Filipino Voices Is Shrilled Over HR 1109!

 

Writing at  Filipino Voices    (FV) is a time-consuming endeavor and I do not have the time.  But glancing at FV does not require so much time and looking at it lately, I was shocked to find the collective “Voice”  shrilled and frayed over HR 1109,  a resolution that some say is a precursor to the extension of the reign of the queen in Malacanang.

The conundrum of voices  at FV over the resolution that convenes the lower house as a constituent assembly to propose amendments to the 1987 Constitution of the Republic of Tralala sent tremors to my self-absorbed activity and self-imposed furlough, and brought me back to punch my keyboard at the expense of my personal endeavor that requires my undivided attention.

 I can only look with envy at some prolific contributors here  that can mass-produce literary pieces on  coffee-breaks, or others that can churn out articles after articles with classic  theme of “beating around the bush” and mindless of the footprint their masterpieces leave on the minds of  the readers.  I look at the readers with circumspect and with studied caution hence I have to think a while before I smoke my keyboard.

The Constitution is the fundamental law of the land.  Some say it is like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched and must be viewed with sanctimonious reverence.  {Thomas Jefferson, (1743-1826)}  Some say  it was made by the people and the people alone can unmake it.  It is a creature of their own will and lives only by their will. {John Marshall (1755-1835)}.

So if you were a Jeffersonian in thought, your protest against HR 1109 is justified.  The Constitution which is too sacred a covenant  will be soiled  if the scoundrels in Congress will be allowed to touch it, but if you were of Marshall’s insight,  the constitution can be rewritten by the people, or by the people’s representatives in Congress.

But which  Congress constitutes ¾  that can propose amendments to the Constitution?  HR 1109 was quite certain that ¾ of congress is the total number of congressmen and senators minus 25%.  Or if there are 289 congressmen and 24 senators,  ¾ of that number is 217.  The Resolution which the House has portrayed to have been unanimously passed on June 2, 2009 with the “ayes” drowning the “nays” brought back old memories of the 1973 Marcos constitution which was ratified by viva voce in the barangay halls of the Republic. 

The House claimed that the recent vote of the House on HR 1109 constituted ¾ of Congress voting to act as a constituent assembly to propose amendments to the constitution.    Its leadership calls everyone to visit Art. XVII of the Constitution and be enlightened by the reality that the said article did not say that ¾ of Congress means ¾ of the House and ¾ of the Senate convening in a joint session or separately which unlike the previous article it has replaced, was clear enough to state that ¾ of Congress refers to both houses voting jointly or separately.

The House reads Article XVII of the Constitution  to mean that ¾ of Congress is 217 all congressmen without Senators,  or 217  regardless of whether the number have congressmen and senators component in them.

But take note that the FV writer that started this brouhaha in an Open Letter said that there were  170 Congressmen who approved the resolution and therefore the number is short of 47 votes of Congress that is authorized to make amendments to the Constitution.  He has not intimidated that he has inside information of the insidious plot in the house to present this Resolution as having been voted by at least 217 congressmen and therefore would force through the throat of the nation that it is now authorized to tinker with the Constitution and prolong the reign of the queen.

Except for a couple of Senators who twitted  the claim of the House about what constitutes ¾ of Congress, the general sentiment of the Senate was totally dispassionate.  It is quite ensconced in its belief that the Senate is part of Congress which must also convene to propose amendments to the Constitution as against the position of the House that if it has ¾ of the total membership of both chambers, it is immaterial if all of these ¾ were all congressmen.  This is a very interesting legal question which must be resolved by the Court, but the general response of those who claimed they represent the public is to haul everyone on the street or punch their keyboards  to expound their legal genius and express their displeasure at the treason the lower house tries to perpetrate against the Republic.

We must be able to examine this quaint position of House in the judicial trenches and predict how the outcome will be decided without passion and without unleashing the most vituperative epithets that only becloud the issue and weaken the foundation of our institutions already much weakened by decades of manipulation and abused by the very people who were,  paradoxically were sworn to uphold the principles for which these institutions stand for.

