450 YOC in Pampanga: El Camino a Lubao

ONLY HALF a century to the quincentennial of Christianity in Pampanga, coming as it did by half a century too from the “discovery” of the Philippines by Magellan.

Wow, numerologists would have a heyday with those numbers!

Indeed, an epoch here for the Capampangan race, sadly unobserved, largely unknown. But for the posts of good friend and fellow ex-seminarian Francis Musni, I could have remained totally clueless too. 

Thanks to him, I was reminded of this piece published here May 8, 2012 – almost exactly to the day 10 years ago – in celebration of the event.

The way to St. Augustine

WHY LUBAO?

Of all settlements in the backwaters, plains and hinterlands of Pampanga, what made the trailblazing Augustinian friars in 1572 to choose Lubao to be the nexus of the Catholic faith not only in the province but up and across the expanse of the central and northern regions of Luzon?

Asked the Most Rev. Pablo Virgilio S. David, auxiliary bishop of San Fernando, in his homily in the High Mass celebrating the 440th year founding of the St. Augustine parish last May 5.

Low-lying and thus prone to flooding, notwithstanding –its very name taken from bajo, Spanish for low – there was something in Lubao that the Augustinians found of great significance: the people, mostly farmers and fisherfolk, of humble birth and bearings, comprising a balayan ning kababan, locus of humility, the good bishop said. Where most manifest one core value of the Faith.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” The second of the Eight Beatitudes, Matthew 5:5. Reflected I, listening to Among Ambo.
Thus by its lowliness, less geographic than anthropologic, Lubao rightfully took its place as the fountainhead of Catholicism for the Kapampangan race.
Delving on the gospel for that day, Matthew 16:18-19 – “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” – the good bishop continued with the celebrated place of the lowly in the City of God, to use the word of St. Augustine.

With Peter as perfect example, in transcending his human frailties and imperfections with his innate humility.
And but of course, Lubao’s patron saint himself, St. Augustine of Hippo whose mother St. Monica – as tradition holds – cried buckets of tears for the conversion of her sinful son.
 “But I wretched, most wretched, in the very commencement of my early youth, had begged chastity of Thee, and said, ‘Give me chastity and continency, only not yet.’” Thus, St. Augustine in his Confessions.
The bishop’s sermon and personal reflection intertwining, and with the once near-photographic memory faded with age, retained now are but snatches of the homily, the opening and concluding part coming full circle though. (How I wish I had the full text of Bishop Ambo’s homily and simply reprinted it here. No word by me can ever approximate even but a fraction of the brilliance, of the eloquence of my once underclassman at the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary. And to think that he delivered his homily from a mere outline!)
For over a thousand years now, the El Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James) in Spain has drawn from all over Europe thousands of pilgrims on foot, on horseback, on bicycles – never on motorized vehicles, converging on the magnificent Santiago de Compostela Cathedral where St. James is buried.
Why do they do it?
The pilgrimage is a return to their roots, the burial site of St. James serving as the fountainhead of Christianity in Europe.
Finding parallelism there, the good bishop broached the idea of an El Camino a Lubao (The Way to Lubao) or an El Camino de San Agustin (The Way of St. Augustine) to afford every Kapampangan a return to the very roots of his/her Faith. From the wetlands of Candaba and Masantol, from the highlands of Porac and Floridablanca, from the urban centers of Mabalacat and Angeles City the Kapampangan faithful, whether in penitence and supplication, or in thanksgiving and veneration, walking the highways and byways to the St. Augustine Parish Church in Lubao.
The grace of a pilgrimage, a refreshing renewal in one’s Faith if only once in one’s own lifetime makes a truly blessed experience.
Ah, I can almost hear St. Augustine beckoning: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
The way of St. Augustine. The path to conversion. The road to salvation. O, that we may all be blessed to take it.

 

Scoring the INC

NOT EXACTLY the X – as in mysterious – having been publicly announced, but the no-less magical, indeed, material factor that spelled the difference in the Angeles City mayoralty race was the Iglesia ni Cristo vote.

