRATION of his feast day, October 22, here is a reprint of a personal encounter with the great John Paul II during his first papal visit to the Philippines in 1981.

Covering JP II   

NO YOU don’t cover John Paul II. He covers you. His presence totally engulfs you. 

Morong, Bataan/February 21, 1981 – At the Bataan Refugee Processing Center as early as the break of day, a crowd of thousands have started gathering before the canopied altar where the pilgrim pope is scheduled to celebrate Mass, principally for the Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian refugees. 

The wife and I – both information officers of the regional office of the Department of Public Information – along with a few staff conduct interviews among the faithful, both local and foreign. The single question: “What does the Pope mean to you?” 

Responses salvaged from fading memory now include:
“Kindness. Why can’t leaders of our country be as kind as he is?”
“Hope. I thought the world has forgotten us. He gives us hope of one day going back to our homeland, unafraid, unpersecuted for our beliefs.”
“Luck. Maybe soon, some other country will take us. The Pope may be our lucky charm.”
“Faith. In the basic goodness of all of us toward our fellowmen.”
“Grace. To bear our sufferings as Christ bore his for our sins.”
Virtues and values that find printed expression in a white streamer at the site:
“Wherever the Pope goes, the best things will be.” Indeed. Indeed. 

Then there is a direct plea, “Save the Cambodian People.” The horrific “Killing Fields” of the Khmer Rouge unearthed, going the rounds in the international media. 

Past noon, a US Navy helicopter from Subic lands, bringing in its most precious cargo: John Paul II.

A hush – and then deafening applause to the shouts of “Totus Tuus” and “Amo Te.”
An onrush, as a tide, of bodies with outstretched arms – seeking to touch, stemmed by an immovable white wall – of security men in barong. The tide may have been contained, but it is John Paul II that broke the wall – taking babies to bless and kiss, reaching out, touching heads and hands.

The cries of “Viva il Papa” crescendoing to the highest pitch as the Pontiff ascends the stairs to the canopied altar. A quietude descending upon the faithful as the strains of the opening hymn signal the pontifical Mass beginning. 

The readings I cannot now recall. But his homily is seared into my consciousness -- charity, the greatest of all virtues. Finding so much resonance in the hearts of the Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian refugees:

"Charity makes no excuses because of the other person’s ethnic origin, religious allegiance or political preference, no exception whatsoever; a charity which sees the person as a brother or sister in need and sees only one thing: to be of immediate assistance, to be a neighbour…The Church is ever mindful that Jesus Christ himself was a refugee, that as a child he had to flee with his parents from his native land in order to escape persecution. In every age, therefore, the Church feels herself called to help refugees. And she will continue to do so, to the full extent that her limited means allow…Of all human tragedies of our day, perhaps the greatest is that of the refugees.”

(No, that is not committed to memory. I found it in some periodicals I kept as souvenir of that papal visit.) 

So deeply touched, one can almost hear John Paul II’s heart break as he blesses and kisses refugee children in their native costumes bringing him gifts during the Offertory. Among the gifts, a basket of vegetables grown by them.

At the consecration, one feels one’s heart literally lifting up to the Lord, in pure adoration of the bread and wine transubstantiated to the real, mystical body and blood of Christ.
In absolute submission to the Lord’s presence, the camera slung on my shoulder makes an intruding reminder of my “official” purpose: to cover the Pope.
Hastily, I focus and click twice – in the midst of the Lord’s Prayer – in time to capture a dove perching on the stairs at the foot of John Paul II, Cardinal Sin, and First Lady Imelda Marcos. 

The peace of Christ be always with you, John Paul II intones, his message embracing the whole congregation, not the least of whom the First Lady and the Cardinal, whose “critical collaboration” with the Marcoses is later to turn into open confrontation. But that is two years in the future yet, after the martyrdom of Benigno Aquino, Jr.

In the meantime, the Mass ends – Go in the peace of Christ. Thanks be to God. Viva il Papa! Viva!

Media frenzy – the clicks of SLRs, the whirrs of television cameras amid all the jostling and pushing. Arms raised, I point and shoot, without the benefit of focus. 

On the steps of the US Navy helicopter to ferry him to Subic, John Paul II raises his hands in a final blessing, sweeping the multitude, his eyes on mine – all for a nanosecond but seems an eternity to me, feeling as that thief promised Paradise by the crucified Christ. 

Blessed, this sinner, for having been in the presence of the Holy John Paul II that day in Morong in February 1981, a presence that has remained in my being till now. 

(First published in Punto! on May 6, 2011, following JPII’s beatification  on May 1, 2011 (Divine Mercy Sunday) by Pope Benedict XIV. On April 27, 2014 he was canonized by Pope Francis with his feast day on Oct. 22.)

