Mother Teresa and the 1st Amendment

Mother Theresa is about to be honored by the United States Postal Service by proposing to issue on her 100^th birthday, this coming August 26,  a commemorative stamp bearing the diminutive nun from Albany who had served the poor of Calcutta, India from 1950 to 1997 and the poor all over the world  through her various charity missions.

The atheists and the Freedom from Religion  Foundation were up in arms and vexed  with the idea that federal funds would  be spent to favor Mother Teresa’s Catholic faith and therefore  infringes the first amendment and demolishes the wall between State and the Church.  It has long been laid to rest that government money cannot be spent to favor one religion unless the activity has a secular purpose. Mother Teresa who was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2003,  was not overly partisan over her faith as she found compassion and had lived with Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist in India.  She has not called members of the other faith “infidels”.

She would be honored for her humanitarian efforts and for touching the lives of millions of underprivileged children and adults all over the world and not for her being a Catholic, though it was her faith or her misgivings about it that made her persevere through the darkness of apathy in our midst.

Her service to humanity dims whatever religious faith she may have.  It is very easy to find secularism the way the postal money would be spent in this regards.

Postal officials though had expressed surprise at this protest considering that the USPS has a long list of previous honorees with strong political backgrounds, including Malcolm X, the former chief spokesman for the Nation of  Islam and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist Minister and co-founder of the Southern Christian  Leadership Conference.

It seems that there is only a constitutional breach of the “first amendment”  if  a Catholic believer is about to be honored by the State and not when other members of the faith would get the accolade.

While the issue of separation of State and Church was enshrined in the first amendment only as safeguard against the State’s dispensing undue favor to  a particular faith over another, the atheists have read it to mean that the State can favor other religious groups other than the Catholic faith.

Love, compassion and justice which are the basic tenets of almost all religions on earth should have been the bedrock of every government.  It is in our effort to detach these lofty principles from the government that makes our bureaucracy evil and corrupt.

The Philippine Senate and the Cockpit

 

          At the expense giving up a whole day of productive labor,  I wrote this piece instead, somewhat distressed by Ding’s  comparison of the cockpit joint with the Philippine Senate.  I thought the simile far off and the comparison an insult to the cockpit.   In one,  it is a very inexpensive  arena where blood of gallant warriors is shed to enrich its few square foot of soil, in the other, a very expensive and imposing  edifice where dishonorable men trade endless tirades at the expense of the populace.

         English speaking people had invented the term  “chicken-out”  to suggest one’s lack of balls or plain cowardice. Western tourists, except for a few, have not been in the cockpit and had not seen roosters fighting in a brief, ferocious and bloody combat. Most of the time, both duelers fought and died in the arena fighting as they gasped their last breath.   I see more bravery, honor and fortitude in the cockpit than in the “august halls”  of the Senate.

        “Chicken out”  is a cruel term appended to the chicken and had failed to do justice to the rooster’s ferocious gallantry and valor in the ring. We see cockfight chiefly as a gambling activity and an entertainment and had barely noticed the egalitarian bout in the arena.

         Like boxing, the outcome of the fight is not determined by the status of the handlers but by the cock’s or the boxer’s ability to hit its or his opponent with barrage of accurate slashing or pummeling. A poor boxer may prevail over his rich opponent or his opponent opulent handlers.  Or a rooster raised by a poor man in his backyard can prevail over a rooster raised in a well-maintained stable whose fighting cocks are fed daily with vitamin supplements, energy food and rich nutrition.

                A writer for Microsoft Encarta had observed:

            “The cockpit is a curiously egalitarian arena. A cock belonging  to a peasant   who owns only two or three birds may defeat, or  fight to a standoff, a bird raised by a wealthy landowner who  maintains a stable of a dozen game birds, a breeder, and a  professional handler”.

            Only if the fight is close between the two protagonists and both were breathing their last that the “referee’s deceptive trick” can tilt the winning edge in favor of the slightly lesser fighter, but such erratic decision is often meet with catcalls and resounding  “boos” from the spectators. One can see that cocks are honorable fighters and cockfighting aficionados are honorable people who would imperiously protest at obvious cheating.   Those who were favored by this cheating would keep quite in the corner and uncomfortable of the idea of his winning by virtue of the umpire’s partiality. 

         This is also a place where a cockfighting enthusiast can shout out his offer for a hefty bet to a complete stranger across the gallery and seal their agreement by mere hand signals.  This practice validates a far better honor code system that inheres within the four walls of an old and tattered cockpit than the imposing Senate floor where acrimonious denials of bribe attempt ever made so the committee can go soft on a colleague that made profit in seeing to it that public funds were spent on highways   slithering through his empire of subdivisions spanning several cities in the metropolis.

         You see a palpable misconduct of Senator but half of his colleagues were comfortable defending his treachery, where in the cockpit,  any perception of cheating is meet with catcalls if not outright physical assault from everybody.

           In some other culture, cockfighting is a pastime, a gambling and a form of ritual to cast away the demons and bad spirits  An English anthropologist wrote about cockfighting in Bali, Indonesia:

            “A  cockfight, any cockfight, is in the first instance a  blood   sacrifice offered with the  appropriate chants and oblations,  to the demons in order to pacify their ravenous, cannibal  hunger. No temple festival should be conducted until one  is made.    x x x.  Collective responses to natural evils-illness,   crop failure, volcanic eruptions-almost always involve them.     And that famous holiday in Bali, The Day of Silence (Njepi), when everyone sits silent and immobile all day long in order   to avoid contact with a sudden influx of demons chased momentarily out  of hell, is preceded the previous day by large-scale cockfights,  in almost every village on the  island”.