All one needs is a quick look at the numbers. Winner Pogi Lazatin posted 59,192 votes, runner-up Bryan Nepomuceno had 45,711. The difference of 13,481 corresponded closely to the vaunted, if approximated, 13,000 to 15,000 INC bloc votes.

Thereby reinforced anew the long, long held belief, aye, a political dogma, that no one, absolutely no one could ever be elected Angeles City mayor without the INC anointment.

A city council seat though is a different story. The always-non-anointed Amos Rivera has consistently won. And the now-unblessed Jay Sangil still made it.     

While not so “potently decisive” as in AC, the INC factor in the City of San Fernando did add up to the numbers of incumbent Mayor Edwin Santiago at 74,125 – not exactly serving as some loose change, with Vilma Caluag managing 52,225.

It was in the vice mayoralty race that the INC ballots played a pivotal role. Taken out of Jimmy Lazatin’s winning 66,277, the sect’s bloc votes would have had Angie Hizon won with her base votes of 56,264. The 10,000-gap easily bridged with the voting kapatid in the capital city.

Tiger

As in AC, so in CSFP, and more spectacularly so. INC-unchosen BJ Tiger Lagman topped the council race, leading his closest pursuer by 6,213 votes and the tailender in the Magic 10 by 21,503 votes, with the two included in the INC ballot. The other Lagman candidate that the INC blessed did land in the winning circle, 17,156 votes behind BJ.

Not a single Iglesia vote and Lagman still managed to score 70,978! Some rethink is imperative here for political strategists – as much on the efficacy, if not the actual strength of the INC bloc, as in the emergence of a shining nova in the city’s political firmament.

What eluded his father Ely the Tiger – the unbeatable vice mayor but the best mayor San Fernando never had – could well be opening up for BJ, grandly.

The ambivalence, okay, uncertainty of the INC votes is perhaps best exampled in the 1^st District of Pampanga.

With the INC support, Coach Yeng Guiao won the congressional contest of 2013 against former Rep. Blueboy Nepomuceno.

Without the INC vote, Guiao lost his seat in 2016 to Rep. Jonjon Lazatin. (Guiao got 106,086 votes to Lazatin’s 127,762)

With the INC again backing him in the return bout in the polls just past, Guiao lost again – 149,398 to 104,796 – swept in all two cities and one town of the district. (Without the INC vote, Guiao lost by 21,676. With the INC vote, Guiao lost even more overwhelmingly by a margin of 45,407 votes. Guiao’s total number of votes even dropped by 1,290 with INC support.)

Rimpy

In the 4^th District congressional polls, ruling Rep. Rimpy Bondoc appears to have been immunized from the INC vote.

As in his fight against former Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo in 2010, so in his battle against former board member Ric Yabut in 2019 – Rimpy annihilating his INC-backed rivals.

Speaking of Candaba, former Mayor Rene Maglanque made a stunning comeback against the INC-anointed incumbent Mayor Dan Baylon.

The INC votes likewise failed to launch Vice Mayor Dexter David to the mayorship of Porac, and to keep incumbent Sto. Tomas Mayor Johnny Sambo in his post. The latter losing by a little over 100 votes to VM Gloria “Ninang” Ronquillo who crafted history as the first lady mayor of Pampanga’s smallest town of only seven barangays.   

The inefficacy of the INC votes in the 2019 polls was most pronounced in Mabalacat City.

­The already formidable tandem of VM Christian Halili and once-forever-mayor Marino “Boking” Morales in reversed roles was even made more invincible – on paper – with the anointment of the INC.

Garbo

Why a plus-10,000 for incumbent Mayor Cris Garbo was reported to have been proffered by some oddsmakers, with nobody biting. Convinced – seemingly – as the voting public was of his opponents’ vaunted invincibility.

Stunning thus came the report of Garbo (at 52,517) trouncing Halili (at 34,694) by 17,823 votes.   

Neither stunned nor even surprised though were those in the know. Ranged against his rival’s INC bloc, Garbo earned the “solid” support of the Born-Again evangelicals and fundamentalists, as well as what little of the so-called conservative Catholic vote. An even greater entity going Garbo all the way is the patriarchal “INT.” Don’t ask me what it means, else I blaspheme and go excommunicado.     

