If anyone cares to remember Rolly Joaquin, a top graduate of the Philippine Military Academy who was deported by the US in 2004 for supposedly tampering with the price of a music disc, which his PMA allowance for his Infantry Officer Basic Course at
Fort Benning, Georgia would have easily afforded, he must be wondering where he is now.
I also want to know how he is doing and hoping he was able to rise from one youthful mistake that cost him his military career.
But I also want to know how Daniel Smith, the US soldier accused of raping a Filipina who recanted later, in exchange for a better life in the US with an American boyfriend (not Daniel, of course), is coping with his “nightmare,” even if his terrifying experience never happened in the Bilibid prison, where he should have been, but in the comforts of American facilities where he was taken by the US authorities who snatched him from the court after he was found guilty of raping Suzete Nicolas.
Rolly and Daniel are two stories worthy of a comparison if we are to ask how equal our relations with the US, then and now.
Rolly faced court martial as soon as he got back, all for the crime of placing a $.50discount tag he took from another CD for an artist he liked, but which was not on sale. Very little information filtered out of those proceedings that, if rules were not bent in his favor, the valedictorian of the PMA Class Maliyab, who was 22-years old then when he was caught red-handed, would have already lost his rank as an Army second lieutenant at the time of his crime, and his freedom, for a measly P22.00, which was the equivalent of 50 cents in US dollars in discount for that particular disc. (An newspaper report claimed Joaquin was recently promoted to 1st Lt. in the Philippine Army. A brother has also just graduated in the PMA).
Rolly did not rape an American woman. He did not kill a person. He did not even steal the music disc he sought to have the $.50 discount for. But he was tempted by the discount tag offered in another CD, he thought he could get away with some youthful naughtiness.
Daniel’s crime wasn’t cute. But technically, he isn’t guilty after the recantation, despite the earlier finding by a Makati court that he had raped Suzette.
Suzette, however, was only practical she took the easiest way out of the controversy that put her and her family to shame. She accepted payment and a visa to join her boyfriend in the US, with hopes of settling there and finding peace with her new partner.
Daniel, I suppose, is also at peace now. Although a friend, who is with the US Marines, assured me that he was “processed” following the guilty verdict, Daniel would have picked up with his life since he walked free.
It is something which our own Rolly would not have done easily even if rules were bent for him.
Rolly is not so fortunate to have committed a crime in the US which did not see it as petty.
Daniel is so fortunate for being an American, period. How can we argue, when even our government has allowed its own soldiers to be treated as poor, second class partners in the Visiting Forces Agreement, the document which saved Daniel’s life, even as he had committed a dastardly crime of rape in the Philippines? And are we supposed to find fairness in the document?
Talks have again focused on the VFA as some 600 American soldiers are currently in Mindanao, sharing bunkers with Philippine troops and occupying military areas like they are their own.
We have heard claims these US troops have actively engaged in the war in Mindanao, an action, if true, that is an affront to our constitution. But government is not complaining, its arms and hands even stretched in waiting for alms and hand-me-downs from the US, materials which they have actually junked and due for replacement with new and sophisticated weaponry but which we are gladly to accept and pay for in loans.
We could not even have criminal jurisdiction over these American fighters, as was obvious in Daniel’s case. Poor Rolly, he was deported as quickly as he was seen on the CCTV cameras removing the discount tag and placing it in the disc that he liked.
American troops are here, supposedly as our equal partners in the fight against global terrorism. But their presence here can also involve us in unnecessary international conflicts as we allow our soils to become monitoring stations and launch pads for their own military operations.
It’s no wonder terrorists are looking at the Philippines now as a valuable training and operations hub, where they are very much welcome by their religious brothers who feel instigated and threatened by the US military presence in their region. They need not look far, however, as their targets are all here.
God forbid it happens that we become another Kabul.
But our government would rather take the risk than isolate themselves from the graces of their foreign masters.
Besides, it is easier to send a petty offender to jail than punish a rapist and come out as the better partner in what is an obviously one-side treaty, if you call it such.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Our children went to war
If not for the hint of rage and the unshed tears that gave their eyes a flint of both anger and fear, we would have shrugged them off for loonies and tripping vandals desecrating a hallowed ground last week, when those 200 kids had “invaded” Malacanang and got their trophies marked in parts of their bodies to show for it.