         So you see now Ding, the Philippine Senate and the cockpit are two different arenas.  One is filled with scoundrels and scumbags, the other, an unimpressive structure with no hallmark of fame, yet it is where an activity is being held to cast away the demons that possess the other.

Late Christmas Note

I have two good reasons not to file this article; one, in the midst of economic crisis and poverty in the country, it is obscene to talk about your blissful Christmas holidays where you have sumptuous meal to feast on and, two, after spending some money during the  holidays, you have to roll up your sleeves, buckle down back to work so you can have some cash on your incoming payables instead of spending time  smoking your keyboard for a piece that may not sound right after all. 

But Christmas, according to Nick, the Editor-Not-Chief of FV, is about love and not about food on your table and not about bricks and mortar enclosures that empanelled your body for comfort. But where on occasion that you have an instant pansit canton, a cheese and corned beef as a center piece of your  Christmas meal,  your  table is yet a picture of a bountiful meal from the perspective of one who skipped his to retire in his cold cardboard mattress. 

I feigned no innocence of this kind of experience for as  a young boy growing up in a big family with small budget in a city, hunger was something you can reminisce about on a daily basis; bricks and mortars, was a dream, and some Christmastime went by literally cold, hungry and sad. From those who skipped his “noche buena” last Christmas, peace and love acquire no meaning.  I have to struggle to write this piece and give it some meaning.

This is my first Christmas with my first grand-daughter in an expensive city of San Francisco where a 2-bedroom condo costs about $450,000.00, compared to a new 4-bedroom detached single unit in Michigan which costs about $250,000.  I see my grand-daughter’s well-being as the consequence of my bow made early in life while reeling from abject poverty and deprivation that I shall never subject any of my children from the same degrading condition I was in as a boy. My son whom I believe had dutifully raised with my wife had graduated from UP and is now working in San Francisco with his wife. We have raised our kids responsibly so they can raise responsible kids too. My elder daughter is a nurse and my youngest daughter, in her first year of college.  From a hostile chilly weather of Michigan this season we flew to a more bearable weather at 50 degrees Fahrenheit in San Francisco, and leave us bewildered if “global warming” is nothing but a big white hoax.

Looking back, I wondered if every young and poor city dweller could make the same pledge I did years ago, can make a difference in the level of financial success one may have today.  Unlike some of us who got married while out of school or were still in school, I settled down when I was already a lawyer at 28, and though still jobless, I did not doubt that with my law degree, I can find a job. Some people have their hormones kicked early in, and had made some bad decisions in life and ended up blaming the government or their parents for their inability to seek for a better life. It is built in our psyche as a people to always ascribe our own misery to others instead of ourselves.  It is like drinking liquor and blaming the liquor store after we got drunk.  I never blamed the government or my parents for my being poor, instead, I gathered from my infirm circumstance an inspiration to persevere in life.

We may not be able to effect change in the corrupt way our government functionaries run the system, but let not their corruption slows us down.  They can always go to hell while we seek for our own blessings and pray for our redemption.  This is the essence of Christmas, to find your own peace even if others won’t.

Anyway, Christmas is about family and not about blaming others for our fault which gives me some license to talk about my 7-month old grand-daughter whose ears had just been pierced so some trinkets could hang in her two earlobes.  It was a wonderful site seeing an obstetrician and a retinue of nurses taking charge of so simple a procedure that could be done in any decrepit tattoo stand in most city side streets by some undergrad technician but I think my grand-daughter was so special that she has a coterie of medical team from the family gravitating on her for a routine ear-piercing job. I would rather write some paragraphs about it than about my two hour visit of  Alcatraz, or my seafood meal at Fisherman’s Wharf or about a young boy doing a Michael Jackson number on the sidewalk of the fabled Bay Area to earn some few dollars in a tin-cup or a grown up black guy in silver-coat regaling his audience with his robotic movements for the same reason the young boy had.

I aimed my 15.1 megapixel canon rebel as the piercing instrument touches my grand-daughter’s ear and I felt a tickling sensation myself and a little bit of associative pain when the needle pierced through her soft skin. I kept the video rolling and the ensuing rendition may have its flaws, but her shrill cries were flawless expression of her innocent pain which she could not even recall when she grows up.  But the images and the video would remind her that at her age, everyone was there to comfort her for her pain and to assure her that everything would be just fine. Her being ensconced in her dad’s arm in tears, reminds me of my daughter seeking comfort from my arms after the dentist had pulled her decayed milk tooth out.  Christmas is also about family being able to find excitement in ordinary things others may find dull and boring.

We spent our holiday in San Francisco and did not notice that the one-week vacation was over and have to fly back home to Michigan. Einstein’s relativity theory was again proven right. One minute in a hot cauldron is an eternity, but a week spent with your family, a fleeting moment.

In a manner of speaking, many Pinoys are in hot cauldron and have suffered for eternity – it is this thought that holds you back from writing about your blissful holiday.   But I have not caused their misery and I endeavor to speak of my own strength hoping that others may find their own.  I still consider myself poor now but not as poor when I was a boy and that gave me good reason to be joyful.