Unfortunately,  the members of the Supreme Court of the Republic, unlike the members of SCOTUS, were appointed to the bench with unknown legal and moral philosophies in life and have clinched their seats less on their academic credentials but more on patronage.  Unlike a U.S. Supreme Court jurist whose confirmation hearing probes on her background as a legal scholar, the Senate of the Republic  does not inquire into the legal mindset of each jurist appointed to the bench,  and so we care less if a magistrate is judicial policy maker, or a simple interpreter of the law, or simply one without passion with the law and therefore a scoundrel that can only be trusted upon to deliver the desired output of his patron. It is behind this backdrop that makes the Supreme Court unpredictable.  But we can somehow be guided by “precedents”.  The predilection of the SCORP towards placating the Executive for which it is now accused of being behind the Con-Ass was proven during the Marcos era and one more time in its peroration of a  “constructive resignation” doctrine that made GMA temporarily a queen.  We have not noticed any stark difference between the Marcos Supreme Court and the Supreme Court now we conveniently labeled as the GMA Supreme Court. And one can hazard a guess that it will vote pretty well along the same partisan  lines.

A legal scholar said of the U.S. constitution:

“For more than two centuries justices, scholars, and people on the street have debated the proper method of interpreting the Constitution. Advocates have sparred over several contrasting approaches: strict, or narrow, versus broad construction (interpretation); conservative versus liberal; interpretivist versus noninterpretivist; and activist versus nonactivist. In general this is a debate between those who believe that the wording of Constitution should be read narrowly and those who argue that in many instances the words themselves provide no guide to the outcome of a case.” 

In going to the streets to manifest our displeasure over HR 1109, while  arguably part of our prerogative as a free people, is also laced with our contempt not only with the legislative and judicial branches but also of ourselves as a people.  Are we not supposed to have faith in  the wisdom of our elected congressmen to amend the constitution for after all we elected them to the office to perform  precisely what they had been mandated to perform, to “sit as constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution?”

If these bozos are the representation of ourselves as a people and therefore  are as half-wits and dimwits as ourselves, then we cannot trust them to tweak the fundamental law of the land no more than we can trust ourselves. We indict them as we indict ourselves.

Similarly, are we not entitled to consider our present recriminations misplaced because we have yet to see how the House will brew the constitution but we were already bellyaching on the treasonous sell-out by which our distinguished congressmen offered us HR 1109?

If the recipe is abhorrent to our taste, are we not supposed to spew it out and reject it in a plebiscite that is called to ratify the amendments?  Why do we have to protest so much on an issue the resolution of which lies within our sovereign  capacity to resolve?  Or are we just like our leaders,  fickle at the sight of wads of bills and boneless at an offer of convenience?   If we ourselves cannot maintain our dignity, the least we should expect it from others.  Our redemption begins with ourselves before we can expect if from from others.
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The Sex Scandal Continues….

The  sex drama online between Ms. Katrina and Mr. Kho had spilled over the Senate floor and everyone got wet,  literally and figuratively.   The august chamber on cue from Senator Jamby Madrigal,  Committee Chairman on Youth, Women and Family Relations had summoned, on suggestion from Senator Bong Revilla, another movie actor,  both artists in the sex video to  bare it  all, entertain the public and to enlighten the distinguished lawmakers  so they can craft a  piece of legislation to address sex videos proliferating online involving our young adults as well as not too young adults.  It is indicative enough that the Senate has the fortitude and the resolve to address this one vexing issue of pornography online,  though hours earlier, the same body was at a loss on how  to interpret its ethics rule against one of its member Manny Villar, and would defer to the High Tribunal for guidance.  Proficiency in math seems to plague this chamber too  that it is likely to ask the same tribunal to determine what constitutes ¾ of the chamber to call for Con-Ass, though in the latter, it is losing steam as of now.  Imagine children in gridlock over whose turn it is to wash the dishes and whose turn to play the video games that they have to ask their parents to settle the matter.   The only difference is that our lawmakers were no longer immature children, though temperamentally they could still be.

That this august chamber is deficient on something else does not argue against its capacity to fashion a piece of legislation that will address the issue of “voyeurism” or “pornography” online.  There seems to be, in this regards, a unanimous perception that the Senate can handle this “sex” investigation in aid of legislation or in aid of its basal interest for raw and prurient desire to look at the “perpetrators” up close and personal.

Let us leave the Senate for a while and look for some substance.