It had happened before, some two or three generations past, when a small group of youth, breaking away from the rioters who have transformed Mendiola and its far environs into a battleground, commandeered a fire truck abandoned in fear by its crew, and rammed it in one of the palace gates, its siren signaling their momentary triumph into the nerves of its evil occupant.
It was an image captured in graying texture of a newspaper photograph, but vividly remembered by those who weren’t there, simply maybe because they were to far to get where the action was, or they were too young to be part of what became the First Quarter Storm.
Inspired or maybe emboldened by it, many prominent politicians from the opposition of that generation supported their youth’s action against what was then an emerging tyranny. And when martial law was declared two years later, sending many of them to prison and most of the FQS participants to the hills or to their graves, only the bravest of heart remained.
Ninoy Aquino was among them.
Driven by ambition at first, Ninoy drew courage from those kids and the people who resisted the tyrant’s madness since its onset. And from this courage rose a martyr who managed to break the country’s bondage but only in his death; and through his wife and family, that is why we refused to forget, that is why we remembered and honored them last Friday.
And because we remember, as we should, we are inspired and emboldened by our history, which thankfully, are embedded in some of our youth’s values, drawing courage from our past in the hopes of charting a better future for themselves and their own children, that they reclaimed the grounds of Malacanang, albeit briefly, the first time civilians have set foot on its sacred grass since the fall of Marcos at the height of the people power, and temporarily held on until police and presidential security fists and clubs broke their lips and jaws and noses, but not their courage.
They may have fallen short in achievement compared to what their parents did in FQS, but the signs are there, beaming hope for a country made dormant by two parties in Edsa, both were coup de etat, but the second one was prostituted by the person who gained from it all, taking everything, including the crumbs and borjers and the concussions that went with it, all too shameless! Bumukol din naman!
Today’s youth have spoken, without waiting for the 2010 polls when most of them are expected to cast their votes for the very time. And they have lent a very loud voice which a Malacanang occupant refused to hear, no she resisted hearing it.
But it was just the start.
There would no longer be days of disquiet and nights of rage, but the new youth would no longer have to fight pitch battles all over again. But, at least, they’re ready.
Wars take on new faces as armies modernize, but it is the heart that still win wars and not just the howitzers.
Last week’s event in Malacanang would pale in the climax of Cory’s funeral, but it made a stronger statement than the observation of Ninoy’s 26th death anniversary in Makati.
I’m sure that was the way Ninoy and Cory would have wanted it, for they have spoken and they spoke out oud.
Even with broken jaws, teeth and lips.
They weren’t too much of a sacrifice compared to what Ninoy and Cory have given. Or their tortured parents who survived martial law.
It had happened before, some two or three generations past, when a small group of youth, breaking away from the rioters who have transformed Mendiola and its far environs into a battleground, commandeered a fire truck abandoned in fear by its crew, and rammed it in one of the palace gates, its siren signaling their momentary triumph into the nerves of its evil occupant.
It was an image captured in graying texture of a newspaper photograph, but vividly remembered by those who weren’t there, simply maybe because they were to far to get where the action was, or they were too young to be part of what became the First Quarter Storm.
Inspired or maybe emboldened by it, many prominent politicians from the opposition of that generation supported their youth’s action against what was then an emerging tyranny. And when martial law was declared two years later, sending many of them to prison and most of the FQS participants to the hills or to their graves, only the bravest of heart remained.
Ninoy Aquino was among them.
Driven by ambition at first, Ninoy drew courage from those kids and the people who resisted the tyrant’s madness since its onset. And from this courage rose a martyr who managed to break the country’s bondage but only in his death; and through his wife and family, that is why we refused to forget, that is why we remembered and honored them last Friday.
And because we remember, as we should, we are inspired and emboldened by our history, which thankfully, are embedded in some of our youth’s values, drawing courage from our past in the hopes of charting a better future for themselves and their own children, that they reclaimed the grounds of Malacanang, albeit briefly, the first time civilians have set foot on its sacred grass since the fall of Marcos at the height of the people power, and temporarily held on until police and presidential security fists and clubs broke their lips and jaws and noses, but not their courage.
They may have fallen short in achievement compared to what their parents did in FQS, but the signs are there, beaming hope for a country made dormant by two parties in Edsa, both were coup de etat, but the second one was prostituted by the person who gained from it all, taking everything, including the crumbs and borjers and the concussions that went with it, all too shameless! Bumukol din naman!
Today’s youth have spoken, without waiting for the 2010 polls when most of them are expected to cast their votes for the very time. And they have lent a very loud voice which a Malacanang occupant refused to hear, no she resisted hearing it.