 

 

 

Quickie Arrey

 

                     Vince and Arrey: They go a long way. FB photograb

“AYAW NIYANG makasagabal at ayaw niyang maging distraction ito dahil alam niyang napakabigat na kailangan nating gawin at siya ay nag-tender ng irrevocable resignation at tinanggap ko na.”

So announced Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon of Undersecretary Arrey Perez’s resignation on Friday, Oct. 17, in the face of allegations linking his underling to contractors.

“Undersecretary Arrey Perez,” said Batangas 1^st District Rep. Leandro Leviste in an interview with DZRH earlier that day, in response to Dizon urging him to name DPWH officials he had claimed were reportedly linked to contractors involved in the controversial flood control projects.

“May mga red flag, tulad ng bakit sa labas ng opisina [meeting] sa mga contractor na magbi-bid sa proyekto? In the context of DPWH, we should hold our officials to a high standard. We cannot give them the benefit of the doubt. The burden of proof is on them, especially if they’re having meetings outside of the DPWH office with contractors of DPWH to prove na wala silang kickback,” Leviste said.

He also raised Perez’s “questionable history” on biddings and procurement, thus: “Siya ay nagkaroon na ng maraming posisyon, kabilang diyan nag-serve siya sa BCDA [Bases Conversion and Development Authority] kasama si Sec. Vince Dizon. Marami pong question sa biddings at procurement na ginanap sa mga dinaanan niyang mga posisyon. Kaya nakakapagtaka bakit sa lahat ng mga tao sa buong Pilipinas, si Usec. Arrey Perez pa ang aatasan ni Sec. Vince Dizon para sa posisyon na ‘yan, na posible pa siya ang hahawak ng bidding ng mga proyekto sa central office na sakop ang buong bansa?”

Even as Perez’s resignation has been accepted, Dizon said the investigation will continue. “The cleansing process will spare no one and show no favoritism, whether they’ve been here before, have already resigned, are from the previous administration, or are people I personally brought in.”

“No one will be exempt, and that’s what we need to do,” Dizon emphasized.

The proverbial reference to the marines easily raised at the DPWH chief there. 

18-day Usec at DPWH

Dizon himself handpicked Perez as undersecretary for operations in charge of convergence projects and technical services and administered his oath of office along with four other undersecretaries last Sept. 29. Resigning on Oct. 17, Perez’s sojourn at DPWH lasted all of 18 days. Shorter than a TUPAD worker’s.

100-day P-COO at MPTC

Before jumping to the DPWH, Perez was chief regulatory officer of the Metro Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. starting March 1, 2025 effectively serving all of six months in that post which in effect was a plunge from the position of president and chief operating officer of the MVP corporation he was appointed to on Nov. 30, 2024. Yes, he was PCEO for all of 100 days. And all of 11 months at MPTC. Short of the reglementary job permanency.

One-year plus at CIAC    

A longer tenure – 14 Sept. 2023 to 30 Sept. 2024, exactly one year and 16 days – Perez had as president and chief executive officer of the Clark International Airport Corp. His most tangible achievement – a mural on a wall depicting the development of the Clark International Airport from paper planes to a sorry excuse for a wide-bodied passenger jet that local art critics readily ridiculed as “obrang bitis,” literally foot-painted in Kapampangan.

To be fair, Perez did indeed get CIAC into the global limelight – though infamously – with his appropriation of an image of Midway Rising – a mixed-use development in San Diego California USA by SafdieRabines Architects – for his dreamed-up “Taylor Swift-ready” arena in Clark and imprinting thereat the CIAC logo. A clear case of piracy. (https://punto.com.ph/piracy-becomes-ciac/)

Longest stay at BCDA

Before CIAC, Perez had an extensive career at the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, rising from internal auditor in 2005 to vice president for business development and then senior vice president for corporate services group when Dizon was BCDA president-CEO.

It was their time together that saw the rise of New Clark City, debuting with the world class sports facilities Class 1 Athletics Stadium and Aquatics Center and Athletes’ Village showcased in the 2019 Southeast Asian Games but mucked with the Games’ P50-million cauldron derided as “the golden kaldero.”

Seeing red

It does not take a Congressman Leviste to see red at what was also then jeered at as “Cayetano’s folly” – for then-House Speaker Allan Peter’s dogged defense of that doggone cauldron.

Red as it is, in the mega scheme of things under investigation, that cauldron is but a small pennant, but glaring enough to warrant questions. As Leviste did, raising Perez’s “questionable history.”

Aye, there’s that controversial joint venture agreement between BCDA and MTD Capital Berhad for the P13-billion New Government Administrative Center project in New Clark City signed in 2018, if ageing memory serves right.

Issues too deep for me to dredge, I’d rather amuse myself with the quirkiness in quick-to-quit Arrey Perez. 

