The ex factor

THIS IS not about that unknown, thus X, element that makes one beauty stand out among a bevy of beauties, as in those Miss Whatever pageants or in modelling.

It’s all about the ex – as in erstwhile, former, once, onetime, past – elective officials seeking to regain lost political glory. Or how their past factors in their present quests. To the point: Does being an ex-mayor or ex-governor or ex-congressman or ex-whatever positively matter in elections?

The thought struck me seeing so many exes in Pampanga – maybe, even elsewhere -- running anew in the May 9 polls, even for the mayoralty alone.

In the 1^st District, there’s Malou Paras-Lacson in Magalang, and Boking Morales in Mabalacat City.   

In the 2^nd District, Carling de La Cruz in Porac, Art Salalila in Sta. Rita, Eddie Guerrero in Floridablanca, and once ALE Partylist Rep. Lina Cabrera in Sasmuan.

In the 3^rd District, Chito Espino in Arayat, and Oscar Rodriguez in the City of San Fernando.

In the 4^th District, Annette Flores-Balgan in Macabebe, Leonora Wong in San Simon, and Johnny Sambo in Sto. Tomas.

While sharing commonality in being exes, peculiarity obtains in their individual situations. 

Two are in for return bouts with their nemeses in the 2019 elections – Paras-Lacson versus incumbent Romy Pecson who beat her by 27 votes; Sambo against incumbent Gloria “Ninang” Ronquillo.

Two were three-term mayors now incumbent vice mayors: Wong wanting to dislodge the once-suspended Abundio “JP” Punsalan; Flores-Balgan in sibling rivalry with elder brother Leonardo “Bobong” Flores.

Four are coming from loses in previous attempts: Guerrero who also lost in the vice mayoralty race right after his third term and in 2019 against incumbent Darwin Manalansan; Espino against now term-ending Bon Alejandrino; and Salalila against brother Dagi, the incumbent; Cabrera against incumbent Nardo Velasco. 

From a one-term hiatus, three termer De la Cruz now challenges reelectionist Jing Capil. Unable to recall a similar situation in past elections, a victory for the former will be a precedent of sorts here.  

Rodriguez is on a different level altogether: congressional winner in his first electoral foray in 1987, losing to Didi Domingo in 1992, winning over her in 1995, reelected in 1998 and 2001, winning the San Fernando mayoralty in 2004, 2007, and 2010, returning to Congress in 2013, losing his seat to Dong Gonzales in 2016, thought to have retired thereafter, beat the deadline for COC filing last year.     

Morales is sui generis in politics: vice mayor in 1988, losing in his first try for the mayoralty in 1992, winning in 1995, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016 but unseated by the Comelec in 2017 for violation of the three-term limit – all of 16 years after the fact.   

The once-forever mayor ran for vice mayor in 2019 but lost – miserably – to his nephew Geld Aquino.

Now we go ex-factoring.

Nung anyang macalucluc ya milucas ya salol, ngeni pang yang managalan? (He lost when he was incumbent, how can he possibly win now that he is the challenger? – no direct translation of a rather picturesque Capampangan idiomatic expression there).

Apparently unapplicable to immediate return bouts, to wit:

Candaba Mayor Rene Maglanque lost to neophyte Danilo Baylon in 2016, but beat him in 2019.   

Incumbent Mayor Pecson lost to Paras-Lacson in 2016 and beat her in 2019. She is out to return the favor this May. An interesting fight if only for the degla. In Sambo versus Ronquillo too.

While a single loss proximate to end-term seems survivable, multiple ones are veritably insurmountable – Espino, Salalila, Cabrera – most especially those who went below their incumbent status and still lost, thus: Vice mayor namu mesambut cayu, qng panga-mayor nanu pang pag-asa yu? (You lost for vice mayor, what hope have you to win for mayor?) – Morales, Guerrero. Here is where the ex is hexed.

A case in reverse is that of Flores-Balgan and Wong – undefeated in three successive mayoralty runs, sitting vice mayors now. There is hardly any reference from their constituencies of their being ex. The mayoralty viewed as mere resumption of duty after the breather that is the vice mayoralty. This we have to see.  