But it was just the start.
There would no longer be days of disquiet and nights of rage, but the new youth would no longer have to fight pitch battles all over again. But, at least, they’re ready.
Wars take on new faces as armies modernize, but it is the heart that still win wars and not just the howitzers.
Last week’s event in Malacanang would pale in the climax of Cory’s funeral, but it made a stronger statement than the observation of Ninoy’s 26th death anniversary in Makati.
I’m sure that was the way Ninoy and Cory would have wanted it, for they have spoken and they spoke out oud.
Even with broken jaws, teeth and lips.
They weren’t too much of a sacrifice compared to what Ninoy and Cory have given. Or their tortured parents who survived martial law.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Poor Gloria
The denouement in Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s reign is a downer so potent it was said not even Prozac could lift her spirit— fighting or otherwise—as end now beckons her term, like a flickering gleam from a dying lighthouse calling on a rickety boat making her final journey to shore on a stormy night.
Her hope of another extension to her already extended term is gone, as the Charter change, as admitted by no less than her staunchest allies in Congress, is dead. And the celebratory clinks of precious wine glasses at Le Cirque, Bobby Vans and David Bouley have all faded except in the minds of the Filipino masses who have certified GMA’s insensitivity to their plight.
Her reign would be remembered, not only through the dreaded triumvirate of lying, cheating and stealing but lately, through her extravagant spending in ritzy restaurants where we could not afford to eat in our lives.
It was her lavish spending that overshadowed even her so-called greatest achievements in propping up the economy, one that was never felt down but whose gains remained only on top. And so in the end, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will come down in history as failure for a president.
In her final months, Gloria is looking for a legacy that she could leave. What gains she had in meeting Barrack Obama, however, were quickly rubbed out by her excessive and expensive dinner parties. Cory Aquino’s untimely death also overshadowed GMA’s long-sought US trip and the people’s sentiments as they joined Cory’s hearse were heard, and they did not bode well for GMA.
Today, Gloria’s sight is trained at attaining peace in two fronts, but her vision has never been as hazy as the cross in the old scope of her soldiers’ guns, she seems to be finding hard to fix her targets.
Her talks with the MILF seem to have been botched too early in the day. No thanks to trigger happy MILF combatants who have been discovered aiding the Abu Sayyaf, classified as a terrorist group which does not have it own pantheon in the respected political colors for its murderous connections, at home and overseas, that it became harder to fathom why the MILF provided it with military assistance, especially at a time when it was to talk peace with government.
It was in their hands where our soldiers, no different from the proletariat army of farm and factory workers, encountered their worst nightmares before their dying bodies were hacked of their souls but not their courage.
Gloria also wants to talk peace with the CPP/NPA/NDF, the same radical left she promised to wipe out by next year, but like all presidents before her, could not seem to fulfill.
The MILF and CPP/NPA/NDF, know their political importance to be used as masks for Gloria’s failures. Both of them carry weight to know how they would be used for Gloria’s own propaganda, all in her term’s dying months, that not a few doubt these talks will end in another stalemate. Besides, who would enter into a deal with lame duck president?
In these talks, only the MILF and the CPP/NPA/NDF would gain. Their troops’ respite from engaging in military actions would help boost morale and give them chances to regroup. Their leaders would also gain propaganda-wise while I also doubt Gloria is really hopeful of nailing peace during her term.
The concerns they’ve raised are age-old problems, maybe older than Kamlon. Mindanaoans and CPP supporters in the countryside have long been demanding gainful employment, better wages, better roads, fair market competition and so on.
There will only be peace if an honest leader could make them happen. Gloria botched her chance to realize them all.
And as if to taunt her, long-dormant MNLF, which had long dealt peace with government, was seen flexing its muscles by occupying remote villages in Palawan.
All these while at home, Gloria remains tipsy over what to do next.
Gloria’s climax is her own failure.
Her hope of another extension to her already extended term is gone, as the Charter change, as admitted by no less than her staunchest allies in Congress, is dead. And the celebratory clinks of precious wine glasses at Le Cirque, Bobby Vans and David Bouley have all faded except in the minds of the Filipino masses who have certified GMA’s insensitivity to their plight.
Her reign would be remembered, not only through the dreaded triumvirate of lying, cheating and stealing but lately, through her extravagant spending in ritzy restaurants where we could not afford to eat in our lives.