If  adults had engaged in some kind of indiscretion, our reflex reaction is to find out if it was consensual on their part.   If  this encounter was captured digitally frame by frame, our instinctive  reaction is to ask if both knew of the capture.  If yes on both, we tend to brush everything aside and take a hike.  If there is no public interest that is involved, we can sleep tight at night.   But how about if this indiscretion was done in an awfully tasteless manner and the entire episode becomes an overnight sensation online as to provoke someone to cry in anger:  “masyado akong nababoy”.  Now we can see some public outrage, though mistaken and misplaced in part because it was snowballed by the TV-network and the movie industry that had packaged Ms. Katrina both as a sex symbol and a heroine out to save mankind.   If Ms. Katrina was advertised as a sex symbol, what is so wrong with her being seen performing  an act that she was packaged to deliver?   Was it because her director was a doctor and  she was unaware of the camera rolling? Was the outrage lies in part because she was not able to deliver her best worthy of a FAMAS title as she was unaware of the camera rolling?  Or was it because it was a one-sided portrayal of her as a  sex symbol and it was not balanced by her selfless  heroine character?

The perplexing personality of Ms. Katrina is only matched by his partner who now claims that his deviant behavior was a result of a childhood trauma. What childhood trauma?  He seemed to be upbeat and in high spirit sojourning with his girlfriend, Ms. Belo in another escapade in Singapore until the sex video with Ms. Halili had appeared online.  He did not appear to be suffering from any trauma before the video scandal. 

 The negative reactions from the public was fueled chiefly by GMA-7,  Ms. Halili’s employer, whose daily variety show features scantily clad young girls gyrating before TV cameras beamed throughout the country and other parts of the world, which announced that it was standing behind her highly-prized sex kitten, Ms. Katrina.  The entire movie industry had rallied behind her as well.

 Dr. Kho was overwhelmed by the negative reactions from the public about this video clip that he hired a lawyer to fight tooth and nail for his right over this video which he claimed was released without his permission.  He appeared on TV contrite though for  his behavior only after his doting mother had made a similar appearance earlier that turned out to be a complete disaster. 

The public are being entertained with the cheap kind of circus where one is  being portrayed as virtuous and another as a villain.  Her virtue centers around her being unaware of the camera rolling while doing sex act;  and his villainous act, that  of taping the sexual congress and releasing it thereafter.  We seem to wallow in the idea that had she been aware of the camera rolling and consented to it, it will cement a character in her  person which in the first place was not there.  For proper perspective though, the public should see them both as villains.

To illustrate this point,  let us put another face instead that of Ms. Katrina’s doing sex with Mr. Kho.  This other face is not also engaged to be married with Mr. Kho  either because he has his own girl Ms. Belo.  We have no problem conjuring up an image of what the local wags would call “Pok-Pok” but in the case of Ms. Katrina, we conveniently put a face of a “victim of injustice”.

In the case of Mr. Kho, the public can easily read  perversion from every copy of  sexual video he has with his partners to catalogue his  conquest and to make money in them in the future.

If you sympathize with either, then we have our priorities wrong and our morality totally upside down.  This could be the reason why we can only achieve so much as a nation.

 

 

 

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Katrina, Hayden In Pari Delicto!

          Katrina and Hayden were in bed sharing their tryst with no matrimonial bond but despite this, Katrina’s employer GMA-7,  was behind its  “shining  star” and so was the entire movie industry which tried to ram through the throat of the  public a misleading one liner that: “Katrina was the victim”.   

          She was not a victim, though both of them were abusers and the unwitting public, their victims.  Katrina to some, is a heroine of the telenovela, Gagambino who fought evil to save mankind.  She had victimized the public into believing that her persona  is virtuously  wholesome, sensually of course it is.   Dr. Kho is  a physician with some kinky habit of taping his every sexual encounter with his partners.  His previous talent manager,  Ms. Solis admits this in a television interview.    He had victimized the public into looking at him as a physician and not as a pervert.

        Katrina models see through lingerie and skimpy bikinis and when you go on ramp to sell these products, the model becomes the most desirable product,  the “band-aid” size bikini she wears is nowhere within the index of any consumer’s  preference.  If she advertises that much she could also sell.  Was the tryst with Hayden an acceptance of the product she was selling and the secret tape,  Hayden’s business concept of cashing on in an investment?   

