Politics, as is

 

REALPOLITIK. The “realist’s determination to treat politics as they really are and not as the idealist would wish them to be.”

The buzzword in the Kissinger era in American diplomacy has long descended from its rarefied niche in foreign policy to the street level, to its very roots – politics as practised, as is, where is.

So, the Colombia cartels conceived in coca and cannabis and birthed narco-politics. Reigned supreme, ruled absolutely the drug lord here. The elected reduced to mere vassals doing the lord’s every bidding, disempowered to sheer figureheads, albeit, well, extremely well compensated.

There is more to the politics of vice other than that taken to perfection by Clayton Olalia in the Province of Pampanga, lived fully by the late Tiger Lagman in the City of San Fernando and Ric Zalamea in Angeles City, and relentlessly pursued now by Vicky Vega-Cabigting with Jay Sangil tenaciously clutching at her ankles.

As a matter of course, the politics of vice meanders to different channels.

Bingopolitics capitalizes on the penchant of the barrio folk for their much beloved game of chance. Nothing to lose for the folk here as the cards come free – from the politico, and everything to gain with prizes galore, from electric fans and gas stoves to refrigerators and flat-screen television sets – ever windfalls even to the Pelco-disserviced brown-outed masses.

Raffle-itics is another very popular game now played in the pre-campaign hustings. All attendees are given designated numbers drawn against corresponding prizes, no more than the usual bingo fare.

Far, far superior – fearsomely graver, the moral minority is always wont to insist – to the two above is tambiolitics – after the tambiolo (the usually bottle-shaped rattan contraption) holding the bulitin (small balls numbered 1 to 37) used in drawing the winning combinations in the illegal numbers game.

Tambiolitics is but our euphemism for what suspended-priest-wanting-to-be-governor-again Eddie Panlilio derisively calls – in your face, Atching Baby – jueteng politics.

But how could you, Among? There’s no jueteng, there’s only STL (small town lottery) in Pampanga. Was that me, or did I just hear Senior Supt. R’Win Pagkalinawan’s strong protestation?       

The now-dispensation-seeking Panlilio himself introduced a brand of politics with his entry to the gubernatorial race in 2007 – clerico-politics.

The cry of clerico-fascism in the exclusive Catholic campuses in the ‘60s though did not resonate in the Panlilio administration at the Pampanga Capitol. It rather devolved into putativism vectored on his provincial administrator.

Religion as the people’s opiate going the way of Marx’s grave, the boob tube, the silver and digital screens took over as the addictive hallucinogens of the masses. With an even greater tama, er, high, er, intense effect. 

Whence rose, and now dominates, cinepolitics.

No matter the reel bida turning real villain once voted into office, moviestars make the very first of the people’s choices in any election they enter. Erap in Malacanang. In the Senate, there’s Jinggoy, Agimat, and Leon Guerrero (then as now, and joined by the hood named Robin, aka Sili, whatever that means). In the House, Lani and Lucy, Mikey too. Ate Vi in Batangas. Jorge Estregan Ejercito in Laguna. A host of others in provincial boards and city councils, not the least of whom is the beautiful Marang Morales in Angeles City.

More in the ways than in the who now is butterflyitics. We all learned from the elementary grades of butterflies going after the nectar of fresh flowers. The wilting and the wilted hardly meriting the slightest flitting. So goes the political party-goer too. At a Senate hearing, the once famous Lt. Victor Corpuz had a rather impolite term for this: political prostitution. Pimpolitics then, anyone?

Trending now is tarpaulitics. The stock-in-trade, aye, the only way of the epal – the publicity-obsessed credit-grabber, in street lingo. It’s just something no one can escape from, given the scale and scope with which every politico – current, wannabe, has-been, and never-been – has impacted his image into our consciousness, polluted our thoughts, and cluttered our environment.    

I most certainly though would rather be pestered by epalitics than fall prey to ampatualitics.