It was her lavish spending that overshadowed even her so-called greatest achievements in propping up the economy, one that was never felt down but whose gains remained only on top. And so in the end, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will come down in history as failure for a president.
In her final months, Gloria is looking for a legacy that she could leave. What gains she had in meeting Barrack Obama, however, were quickly rubbed out by her excessive and expensive dinner parties. Cory Aquino’s untimely death also overshadowed GMA’s long-sought US trip and the people’s sentiments as they joined Cory’s hearse were heard, and they did not bode well for GMA.
Today, Gloria’s sight is trained at attaining peace in two fronts, but her vision has never been as hazy as the cross in the old scope of her soldiers’ guns, she seems to be finding hard to fix her targets.
Her talks with the MILF seem to have been botched too early in the day. No thanks to trigger happy MILF combatants who have been discovered aiding the Abu Sayyaf, classified as a terrorist group which does not have it own pantheon in the respected political colors for its murderous connections, at home and overseas, that it became harder to fathom why the MILF provided it with military assistance, especially at a time when it was to talk peace with government.
It was in their hands where our soldiers, no different from the proletariat army of farm and factory workers, encountered their worst nightmares before their dying bodies were hacked of their souls but not their courage.
Gloria also wants to talk peace with the CPP/NPA/NDF, the same radical left she promised to wipe out by next year, but like all presidents before her, could not seem to fulfill.
The MILF and CPP/NPA/NDF, know their political importance to be used as masks for Gloria’s failures. Both of them carry weight to know how they would be used for Gloria’s own propaganda, all in her term’s dying months, that not a few doubt these talks will end in another stalemate. Besides, who would enter into a deal with lame duck president?
In these talks, only the MILF and the CPP/NPA/NDF would gain. Their troops’ respite from engaging in military actions would help boost morale and give them chances to regroup. Their leaders would also gain propaganda-wise while I also doubt Gloria is really hopeful of nailing peace during her term.
The concerns they’ve raised are age-old problems, maybe older than Kamlon. Mindanaoans and CPP supporters in the countryside have long been demanding gainful employment, better wages, better roads, fair market competition and so on.
There will only be peace if an honest leader could make them happen. Gloria botched her chance to realize them all.
And as if to taunt her, long-dormant MNLF, which had long dealt peace with government, was seen flexing its muscles by occupying remote villages in Palawan.
All these while at home, Gloria remains tipsy over what to do next.
Gloria’s climax is her own failure.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Gloriavagant
Media colleague Bing (Real name: Raleigh) Jaleco’s genius was once again at work when he conjoined the word that fits big spender Gloria Arroyo’s name appropriately and without shame.
Unlike the poor Filipina conjoined twins now fighting for their lives in a hospital which services they could not afford yet have no choice but to pawn their souls so they, or at least one of the twins, would survive, the growing demand for a surgical procedure is not that to separate big spender Gloria from her extravagance but to extract big spender Gloria like a rotten molar from the cavities of Malacanang.
Big spender Gloria has surpassed the much-maligned stature of the Imeldific, and it did not go unnoticed both here and among Gloria watchers overseas.
In a GMA website report, the New York Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines slammed big spender Gloria for her lavish lifestyle.
"As Filipinos in New York, this degree of extravagance from a Philippine Head of State is both vulgar and, unfortunately, familiar," the report quoted the group’s reaction over the $20,000 tab by big spender Gloria in New York’s very ritzy Le Circque and the $15,000 dinner in the name of big spender Gloria at Bobby Van’s Stakehouse in Washington. .
While both dinners for two nights ran closely to P2 million, various Malacanang spokespersons called them “simple” and not really extravagant. But who’s buying? No one, really, and big spender Gloria thus earned a new monicker as the “new Imelda.”
While the Big Apple is “home to Wall Street power lunches,” the group said, simple and inexpensive dinners could be had in New York without diminishing imaginary statures, especially one befitting a fake president.
If we may ask Palace spokesperson Serge Remonde: What is wrong with a $1 hotdog sandwich? And then again, maybe we should ask him what are definitely wrong with the two lavish dinners they have had in Washington and New York? I think he knows, but his job demands him to lie.
I suppose not all of them have finished their servings of steak in Bobby Van’s. If some of them have a leftover “take out” or “to go” in US restaurant lingo, some stale grams would have made decent fare for that old man who died in hunger last week while sleeping in a parked bus in some decrepit cavity of the metro, where, I believe, Gloria has not been since she become part of government service or even before it.
