Criminal
The criminal was a woman. They are always women.
On paper, the sentence is imprisonment, up to six years. In the dank back rooms of Manila slums, and in the emergency wards of public hospitals, the sentence can be death. In 2008, at least 500,000 women resorted to abortion. Ninety thousand suffered complications. A thousand died.
In the Republic of the Philippines abortion is illegal. There are no exceptions under the law. It does not matter if the woman’s life is at stake on an operating table in the Fabella General Hospital. It does not matter if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, if the expectant mother is a 9-year-old girl in the slums of Tondo, if the fetus is expected to die within the womb and the woman with it.
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Brotherhood of Bigots
In the Church of Nicodemo Ferrer, God is a bigot, and his apostles fly first class.
In a decision penned with commissioners Elias Yusoph, Armando Velasco and Lucenito Tagle, Commission on Elections Commissioner Ferrer proclaimed multimillionaire Juan Miguel “Mikey” Macapagal Arroyo, son of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the legitimate representative of the nation’s security guards and tricycle drivers. Ferrer, Yusoph and Tagle make up the same holy trinity that replaced the Constitution with the fire-and-brimstone rantings of a Pennsylvanian Baptist preacher from an online website when they justified banning gay representatives from government.
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In protest
THIS COLUMN will be happy. It will revolt against itself. The words will slick on red lipstick; the verbs will step into high heels. Sentences will saunter barelegged in a blackout, will swing up to the painted green top of a damp table to dance in the blinking light of mobile phones just before the batteries die. Punctuations will boogie to graffiti and bop to vodka, will dance until the heels slip on spilled ice and a sky the color of Juan Ponce Enrile’s hair opens in needle-lashing rage.
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At the still point of the turning world
The first time I saw Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, I thought she was pretty. I was 13, and there was a poster across the street from where I stood waiting for the school bus. She wore a deep blue suit, her hair was in a braid, and she was holding a red rose. It was 1998, and she was campaigning for the vice presidency. I won’t swear by the image, the suit might have been red and the rose might have been white and her hair might have been short, but I remember thinking she was pretty, and hoping she would win because she seemed like a nice lady.
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The savage state of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
His name is Rei-Mon Guran; he was a left-wing student leader at Aquinas University. His friends called him Ambo. On his 21st birthday, his parents took him to a bus terminal where they watched him load his bags for school. He was still in the back of the bus when they found him, with four bullets from a .45 cal. pistol lodged in his head.
His name is Raymond Manalo, and he was a farmer. The armed men took him on Valentine’s Day. He was also 21. They said he was a communist. They beat him with chains and planks; poured his own piss down his nose, stuffed him into a four-by-one foot cell with three other men. When he escaped, he talked about the man in the next cell, who lost his mind and hanged himself with the garter from his underwear.
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