       Was she wronged because her consent was absent on the taping though the sexual liaison was consensual?

        Indeed , she was robbed of her privacy.  But would  she be appeased with the other “disgorging” the profit of the sex videos in her favor or does  she desire more?  If all these brouhaha are geared towards making the other scoundrel pay-up for the “tarnished image” and “privacy violation”  of the “victim”, then the settlement along these gridlines becomes private affair and the public had been had once again.

       They were both in pari delicto and no one should be allowed to profit from each other.

        Public appeasement will only come if Mr. Kho is stripped off of his license as a physician being a purveyor of porn and Ms. Halili is sanctioned for her “indecorous” behavior by the very people behind her.  But her employer, as aptly observed by DJB,  has a daily variety show of scantily clad young girls gyrating in front of television cameras beamed throughout the country  and certain parts of the world.  This variety show could be the very backbone of its rating and therefore its huge source of income.  The paradox is, the more Katrinas  they have, the more the money and the fun.

       Let us wait and see how this scenario pans out in the next few days.  But the prediction of  DJB  entitled Live by Pudenda, Die by Pudenda  below only confirms that the public  will again be the helpless victims.

      “What Hayden Kho and Katrina Halili are suffering now is merely the consequence of that tragically false presumption. We owe them pity, but that is all. I don’t see why either of them should be held up as examples of causes worth fighting for. I’m cold to them both and am willing to predict that  Katrina Halili and Hayden Kho, and those behind, in front, under and over them both will all soon realize they ought  to just patch this all up quietly and continue in the business of making money by selling made up flesh doctored and dolled up for ramp, runway and studio.  The alternative of course is an escalating war of dueling videos,  in which videos of other famous people doing it could hit the World Wide Web”.
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Annika, (May 24, 2009)

      I shall call  you  “Kikay”.  Nobody in the family will call you Kikay except your grandpa.  Your would-be friend Kristina had been waiting for your coming and quite excited about it and she  would call you by your  sweetest nickname, “Annie”. Your aunt Kaycee and Loren or even your grandma will probably call you the same or simply Ann.

          But you shall remain Kikay to grandpa.  The name sounds so exotic and so endearing though had you been a boy, Kikoy could be the name for a clown.  But as a girl’s nickname,  Kikay  evokes some special kind of a bond.  A bond that  that distinguishes any other bond with others.  Your other grandpa would not be able to make any spatial bind with you, but later, you can search for his spiritual presence while I search for yours now.

         The family had waited for you for 4 long years now.  You seem to appreciate the gravity of those  missed years that you came  out 3 weeks  ahead of your schedule.   Everyone else in the clan has an attitude, but yours surpassed that of everyone else.  You are a textbook example of a paradox;  eager to face the world in an economic crisis while others were running away from it.   That’s my Kikay…

      I shall be your greatest grandpa because you have no other.  I am thrilled by the distinction.

      Meanwhile break the stillness of that early dawn with the shrill of your innocence. 

       Welcome to the World my little sweet angel ! ! !

http://qik.com/video/1734581

 
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Katrina Halili, God and the Church

        Ms. Katrina H. represents our today’s  confused or embattled generation.  In a telenovela, Gagambino with Dennis Trillo,  she was one of the heroines who battled the forces of evil  (Ms. Jean Garcia and one Harold) so she and others can save mankind from extinction, but in another dimension,  you saw her modeling see-through lingerie and skimpy bikinis on the ramp or posed in still lurid and alluring photos of flesh.

        In the first, she serves as role model for our young people to do what is good and resist everything evil yet  in another dimension you saw her sensual curvatures and contours sufficient to soak up one’s nocturnal fantasies.  Your vision of her in this dimension could lead you to an honest perception that if she  advertises that much, she could sell as much.  Did she sell this time around?  Or it was purely for fun?

        The young generation is lost on Katrina H.  She is a heroine who fights evil but she could  very well be the same forces that she was battling against.