I wonder how long those million-peso dinners would have stretched if they would be used to support the families of the soldiers who perished in battles in Mindanao last week. Or would the jungle battles been fought differently if only those millions were used to buy guns and bullets, or perhaps used in intelligence gathering against the Abu Sayyaf? But we should feel sorry for ourselves and our soldiers, the caviar tasted good and the fine wine was intoxicating as the power they have now.
That power, stolen as it was, gave her the good life she is experiencing right now, the same one she accused Erap of living before big spender Gloria and her clique in the military forced what became the bastardized version of Edsa People Power. It’s the same power and privilege that she does not want to let go of now.
And she definitely knows how to push things further. She is now shopping for a used “presidential fixed-wing executive jet" worth at least P1.2 billion, a budget that would go a long way if spent for our school children or health care, than the presidential travels she perhaps intend to take in the last remaining months of her already extended terms.
Big spender Gloria sure has a good taste, and luxurious travels are among them.
In his report last week, Congressman Teofisto “TG” Guingona III exposed big spender Gloria’s indiscriminate spending that her contingency fund ran dry in supplementing her travel expenses. Her tab, mind you, was more than 100 percent than originally intended.
And once more, she wants to bleed dry the country’s coffers by purchasing a new plane.
Honestly, though, we won’t mind if that presidential plane would take her to Hawaii.
Or she better hitch with an American plane. ‘Twas proven and free of charge.
Unlike the poor Filipina conjoined twins now fighting for their lives in a hospital which services they could not afford yet have no choice but to pawn their souls so they, or at least one of the twins, would survive, the growing demand for a surgical procedure is not that to separate big spender Gloria from her extravagance but to extract big spender Gloria like a rotten molar from the cavities of Malacanang.
Big spender Gloria has surpassed the much-maligned stature of the Imeldific, and it did not go unnoticed both here and among Gloria watchers overseas.
In a GMA website report, the New York Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines slammed big spender Gloria for her lavish lifestyle.
"As Filipinos in New York, this degree of extravagance from a Philippine Head of State is both vulgar and, unfortunately, familiar," the report quoted the group’s reaction over the $20,000 tab by big spender Gloria in New York’s very ritzy Le Circque and the $15,000 dinner in the name of big spender Gloria at Bobby Van’s Stakehouse in Washington. .
While both dinners for two nights ran closely to P2 million, various Malacanang spokespersons called them “simple” and not really extravagant. But who’s buying? No one, really, and big spender Gloria thus earned a new monicker as the “new Imelda.”
While the Big Apple is “home to Wall Street power lunches,” the group said, simple and inexpensive dinners could be had in New York without diminishing imaginary statures, especially one befitting a fake president.
If we may ask Palace spokesperson Serge Remonde: What is wrong with a $1 hotdog sandwich? And then again, maybe we should ask him what are definitely wrong with the two lavish dinners they have had in Washington and New York? I think he knows, but his job demands him to lie.
I suppose not all of them have finished their servings of steak in Bobby Van’s. If some of them have a leftover “take out” or “to go” in US restaurant lingo, some stale grams would have made decent fare for that old man who died in hunger last week while sleeping in a parked bus in some decrepit cavity of the metro, where, I believe, Gloria has not been since she become part of government service or even before it.
I wonder how long those million-peso dinners would have stretched if they would be used to support the families of the soldiers who perished in battles in Mindanao last week. Or would the jungle battles been fought differently if only those millions were used to buy guns and bullets, or perhaps used in intelligence gathering against the Abu Sayyaf? But we should feel sorry for ourselves and our soldiers, the caviar tasted good and the fine wine was intoxicating as the power they have now.
That power, stolen as it was, gave her the good life she is experiencing right now, the same one she accused Erap of living before big spender Gloria and her clique in the military forced what became the bastardized version of Edsa People Power. It’s the same power and privilege that she does not want to let go of now.
And she definitely knows how to push things further. She is now shopping for a used “presidential fixed-wing executive jet" worth at least P1.2 billion, a budget that would go a long way if spent for our school children or health care, than the presidential travels she perhaps intend to take in the last remaining months of her already extended terms.
Big spender Gloria sure has a good taste, and luxurious travels are among them.
In his report last week, Congressman Teofisto “TG” Guingona III exposed big spender Gloria’s indiscriminate spending that her contingency fund ran dry in supplementing her travel expenses. Her tab, mind you, was more than 100 percent than originally intended.
And once more, she wants to bleed dry the country’s coffers by purchasing a new plane.