Ex-three termers who lost in even but a single comeback bid who run anew face overwhelming odds, not the least the ridicule of their constituents: Bisa ca pa? E ca pa sinawa? Nanung e mu alacuan quen? (You still want (the position)? Aren’t you sated yet? What can’t you leave there? – direct translations now). Yo, Guerrero! Yo, Espino! Yo, Morales!     

How about Rodriguez?

The ex factor stacks up in Mang Oca’s favor – street parliamentarian, human rights lawyer, a pillar in legislation, brilliant prosecutor in the Estrada impeachment trial, father of San Fernando cityhood, World City Mayor Awardee, etcetera. Think gravitas and not one of his rivals even comes close, dare I say. And no apologies there. How all this stands against the factor of age, is all up to the electorate.    

Given the magnificence of his exes, were Mang Oca now imbued with the X factor – that “variable in a given situation that could have the most significant impact on the outcome…”

No fearless forecasts here, only random ruminations of an armchair theorist. Chillax.      

 (Punto! March 23, 2022) 

 

Marcos Jr. at 60%, seriously?

"OBVIOUSLY HE has captured the imagination of a good percentage of our voters. Also, he has more than adequate resources to sustain his presence in social media, his caravans, his campaign. Plus, his name of course and the association with his father has definitely benefited him from that."

So spoke Pulse Asia executive director Ana Tabunda of the February 18-23 survey her company conducted showing former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. keeping his lead over all other presidential aspirants.

Marcos Jr. polled 60% to VP Leni Robredo’s 15%, Manila Mayor Isko Moreno’s 10%, Sen. Manny Pacquiao’s 8%, and Sen. Ping Lacson’s 2%. The rest of the presidential timbers obviously axed unceremoniously from the survey’s interview schedule.

And Pulse Asia has never been wrong in predicting the next president, so stressed Tabunda in ANC Headstart.

Gloating over the results, Marcos Jr. spox Vic Rodriguez said the survey “has again debunked the fake narrative being forced by some small segment of our society on the current sentiments” of Filipinos on the May 9 elections.

Rubbing it in: “While some of them may claim that they are winning in ‘Twitter’ and ‘Google’ searches, frontrunner Bongbong Marcos is winning the battle with the Filipino people.” So was he quoted in media.  

Quick and querulous are the dismissals of the survey results as the “false pulse” of the electorate, Pacquiao and Lacson unbothered a bit.

The Kakampink movement of Robredo went the full nine yards questioning the accuracy of the methodology, disparaging the implausibility of the results.

Argument 1: Marcos polled 60% of 2,400 adult respondents – that is a total of 1,440 individuals – and it’s already reflective of the preference of the national electorate.  Robredo has been gathering mammoth audiences by the scores of thousands in rallies in Naga, Quezon City, Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, Iloilo, Cavite, Bulacan and Bacolor, even in the so-called Solid North province of Isabela and that’s 15%?

Argument 2: Marcos has 60% of the vote when he could not even get decent numbers – hakot and takot notwithstanding – to rallies that his minions had to cancel. Resibo: Antique, Mindoro, Tarlac, Paranaque.

Argument 3: Marcos has 60% preference and still his handlers have to multiply a thousandfold the measly 18,000 attendees and spectators to his caravan-rally in Las Piñas to an incredible 500,000?  

Resibo from CNN: “Las Piñas City Police Chief Col. Jaime Santos on Monday confirmed that the police estimated around 5,000 people were inside The Tent, Global South in the city, where Marcos and other candidates of UniTeam held a rally. He also confirmed that around 3,000 people gathered outside the venue, while over 10,000 participated in the caravan.”

Aye, there is more, much more accuracy in surveying lands than people here.