       The Church was right all  along in its position that those pills and other contraception which the government had tried to sell to the public to address population problem could backfire and lead people astray towards promiscuity.   Ms. Katrina H and Mr. Kho,  and others could engage in this voyeuristic activity in a one-nightstand unfettered by the responsibility that traditional couple would assume when they engaged in this kind of intimacy. That they engaged in it for fun,  is entirely different from those who engaged in it as an expression of the oneness of their souls. They look at is as the primeval expression of basal instinct for flesh and sex,  while ideally, people should only engage   in it because they are in love with each other.  This is the Church’s  line which unfortunately, many have considered this to be primeval too.

       But Mr. Kho, who presumably had taped this lustful encounter with Ms. Katrina H. and leaked it to the media thereafter, should have taken clinical psychology first before cosmetic medicine so he could have his head examined before he is even allowed examine another person’s anatomy to perfect it.  And from where I sit,  Mr. Kho has the propensity of examining  a person’s anatomy which is already perfect and flawless and therefore does not need his expert intervention.  Apparently, the intervention was of different dimension using a probing scalpel that was  never sanctioned before by the medical board.   He is embroiled now in a “medical malpractice” .

       All these talks about sanctions and passage of a cyber-law to address privacy violation and pornography in the internet while laudable and appropriate,  had missed one larger issue:  We cannot legislate an acceptable standard of morality in our populace.  We have to instill that morality and virtues to our children direct from our homes and ask our children to emulate persons whom they know personally to be upright and virtuous  and not to emulate those movie personalities whose “virtues” were packaged commercially by media using flesh and skin as the basic framework.

      From my standpoint, we are losing our young generation because we have lost God in our own generation.
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A SIMPLE CREDIBILITY PROBLEM FOR THE COURT

        The Court of Appeal’s  sideshow of promoting the three lady justices who acquitted Lance Cpl. Smith as beacons of probity and wisdom foreshadows a greater malaise all known too well to the public.   The presumption of regularity of performance of official duties is no longer true.  The presumption now is that government function has been discharged irregularly.    Thus the desperate but concerted efforts to portray these woman jurists as the epitome of integrity and probity was meant to address that overturned presumption of regularity.  Their plaques of citations and honors received in the past, come handy to drill into the minds and hearts of the public that their latest judicial act was judicious, prudent and had served the ends of justice.

        What prevented the CA from rendering a decision forthright and without the accompaniment of these  decorative “halos”  of integrity plastered all over the head of its jurists?  One explanation is that this Court has just been reeling from the effects of some of its “distinguished members” being axed for misconduct by another tier of a Court which is neither known for good conduct.  Mr. Marcos has his chest fully covered with medals of honor and bravery,  but the people, except perhaps the Ilocanos and some few percentage of the entire population, would still consider him a “scoundrel”.    So what has that to say about those citations of our “distinguished lady jurists?”   Does that make them prudent and clothe their decision with extravagant wisdom?  No, sir! -  It has nothing to do at all with probity and wisdom.  It has something to do with addressing its own eroded credibility.

          For his brusque conduct, Mr. Smith has been pilloried as a rapist, momentarily detained at the decrepit and stinky Makati jail, and was then transferred to a more human environment at the Rowe Security Building inside the U.S. Embassy at Roxas Boulevard only to be acquitted afterwards.

      Put yourself in the shoes of Mr. Smith and ask yourself:  “Does that look like justice having been served?”  Damage has already been inflicted against Mr. Smith.

        The way we manipulate our judicial system and subject it to public pressure is destructive of a constitutional government and that is the downside.  The upside is, our judicial officials are now sensitive to public opinion.  It is time now that we educate the public and elevate their consciousness to a level where they can approximate what justice is all about.

          In my most warp sense of justice, I cheer for Nicole.  She won her case.  She got her visa and her money through the efforts of the  public in drumbeating her one-night stand that has gone haywire.  It is unfortunate that the “orphans” she had left, have to bellyache still in the streets of Manila, in the airwaves and in the tubes, in the pages of MSM and the blogsphere with the same passion this case has generated the first time this prurient episode had hit the headlines in 2005.  

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THE POLICE MUST KEEP ITS MOUTH SHUT

Mr. Ted Failon, being administered with cast to determine gunpowder residue (photo from yahoo news)

 

Trina, 45, Ted Failon’s wife is dead. Doctors  at New  Era Hospital in Quezon City pronounced her dead at 8:50 p.m. Thursday.  It is tragic but the drama that unfolds after the shooting was even more tragic.