Honestly, though, we won’t mind if that presidential plane would take her to Hawaii.
Or she better hitch with an American plane. ‘Twas proven and free of charge.
Monday, August 10, 2009
When a dinner becomes a crime
There was a crime story long ago which not only wrung hearts of bloody tears, it squeezed a vile of contempt against what we thought then was an abusive, insensitive government, when a man was arrested for stealing the neighbor’s steaming pot of rice, so he could have something to feed his family which for days had not had meal—no matter how indecent—that even a stolen cauldron of rice would not only have made a decent fare but some days' survival for his wife and kids.
What the late Alex Fernando thought then was a novelty report had in fact become an example piece in basic news writing for the added dramatic twist to what was ordinarily a report about a simple case of theft, which on bland, dry days only fills space in a newspaper’s metro or police section, unless some interesting event comes along and it does not get stolen by the front page.
Like when a head of the family spiked what became his family’s last dinner with a stick of watusi, killing his wife, children and himself. It was abject poverty which forced him to commit suicide, because he could no longer bear it and the hunger it forced on his family, because there was no opportunity for him to earn decently, or maybe even more simply, because there was nothing coming for him and his family however hard they tried.
He had provided the template for other family suicides that followed, simply because a stick of watusi is more affordable and accessible than the best poison there is. Some suicides, however, were not as successful as the first, failures which left a deep sense of guilt, and to others regret, while they also make us ponder on the painful truth that we could not complain against our inadequacies, or about the inequalities we see, as there are still those living in the extreme abyss, suffering hell until a stick of watusi puts an end to their sufferings.
Hunger is the bastard son of poverty. Before Gloria Macapagal Arroyo read what should be her last State of the Nation Address last month, where the only gloom come from those who criticize her leadership, while the rest were just as healthy as her cute cheeks, a survey claimed two in every five Filipinos have suffered involuntary hunger in recent months.
Gloria’s numbers which littered her speech to strengthen her claims of an economically robust Philippines under her watch, all the already extended nine years of it, could not belie how poverty and hunger have spread since she took power in 2001.
Her claimed growth has not trickled down to reach those who should have been its intended recipients, the poor masses who are still struggling to make ends meet. When their everyday fare still includes thoughts on how to provide their children with food, education and jeepney fare, while in the back of their minds are additional concerns on where they would squeeze their next budget for their medicine, let alone doctors fees, how could Gloria claim growth?
Yet just days after Gloria’s painting of a rosy picture for all of us to believe, she lived the lie. When the world, even superpower America, is down on its knees and reeling from the effects of recession, there was Gloria sleeping in comfort in Waldorf Astoria, and partaking in a nearly P1 million dinner (given, we were told, in honor of the first couple celebrating their wedding anniversary) at the very ritzy Le Cirque, earning contempt even from Americans who saw them partying just as the nation was mourning, as ordered by Gloria herself, in honor of a dead former president who is well-loved for her honesty and dignity, traits missing in Gloria’s political dictionary.
It was good bed, good food and good wine, all served in celebratory mood for what Gloria thought was a successful visit to Barrack Obama. She was wrong.
She was noticed—all her excesses and abuses and insensitivity. Bless the souls of those who died—or killed themselves— in hunger, they must be turning in their graves now, waiting for vengeance when they could get it.
And for us living, we still wonder whether a caviar is best served hot or cold. Because we will never know in our lives how caviar tastes or looks like. We are familiar only with the steaming white rice, which used to come in endless servings in our tables, but which we could hardly afford now.
Now, I wonder which is the worst criminal: the man who stole the pot of rice, the man who forced family suicide because they could no longer bear poverty and hunger, or the couple who…? Nevermind!
What the late Alex Fernando thought then was a novelty report had in fact become an example piece in basic news writing for the added dramatic twist to what was ordinarily a report about a simple case of theft, which on bland, dry days only fills space in a newspaper’s metro or police section, unless some interesting event comes along and it does not get stolen by the front page.
Like when a head of the family spiked what became his family’s last dinner with a stick of watusi, killing his wife, children and himself. It was abject poverty which forced him to commit suicide, because he could no longer bear it and the hunger it forced on his family, because there was no opportunity for him to earn decently, or maybe even more simply, because there was nothing coming for him and his family however hard they tried.