Boking

As bitter, aye, bitterest, as it can ever get, the Mabalacat City outcome for one man.

In the 2016 local elections, he garnered 39,919 votes, more than the combined total of his three rivals – the closest at 17,553, the next at 10,696, and the last at 5,750.

In the polls just past, he managed 30,022 – still winnable by the 2016 standards. However, he had just one opponent this time, getting 52,509 votes.

In less than two years after his Comelec-ted eviction from the Mabalacat City hall, once eternal mayor Boking Morales got the worst drubbing of his political life, the pain of losing by landslide exacerbated by at least two factors: 1) that it was inflicted by his own nephew; 2) the prize at stake was only the vice-mayoralty, below Boking’s stature of hizzoner for 22 years.

Maybe, the electorate just got tired of Boking. But then, someone who looked like his go-to-guy Deng Pangilinan cried: Pang-­mayor lang si Boking. Hindi pang-vice. (To the chagrin of the double visionary, Boking is again running for mayor against him and the incumbent Garbo)

Yeah, I remember then-vice mayor Boking lost too in his first attempt at the mayorship in 1992, despite INC backing. He won all elections since with the INC. Now losing anew, still with the INC.

Gone full circle there, as much for Boking as for the INC. Whence, a new beginning evolving.    

Yeah, this epic loss notwithstanding, it is too premature to write finis to Boking. And the INC vote too.

(Reprinted, with updates, from Zona Libre, May 15, 2019)

 

 

 

Indelible INC

THE INC vote is out.

And the wailing and gnashing of teeth has begun...

Hold on to your hankies, guys. It ain’t over, as they say, till the fat…er, curvy, lady sings. And yeah, Elvis may still be in the building.

Keep the faith, hope against hope. There’s still two (or three?) more samba before E-Day. Only God – and Ka Eduardo, plus his Sanggunian – can be absolute if the pasiya leaked Wednesday is indeed the final decision.

2013 is not too remotely past to remember that a later pasiya superseded an earlier one, also a few days before the polls in Pampanga.

Cong. Tarzan Lazatin was the proclaimed choice for the Angeles City mayoralty race, only to be replaced by incumbent Mayor Ed Pamintuan in the final INC ballot.

In the fourth congressional district, the INC blessing for returning Cong. Rimpy Bondoc was withdrawn and conferred upon Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo, aka John Lloyd.

So, asa pa tayo more. Hope springs till damnation strikes, as some wit says.

Okay, even granting a candidate’s deprivation of the INC vote is finally final, this isn’t any fool-proof guarantee of certain victory to the chosen one.

Aye, there’s as much hit as miss with the Iglesia vote. Pelayo losing miserably to Bondoc, just one of them.

In 1995, even absent the INC vote, Cong Oscar S. Rodriguez reclaimed the third district congressional seat from 1992 nemesis Andrea “Didi” Domingo.

In his first run for the Mabalacat mayoralty race in 1992, then Vice Mayor Marino “Boking” Morales was all invincibility with the INC vote but still lost to the unassuming Dr. Cati Domingo. (Invincible indeed, Boking on paper then. What with the backing of two national parties contending the presidency: his opening salvo graced by Lakas-Tao with Fidel V. Ramos backstopped by incumbent President Cory Aquino; his miting de avance at the platform of the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino spearheaded by Speaker Ramon Mitra.)    

Why, Ramos himself was denied the INC blessing in 1992 but still won, albeit by simple plurality. The INC-chosen, Danding Cojuangco a poor third, behind runner-up Miriam Defensor-Santiago.

The Senate is replete with as much winners as losers unrewarded with the INC vote. Top-of-the-mind flash shows Sen. Lito Lapid in 2007, who, it is bruited about, ceded his INC-preferred-status to his son Mark then re-electing governor of Pampanga.