Yeah, that brand of politics in Mindanao that votes with bullets rather than ballots, and memorializes mediamen in backhoe-dug and –filled-up, unmarked graves.

And they say it’s only politics?

(Reprinted from Zona Libre, Feb. 6, 2013)

Capitol digs out CSF's filth

 

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – Gov. Dennis “Delta” Pineda has mobilized the resources of the provincial Capitol in a joint undertaking with the Department of Public Works and Highways in Central Luzon to declog the drainage systems along the flood-prone thoroughfares in the city.

Typhoon Carina and the monsoon rains last July onto August and this month inundated the city with the depth of floodwaters unseen in recent years, that is prior to the current city administration.

Gov. Dennis “Delta” Pineda goes hands-on in declogging operations. Daniel Ombina/Pampanga PIO

“Andami na pong nagrereklamo, lalo na sa business sector. At kailangan na rin ho sigurong pagtulungan talaga. Kailangan na rin hong mabigyan kaagad ng solusyon. At sayang ho, maunlad na lungsod tapos sa ganitong problema, hindi ho natin kaagad mabigyan ng solusyon,” said Pineda during the action planning at the Capitol with the DPWH on Monday, Sept. 2.

                  Clearing JASA canals of debris. Jaja Galang/Pampanga PIO

On Wednesday, backhoes, dump trucks and other heavy equipment with enough manpower opened canals along the Barangay Dolores stretch of Jose Abad Santos Avenue revealing hardened silt, debris of concrete, wood, and steel, plastic, plastic and more plastic that rendered drainage totally useless.

By Thursday, the Capitol-DPWH team had cleared 185 meters of the drainage canals along JASA, still a long way to go in this stop-gap measure of the provincial government at flood mitigation in the city.

There are still Lazatin Boulevard, notably at its junction with JASA, and the MacArthur Highway segment at the government center in Barangay Maimpis to be cleared. 

Complementing the drainage clearing, former board member and current executive assistant to the governor Mylyn Pineda-Cayabyab mobilized beneficiaries of the Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers (TUPAD) program to clear clogged drainage canals in Barangays San Pedro Cutud, Dolores, and Sta. Lucia.

 

                  TUPAD mobilizer Mylyn-Pineda Cayabyab. Contributed photo

“Makatulong po sana ito para maibsan kahit papaano ang mga pagbaha sa barangay. Pagmalasakitan po sana natin at panatilihing malinis ang mga daluyan ng tubig,” said Pineda-Cayabyab of her initiative.

Aside from the declogging operations, the Capitol and the DPWH have also agreed to undertake medium- and long-term actions include upgrading structures so these could take in bigger volumes of water, and constructing urban drainages that serve as catchments.

 

Gov. Pineda looking at one proposed anti-flooding measure. Daniel Ombina/Pampanga PIO

These include the installation of a pumping station that would drain to Gugu, a creek that has turned into a river after a series of Mt. Pinatubo lahar flows in nearby Bacolor town.

"Nagpa-design po ako sa DPWH at nagpabigay po ako ng estimate kung magkano, at pagtutulungan po namin ang funding para mag-operate po kaagad ang pumping station na ‘yan," the governor said. 

This, even as Pineda has gone to lengths to appeal to the residents to practice proper waste disposal.

Where’s city hall?

The ongoing declogging operations in the city by the provincial government, sans any presence from the city government, has not gone unnoticed to the public.

The social media and traditional word-of-mouth communications are abuzz, ranging from allegations of arrogation of municipal/city powers by the provincial government unto itself, on one end, to accusations of abdication of by the city government of its powers, on the other.

             Mayor Vilma Balle-Caluag handing out DSWD relief. CSFP-CIO

Amid the Capitol operations, it did not help any that city hall did not come out with either press release or post of flood-mitigating measures of its own in its very active social media page, not even in Tiktok that is the highly favored means of social communications of Mayor Vilma Balle-Caluag.   