Man’s Inhumanity to Man (Maguindanao Massacre)

 Manila, Philippines,  Dec. 7, 2009 -       A skillful handling of the Maguindanao massacre by the present administration under President Gloria M. Arroyo (GMA) could offer a last crack towards her redemption. If that happens, the Ampatuans could serve again as GMA’s reliable allies, though this time, they were her unwilling allies unlike in year 2004 where they were complicit and willing accomplices in delivering hundreds of spoiled votes to ensure her victory against her rival, FPJ.

 It is a golden opportunity for GMA to rise above partisan politics and salvage her image as a corrupt politician. She can forget about running for a congressional seat in her district and devote full time her last remaining months in Malacanang to address the Maguindanao crisis and prove her detractors wrong by putting her erstwhile allies permanently behind bars.

She had already invoked her emergency powers by declaring martial law in the province and her Armed Forces had already put manacles on the members of the clan suspected of having achieved the singular distinction of being able to fashion out instant mass graves for their political opponents as well as some media people and civilians.  These were encouraging signs although her detractors remain cynical of her efforts and would see these developments heralding a nationwide emergency rule, mass arrests and incarceration of political dissenters and the possible cancellation of the 2010 presidential elections.

Almost everyone was trying to compete in the inebriating notoriety of this tragedy.  The left, headed by Satur Ocampo and his army of red-flag-waving crowds, as well as the trapos and the media’s most pretentious pundits have brought in their collective wisdom or a lack of it and started conjuring up the image of a martial law realities and in the  mold of the Marcos  bygone era.  Only this time, they could not quiet distinguish between the fake ambush of Senator Enrile in 1972 which was made as one of the chief reasons why martial law was declared in that year and the actual slaughter of 57 or so people last month in a place long noted for violence and ruled by ruthless and merciless warlords who can kill with impunity fortified with armory supplied by the same military unit that now put them behind bars. What an incredulous irony!

Unfortunately, the Ampatuan clan is the government’s counterweight to the MILF which had been waging a violent war against the Republic.  If you have to put this clan out of the political landscape, you have to anoint another clan to fill up the void to be left by its being temporarily out of power unless you want the MILF and other ragtag groups of violent people that operate in the area rampaging every corner of the resource-rich island of Maguindanao and other Mindanao provinces.  Either way, the promise land is always confronted with the choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.   It’s a sort of low-intensity conflict if you just allow these Muslims to kill each other rather than bring them united against the entire Armed Forces.

Finding solution to the problem facing Maguindanao right now, aside from rescuing its people from ignorance and abject poverty always poses a challenge to any occupant in Malacanang.  In the past, imperial Manila’s predictable response to reign in the violence in the area is to impose its own violence but this time around, the imposition of state violence can be explained facing TV cameras with somber expression of grief that Martial Law was put in place to bring the perpetrators of this dastardly massacre to justice and to dismantle all the warlords in the area.

Economic woes and unmitigated corruption in office had been the centerpiece of GMA’s presidency but if she plays her cards right in resolving the Maguindanao dilemma and her martial law objective in the area, her nine years of blunders and corruption could end up with one year of public euphoria. The ball is in her court.  She could dribble it to fame or remain in the court of infamy.

Erap, Rosalinda, Wowowee, GMA-7

 

“Alin ang Naiiba?”,  goes a kindergarten  brain teaser.  Apparently,  two in the group are natural persons, while one is a  very popular noontime show and the other, a media conglomerate.  But despite their being entirely different from each other, they have the same thing in common; each represents our addiction to something that perpetually demeans and enslaves us.

GMA-7  reported in 2008 a  P2.37 billion net profit  which is a huge sum in today’s faltering local and worldwide economy.  The increase in profit was generated by both domestic and foreign subscribers.  The media mogul made money by giving us “Eat Bulaga” with scantily clad young girls gyrating in front of TV cameras while Wowowee, of the rival station,  ABS-CBN, tries to outshine it with even more beautiful young girls slithering in various body contortions. It is not the young girls though that demeans us but the idea that we can get cash dole outs from these two studios that routinely dispense money to few lucky fans by just hanging out there and wait for our turn for a crack at the jackpot.  Compared to the thousand of poor city dwellers that troop daily to these studios hours before sunrise, a dozen of lucky winners in these shows are too insignificant to the mass of humanity that went home empty-handed after spending  long hours outside and inside these studios of make-believe.  We do not quantify the man-hour loss, after all these are mostly jobless fans that have no regular jobs and could afford the endless wait hoping to be admitted in these studios and be given one shining opportunity to be on TV and make some few thousand bucks. Their belief that they can make instant cash keeps the hypnosis perpetual and prevents them from reinventing themselves to become more productive human resource. While these media moguls and their superstar hosts are assured of millions, the screaming fans both inside and outside these studios remain poor, gullible and pathetic.

GMA-7 does not only rob the jobless poor people of their right to think for themselves, it also rob the middle class of their cash by giving them cheap telenovelas in the likes of Rosalinda, Totoy Bato, Darna, “Ikaw Sana”  “Kaya Kong Abutin ang Langit” and “Tinik sa Dibdib”. And while the actors and actresses in these teleseries were talented individuals, the storylines were cheap and the dialogues, pure garbage.  These teleseries are bazen attempt to keep the middle class as well as the C-D class stupid and clueless.

Both in substance and theme,  these teleseries are identical that if you have seen one, you could almost say that you have seen them all. Except for “Stairway To Heaven”  featuring Dindong Dantes and Rhian Ramos, two of the wholesome matinee idols of this recent years, all other teleseries  revolve in idiotic fantasies and nonsensical drama that are fit only for Pinoys whose brains had already suffered irreversible atrophy.