 

 

Hasta siempre, Che Guevara

 

IT HAS BEEN 58 years – well over half a century – after his death, but Ernesto Guevara de la Serna still lives. No incorruptible saint – in fact the so called “Butcher of La Cabana” for signing the death warrants of hundreds of “war criminals,” read: military officers of the ousted Batista regime as well as informants, and counter revolutionaries – Guevara has gained cult status around the world.

Notwithstanding too, the late – and still continuing – discoveries of his proven failures and alleged atrocities.

It was on the occasion of his 44^th death anniversary in Oct. 2011 that I essayed to touch the Che mystique, thus:

“COMANDANTE STAR on a black beret capping a frowning, pensive handsome face; left eyebrow slightly raised; black, long hair waving in the breeze.”

Beyond the image of Che Guevara pop cultured in millions of T-shirts, posters and decals around the globe, what do the young and not-so-young know about the man already long dead – executed on October 9, 1967 – even before they were born?

Essentially, nothing.

So, what fascinates them to wear that icon, in virtual veneration of the man they don’t even know?

Irreligious blind faith?

The aura of enchantment around that image of Che known in the whole of Latin America as El guerrillero heroico is – to Paco Ignacio Tabio Jr., author of the definitive Guevara: tambien conocido como el Che (Guevara: also known as Che) – wrought by “the manifestation of a transparency and supernatural honesty.”

There, arguably, lies the Guevara mystique.

The photograph was taken by Albert Korda for the Cuban newspaper Revolucion at the public funeral of the 81 fatalities in the explosion of La Coubre, a French ship laden with Belgian arms at the Havana harbour on March 4, 1960. Unpublished, the photo remained in the newspaper morgue. In 1968, the Italian publisher Giacomo Feltinelli, researching on the life of Che, found the photo in Korda’s house, took it back to Italy and made a poster from it. The rest, as clichéd, is history. The irony not lost in the capitalist success rising out of a communist “artifact.”

The Che brief may well read: Argentine by birth, doctor of medicine by education; adventurer and motorcycle enthusiast, poet, photographer, writer; by revolution defined and deified.

The essence of Che may well be in his word: “The only passion that guides me is for the truth…I look at everything from this point of view.”

By his truth he lived. By his truth he was executed. Life and death make a universality that finds relevance to and resonance in the world to this day.

An unshakeable belief in the people that makes the core value of the true revolutionary: “There is no effort made towards the people that is not repaid with the people’s trust.”

Vanity

A damnation of the vacuous vanity of self-ordained champions of the masses: “The people’s heroes cannot be separated from the people, cannot be elevated onto a pedestal, into something alien to the lives of that people.”

The masses eke an existence out of hovels, even as they look up to their heroes luxuriating in their high-walled mansions. So un-Che, so unheroic, so undemocratic, so prevalent. And so very Filipino.

Che holds the purity of the democratic ideal before its corruption by the politics of patronage: “How easy it is to govern when one follows a system of consulting the will of the people and one holds as the only norm all the actions which contribute to the well-being of the people.”

Compare with the Filipino norm of governance: Off with the people, buy the people, fool the people. Thus, the first call of the revolution: “People – forward with the Revolution! Workers – to the struggle! Peasants – organize!”

Romanticism – damned by Mao as a bourgeois diversion to be expunged from the Chinese Revolution, and for that matter, from all revolutions – finds a refining, humanist aspect in Che’s own: “If it were said of us that we’re almost romantics, that we are incorrigible idealists, that we think the impossible: then, a thousand and one times, we have to answer that yes, we are.”

The Latino attributes of intense passion, sentimentalism, and romanticism do not diminish any, but in fact even enhance, nay, inflame revolutionary zeal. Che makes the perfect argument: “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”

(In college, barely versed in Che’s life and works, I wrote an essay on Che titled The Romantic Revolutionary. Modesty be damned, I got a flat 1.0 on that. More importantly, bragging rights for having already grasped Che’s essence even then. Though my enchantment with Che started in high school, in – of all places – the Mater Boni Consilii Seminary.)

Humanism

Che takes the humanist facet of the revolution further: “Revolutions, accelerated radical social changes, are made of circumstances; not always, almost never, or perhaps never can science predict their mature form in all its detail. They are made of passions, of man’s fight for social vindication, and never perfect.”

Yet another taboo in the revolutionary movement – adventurism – was taken to the positive plane by Che: “Many will call me an adventurer, and I am, but of a different type: of those who put their lives on the line to demonstrate their truths.”

So, Che demonstrated his truth with his death, something the romantic adventurer in him put thus: “Wherever death may surprise us, it is most welcome. Our funeral dirge will be the staccato sound of machineguns and the cries of battle and victory.”

Some object lessons there for the RAM, the Magdalo, the YOU and what-have-you in the Philippine military wanting a coup. Moreso, for the current cadres of the longest-running insurgency in all of Asia.  