                  Declogging of city canals by the city engineer’s office. CSFP-CIO

On Friday, Sept. 5, the CSFP-CIO posted photos of what it said were declogging operations undertaken by the city engineer’s office from March to August this year. The depth of the flooding wrought by Carina and the monsoons upon the city raising questions of their authenticity, if not inutility. 

            Disapproved items in the supplemental budget. Contributed photo   

Followers of the mayor have accused the city council of “tying her hands” with its disapproval of a supplemental budget she requested late last month, in the wake of the onslaught of Typhoon Carina and the monsoons, for a P5 million allocation for clearing, desilting, and declogging of waterways in the flood prone areas of Café Rustico-St. Jude in Dolores, PLDT to Gulf Gasoline Station on the CSF-Lubao Road, PLDT to Lelut Baculud in Sto. Nino, 7-11 (convenience store) to Prime Water in Lourdes, and the Assumption Creek in Del Pilar.

Measly as it is, by engineering estimates, the requested allocation did not cover the main thoroughfares of JASA, Lazatin Blvd., and MacArthur Highway which flooding effectively brings traffic to a complete standstill for hours on end.

 Continuing declogging operations at JASA. Daniel Ombina/Pampanga PIO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pineda-Sambo tandem for 2024 emerges

 

TRADING POSTS IN 2025

STO. TOMAS, Pampanga – “MMBP. VMMJS.” Not so cryptic caption of this photograph showing Pampanga 4^th District Rep. Anna York-Bondoc raising the hands of incumbent Vice Mayor Matias “Bong” Pineda to her right, and incumbent Mayor Johnny Sambo to her left, implying the switch in the positions the two officials will seek in 2025. The picture was posted on Sept. 3 in the FB page of Karen Zablan Pineda, wife of the vice mayor. Punto Political Team

As it turned out, we were only half-right in our piece here yesterday - Bong Pineda eyeing mayorship -- with projected opponent incumbent Mayor John Sambo sliding down to the vice mayoralty. 

Bong Pineda eyes mayorship

                                             

                                          Vice Mayor Matias “Bong” Pineda

STO. TOMAS, Pampanga – Not the province’s foremost businessman-philanthropist Rodolfo “Bong” Pineda though, but his nicknamesake Matias “Bong” Pineda, incumbent vice mayor, that has set his sights on the mayoralty of this town.

Pineda, Matias that is, is reported to have publicly announced his bid for local chief executive of Pampanga’s smallest town – all of seven barangays – on at least two recent occasions.

The first in Barangay Sto. Rosario-Pau, where he served as longtime chairman and succeeded by his wife Karen; and the second at the fiesta celebration in Barangay San Bartolome last Aug. 24.

While direct blood kinship with Pampanga’s political first family has not been established, Matias is known to be their ally, dating back to the governorship of the matriarch Lilia “Nanay” Pineda starting in 2010. And the Bong moniker, is deemed as enough interest draw. 

                                         

Pineda will be running against re-electionist Mayor Johnny Sambo, against whom he lost in the mayoralty race in 2016, teamed up with in 2019 when Sambo lost to Gloria “Ninang” Ronquillo, and in tandem anew in 2022 when Sambo turned the tables on Ronquillo.

Sambo’s putative running-mate for 2025 is former councilor Pinky Feliciano who failed miserably in an earlier run for vice mayor against Ronquillo.

One-term mayor Ronquillo, widow of former Mayor Romy Ronquillo, is reported to be eyeing the vice mayoralty with her son Raymond running for mayor.

Of late, the son has been visible with a key role in the highly popular Batang Quiapo teleserye of Coco Martin.

                                         

                                   Raymond Ronquillo stars in Batang Quiapo.

Very recently too, the Ronquillo family’s high-end resort Emon Pulo in Zambales factored in the Alice Guo saga with the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission alleging the fugitive unseated Bamban mayor and cohorts were in the resort prior to her escape. “Slanderous,” said Ronquillo of the allegations categorically denying them all and even threatening to file cases against the PAOCC.