And once more the broken record that I am when it comes to opinion polling plays anew: Believe in published surveys at your own peril.
Case 1: In 2007, then-Rep. Rey Aquino was so gung-ho at taking back the San Fernando mayoralty from incumbent Oscar Rodriguez – “Pamacsi que y Oca” – with a 60 to 40 edge in surveys. Oca won, as he did in all but two – 1992 and 2016 – electoral contests he joined: 1987, 1995, 1998, 2001 congressional races, and the 2004 mayorship, even as he always lost in all published surveys on those elections.
Case 2: Crisostomo Garbo was never the top choice in any survey but won all elections he entered – as Mabalacat councilor twice, first district board member three times, vice mayor once, and mayor now twice. Currently, Garbo is polled as winning in one survey while another showed him losing to political newbie broadcaster Deng Pangilinan.
So, again, I write: Surveys are meant to serve as campaign guideposts. Their efficacy to gain some bandwagon effect has long been lost because of surfeit and the incredibility of results.
Which makes this whole affair of press releasing survey results, whether factual or false, a double-edged sword. Propaganda – as these survey releases are nothing but – can always backfire. With the outcome diametric to the intended results. Propa-pangit. The spinmeisters of my generation coined that word for it.      

Triumphant Truman displays erroneous Chicago Daily Tribune banner headline on the result of the 1948 US presidential polls. Getty Images/grabbed from web

The perils of opinion polls – along with the overconfidence they bring to their purported winners – are best exemplified in the (in)famous “Dewey defeats Truman” US prudential elections of 1948.

New York Governor Thomas Dewey was by most indications in the polls was on the way to an easy victory over incumbent President Harry Truman who was into his first election for president, having succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt who died in office in 1945.

Truman’s Democratic Party had splintered into three factions and pre-election polls signaled Dewey was so comfortably ahead that one of the three national pollsters at that time, Elmo Roper, declared he would release no further survey results unless a political miracle intervened.

So confident of winning that Dewey was said to have told supporters: “… always remember, when you’re leading, don’t talk.” 

On the other hand, Truman “had just one strategy—attack, attack, attack, carry the fight to the enemy’s camp,” so we read in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography by David McCullough. 

The outcome of the elections – and with it “the epic failure of the pollsters, pundits, and the press” – is memorialized in that picture of Truman in triumph holding aloft the Chicago Daily Tribune with the erroneous banner headline “Dewey defeats Truman.” 

No, I am neither parallelizing past and present political events nor insinuating anything.

 

 

 

Vanity unfair

AESOP made a fable of it: “The fly sat upon the axle-tree of the chariot wheel, and said, ‘What a cloud of dust do I raise.’”

The taga-ilog crafted a proverb out of it: “Langaw na dumapo sa likod ng kalabaw, pakiwari’y malaki pa sa tinuntungan.”
The taga-pampang, never to be outdone by their neighbors, witticised it thus: “Soga ing penako na, katayid damulag ya.”
“So there are some vain persons, that, whatsoever goeth alone or moveth upon greater means, if they have never so little hand in it, they think it is they that carry it.” So wrote the great English essayist Francis Bacon on the subject.
Yeah, it’s vainglory we are talking about here, dummy.
As in basking in reflected glory, like the moon boasting of its light that is no more than that reflected upon it by the sun.
So common in sons of not necessarily illustrious, but even merely popular, fathers. Some even get to be governors totally clueless in the art of governance. (Update: Others even ambitioning to the presidency on the grounds of their forebear’s infamy. Yea, like you-know-he.)
As in huffing and puffing to look heftier and mightier than one’s real puny, sorry self. Paper tigers, the activists of the ‘60s call them. Menacing but totally harmless. Like some soldier-boys you and I know.
As in a mere foot soldier claiming full credit for victory in war.
Come to think of it, wasn’t the great 1st Lt. Ferdinand E. Marcos of USAFFE cited for single-handedly delaying the fall of Bataan and Corregidor for one month? Only, the citation came nearly 20 years after the fact, err, the lie.
There is one writer, Michael Korda in his book Power, if I am not mistaken, who pricked the vainglorious bubble thus: “Only a weakling will endeavor to display strength at every turn.”
So there, form over substance. Clanging cymbals signifying nothing, the Apostle Paul preached of vanities.
So beware of him that blows his own trumpet. For there is nothing there but hot, always fetid, air. And he too that follows him.
Take heed of Bacon: “(Vain)Glorious men are the scorn of wise men; the admiration of fools; the idols of parasites; and the slaves of their own vaunts.”
Lofty, lofty classical thoughts there we have to translate to current times. So, vainglory goes from the sublime to the, err, clinical. Yeah, to the child psychologist’s ADHD -- attention deficiency hyperactive disorder.
And from the clinical to the sublimely ridiculous, KSP – kulang sa pansin.
So have you noticed those bloated tarpaulined egos lately?
Truly pathetic.