He had provided the template for other family suicides that followed, simply because a stick of watusi is more affordable and accessible than the best poison there is. Some suicides, however, were not as successful as the first, failures which left a deep sense of guilt, and to others regret, while they also make us ponder on the painful truth that we could not complain against our inadequacies, or about the inequalities we see, as there are still those living in the extreme abyss, suffering hell until a stick of watusi puts an end to their sufferings.
Hunger is the bastard son of poverty. Before Gloria Macapagal Arroyo read what should be her last State of the Nation Address last month, where the only gloom come from those who criticize her leadership, while the rest were just as healthy as her cute cheeks, a survey claimed two in every five Filipinos have suffered involuntary hunger in recent months.
Gloria’s numbers which littered her speech to strengthen her claims of an economically robust Philippines under her watch, all the already extended nine years of it, could not belie how poverty and hunger have spread since she took power in 2001.
Her claimed growth has not trickled down to reach those who should have been its intended recipients, the poor masses who are still struggling to make ends meet. When their everyday fare still includes thoughts on how to provide their children with food, education and jeepney fare, while in the back of their minds are additional concerns on where they would squeeze their next budget for their medicine, let alone doctors fees, how could Gloria claim growth?
Yet just days after Gloria’s painting of a rosy picture for all of us to believe, she lived the lie. When the world, even superpower America, is down on its knees and reeling from the effects of recession, there was Gloria sleeping in comfort in Waldorf Astoria, and partaking in a nearly P1 million dinner (given, we were told, in honor of the first couple celebrating their wedding anniversary) at the very ritzy Le Cirque, earning contempt even from Americans who saw them partying just as the nation was mourning, as ordered by Gloria herself, in honor of a dead former president who is well-loved for her honesty and dignity, traits missing in Gloria’s political dictionary.
It was good bed, good food and good wine, all served in celebratory mood for what Gloria thought was a successful visit to Barrack Obama. She was wrong.
She was noticed—all her excesses and abuses and insensitivity. Bless the souls of those who died—or killed themselves— in hunger, they must be turning in their graves now, waiting for vengeance when they could get it.
And for us living, we still wonder whether a caviar is best served hot or cold. Because we will never know in our lives how caviar tastes or looks like. We are familiar only with the steaming white rice, which used to come in endless servings in our tables, but which we could hardly afford now.
Now, I wonder which is the worst criminal: the man who stole the pot of rice, the man who forced family suicide because they could no longer bear poverty and hunger, or the couple who…? Nevermind!
Saturday, August 8, 2009
What now, JdLC?
Flags of various shades, which just in recent past have clashed, and in many instances violently, were back. And for a long moment—all seven-and-a-half hours of a people’s procession—a long chilling moment that was both fleeting for a grateful nation to have seen, touched and been touched by her; and also remorseful for its many failures in overcoming various adversaries that have sent the country back to its present darkness, they have come together to join the people in mourning their loss of Cory Aquino, an icon who had been a rallying point in kicking out a dictatorship, who, even in her dying moment, struggled still to remind us of an unfinished business.
On Wednesday, when even the skies cried in gray sorrow as Cory was laid to rest beside her husband Ninoy, hero of our generation, these flags gave way, preferring instead to stay on the sides where the people were, shedding various claims of being vanguards of the protest movements, if not the revolution they have been trying to wage, and yes, even against Cory when she was still president of the republic. They joined the funeral to make up for their loss when they snubbed the first party in Edsa, where their presence would have turned it into a different revolution which it did not become, and so eventually they were eased out of their chance to become part of a government which they, in turn, despised and distrusted, but on which they clung their hopes on in not a few occasions when even their revolutionary wicks flickered.
For once, they were with the people they claimed to be trying to emancipate but whose major support they could not get. Men, women and children, the rich and the poor, the lumpens of the nation mixing with business and political leaders, those with PhDs who, in ordinary circumstances would not have walked the streets they traversed on foot on Wednesday, but never again in their lives perhaps, but were there to display a phenomenon we have seen only after nearly three decades, the last was for Ninoy himself, but just the same, was a clear signal of what is to come, if the present dispensation will continue on with its evil plans which Cory, herself, warned us against many times when she was living.
But even without flags, Cory’s last journey was like that of Biblical Moses, her remains parting an ocean of people, an account which for sure had sent many skin hair standing among the millions glued on their tellies, and a frightening chill down the spine of an illegal Malacanang occupant, who probably know by now but still refuses to acknowledge it, that on the day Cory had perished, the fire of protest among her people was again stoked—with or without the flags, with or without instigation, with Cory gone yet her spirit living, because there is an unseen revulsion in their hearts which they will express at any time they are challenged, or taunted.