Totoy Bato featuring Robin Padilla, the “bad boy” of the Philippine  cinema, is a story about an “immortal hero” whose lifetime had spanned several generations in order to save mankind from bad people.  The story was almost lifted from three Hollywood films, “Highlander” featuring Christopher Lambert, “The Terminator” with Arnold Schwarzenegger and “Troy” with Brad Pit.  While these foreign films were distinct in themselves,  “Totoy Bato” was an alchemy of these three films. It was inspired by these three films that you could be certain that the Totoy Bato’s theme was copied from these films. That “Totoy Bato” was written by Carlo J. Caparas, who was named National Artist for Visual Arts and Film for 2009, made it even worst.  The genuine group of literary people  who inveighed against his choice as the national artist for this category had all the reasons to be up in arms and be scandalized because the choice reflects the lowest ebb of our creative genius that we find no more qualms in bestowing an award to a literary thief.  

“Darna” is an old heroine that her predecessors had already left the cinema and had gone to politics, and one lonely soul had gone from drugs into being lesbian.  It is being rehashed to entertain the Pinoys.  With the advent of modern technologies, Darna’s nemeses had quadrupled, but the cinematic rendition of this inherently Pinoy character-heroine in our tubes, remains crude and tasteless.

“Ikaw Sana” features Jennilyn Mercado and Mike Herras, husband and wife who had fallen victims of the scheming Pauline Luna and her mom. In one episode, she was framed-up for a murder and was  imprisoned in Palawan and thereafter had been transferred to Davao Penal Colony and she was jailed for 7 years and despite the advance in technology where “text messaging” and emails are common,  Ms. Mercado was unable to contact her husband in Manila  to inform him about her ordeal.  Nowadays, you can reach someone on the moon.  She relied on regular mails which were never mailed by her jailer and phone calls which were received by someone else in her household and therefore never get relayed to her husband.   And despite the overwhelming evidence that Ms. Luna had been working against her, she remains gullible in believing that Ms. Luna will bring the matter of her being imprisoned to Mr. Herras when Ms. Luna had visited her in prison in Palawan.

“Tinik sa Aking Dibdib” stars Sunshine Dizon (Lorna)  but she was replaced by Nadine Samonte in the casting because of Ms. Dizon’s  reported depression.  Opposite her is Marvin Agustin who could not believe in the switch from Lorna to Danika, another personality in the teleseries because of the plastic surgery performed on her by a psychopath physician.  Matching of dental records and DNA testing are two well-known procedures to settle any identity problem, but these forensic techniques have never crossed his mind when he was told that Danika is actually Lorna.

The same identity problem was raised in the teleseries, “Rosalinda”. Her husband,  Fernando Jose accepted  her being dead on the basis of a charred body where her necklace was found without DNA testing and dental record matching.  Despite his being a lawyer, he did not ask that these procedures be performed on the cadaver. And Rosalinda who was actually alive, found nothing immoral about her being married to Fernando Jose and yet living in the house of her manager, Alex who had been salivating to have sex with her and away from her husband and an infant daughter.  She is a very beautiful woman but there was no explanation in the story of how defective her psychological and moral  make-up was, thus giving the impression among our young televiewers that it was alright for a young married woman to stay in another man’s condo apart from her own family so she can help him rehabilitate from his paraplegic condition. If only she has a brain half-as-much as ordinary people have, it was easy to discern that Alex was her tormentor by keeping her away from her husband while she had an amnesia and concocting a grand lie about her husband having betrayed her and so she must exact some revenge.  She owed him no sympathy that can ruin her marriage to Fernando Jose,  yet her overflowing kindness to Alex had put her marriage at risk. There were so many loose ends and nonsense in this teleseries, which is quite the hallmark of all the other, but Rosalinda makes the perfect baloney.

Fernando Jose and his uncle Ariel Rivera are lawyers. When Fernando Jose filed for annulment of his marriage with Rosalinda, the teleseries had developed a storyline that if Rosalinda would not file her counter-affidavit to oppose the annulment, it would hasten the annulment process.  There are two legal misconceptions in this regard.  In annulment, you file an answer not a counter-affidavit and if you did not file an answer it will not hasten the annulment, it could even prolong it.  Once a respondent in a case for annulment had failed to file an answer, the Public Prosecutor will conduct his own investigation to ensure that husband and wife did not enter into a collusion to have their marriage annulled by conveniently filing the petition and let it unopposed by other spouse because public policy which promotes the sanctity of marriage and the family as the basic foundation of society, forbids collusion to obtain annulment of marriage.

While GMA-7 is awash with money, it would not submit its teleseries for review of their legal consultants who could have noticed this legal anomaly in the script and purge it.  It is comfortable in dishing out garbage to the public.

“Kaya Kong Abutin ang Langit” which features Aiza Calzado was desperate of getting an enviable social status that she would  be willing to be adopted by  a rich couple who served as her baptism sponsors and abandon her poor and broken-hearted mother. She was no longer a minor and therefore adoption is not an option, unless the adopting parents were the natural parents of the child or they have raised and treated the child as their own prior to the adoption.  This is another legal anomaly which could have been easily blue-penciled had the script been subjected to review by its legal consultants.

But wait a minute, Kaya Kong Abutin, is a story produced by one Attorney Abrogar.