(First published in Punto! Feb. 10, 2008, reprinted March 7-12, 2022 for its relevance to the times.)

Our good shepherd

 

“IF WE really pray together, (we would discern that) one cannot monopolize truth. Truth begins in the heart, the sanctuary of our conscience.”

Thus spoke the Most Reverend Paciano B. Aniceto, archbishop of San Fernando, at the thanksgiving Mass in celebration of his 71st birthday on Sunday.

He could well be speaking of that sector of society that has arrogated unto itself all possession of truth. But, no, the archbishop’s sermon encompasses all the faithful, their individual politics undistinguished.

In the presence of Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the Reverend Governor Eddie T. Panlilio, Congressman Dong Gonzales, City of San Fernando Mayor Oscar Rodriguez, and a host of other politicians and local leaders who were allowed through the stringent security measures imposed by the Presidential Security Guard at the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary, Apu Ceto shone as the shepherd truly worthy of his flock.

To Apu Ceto, there never are black sheep. He has faith in the goodness inherent in anyone, even among those who have gone astray. I should know, I was once Apu Ceto’s most prodigal child, converted by his faith in his God and his belief in me, notwithstanding my frailties.

“We need to purify and change. If we follow that process, we will have a peaceful and just society with integrity. You should watch and pray that you don’t fall into temptation.”

“Our country is at a crossroad. We are a divided people, eternally quarreling, bickering. Some media contribute to this. We are falling into the pit.” Apu Ceto warns.

But instead of taking his flock to the streets of protests to foment greater divisions, Apu Ceto, pointed them to the way that he has always embraced:

“We are asking the Lord to permeate every stratum of society. Families and leaders should work so there is a holistic approach in the search for a real, authentic, common good, for the progress and development of our people.”

Ora et labora. Pray and work. Christian life at its most essential.

“Let us pray together, discern together so that we could know the will of God for the Filipino people.”

Apu Ceto laid down anew, the very ground upon which sprang the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines pastoral statement on truth. That which, Apu Ceto lamented, made the shepherds “unpopular.”

He cautioned those that found cause for impatience, if not disbelief, in the pastoral statement: “The Church is a sign of contradiction but it comes from a position of strength because the center of evangelization is Jesus.”

Oh, how conveniently have we Christians forgotten the very paradox of our faith: of spiritual strength in human weakness, of the triumph in the Cross, of being born in dying.

“We have to give the precise mission of the Church, we do not respond to external pushes only. Intrinsic in its nature and mission, the Church must define society, not society defining us.”

Apu Ceto has spoken. And eloquently. Now, were the more loquacious – and mediaphilic – of our churchmen as discerning as him…

(Zona Libre, March 2008. Reprinted on the occasion of the Archbishop Emeritus of San Fernando Most Rev. Paciano B. Aniceto’s 85th birthday, March 9, 2022) 

 

 

Tragedy and farce

 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 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 though, 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.

A vindication of Ninoy, his widow in yellow triumphant. Shining moment of the Filipino before the admiring world. Brief shining moment like the mythical Camelot, it turned out. Within 10 years, the Marcoses were back, their northern bailiwick as strong as ever.

A short 15 years after, EDSA Dos came. No, not against the dictator’s remnants, but one petty excuse for a president.

Another Aquino, the BS III in an interregnum of sorts, sampling Pampanga’s Glory-Been in his self-caricature of Mr. Clean.

In another 15 years from EDSA’s second coming, the nation descended to Duterte’s despotism.

2022. But one generation removed from the original EDSA, comes the son and namesake of the dictator at the cusp of claiming his birthright to the presidency.

Never again. Never forget. Not ever in the Filipino, alas.

Marx paraphrased: History repeating itself in the tragedy that was Marcos and the farce that is Marcos Junior.

Santayana impacted: Unlearning of the lessons of history, we are a people dumbed, we are a nation damned.

Rabelais dead-on: “Draw the curtains, the farce is played.”