The day that Ms. Trina was shot, police elements and media people were swarming like bees that descended upon the elegant home of the Failons in one plush subdivision in Quezon  and mistaking it  for a moment for a shrubbery of highly pollinated nectar that matches only the stature of the ABS-CBN TV-anchor, Mr. Ted Failon.

Government officials, politicians and even the  chief lawyer of a government office  mandated to aid the  “indigents” had tried to compete for the inebriating appeal of the tubes and the airwaves. In the latter case, you can ask in disbelief if Mr. Failon is an indigent.

 The effort to get into the hub of the orchard they thought rich of enervating syrup that could last them one summer had spilled over into the police precinct and hospital premises.  Not content with the initial investigation of Mr. Failon at the police precinct  after the shooting,  police operatives swarmed back at his house and had arrested his household helps and his driver, and then made one swoop at the hospital to arrest Trina’s brother.

There is nothing wrong with the effort to arrest persons the police  had suspected to be obstructing justice but these law enforcers  must do so with the least possible pomp and rudeness  in the light of the request of the Failons to respect their grief and in the case of the hospital arrest,  to be considerate over a brother’s anguished at  his sister’s fate. However, the police could care less on the sensitivity of the grieving family;  it must discharge its “duties”  regardless of the person’s stature,  may he be a TV personality of nationwide renown,  or   the quintessential “grease man“ on the street.  Does it  really want the public to believe in this?

Badgered by the media which wanted a minute-by-minute account of the ongoing investigation, the police had willingly obliged by announcing  that Mr. Failon was negative of nitrate reactant, ( no gunpowder residue found on his arms), and so was Trina.  But the police had continued to highlight its own suspicion of Mr. Failon by announcing that  the findings do not indicate that he did not fire any firearm but it would not highlight  the same observation  in the case of Trina.

If you parse the police  announcement, it is possible that Trina had fired  the gun and yet no gunpowder residue was found. The next malice was the eagerness of the police to announce that there was no “tattooing” on Trina’s skin.  Tattooing is the markings on the skin  surrounding the bullet’s entry point to indicate that the nozzle of the gun was fired about  few inches from the head to sustain the “suicide theory”, but the police did not account for the fact that the deceased was a woman with thick  bundle of  hair  that could effectively have prevented the smudging on her skin.  And the “sorry note” by the victim was not actually a “suicide note”.   You can already sense the bias in the investigation.

The police had continued entertaining the public with another angle to sustain a “foul-play” theory.  The rounding-up of the household help and the driver, (despite their lawyer’s plea for a warrant and a need of her assistance),  and  the arrest of Trina’s sister, Pamela Arteche,  was premised for their having “conspiratorially tampered with the “crime scene”.  The announcement that it was a “crime scene” is conclusionary.  It gives you an idea already that a crime was committed and the people they had arrested had tampered with the evidence of the crime.  The “suicide” theory has been downplayed.

The innocent explanation of the household was that the clean-up was made to shelter the 12 year old daughter of Trina and Ted of a possible trauma of finding blood all over the bathroom.  The clean-up of the vehicle was almost natural to even ascribe ill motive over such action.  The blood in the car was in no way determinative of who could have shot Trina and therefore no longer part of the scenario that could sustain a theory of “evidence tampering”,  but you would be amazed to note that the clean-up of the blood in the bathroom and the car were being drum-beaten as consistent acts to tamper with the evidence.

The police may entertain various theories on the tragic shooting to death of Trina  on April 15,  or it may even implicate Mr. Failon, but it must do so only after a  careful sleuthing of the bits and pieces of information and physical evidence that are logical and sensible.  It being badgered by the media to come up with some conclusion on the case does not entitle it “ to shoot from the hip”,  for one’s liberty hinges upon it,  it is horrible that the police is playing with it.

My take is that the police must continue to investigate the case until it can come up with the most  logical explanation as to who shot who. Meanwhile, it can shut  up and refrain from feeding the media with some malicious and sleazy innuendos.