Meantime, Erap is rearing for a political comeback. He thinks that he is the best thing that ever happened to the Philippine Presidency because he is pro-masa.  Like GMA-7, which routinely doles out cash in its variety show to some adoring fans and distributed relief goods to flood-ravaged Manilans, Erap also distributed goodies to Tondo residents.  Never mind his having converted Malacanang into a casino pub for his high roller friends and  was adjudged having illegally acquired millions from  jueting payolas.  His cinema persona had enslaved us and effectively put blinders in our ability to see him through as a fraud and as a  thief. He represents every one of us who believes that with atrophied brain, we can also succeed in life.

Erap, Rosalinda, Wowowee and GMA-7, four different degenerative exposures worst than the radioactive fall-out of any atomic explosion that that beset the entire nation and our people. We are experiencing the reverse of Darwin’s theory of natural selection and our pea-brains will usher us back to become pygmies again.

Plastic, Climate Change, Earthquakes and “Go Home Yankees”

 Just as the Philippines  is reeling from the onslaught of  two deadly typhoons, Ondoy and Pepeng that killed about 600 people, damaged infrastructure and turned some Metro Manila cities into swamps of garbage and decomposing bodies, eathquakes shook  some parts of the world.  Climate change, or the continuing increase in atmospheric temperature caused by humans and other environmental factors that deplete the ozone layer, raises ocean level by sheer heat, creates precipitation  that translates into instant torrential rains,  destroys glaciers that adds up to more inland water.   More floods will come in epic proportion that may approximate the biblical forecast of Armageddon, but it may  not herald His second coming as of yet.

       Our contribution to this flood, aside from its chief culprit,  the “climate change” which the entire world population is responsible of,  is our antiquated drainage system; our lack of comprehensive urban planning; and our irresponsible waste management disposal.  Add to this problem the unabated destruction  of what used to be our pristine watersheds few years back by illegal loggers.

       In Metro Manila, during this flash flood, we saw garbage floating side by side with people and empty plastic bags entrenched like  “banderetas” in Meralco electric wires.  It is indicative enough of how high the water  that inundated our cities as well as how enamored we are with plastic that is non-biogradable and the irresponsible way we dispose of it after our trip to the septic wet markets to  the more elegant malls.  And while the plastic decorative flaglets that normally adorn our city streets during fiestas ushered in festive mood among our people, the recent   flaglets in our electric wires  heralded a chorus of wailing for lost lives and properties and the inadequacy of government response for tragedies as epic as this one. 

      Victims were trapped in their roofs, wet and hungry but were rescued only after several hours. The precipitous onrush of water swept some of  them from their homes and got drowned.  Not that it was entirely the fault of the local or the national government to act swiftly on life-threatening situations as these floods, but  some were so stubborn enough not to heed the call of their officials to leave their homes for safer grounds.  It all boils down to our attitude as a people, we won’t act least we see danger up close and personal and even if we act swift enough, people were simply have nowhere to go in this stampede to look for dry and safe lands.

         As the floods brought about by  Ondoy in Metro Manila and Pepeng in the provinces  started to recede, our politicians will vie for billings in the broadcast media and the press to pay lip service to our sufferings. Finger-wagging indignation of our politicians over the destruction of our watersheds and our lack of coordinative efforts to alleviate the sufferings of the flood victims will dominate the airwaves.  Relief goods will be distributed and photo-ops with grieving populace will be made by politicians and movie stars alike, and though these efforts will tide over hunger for a couple of days or even weeks, such will fall short of filling in the tremendous void in our populace.

       But tragedies like these always bring the worst and the best of our people.  Already, our merchants have trebled the prices of their products while the heroism of a young teenager who drowned after saving some of his neighbors in this stampede sent his grieving mother to appeal for help to bury her dead.  A hot cup of coffee or a warm blanket being extended by  those who were luckier to have avoided the flood to those who had been ravaged by it were poignant and  inspiring act of humanity that reminds us of the better part of our character as a people. 

       Meantime, several provinces up north were under water and a U.S. military contingent was seen helping stranded people  relocate to dry lands and distributing food to the victims using its helicopters, soldiers and other resources,  while the vociferous Anti-Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) groups in our midst,  were for the first time, mum and muted by this act of gallantry, and they were not about to shout, “Go Home, Yankees!!!”.

Erap and Lacson Should Be Behind Bars!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Westland, Michigan, Sept. 20, 2009, - Inside St. Theodore Church Sunday, September 20, our priest in his homily quoted someone who said that he read only the sports page of a newspaper because it chronicles  man’s success and triumphs while the front page chronicles man’s dismal failure.  It is too bad that Filipino Voices  (FV), though not a newspaper in its traditional sense,  has only its front page.

Accordingly, our newspapers or FV,  regale us  with the darkest of human endeavor.   We read a variety of news and posts about GMA and her family’s plunder and failed governance, our fear about the possibility of a massive brownout on election day, Senator Villar’s ethics probe, the failure of the owners of Hacienda Luisita to give up their farms and lately, of Senator Ping Lacson’s and Joseph Estrada’s involvement in the murder of publicist Bubby Dacer and his driver, Emmanuel Corbito. 

As regards to the Luisita farmlands, one can see the failed logic in the concept of breaking up a huge viable sugar land into small chunks so the farmers who have no capital can  own them  and operate them at a profit.   Society is basically a component of capital and labor.  China and Russia, despite their claims to being  socialist/communist societies, have not achieved a classless society so far, and yet we still dream of a great rendezvous with  an equitable society by simply giving the poor their lands to till. This is a myth that up to now is being fueled by the most incorrigible dreamers of our society. The politburo of China and Russia remain the face of the ruling class and majority of their citizens, their working class and with the doors of both countries greased by the corrupting influence of capitalism, you can see some cities, especially in China, become overnight models of “laissez faire” and the new entrepreneur class in these cities, on the rise.