Game over.

(Punto! Feb. 22, 2022)

The Capampangan

THERE IS much ado about the Capampangan.

More than a tribe, the old Capampangan prides himself as a separate race. Perhaps in bitter rebellion against the diminution of his once vast kingdom that was said to have stretched from the mouth of the Pasig in Tondo to the upper reaches of the Chico River in Cagayan Valley.

Mayhaps, in a vicious reaction to the consequent waning of the primacy of his lingua franca which is now limited to just the province and the southern half of Tarlac, plus a single town in each of Pampanga’s contiguous provinces of Bataan, Bulacan, and Nueva Ecija.

He may not be the distinct species that he likes to make of himself, but the Capampanga unarguably stands out when ranged against his Filipino fellows. You will know the Capampangan, easily.

Food is his passion. A gourmand is the Capampangan as he turns snails and frogs, dogs and field mice, pythons and cobras, locusts and mole crickets into exotic dishes rivaling ambrosia itself. And no meal for him without the attendant condiments of patis, toyo, and aslam.

And who could love the pungent buro more, other than the Capampangan?

How the Capampangan loves to party! Just about every occasion is a cause for celebration. A Capampangan fiesta is unrivalled in the excesses of bacchanalia. The fattened calf or pig, even good old Bantay, get served on the Capampangan table. Beer goes by the truckful. No money is no excuse to feast. E ca macapagtawó? Ala cang marine tau. Nananu ya itang mag-five-six qng cantu? Feast for the day, all the year to the usurer.

Fashion is an everyday statement. In colleges and universities, the ubiquitous Capampangan student is the one dressed to the nines but with barely a dime. Just about everywhere he is togged as though ever-ready to a party.

Dance is a religion. Even before the fad of disco and ballroom dancing, the Capampangan has had – dating to the turn of the century, the 19th to the 20th pa – Circulo Fernandino in the capital town, Bachelor’s Club, later Thomasian in Sto. Tomas, Old Legs in Bacolor, Batubalani in Guagua, Maharajah in Macabebe, Now and Then in Minalin, and a host of other annual formal dances where the local crème de la crème shine in their best fineries.

Porma is his way of life. When a Kapampangan earns – even barely enough – the first thing he buys is a car, never a house. Why? Ninanu ca, malyari meng apidala-dalang pamorma ing bale?

Now you know the reason behind the labeling of the Capampangan as mayabang. Part of this also is his “sugar mentality” raised, no doubt, in the province’s once fertile sugarlands. More than a sweet tooth and a diabetic constitution, the Capampangan possesses a saccharine tongue.

Just you listen when he woos the object of his affection. Or eavesdrop to his whispers to the subject of his seduction. And wonder no more why the Capampangan is a lahing sibuburian, if not a lahing pipicutan.

The Capampangan’s mastery with words is manifested too in the number of cabalens in literature and in the media. Just about every newspaper in Manila has a Capampangan for an editor, columnist, deskman, or reporter.

Of course, there are the laughables about the Capampangan.

When the deadly H-fever epidemic was wreaking havoc in Metro Manila and elsewhere, it was joked about that Pampanga would be spared. Why? The Capampangan has no H in his language, silly.

Which brings to mind that tongue-twister that landed me a grade of 70 in high-school Pilipino after I read it thus: Hako hay naiipan ng anging hamian hat hako’y napa-alak-ak, a-a-a-a-a.

Having not the letter H in the language is nothing to be ashamed of though. This is part of the Kapampangan’s Spanish heritage. Remember in lengua Español, the letter H is silent. O, nanu pang asabi mu?

Positivizing the negative is a Kapampangan attribute. Finding opportunity in adversity is imbued in the Kapampangan character. Yes, there was more than sloganeering or rhetorics in the late Governor Bren Z. Guiao’s E co magmalun, mibangun ya ing Pampanga immediately after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. It was a call to the resiliency innate in the Capampangan. Proven in time by the leaps and bounds the province has taken rising, then soaring from Pinatubo’s ashes of devastation and despair…

Luid ya ing Capampangan.