Notwithstanding the putative strength of the INC in the province, Mark, of course, landed dead last behind Comelec-proclaimed winner Among Ed Panlilio, and ultimate winner-via-electoral-protest Lilia G. Pineda.    

In his first win, after two successive failures, for an Angeles City council seat, Jay Sangil landed No. 5 sans the INC ballot. In his next two victories, he was gifted with the bloc votes though he landed ranks lower than fifth.

So, it was reported that Councilor Amos Rivera failed to make the grade in the current INC list. So, what’s new? Rivera, in similar straits, won – with plenty to spare – in 2013.

In the last barangay elections, Rodelio “Tony” Mamac did not have the INC backing. The odds against Mamac, already formidable, were made even insurmountable by the open support given his rival by Mayor Ed Pamintuan, and, more telling, by a local conglomerate of political and business interests. Just the same, the retired bemedalled police officer kept his stewardship of Angeles City’s premier barangay Balibago.

With these sample instances, I am just saying candidates who fail to get the church’s endorsement need not necessarily be pronounced dead-on-the-spot politically. Dead-on-arrival, neither.

The certainty of the INC vote – already suspect, is further cracked in the wake of the family feud that turned into internecine strife that rocked the sect in mid-2015. And apparently far from being settled.

BE THAT as it may, as my favorite attorney is wont to say, the INC bloc can spell, as indeed it has, the big difference in close-quarters contests.

While there were INC-unblessed bets who simply threw in the towel, and left everything to fate, there were too the intrepid never-say-die that crafted counterfoil to the INC advantage of their rivals.

For the moneyed, it is more of the usual – vote buying – albeit on wholesale, commensurate to at least 50 percent of the number of INC voters in the contested locality. Why 50 percent? It’s close-quarters combat, do the plus-minus equation and find out.

For the more moneyed, it’s “carpet bombing” in the last week of the campaign, and gulungan on election eve. Buy as much votes as one can, without counting the cost.

A caveat here though: Be sure the ones purchased are of the “honest” kind, re: voters who when bought, stay bought. And not up for any other auction.

Cognizant of this “flaw” in the voter’s character, a candidate in elections past literary corralled the hundreds of voters he bought, 24 hours before the precincts opened, effectively denying his opponents the least chance to buy them back.         

This too serves as a warning to the INC-anointed not to be complacent. Desperate straits call for desperate measures.

My favorite mayor makes a template of this instance. After his bitter loss in 1992, Boking Morales never looked back – winning all electoral contests, and even after being declared loser in the early 2000s, he managed to stay put for all of 22 years as Mabalacat mayor, unseated only by a Comelec decree in 2017.

His secret of winning? The INC-backing notwithstanding, Boking never let his guard down, even upping the ante after the INC pasiya. And burying his rivals in avalanches of votes.

Yeah, no substitute for victory. INC or no INC.     

(Reprinted from Zona Libre, May 5, 2016)

Vote nut

 THE INC vote is a certainty.