                        Former Mayor Gloria “Ninang” Ronquillo in Eman Pulo.

A Ronquillo son-mother tandem in 2025 harks back to the Ronquillo’s conjugal run in 2013 – the husband losing to Lito Naguit thereby earning the latter the distinction of being the first-ever three-term mayor of Sto. Tomas; and the wife bested by councilor Mark Louie Arceo, himself son of two-term mayor Lucas Arceo.

At this early, local politics has become the town’s main currency.

Once a mere factotum of Mayor Romy Ronquillo, Sambo gained political mileage as son-in-law of then forever Mabalacat City Mayor Marino “Boking” Morales as well as material resources from the myriad projects of his construction firm in the Metro Clark area. This, further buttressed by his close association with the Bondoc siblings – Juan Pablo, aka Rimpy, and Anna York – alternately ruling the roost in Pampanga’s 4^th congressional district since 1998.

                      Mayor Sambo with Rep. Anna York-Bondoc in relief mission.

The Ronquillos come straight out of the exclusive pages of the rich and famous – trucking, luxury cars, resort, realty, helicopters. In the 2022 election campaign, the son created a ruckus raining down peso bills all around town from his helicopter. 

The Ronquillos have also aligned with Patrol Partylist Rep. Jorge Bustos who is reported to be bent in breaking the Bondoc’s stranglehold of the 4^th District.

 

              Purported “masa-favorite” Pineda joins San Bartolome fiesta revelry.

Public perception of Pineda makes him the most accessible of the three prospective candidates. It is bruited hereabouts that Sambo has made himself scarce in Pineda’s presence in official or social functions. This, after the vice mayor received more attention, greater applause, and even called “Mayor” even when Sambo was the principal guest.

From there, a consensus on who can possibly win is already emerging in town, notwithstanding the political situation still in a state of flux.

The best bet though is: Mayor Bong Pineda, Vice Mayor Ronquillo, be it the mother or the son. In a one-on-one with Mayor John. Photos grabbed from the web  

 

Lyrical September

 

                                                                                  Blooming Sept. 1, 2024

Twixt summer thrill and autumn chill

September – magical, mystical, lyrical,

sentimental, so in song solemnized –

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow…

The ebb and flow of memories –

Do you remember
The 21^st night of September?
Love was changin' the minds of pretenders
While chasin' the clouds away…

Melancholic --  

The autumn winds blow chilly and cold
September, I remember
A love once new has now grown old…

Alas, a loss --

Pale September, I wore the time like a dress that year
The autumn days swung soft around me, like cotton on my skin
But as the embers of the summer lost their breath and disappeared
My heart went cold and only hollow rhythms resounded from within…

Pensive --

In the middle of September we'd still play out in the rain
Nothing to lose but everything to gain
Reflecting now on how things could've been
It was worth it in the end…

Oh, that sweetness of showers in September –

To every word of love I heard you whisper
The raindrops seemed
To play a sweet refrain

Though spring is here
To me, it's still September
Ooh, that September
In the rain…

Of love still --

September girls
I don't know why
How can I deny
What's inside
Even though I
Keep away
They will love
All our days

Forever romantic --

September morn
We danced until the night
Became a brand-new day
Two lovers playing scenes
From some romantic play
September morning
Still can make me feel that way…

Rather, nostalgic --

As my memory rests
But never forgets what I lost
Wake me up when September ends

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends…

Sweet September apexes,

Sentimental sap’s 2024 now over.

(Sept. 1, 2024. Listening to songs with September in the lyrics)

 

 

Tatay's Chosen: 'Chopper politics' trends in Pampanga

 

                                    Pineda helicopters about to make political runs

A SKY-BORNE political dispensation has lately become the most fervent wish of wannabes for the local elections next year. Coming as it is with the blessing – read: support material, moral, indeed, paternal if not Providential – of Pampanga’s foremost businessman-philanthropist Rodolfo “Tatay Bong” Pineda, patriarch of the province’s first family that includes the governor, vice-governor, recently-resigned board member, and Lubao town mayor.