(First published in The Voice, Dec. 6-12, 1998 – all of 23 years ago. Uploaded on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the foundation of the Province of Pampanga, Dec. 11, 2021) 

 

'Dugong aso' deconstructed

ALDO NING KAPAMPANGAN. Celebrating the 450th founding anniversary of the Province of Pampanga started with a Holy Mass concelebrated by San Fernando Archbishop Florentino Lavarias and Archbishop Emeritus Paciano B. Aniceto and half a dozen priests at the Capitiol grounds on Monday.

This was immediately followed by the lighting of the Capitol’s Christmas displays. All other events traditionally included in the annual celebrations, foremostly the Mutya ning Kapampangan pageant and the Most Outstanding Kapampangan Awards, have been cancelled for the second straight year owing to the pandemic.

The pause, the quiet accorded the festivities, gives a good time to really reflect on the Kapampangan soul.

Rather than go to the breast-thumping “Kapampangan Ku, Pagmaragul Ku” conceit and think hard of what I can really be proud of as a Kapampangan, I chose to look at that singular disparagement of the Kapampangan in the eyes of all the other “nations” of the archipelago – from the Ilocano to the Bicolano, the Waray and the Ilonggo, the Cebuano, the Maranaw, etcetera.

Aye, the Kapampangan dog-tagged – it can’t be any more literal – as dugong aso.

Quick trip through my yellowed archives brought back this piece written and rewritten some years back –

…DOGS ARE clichéd as man’ts best friend, yet they tend to get the choicest cuts in the worst insults. “Gone to the dogs,” for instance.

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago riled the usually cat-cool Sen. Panfilo Lacson (not my relative) not so much for calling him “Pinky” as for branding him as Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile’s “attack dog.” Warranting a reply in kind from the former top cop. A case of “dog-eat-dog” there?

“Tuta ng Kano (America’s puppy).” So, the militant Left derided Ferdinand E. Marcos, Cory Aquino, Fidel Ramos, and all those who followed them to Malacañang down to Cory’s son BS.

Even the venerable Carlos P. Romulo, who served eight Philippine presidents – from Quezon to Marcos – and who himself sat as president – of the Fourth Session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1949-1950, was not spared of a similar epithet. No idle urban legend but a revealed truth to student activists of the First Quarter Storm was Chou En-Lai’s dismissal of Romulo as “America’s running dog” at the Bandung Conference of Asian and African nations in 1955 that helped crystallized the Non-Aligned Movement.

At the time of Cory too, I remember the Malacañang Press Corps raising a howl over a presidential factotum’s obvert reference to them as mongrels when he directed his staff to “feed the kennel” whenever his office issued press releases.

For too long a time, a collective insult, indeed, a curse, to the whole Kapampangan race is the branding “dugong aso.”

In 1981, the political leadership of Pampanga – from Gov. Estelito P. Mendoza, Vice Gov. Cicero J. Punzalan, down to the mayors led by the “Big 5” of San Fernando’s Armando Biliwang, Arayat’s Benigno Espino, Magalang’s Daniel Lacson, Sta. Ana’s Magno Maniago, and Sta. Rita’s Frank Ocampo, along with Angeles City’s Francisco G. Nepomuceno, raged and ranted rabidly at then Olongapo City Mayor Richard J. Gordon for citing the Kapampangans as dugong aso in the context of regionalism’s ill-effects to nationalism in his nomination speech for Ferdinand E. Marcos in the KBL party convention at the Manila Hotel.

Actual physical threats were even thrown Gordon’s way in addition to some persona non grata resolutions. (Gordon’s topping Pampanga in the senatorial contest of May 2013, is some vindication of the forgiving-and-forgetting nature of this race.)

Lapid

Even as dugong aso stuck to the Kapampangan, the insult accruing thereat has largely dissipated. This is owed to an extent to then Gov. Lito Lapid, as we wrote here some time ago:

“Ikinagagalit nating mga Kapampangan ang pagtawag sa atin ng ‘dugong aso.’ Subali’t ito ay ipinagmamalaki’t ikinararangal ko. Sa katapatan, wala nang mauuna pa sa aso: sa kanya iniiwan ng amo ang tahanan nito, pati na magkaminsan ang pagtatanggol sa kanyang pamilya. Subukin mong saktan ang amo, at tiyak, dadambain ka ng kanyang aso. Ang katapatang ito ang iniaalay ko sa inyo.” (We Kapampangans get slighted when told the blood of dogs runs in our veins. But I find pride and honor in this. When it comes to loyalty, none beats the dog: to it man leaves the protection of his home, at times even the defense of his family. Try to hit a man and his dog will surely attack you. This is the kind of loyalty I off er you.)