Plunder of the treasury by a government functionary is a failure in integrity and honesty.  And despite endless media’s barrage on the corruption in the highest level of the government, the public no longer feel any sense of outrage, frustration or anger because we look at every allegation of wrongdoing motivated not by a noble purpose of bringing sanity back into government bureaucracy but that of ill-will for not being part of those who are looting the treasury.  We see a grand spectacle of J.  Devenecia, Jr. and his son denouncing the present administration as corrupt which reduces the entire debate in what  BongV’s metaphorically described in another post as a case of the “pot calling the kettle black”.

But the worst of our failure is our inability to be outraged by the most outrageous murder  of our fellow human beings.   Weeks after ex-police officer Cesar Mancao executed his affidavit implicating both Senator Lacson and former President Erap Estrada for the  murder of Dacer and Curbito, the government has not put these two suspects in handcuffs.  One said that it was the other who ordered the victims “neutralized” and the other countered that it was his accuser who was  involved in the murder.  Year 2000 was highlighted by impeachment of Erap. Dacer who was about to meet former President Fidel Ramos with some  alleged “dossiers” on Erap suddenly disappeared with his driver, Curbito and later found dead, torched and ditched in  Maragondon, Cavite.  Erap  has the motive to silence Dacer and he could have ordered his dirty PAOCF hitmen, headed by Lacsson to carry out the job.

The government should charge them both with murders including all those former police officers who carried out the order. But the government dawdled in putting these two high profile suspects behind bars.  Obviously, the government has the gullibility of Kay Adams  of Mario Puzo’s Godfather, that Presidents and Senators don’t have men killed.

Michael Corleone:  “My father is no different than any powerful man, any man with power, like a President or Senator”.

Kay Adams:  “Do you know how naïve you sound,  Michael?  Presidents and Senators don’t have men killed”.

Michael Corleone:   Who’s being naïve, Kay?

A Warped Sense of Justice!

    The 144-page  Ombudsman resolution charging former election chief Benjamin Abalos and SSS Administrator Romulo  Neri with anti-graft law violation in connection with  the botched $329 Million ZTE-NBN broadband project while exonerating other most likely key players was a typical “out of the box” resolution,  predictable and foreseeable and nary  a soul should be surprised about the concoction.  The mighty and the powerful are always above the law and are immune from prosecution though our people remain as clueless as before.

          The Marcoses and their cronies were back in circulation after their grand plunder of the treasury and former President Joseph Estrada (Erap) is rearing for a comeback in Malacanang after being given a furlough for his own plunder.  These are grim reminders that justice in the country is meted out only to the powerless plebeians or expendable pawns of the powerful.  Secretary Neri and Ex-Chairman Abalos are lesser officials in this big power game. If someone is somewhat delighted that the Ombudsman came up with two people to charge with the purported offense, he will find that elation ephemeral, for in the labyrinth of judicial process, these seemingly deserted and lonesome pawns can eventually get cleared, or if misshapen mishap does occur, what is there to prevent  the new administration to extend them a “pardon?”.  But for now, we cheer or jeer depending on where we are in this great political divide at this crudest form of charade and entertainment.

       We are incorrigible gullible of the subtlety of court proceedings and have a fantastic   aberration for due process while other cultures, would resolve matters of this nature  through the ballots or in a more honorable way of “hara-kiri” or quitting the office.  Apparently we cannot trust the electorate to punish these deviant creatures in our bureaucracy because we keep electing them back to office.  Do not look now, but you may have Erap again as President  or Bongbong Marcos as your Vice President.  We cannot trust our politicians too to do a “seppuku” or simply resign the office because it is not part of our psyche  that we appease public outrage by doing the most honorable thing to do, quit our privilege position or end our shameful life.

       The motley of charlatans in our bureaucracy will swear to the bible that the uncharitable characterization of their persons were “trump-up” and “totally baseless” and would like to clear their names in a proceeding where honorable prosecutors and/or magistrates preside. Some good public servants suffer the same humiliation because of the perception that they all belong to the same genre of crooked office holders.   The prosecutors and the judges that will process those haled to court are themselves corrupt.  This provides  constant paradox that amazes us no end. If you were unlucky to find a corrupt prosecutor or judge that is looking into your case, you will be lucky enough to find that his virtue of predictability can work in your favor.

          In another sense, those who wanted the crooks in the government punished,  are not sinless angels with impeccable credentials either.  One, is a scion of a Marcos regular during martial law whose elder was dethroned from speakership and another who have milked the government too of some small change in the past who decided to make it big but for the sharing-of-the-loot  equation that went tawdry. They enlisted the support of a score of nuns and yes, bishops too,  to end  the rule of a very rapacious regime and offer substitute in the likes Erap, Escudero, Villar of the C5 fame or even a  Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  Our concept of justice is an unending paradox.  We want a set of brigands punished by bringing them to court or to public ridicule so we can replace them with another set of brigands.

        Look at this as another paradox:  Erap was found guilty of plunder and the Marcoses were perceived to be plunderers.  Mssrs. Abalos and Neri were allegedly attempting at plunders.  Erap  and the Marcoses are riding the crest of public adulation while we excoriate Neri and Abalos for their attempt at plunder.  Our sense of justice is warped and we are very funny people!