Che’s thesis on revolutionary praxis makes one of the most succinct on the subject: “And it must be said quite sincerely that in a true revolution, to which everything is given, from which no material returns are expected, the task of revolutionary vanguard is both magnificent and anxious…In these conditions, a great dose of humanity is needed, a sense of justice and truth, if we are not to fall in the trap of extreme dogmatism, of cold scholasticism, of isolation from the masses. Every day we have to fight so that love for humanity can be transformed into concrete deeds, into acts that set an example, that mobilize.”

There lie lessons in revolutions Che had fought, had seen, and in those he did not see: the Stalinist dogmatism that pervaded the Soviet Union and its satellites, the excesses of China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Mao’s cult of personality, the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields. And, in the current of events, Xi Jinping taking China to the imperialist road to perdition.   

Failure

Before his fatal failure in Bolivia, Che bombed out in the Congo in the 1965 attempt to start the conflagration of the African continent that, to him, represented “one of, if not the most, important battlefields against every form of exploitation that exists in the world.”

“We cannot liberate by ourselves a country that does not wish to fight,” Che conceded defeat six months after. A pointed lesson that it is as hard to start as to stop revolution from without. Lessons for Che himself in Bolivia, for the USA in Vietnam, and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Lessons still unheeded today in Iraq, in Chechnya, and again, in Afghanistan. Hasta la victoria siempre – ever onward to victory – usually captions the Che icon. It was the exhortation that closed Che’s letter to Fidel Castro before he left for the Congo. It has become the rallying cry for revolutionaries around the world.

But Che had a more stirring call for revolutionary solidarity: “If you can tremble with indignation every time an injustice is committed in the world, we are comrades.”

Hasta siempre, Comandante Che Guevara!

 

The private-public contradiction of BM Estelito, aka Shiwen, Lim

 

RES IPSA LOQUITUR. Then-aspiring board member Estelito aka Shiwen Lim in a public display of his COC. File photo of SunStar-Pampanga.

EMBROILED IN legal entanglements ranging from a garnishment order and sum of money writ to a case of large scale estafa and more reportedly coming, Pampanga 3^rd District board member Estelito P. Lim alias Shiwen Lim cried harassment and  filed a complaint before the National Privacy Commission against Punto!, SunStar-Pampanga, iOrbit News Online, and CLTV-36 – all that have assiduously reported on his cases, and on the cries for justice of the alleged victims of his schemes.  

Lim’s contention: The publication of his warrant of arrest subjected him to public ridicule and prejudgment; that the inclusion of personal details indicated in his warrant of arrest exposed him and his family to danger and public shame; that this violated his right to privacy.

Privacy, ‘tis been many times proven, makes the ready refuge for public scoundrels. No, that is not in the least implied in this instance.

Still, privacy is the last thing Lim should have invoked, given his celebrity status in social media from Facebook to TikTok – indeed, that which he parlayed to a successful run for the sangguniang panlalawigan where he now roosts.

Virtually and veritably, Lim has been too long a public figure before he was elected to public office. And therefore, well within the realm of public interest, open to public scrutiny. Even ridicule and denunciations, if we go by social media posts.  

As provincial board member, let Lim be impacted with that fundamental principle enshrined in the Supreme Law of the land: Public office is a public trust.

Of government officers and employees enjoined to “at all times, be accountable to the people, serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty, and efficiency; act with patriotism and justice, and lead modest lives.”

So, the disclosure of his personal details – specifically home address – indicated in the warrant of arrest media published as factual basis for their articles, now constitutes a violation of his privacy?

If this were so, Lim had already incriminated himself long before media published those legal documents attendant to the cases he has been named as respondent.

After filing his certificate of candidacy with the Commission on Elections in October last year, Lim did the perfunctory photo-op showing his accomplished and duly received COC that subsequently made the rounds of mainstream and social media. The COC contained even much more than the personal details in the warrant of arrest that Lim now invokes as a cause of breach of privacy. Res ipsa loquitur, anyone? 

Of the COC, Comelec spokesperson John Rex Laudiangco said at the time of filing last October: “It is the specific document required by law to establish the express intent of a person, or aspirant, to run for a specific elective public office, establishing his or her possession of all qualifications and none of the disqualifications, declaring as well his political party affiliation, if any.”

Lots of personal details there, if I may.  

“Given that this is a public document, it is required to be executed under oath,” noted Laudiangco.

Furthered Comelec chair George Garcia: “[The COC] highlights the intent to aspire for a particular position. The COC reveals compliance with the qualification requirements of the Constitution and the law. And false material representation can be grounds for cancellation of candidacy or denial of due course coupled with misrepresentation as an election offense aside from the crime of perjury. This is therefore the document for the voters to better know the candidates.”

Public interest. As much for the voters specific in the case of the COC, as for the general public in warrants of arrest.

Quod erat demonstrandum, as my favorite fiscal was wont to say.