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Justice for Lance Cpl. Smith

 Ms. Nicole had vanished into the dead of the night.  She has left a conundrum of orphans and a lot of far more troubling questions.  Was she a victim or a victimizer?  Why did the poster girl of  Gabriela and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan go as to even render yet another  unlikely orphan, the venerable old man, Senator Jovito Salonga? But in the wake of her disappearance she has left a trail of what could have really happened on November 1, 2005.   Her previous statement which provided the basis to charge five people with rape was whittled down to one, Lance Cpl. Smith  by Hon. Judge Bejamin T. Pozon in a decision on December 4, 2006.  Her latest statement provided us  another yet troubling aspect of what  really could have happened on that night of the day of the dead.  From five people whom she has claimed previously to have conspired to bang her inside  a Starex van,  she says now that there was none, and   the intimate liaison between her and Mr. Smith, the accused detained in a comfortable U.S. embassy premises in Roxas Boulevard, “could have been consensual”.

Can the same group who rallied behind Nicole on a paramount issue of justice take the cudgels for Smith now for the same reason?  Or are we programmed only to see ourselves as victims and never as abusers?

Don’t call me heartless and callous.  I have two daughters.  In 1993, Mayor Sanchez  raped and killed a college coed and her beau. My youngest daughter then was in the kindergarten, the other was third year high school.  In one post  I said:

      “ I was already a lawyer when Aillen Sarmenta and Allan Gomez were murdered, the former after being gang-raped. I have two young daughters then, tears flowing from my eyes after reading the newspaper account of the bestiality committed on Aillen and her plea for life after she was ravished had fallen on deaf ears. I have chill all over my spine.  I  have to close the door in my room, my two daughters were in school and I wept”.

 My youngest daughter is going 20 and here she is singing:

 

 

Given the unfolding drama that continues to fixate the entire nation, I would still be cheering for Nicole.  Unlike some young women who are better situated,  Ms. Nicole has  limited options but the route she has taken is the best for her though her own private sense of justice has trampled upon another sense of justice, that of Lance Cpl. Smith. 

Meanwhile the drama continues to unfold both on and off-court. Expect  a sequel in this spicy episode. 

 

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THE ELECTORAL PROCESS RP SHOULD ENVY !

There is something that the Philippines should envy about the election process in the U.S. For my entire life I have just voted twice. The first time was in 1975 when Senator Ninoy Aquino ran against Imelda Marcos and her ticket for the Batasang Pambansa. I voted for Ninoy but he was cheated out of his victory. I have never voted in any election then.

The second time was in the U.S. Presidential election this Tuesday, November 4, 2008. The line in the polling precinct where I voted was about 20 meters long, but the process was orderly. You can vote by party affiliation by blackening the oblong in the ballot box or you can mix and match your choice by blackening an oblong opposite the candidate name.

If you opt for block voting, you have to darken only one oblong and all the candidates of the party are voted for from President, Vice President, Senators and Congressmen.

Next you are required to vote for non-patisan candidates like State Supreme Court Justices, District Court Judges and even School Board Officials.

In Michigan, the ballot also carries a referendum on legalizing marijuana production for medical use and another referendum on “embryonic cell research”.

After filling up your ballot you insert it into a machine where it is being scanned and tabulated while pushing your ballot inside the machine.

Few hours after closing you know who wins the election and you find the losing candidate conceding his defeat.

The U.S. is composed of 50 States but she can manage the elections so smoothly. Though there was that famous “hanging chad” controversy in Florida that glued the entire nation on the outcome of the election in 2004, but such was resolved in few days.  This year’s election was model in its orderliness.. The Philippines land mass is less than that of California and I could venture that it has more electorate than the Philippines but our canvass would last for three weeks to two months, and the nation hold her breath for the outcome, which more often is incredible to say the least.

State SC Justices and district court judges have tenure and have be to voted upon by the electorate. This way, these Justices cannot abuse their authority because they can be voted out of office in 4 years.

The Philippines can copy the U.S. experience if we really want to strengthen our institutions and free ourselves from the manipulation of our politicians and their corrupt cohorts.

WHY I AM VOTING FOR MCCAIN/PALIN IN MICHIGAN

The Republican Party has already conceded Michigan to the Democrat Obama/Biden but I am still voting for  Mccain and Palin because I found Obama a phony and Biden a “trapo”.

Here is my objection to Obama, please click these links:

 

 

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