The Iglesia ni Cristo brethren vote as one. More from personal reading now – as I am no INC affiliate – than hermeneutics is that one church, one-vote dogma grounded on Romans 15:6: “That you may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
In all things, not the least in choosing the people’s leaders, is God glorified. Alleluia! 
No certainty though – in winning, is the INC vote. In local contests, the bloc votes are no surefire for electoral success. A case in point is Oca Rodriguez’s victory in his congressional rematch in 1995 against the INC-backed Didi Domingo. 
And then, there was the incumbent INC-propped Mark Lapid finishing dead last in the 2007 gubernatorial polls against proclaimed winner Eddie Panlilio, and recount victor Lilia Pineda.
Elections being a matter of addition and multiplication makes the INC vote a plus-plus factor nonetheless. 
Thus, its being a much-coveted prize among all candidates.
The Catholic vote is an improbability. Not the nullity it was readily dismissed to be after the bishop-blasted Joseph Estrada handily won the presidency in 1998. 
“Vote for persons who morally, intellectually, and physically show themselves capable of inspiring the whole nation toward a hopeful future.” So reverberated the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines’ pastoral statement from pulpits throughout the land. 
The not-so-subtle inference of moral wrongs on the womanizer, gambler, drinker and un-colleged Estrada not so much fallen on deaf ears as glossed over by the sheen of the Erap persona on the silver screen.
But there is such a thing as “Catholic influence” – that which Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile raised at the time of the deliberations on the Reproductive Health Bill.
This is much pronounced at the parish levels, especially in the rural areas where the cura parocco exercises the highest moral ascendancy and thereby the greatest influence in community life.   
So, who among the cerrado Catolico would dare even to conceive a questioning thought against the very voice of God emanating from the pulpit? 
Roma locuta est, causa finita est. Rome has spoken, the case is closed. The definitive end to all arguments of the medieval era is not extinct as the Borgia pope but as much extant today as Benedict’s infallibility. 
To a considerable majority of the Catholics, that is. That which so-called freethinkers have long ridiculed and despised as the miserably blinded faithful and unthinking fanatics.
Think and rethink: The intelligent vote is a fallacy.   
Why do we vote for those whom we vote? 
Family. The candidate is mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, cousin to the nth degree of consanguinity dating to the discovery of the Philippines.
Friendship. The candidate is a childhood friend, barkada, friend of the wife, friend of a brother, friend of a cousin, friend of an uncle, friend of a friend, friend of a friend of a friend…
Favors. The candidate paid for the hospitalization of a family member, funeral expenses for a relative, school tuition of a child. Whence rises too the commodification of the vote, of the right of suffrage reduced to the transactional, to buy-and-sell, to trade or pawn.                  
Always visceral, very rarely cerebral. That’s the vote hereabouts. 
So, we ask again: In the pursuit of our electoral exercises do we ever, as we should, to quote Baruch Spinoza, “… use in security all (our) endowments, mental and physical, and make free use of (our) reason”?
So we vote nut. So, we are the nut. 

(Reprinted from Zona Libre, 7 February 2013)

 

May 1, 1990: The day press freedom was 'slain'

Phalanx of Cabcom troopers strike at Nel Dizon.

MAY 3 is World Press Freedom Day. Declared by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1993 to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the press and remind governments of their duty to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression enshrined under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Thirty years ago – on a May Day celebration – press freedom was bludgeoned, literally. Here is an account of that day as bannered in the May 2, 1990 issue of the Manila tabloid Afternoon HEADLINE, by-lined Bong Z. Lacson, president, Pampanga Press Club & chairman, NUJP-Pampanga:

Press freedom ‘slain’

CLARK SOLDIERS BRUTALIZE NEWSMEN  

FREEDOM of the press died before the main gate of Clark Air Base yesterday, slain by soldiers of the Republic – those very people sworn to uphold and protect it.

In what has turned to be the most violent rally dispersal yet, Philippine Air Force troops assigned to the Clark Air Base Command swooped down, as a rampaging wave of truncheon-wielding horde, on the hapless rallyists; hitting at will at anyone regardless of age or sex.

Corazon Asuncion, 62, of Orion, Bataan, slapped and kicked. Elena Viray, fortyish, of Samal, Bataan, truncheoned inside a vehicle. Joel Baul, 20, of Guagua, Pampanga hit with a stone. There were also boys aged 8-12 hit with truncheons. A total of 85 rallyists remained unaccounted for up to late last night.

What brought a spine-tingling sensation among mediamen was the presence of a special force noted to have specifically picked on those wearing press tags and vests, methodically going about their job of bashing heads and breaking shins. Why this “special treatment” of mediamen?

The Angeles Sun reporter Cheska calling for help for the bloodied Robert Quito. 

In a press statement released immediately after the Clark melee, the Pampanga Press Club condemned “in the strongest terms the blatant assault on press freedom… and holds Brig. Gen. Demetrio Camua, Cabcom deputy commander, responsible for this barbaric act.”

To the press corps, yesterday’s assault was the “culmination of the systematic harassment of mediamen by Cabcom that started with the coming to the base of General Camua.”