Judicial and Bar Council: A Malignant Tumor That Must Be Excised

       You have heard it. Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno would not add up any candidate to its short-list  of Supreme Court Justice aspirants. This is a blatant usurpation of the appointing power which the constitution vests in the President and placed the error of such appointment to a group of persons who are not accountable to the people, the  Judicial and Bar Council (JBC).  The council was envisioned to broker the well-intentioned aspirants to the judiciary by going into the labyrinth of the judicial gauntlet as way of recruiting the cream of the legal profession.

 

       The concept of screening judicial appointees through the JBC to ensure that only the good and the most fit are commissioned to serve is a myth.   After 22 years of its existence, the JBC had only succeeded in recruiting the most inept and the most corrupt in the judiciary.  You have only to look for the fund diversion of the Supreme Court which had been the subject of an impeachment in the House against its previous Chief, Hilario Davide, Jr., or the Meralco-GSIS row which resulted in a couple of heads rolling in the bastion that is supposed to be the stellar for dispensing justice, to find out that the JBC was an abject failure.

       The inability of the JBC to address the very issue it was envisioned to perform argues for its abolition. Like a malignant tumor, it has to be excised  from the body and rid its atrophied part from metastasizing.  The good intention in recruiting only the wise and the honorable in the judiciary is not assured by putting it in the hands of people who by nature belongs to  the same corrupt body politics in the approximation of a mob organization where enlistment of new members must be of the same mold and orientation of the people who recruited them.  New members of the judiciary must symbolically kiss the hand of the Mafioso ring leader and pledge allegiance to the preservation of the organization’s culture of corruption. Senator Miriam Santiago had put it more succinctly when she refused to subject herself from this hand-kissing ritual known as “JBC job interview” and thereby forfeited her opportunity to become justice of the Supreme Court, an entity she curtly described, the “old boy’s club”.

        If one examines the composition of the JBC, one would not fail to notice that it is a separate power enclave of the Supreme Court where the voice of the Chief Justice reigns supreme.  The Chief’s latest pronouncement that no more candidates for the Supreme Court coming from the President will be added to its “short-list”,  highlights this point. The JBC is a constitutional fiat which is  anathema to constitutional government.  The power to appoint justices and judges of inferior courts belongs exclusively to the President.  Providing her with a “short-list” from whom she can appoint a justice of the Supreme Court effectively short-circuited this power of appointment.  The JBC arrogates a power never intended by the framers of the constitution.

          Under the old set-up, the Commission on Appointment in Congress cannot provide the President a “short-list” from which she can appoint a justice of the Supreme Court and judges of inferior courts.  Congress is free to reject whoever is submitted by the President for confirmation but it is never allowed to determine which candidate the President must submit to Congress for confirmation.

       And while Congress can put a monkey-wrench on the appointment of the President for justices and judges, such behavior is tolerable under the principle of “check and balance” and the concept of accountability  enshrined in the constitution.  Members of congress who are stubborn and unreasonable in putting partisan politics over the common good are directly responsible to the people comes election in the same way that the President is held accountable for appointment of corrupt government officials and for her own corruption.  This  concept of accountability is lost on the JBC  because its members do not seek the mandate from the people during elections  and yet it exercises a tremendous power than can even hold the President’s appointment power hostage by sheer arrogance.  Make no mistake about it.  No group of particular government functionaries enjoy moral superiority than others.  George Washington makes a wise counsel: “ the love for power, and the pronness to abuse it predominates in every human heart”.

     The endemic corruption in the judiciary is never blamed on the JBC  and if ever it is blamed for it,  the people are powerless to tell its members to go and look for another job.  If the people must remain sovereign, any contrivance in the constitution that seek to create a mini-branch of government that is outside the oversight of the people must be excised and expunged.  There is little doubt that Cha-Cha proponents can wear their moral armor in splendid color fighting for the abolition of the JBC in the constitution.

       The greatest constitutional government of all times,  the United States of America, has not adopted in her constitution a parallel outfit as the JBC because she remains faithful to the concept of the Republican form of government where check and balance is in place and accountability of government officials is demandable by the sovereign people.  Under the submission that the JBC is a power-chute of the Supreme Court which is outside the sovereign will, Thomas Jefferson’s observation about the Supreme Court acquires a new dimension:

     “To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is “boni judicis est ainpliare jurisdictionem,” and their power the more dangerous as they are in once for life . The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots”.

Are Filipinos Worth Dying For?

        

               Corazon C. Aquino is dead and so was Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr.,  while we remain alive and myopic of their sacrifice and missed the golden opportunity to draw strength from their death. We remain fractious, divided, immature and greedy and offered cypress leaves to honor their graves instead of living out the ideals of their dreams and a vision for a prosperous country.  Alas, we have chosen to live a meaningless life than seek a glorious death.  In ‘Termites from Within’,  I wrote: 

      “One of finest 20th century heroes of the country went home in August 1983 from a 3-year exile from the US with a prophetic candor that the Filipinos were worth dying for. Few minutes after his plane had landed, his military escorts shot him at the back of his head,  few stair steps before his tired and weary feet longing for home touch the drab and irreverent dusty tarmac.