It all started in early July when a helicopter was dispatched to fetch Mabalacat City Vice Mayor Atty. Geld Aquino from the very vicinity of city hall and flown to Pradera Verde, the Pineda’s sprawling resort-leisure-sports complex in Lubao, for a meeting with “Tatay Bong,” videos and photos of which were subsequently splashed in social media.

                                               VM Geld Aquino

Aquino has since been fetched at least twice more from the city hall area, an in-your-face affront of incumbent Mayor Crisostomo Garbo’s falling from the graces of the political kingpin who is largely credited for Garbo’s assumption to the city mayoralty in 2017 through a Commission on Elections resolution, unseating 2016 election winner Mayor Marino “Boking” Morales for exceeding the three-term limit, and therefore his qualification to run void ab initio.

                                 Ex-VM Christian Halili and VM Aquino with Tatay Bong

Incumbent city councilors and other political leaders including former Vice Mayor Christian Halili have also been called to meetings with Tatay Bong and Aquino at the Royce Hotel in Clark Freeport, further impacting the displeasure of the former to his once beneficiary, at the same time cementing Aquino’s status as his niño bonito.

The Pineda helicopter next landed in Arayat town, taking incumbent Mayor Maria Lourdes “Madir” Alejandrino, along with former Vice Mayor Sixto “Pogi” Mallari, to their own Pradera rendezvous with the patriarch. 

           Ex-VM Pogi Mallari and Mayor Madir Alejandrino prepare to board chopper

 A “destiny of unity” for Arayat, one FB post dubbed the prospective partnership of Alejandrino and Mallari, given that Pogi bested Madir in the vice mayoralty contest in 2019 with the latter turning the tables on the former in the mayoralty race in 2022.

As in Mabalacat City, more chopper trips between Arayat and Pradera have since been logged.

This month, it was the turn of former Porac councilor and provincial board member Mike Tapang to answer the summons by helicopter.

 

                                    Ex-BM Mike Tapang welcomes Tatay Bong

Instead of the prospective candidate airlifted to Pradera though, it was Tatay Bong that descended on Porac ground. Enthusiastically meeting him were over a hundred once-and-future town officials led by former three-term Mayor Condralito de la Cruz and former Vice Mayor Dexter David.

            Tatay Bong with former Porac officials

“Atin TAPANG Pag-asa,” a play on Tapang’s surname as harbinger of hope for Porac, sounded the 2025 campaign slogan. Social media posts of the meeting bore hashtags like “Tatay lang ang sakalam,” the Tagalog palindrome for the political power that Pineda wielded.

Unposted in social media as yet but already confirmed as having taken the helicopter ride to Pradera is incumbent San Simon Vice Mayor Romanoel “Dading” Santos.

The frequency of the suspension from office of Mayor Abundio “JP” Punsalan from both the Office of the Ombudsman and the Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Pampanga presided by Vice Gov. Lilia “Nanay” Pineda is viewed here to have become untenable to the Pinedas who have made good governance the very signature of their public lives.

Meanwhile, where the Pineda helicopter land next has become a guessing game of the moment in Pampanga, wannabes keeping their fingers crossed, the public on its toes. Photos grabbed from different FB pages

(Banner story Punto! Aug. 26-31, 2024 issue) 

An Augustine, but not yet

THE FEAST of St. Augustine of Hippo on August 28 has – for over ten years now – sparked cloistered moments of contemplation centered on a visit to the Sta. Monica Parish Church in Minalin town at the time it was declared by the National Museum as a national cultural treasure.

The media coverage attendant to the occasion turning, to me, into a pilgrimage. Thus:

Completed in the mid-1700s by the Augustinians the church has remained relatively intact, having withstood devastating earthquakes, typhoons and floods, and the Mount Pinatubo eruptions that swamped it with lahar.