The local media have been vocal about perceived irregularities at Clark, allegedly involving Cabcom troopers. Alleged carnap syndicates, the mess in the garbage disposal contracts, widespread theft and robbery, and the “illegal detention” of 32 heads of cattle by Cabcom soldiers have been staple news in many local publications as well as in correspondents’ stories in the Manila papers.

It was after these stories found their way in the papers that mediamen covering rallies at Clark started getting hurt. First was Robledo Sanchez of Manila Times. Then came Sotero Chandler Ramas III of Daily Globe. Yesterday’s list grew longer: Norberto Quito, Philippine Star, with 12 stitches on a head wound; Renel Dizon, Philippine Weekly Graphic, contusions and abrasions in various parts of the body; Eric Jimenez, Angeles Sun, truncheoned; Noel Vizcocho, Manila Times, and Jun Dimaging, Bagong Pinoy, both missing until late last night, last seen being mauled by Cabcom soldiers; and again, Ramas and Sanchez.

“Camua and his running dogs have become the scourge not only of peaceful demonstrators but also of mediamen. The earlier they leave Clark, the better for us all,” said Fyodor Fabian, spokesman of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines-Pampanga.

THE AFTERMATH. Both the NUJP and the National Press Club with its president Marcelo Lagmay provided all the legal, material and moral support to the PPC struggle for justice for Quito and the others. A symposium was held at the NPC to rally national attention to the case.

At the forefront of media protest march (L-R): Elmer Cato, Abner San Pedro, Bong Lacson, Jay Sangil, and Ric Valmonte (foreground)

The Quito mauling too spurred the first – and so far, only – media rally in front of Clark Air Base, participated in by some 200 Pampanga and Metro Manila mediamen including notables, NUJP chair Antonio Ma. Nieva; Atty. Ric Valmonte, president of the Philippine Movement for Press Freedom; and Rep. Oscar S. Rodriguez (3rd District-Pampanga). The rally was covered not only by the national media but also by the international news services Reuters, Associated Press, Agence France Presse, United Press International, Kyodo and Cable News Network.

Breaking through a military cordon, the media protesters achieved a historic first: the occupation of Clark’s main gate where no other group of rallyists ever came as close. Their streamers said it all: “Save Media, Oust Camua, et al.”

In what could have been a reversal of roles – as observed by a foreign correspondent – the protesting mediamen found themselves being covered – for protection – by policemen and Constabulary troopers with no less than their chiefs directing operations – Angeles Metrodiscom chief Col. Julius Yarcia and PPC-INP Recom 3 commander Brig. Gen. Manuel Bruan.

 

Occupying Clark Air Base Main Gate are (L-R): Ric Valmonte, Sonny Lopez, Jay Sangil, Nap Clemente, Bong Lacson, Abner San Pedro, Lino Sanchez, and Ody Fabian (cut). 

The House of Representatives too formed a committee to investigate the incident. As PPC president, I was among the principal resource persons at the hearings held by the joint committees on information and human rights chaired by Rep. Michael Mastura. Among the congressmen who immediately denounced Cabcom’s “system of aggression against the media” were Bonifacio Gillego, Venancio Garduso, Gregorio Andolana, Charito Plaza, and of course, Oscar Rodriguez.

The joint committees found the evidence we presented particularly damning: actual photographs of the mauling of Quito, Dizon and others, and the handkerchief-covered faces of their tormentors which Elmer Cato, Angeles Sun publisher and Manila Chronicle and Kyodo correspondent, painstakingly collated and documented. My question to the Cabcom officers present, “Since when did hankies-on-faces become part of the Air Force uniform?” provoked Gillego to denounce Cabcom as no different from robbers and highwaymen.

(From Chapter 3 – Waging War – of my book Of the Press (1999))

 

 

That job interview

OF ALL that’s been said, and continues to be said, about the habitual absenteeism of candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the presidential debates, none impacted the public’s mind more than its comparison to an apparently ardent applicant choosing to skip a job interview. A contradiction in terms, already a red flag there.

As the mere presence of all the other candidates in the debates shows the seriousness of their intent, Marcos Jr’s absence exposes his trifling take on the job on hand.