           A commission was formed headed by SC Justice Enrique Fernando,  to investigate the murder of Senator Aquino but due to the intense criticism from the public, he,  being identified as a Marcos lackey and an Imelda errand boy, the commission was disbanded, and its place another commission headed by Corazon Agrava was formed.  The Commission concluded in the minority report that was  submitted by Ms. Agrava to Mr. Marcos that it was the lone gunman,  Mr. Rolando Galman who killed Senator Aquino.  The majority report which was also submitted to Mr. Marcos found that it was his 26 military escorts that had conspired to kill him.

   A case for double-murder was filed against all the 26 military escorts in 1985  but they were all acquitted by the Sandiganbayan.   After Mr. Marcos fled to Hawaii in 1986, the Supreme Court declared a mistrial and another trial was conducted and found his 16 military escorts guilty of the murder.  The SC  which had been subservient to Mr. Marcos had found its  spine back under Cory’s  skirt of newfound freedom.

  The mastermind was never known, but the people had the right suspect in their collective minds. Before Marcos was forced out of power by the EDSA Revolution in 1986, he has called for a snap Presidential election. He was pitted against Senator Aquino’s widow, Cory, a nickname she was fondly called by her supporters.  She was backed up by the powerful Catholic Church under Cardinal Jaime Sin. After the nation has voted, both had claimed victory. Marcos was declared the winner by the Batasang Pambansa while Cory was declared the winner by the tumultuous crowds on the streets of Metro Manila. While the nation was polarized,  ambitious members of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement under Gregorio Honasan tried to stage a coup. One of his underlings spilled the beans over to Mrs. Marcos. She wanted to preempt the coup by looking for its most likely patron, Secretary of Defense Juan Ponce Enrile who, meanwhile, had talked with PNP Chief Fidel Ramos into staging a mutiny at Camp Crame at EDSA. Cardinal Sin called on the faithful to go to EDSA and lend support to the mutineers. It was during this time that Secretary Enrile when interviewed by the media said that Cory was robbed of her victory as President of the Republic because of the massive cheating during the snap presidential election. Cory meantime was in the Visayas under the care of some catholic nuns. Civilian protesters shouting  “Cory, Cory” along EDSA  had paralyzed Metro Manila while in the provinces people were glued to their televisions or their radios waiting with bated breath of what could happen with massive civilian protesters confronting military tanks and armed soldiers of the Marcos government in the streets of Manila.

 Time Magazine writer Pico Iyer wrote on January 5, 1987:

 Finally, the improbable became the impossible. Marcos’ tanks rolled toward the crowds, only to be stopped by nuns kneeling in their path, saying the rosary. Old women went up to gun-toting marines and  disarmed them with motherly hugs. Little girls offered their flowers to hardened combat veterans. In the face of such quiet heroism, thousands of Marcos loyalists defected; many simply broke down in tears.”

 The nation had a sigh of relief when Mr. Marcos, his family and cronies fled to Hawaii on February 26, 1986. Cory said after Marcos had fled the country that paved the way for her own rule over a very fractious society:

 “We have achieved our freedom with courage and determination, and most important, in peace. A new life starts for our country tomorrow. A life filled with hope and, I believe, a life that will be blessed with peace and progress.”

     Peace and progress that proved to be elusive as her six year term as President had been plagued by a series of military mutinies which had been staged by military personnel who had been sidelined from their previous lucrative assignments and have lost the their lifestyles under Marcos. These coup attempts had sent the economy in yet another tailspin.

       The nation was hopeful that the country would have moved towards economic prosperity under Cory because she owed no one political debts to pay. She was catapulted to power by the people and only the people she must listen to. But the adventurous  segment of the military had denied our nation the opportunity to achieve stability, progress and peace.

         Cory should have taken power as a popularly elected president of the Republic but the ambitious military who would like to be seen as part of Cory’s triumph would like her to serve as a President of a provisional government. Either as a provisional president or a regularly elected eleventh President of the Republic, Cory was sworn nonetheless as President by the Justice of the Supreme Court.

          The military mutineers were seen by some of us as heroes of EDSA while others saw them the way they should be seen: “plain opportunists.”  These personalities were martial law architects and implementers for 12 years who have seen the upsurge of civilian support for Cory and had decided to abandon their commander-in-chief in a fast sinking ship.

      Instead of looking at these coup plotters as villains we see them as the saviors of the Republic. We elected some of them to high government positions and they continue to derive benefits from the very institutions they had subverted in favor of a Marcos one-man rule and from the institutions they tried to subvert in favor of a military junta.  On the other hand, the coup plotters against Cory were punished with ten push-ups by her Chief of Staff, Fidel Ramos and some of those prominent coup plotters found their way back in the corridors of power as senators or as  executives of lucrative government corporations.

        The perception that most of those in power were guilty one way or another of subverting our democratic institutions had prevented us from imposing the full measure of punishment to those who openly committed acts of treason and subversion against the republic. To our minds, only the members of the New People’s Army, the members of the Moro National Liberation Front and the members of other left-leaning groups deserved to be punished by death or by outright execution. The most sinister plotters that had destabilized the nation and ruin our economy and the raiders and plunderers of our treasury do not deserve the kind of punishment meted out to other subversive elements of our society when in matters of degree, the latter wrongdoers have wrought more havoc and destructions to our motherland. This is the reason why after Mr. Marcos and his family had fled to Hawaii in 1986 and most of his kins and his retinue of crony capitalists had come back, we have yet to see them go to jail.

      Filipinos have short term memory and a very forgiving race. We do not know exactly whether these qualities underpin our vice or our strength as a nation.  But as of now, I am still muted if indeed, we are all worth dying for.  (amendment to “Termites  From Within”).