Before a beaming President Ramos at the Mawaque Resettlement Project site in 1997, Lapid pledged his loyalty in gratitude for the new lease on human decency, on human life itself that El Tabaco bestowed upon those the Mount Pinatubo eruptions devastated, displaced, and dispossessed.

Thence, the Bida embraced FVR’s Lakas- NUCD with a fidelity his wife could only wish he committed to his marital vows with as much devotion, if not intensity.

Lapid there made a rarity: loyalty being an uncommon commodity in politics. So, what is it that makes politicians and adulterers one and the same as a dysfunctional radio? Low fidelity on a high frequency, dummy…

There too was Lapid giving a novel and noble meaning to the derogatory dugong aso impacted in the Kapampangan psyche, extolling it as the virtue of katapatan, of dogged loyalty to an elder, to a superior, to a friend. No mean feat for the uncolleged Lapid.

But for the title “Of dogs and men,” there is very little I remember of a column I wrote in The Voice in the late ‘70s. It would have made a most relevant read in the subject I am discussing here. The ending of that column though is something I cannot possibly just easily forget, having consigned it as much to the mind as to the heart and put out at every opportunity that calls for it, like now.

A lesson in loyalty – of dogs, as well as of men – perfectly captured in that blurb of an award-winning Lino Brocka movie: “Sa bawa’t latay, kahit aso’y nag-iiba. Sa unang latay, siya’y magtatanda; Sa ikalawa, siya’y mag-iisip; Sa ikatlo, siya’y magtataka; Sa ika-apat, humanda ka!” (At every lash, even a dog changes. At the first, it would learn. At the second, it would think. At the third, it would wonder. At the fourth, brace yourself!)

Caveat canis. Beware of the dog. Yes, there is more to what the Latins of old put up at their gates than its literal meaning.

Tantingco

GOOD-BYE, Dugong Aso.

Thus, the erudite Robby Tantingco, head of the Center for Kapampangan Studies at the Holy Angele University, slugged his Facebook post three years ago.

He wrote: “Have you noticed? There is hardly any Filipino anymore who calls Kapampangans ‘dugong aso’. We have successfully asserted ourselves and changed the conversation to the other narratives of the multi-layered story of our amazing people. So, once and for all, and to put the last nail on the coffin of this subject matter, let us stop blaming the Macabebe Scouts alone…for the capture of Aguinaldo in Palanan in 1901…”

And, with their corresponding mug shots and briefs of their dastardly deed, Robby laid the blame on Spanish Capt. Lazaro Segovia, Ilocano Cecilio Seguismundo, and Tagalog Maj. Hilario Talplacido as having betrayed Aguinaldo.

Lamented Robby: “And yet it was the foot soldiers, the Macabebes, who bore the brunt of the nation’s anger which resulted in the unfair racial profiling of all Kapampangans as ‘traydor’ and ‘dugong aso.’”

Rightly, and reasonably, Robby: “How could the Macabebes, who never served in Aguinaldo’s army and therefore could not have betrayed him, be branded as traitors, and not these three defectors? They were merely doing their job as hired soldiers of the American military, and were actually exacting vengeance on a man they hated with all their heart and soul (for killing Andres Bonifacio whose roots were in Macabebe, and for ordering the burning of the Macabebe church).”

I commented: From another perspective, the Macabebe scouts should even be hailed as heroes. Aguinaldo’s messiahnic delusions deprived the revolution of its father, Bonifacio and its only real military brains, Luna.

While over a score liked what I said, the overwhelming majority of reactions were more of relief and gladness at Robby’s reasoned contextualization of a historical event in expunging from the Kapampangan race the canard of a canine bloodline.

Luid ya ing Kapampangan!

 (Punto, Dec. 8, 2021)