Marcos Jr. looks and acts the entitled whose name is all that’s needed to land this job, notwithstanding his putative lack of qualifications – if not patent disqualification, dearth of skills, and surfeit of failings. His direct display of disdain of the debates per se – didn’t he cry “biased” in that one moderated by Jessica Soho? – makes a complete revulsion of the democratic process of choosing leaders, argumentation and debate being essential to it.  

Hence, this is an insult to the intellect of the electorate, as it is a deprivation of their right to know – of Marcos Jr.’s government platform, if any – in order to make an informed choice come election day.

As bad as shortcutting the job interview process is in the corporate world, short-circuiting it in the political realm is the absolute pits. Marcos Jr. therefore deserving of all the opprobrium consequent to his absence in the debates.

Where the job interview analogy aptly applies to Marcos Jr., it cannot, however, serve as universal template for all elective positions. Job interviews obtain, indeed, oblige, where there are vacancies. As the presidency shall soon be. All applicants should go through the wringer, so to speak, to find the best qualified for the post, the highest in the land at that!

But where there are no vacancies, as in incumbencies, job interviews cease to become obligatory.

Election debates are primarily purposed for the public to know the candidates’ intents, plans, programs, or platforms of government. Thus, debates serve the wannabes best. By their words, the electorate shall know them.

For reelectionists, however, what the debates aim to impart to the public are already amplified in their actual performance in the course of their incumbency. By their work – or lack of it – they are already known by their constituents.

The principle of res ipsa loquitur – the thing speaks for itself – comes to work here. Aye, actions speak louder than words. Or, as the dearly lamented Cong Tarzan Lazatin lived it, Ditac a salita, dacal a gawa. Performance being the ultimate basis for the electorate to make an informed choice, more so, a well-formed judgment on the day of the vote.

Res ipsa loquitur. On that score, the incumbents’ participation in debates is reduced to nothing but a virtual replay of their mandatory state-of the-province, or state-of-the-city, or state-of-the-municipality addresses, generically known as the annual Ulat sa Bayan. A repetition that could be taken by the audience as a tooting of his/her own horn, an exercise in self-aggrandizement.  

Even the mere presence of the incumbents in the debates already puts them in an open season for their rival wannabes’ snide attacks, if only to cover up for their – the rivals’ – lack of qualifications or sheer incompetence. Phoned-in questions from supposed non-committed viewers are also routinely weaponized to strike at the incumbents.     

Diminished into ad hominems and non-sequiturs, as most political debates descend to, with the wannabe having everything to gain and nothing to lose, the incumbent almost always suffers a great disadvantage.

In this instance, it is not cowardice therefore – as it is generally (mis)construed – for the incumbents to skip debates. It is prudence.

 

A treatise on politics

 “AM I Machiavellian? Well, I’ve studied him quite thoroughly, and I know very many Machiavellians in my life.”

The hornets stirred by this declaration of presidential runner Ferdinand Marcos Jr. have not gone back to their nests yet so here’s one aged wasp joining the stinging frenzy.  
Finding nothing new to contribute to the discussions – ageing has put the processes of the intellect to a crawl – I burrowed deep into my Zona archives and found this piece dated Oct. 30, 2007, A primer to Panlilio. Yup, choice cuts from Old Niccolo applied to the then Reverend Governor of Pampanga. Here it is:

“A MAN who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessary come to grief among so many who are not good.”
That aphorism could have been specifically crafted for Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio in the wake of his honest act relative to the P500,000 donation he received in – not from – the Palace, and the seismic aftershocks it caused.
Easily, the quotation by its inspiring moral tone could have come only from a tome on values, if not the Holy Book itself.
Wrong. It is vintage 1500. From the little book that launched – and sank – a thousand political careers: Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince.
If he hasn’t, Panlilio should read – and internalize – the book, it being the definitive handbook of politics, power, and statesmanship.
The Prince – history tells us – nurtured through generations a virtual Who’s Who in the world political stage: Cardinal Richelieu, the de facto dictator of France at the time of Louis XIII; Christina, the queen of Sweden circa 1632-1654; Frederick the Great of Prussia; Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of the German Empire; Georges Clemenceau, French statesman and premier.
Notables of the 20th century who went to school in Machiavelli included Adolf Hitler, der fuehrer of the Third German Reich; Benito Mussolini, il duce of Fascist Italy; Vladimir I. Lenin, father of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and his heir Josef Stalin; and the Philippines’ Ferdinand E. Marcos, known to have made the book – not Imelda – as his bedside companion.
A virtual historical rogues’ gallery, that list by itself seems proof beyond doubt that indeed The Prince is the “blueprint for dictators” and its author the Devil Incarnate himself. Old Nick, the slang for the devil, is a take from Machiavelli’s given name. And Machiavellian entered the lexicon to mean crafty, shrewd, deceitful, immoral. This is an offshoot of the most famous quotation obtaining in the book: “The end justifies the means.”
Comes the question now: How does one steeped in Christian values – like Panlilio the priest-and-governor – come to terms with an opus placed in the Index of Prohibited Books in the Vatican in 1559 and, with the confirmation of the Council of Trent, decreed to be burned by the Inquisition?
Ain’t the priest and any Catholic for that matter sinning mortally by simply reading an “Indexed” book? (A confession: I first read The Prince in my Suprema (third year high school) class at the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary. The copy smuggled in by my “free-thinking” professor in, of all subjects, trigonometry.)
Far from being the devil’s handiwork, The Prince – particularly its last chapter, Exhortation to Liberate Italy from the Barbarians – made a number of invocations to the Almighty for national redemption and admonition for the leader to do his share in the effort: “God will not do everything, in order to deprive us of free will and the portion of the glory that falls to our lot.”
That’s just like the old, old very Christian saying “God helps those who help themselves.”
Though written against the backdrop of a long gone era, of an Italy fragmented into five major seats of power, The Prince has found currency through the ages as well as relevance and validity no matter the political setting, be it monarchical or republican, autocratic or democratic. Even in such a milieu as provincial politics and governance. Thus, its importance to Panlilio.
“The first impression that one gets of a ruler and of his brains is from seeing the men (and more especially the women, if I may add) that he has about him. One can always form an unfavorable opinion of him, because the first mistake that he makes is in making this choice.”
Atty. Vivian Dabu as (un)confirmed provincial administrator and Atty. Ma. Elissa Velez as (un)confirmed provincial legal counsel, choices Panlilio stubbornly pushed – no matter the media protest rally, the lamentations of Lolita Hizon and the sangguniang panlalawigan’s rejection – raised all speculations not so much about Panlilio’s brains as about his balls, and who’s holding, ay, grasping them.
Speaking of Hizon and other campaign supporters of the governor who reportedly had a “fall out” with him on some issues, here’s Machiavelli’s advice to Panlilio: “It is the nature of men (of women too, again we add) to be as much bound by the benefits they confer as by those they receive.”
Tit for tat or political payback, plain and simple.
Okay, okay, so the mayors are all ganging up on Panlilio on the issues of quarry and the P500,000 money. The governor, ensconced in his civil society, can find solace in Machiavelli: “A prince need trouble little about conspiracies when the people are well disposed, but when they are hostile and hold him in hatred, then he must fear everything and everybody.”
Again, seemingly written by Machiavelli with Panlilio in mind: “One who becomes prince by favor of the populace must maintain its friendship, which he will find easy, the people asking nothing but not to be oppressed.”
Arguably enjoying the support of the people, Panlilio must be wary though of those previously written about in this column as his myrmidons who do nothing but sing hosannas to him. Machiavelli cautions: “There is no other way of guarding one’s self against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect.”
A primer on governance, The Prince is required reading not only for presidents but for every student of politics and power. Moreso for a priest who traded his parish church for the provincial Capitol.
PAST TO PRESENT. Still stripped of his priestly functions even after stepping down from the Capitol and two failed comeback tries, Ed Panlilio is far from having shunned politics. He is currently among the spearheads of the Leni-Kiko campaign in Pampanga.