No ostentatious ornateness but architectural splendor defines the façade – an outdoor retablo in concrete, where niched between Corinthian columns the images – as old as the church too – of Saints Peter and Paul, Francis of Assisi, and Catherine of Alexandria, with the top of the triangular pediment holding the image of St. Monica. Twin hexagonal four-story bell towers buttress the façade.

At the churchyard are the only four capillas posas still extant in the whole Philippines. Small chapels in red bricks, these served as holding areas for catechumens prior to their baptism inside the church in the early days of colonization…There ended objective coverage.

Aye, being edifices of faith, churches are not simply viewed. Churches are objects of contemplation, and, but of course, centers of worship, loci of adoration. More than the sense of wonder it evokes, the Sta. Monica Parish Church invokes deep stirrings of the soul…There commenced my personal pilgrimage. With St. Augustine, whose presence is embossed throughout the church named after his mother.

Crowning the window above the pasbul mayor, the main door of the church, is an escudo of an eagle – the symbol of St. John the Evangelist whose gospel was St. Augustine’s favorite.

“Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that thou mayest believe, but believe that thou mayest understand.” So, I remembered St. Augustine saying in Tractatus in Ioannis Evangelium. There. entered I the realm of faith.

At the vestibule, above the baptistery, is the heart of Sta. Monica carved on the adobe keystone – the image of a spade pierced by an arrow. Significant of the sufferings and sacrifices of the mother 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.

Taking center spot in the iconography at the main altar is a painting of the Nuestra Senora de La Consolacion y Correa. Beholding the image dredged memories of my dearly departed maternal grandmother.

May 4, the feast day of St. Monica (in the pre-1969 General Roman Calendar but has since moved to Aug. 27), Apu Rita took five-year-old me to this same church for Mass. As was her wont whenever we went to any church, she told me anecdotes about all the saints present at the altar.

Her take of La Consolacion – from memory now – St. Monica prayed nightly to God, through the intercession of the Virgin Mother, to change the sinful ways of her son Augustine. One night, as St. Monica wept, the Virgin appeared to her and as a token of compassion took off a black cloth cincture from her waist and gave it to St. Monica. It was that cincture that finally effected the transformation of Augustine. From then on, members of his eponymous monastic order have worn a black band across the waist as a pledge of devotion to La Consolacion. In remembering Apu Rita, I heard St. Augustine saying: “What is faith save to believe what you do not see?”

Unschooled, unemployed, unfettered from the material world, Apu Rita totally devoted her whole life between home and “her one, true, Mother Church.” Again, hearing here anew St. Augustine, and St. Cyprian too, declaring: “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.”

Lest this be misconstrued as Roman Catholic conceit, the most recent Catholic Catechism interpretation of “Outside the Church there is no salvation” is that “all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body.” Everything universal, nothing parochial in the expanse of the Church here.

That visit to the St. Monica Parish Church coming a day after the local media’s commemoration of the 21st month of the Ampatuan massacre, I was moved to pray for the repose of the souls of the victims and that justice be done. And then remembered St. Augustine saying in De Civitate Dei: “Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies. For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms.” (So, literally hewing to the current of events in Davao City these days.)

His City of God segueing further to the present, aye, to an ever-presence: “He that is good is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.” On the way to my parked car at the churchyard, my last look at the church centered on an escudo of a flaming heart – the very seal of the Augustinian Order – appliqued to the keystone of the main door.

Ah, how could I ever forget, the very core of St. Augustine’s Confessions: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you”

Maybe, I need to spend more time in churches than in coffeeshops. That will certainly make a lot of people less stressed, less upset, if not happier.

So, then I cry: But I wretched, most wretched, in my every commentary, had begged charity of Thee, and said, “Give me charity, give me unquestioning acceptance of the powers-that-be, only not yet.”

So, then I pray: God let me do a St. Augustine, but not yet.