In her death, Cory is still defending her “freedom constitution,” clutching it with both arms, her fingers twined with beads of her rosary, as if leaving it for God to defend, because in the last instances when many leaders called for bodies to show up, including Cory and Erap—two former presidents the present dispensation have many times called passé, only the flags showed up, not the people who came to Cory’s funeral, not those who still come in multitude in her Times St. home or the mausoleum she now shares with Ninoy, even days after her burial.
Even in her death, Cory had shown she can take people out of their homes and into the streets. If last week’s event does not send a warning to Gloria and her clique, who even just hours after the late president was laid to rest, have come out to insist on their Charter change plans, even claiming it as a test case once it is filed with the Supreme Court, to know whether Congress could go it alone, without the Senate, without the people and without conscience.
Even before Cory’s death, however, the people have already spoken against Cha-cha and against Gloria. They have preferred to lend their voices through new media, in various blogs, the Twitter, Facebook and yes, even Friendster, they have said no!
Gloria must have misread the people’s silence as either an impassive gesture or maybe lack of interest, or maybe even worse, silence that must have meant a show of support for her and her Cha-cha, oh Heaven forbid!
That was until last week, when everything changed, again.
And for it, let us thank Cory. Then let us move on and finish the business she had left behind, the same business we have ignored for a long time and let those various flags to solve.
Alone, they can’t. But together, we can!
On Wednesday, when even the skies cried in gray sorrow as Cory was laid to rest beside her husband Ninoy, hero of our generation, these flags gave way, preferring instead to stay on the sides where the people were, shedding various claims of being vanguards of the protest movements, if not the revolution they have been trying to wage, and yes, even against Cory when she was still president of the republic. They joined the funeral to make up for their loss when they snubbed the first party in Edsa, where their presence would have turned it into a different revolution which it did not become, and so eventually they were eased out of their chance to become part of a government which they, in turn, despised and distrusted, but on which they clung their hopes on in not a few occasions when even their revolutionary wicks flickered.
For once, they were with the people they claimed to be trying to emancipate but whose major support they could not get. Men, women and children, the rich and the poor, the lumpens of the nation mixing with business and political leaders, those with PhDs who, in ordinary circumstances would not have walked the streets they traversed on foot on Wednesday, but never again in their lives perhaps, but were there to display a phenomenon we have seen only after nearly three decades, the last was for Ninoy himself, but just the same, was a clear signal of what is to come, if the present dispensation will continue on with its evil plans which Cory, herself, warned us against many times when she was living.
But even without flags, Cory’s last journey was like that of Biblical Moses, her remains parting an ocean of people, an account which for sure had sent many skin hair standing among the millions glued on their tellies, and a frightening chill down the spine of an illegal Malacanang occupant, who probably know by now but still refuses to acknowledge it, that on the day Cory had perished, the fire of protest among her people was again stoked—with or without the flags, with or without instigation, with Cory gone yet her spirit living, because there is an unseen revulsion in their hearts which they will express at any time they are challenged, or taunted.
In her death, Cory is still defending her “freedom constitution,” clutching it with both arms, her fingers twined with beads of her rosary, as if leaving it for God to defend, because in the last instances when many leaders called for bodies to show up, including Cory and Erap—two former presidents the present dispensation have many times called passé, only the flags showed up, not the people who came to Cory’s funeral, not those who still come in multitude in her Times St. home or the mausoleum she now shares with Ninoy, even days after her burial.
Even in her death, Cory had shown she can take people out of their homes and into the streets. If last week’s event does not send a warning to Gloria and her clique, who even just hours after the late president was laid to rest, have come out to insist on their Charter change plans, even claiming it as a test case once it is filed with the Supreme Court, to know whether Congress could go it alone, without the Senate, without the people and without conscience.
Even before Cory’s death, however, the people have already spoken against Cha-cha and against Gloria. They have preferred to lend their voices through new media, in various blogs, the Twitter, Facebook and yes, even Friendster, they have said no!
Gloria must have misread the people’s silence as either an impassive gesture or maybe lack of interest, or maybe even worse, silence that must have meant a show of support for her and her Cha-cha, oh Heaven forbid!
That was until last week, when everything changed, again.
And for it, let us thank Cory. Then let us move on and finish the business she had left behind, the same business we have ignored for a long time and let those various flags to solve.
Alone, they can’t. But together, we can!
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