“I do hope it doesn’t reach this point again. It would have been better if they had been sensitive to our culture, and respectful of our faith.”

Castro is speaking of a recent McDonald’s ad showing two small children talking in a playground. In the ad, a pretty young girl, maybe 5 or 6 years old, asks a little boy if he was her boyfriend. The boy shakes his head. Girls, he says, are much too demanding, asking for too much too often. The girl corrects the boy—all she wants are McDonald’s French fries. The boy jingles the coins in his pocket and grins. And so happy boy and happy girl walk down the street, as a voice-over informs the public that McDonald’s fries are now at P25.

There may be many and varied reasons why McDonald’s French fries are a danger to the public health, but it is only now that God’s fast-food preferences became an issue of multimillion-peso interest. Castro demanded the junking of the 30-second commercial, claiming that it taught children the wrong values on human relationship. “They should replace it. It doesn’t look good. The emotional, relational bonding of people was made to look shallow that’s why it should be replaced,” said Castro over Church-run Radio Veritas.

That God prefers Jollibee over McDonald’s may be the only rationale behind the Church’s ire. Certainly it isn’t because of McDonald’s disrespect to Catholic teachings, else the CBCP would have howled louder over a 2006 Jollibee commercial where a small boy stands in a church beside his praying mother, and proceeds to violate the Fourth Commandment by thanking God for his Jollibee dinner. Neither can Castro claim that the treatment of love and relationships is particularly offensive, else he should be called lax in his duties by permitting Rhian Ramos to equate love to the joy of a Jelly Trio. In fact, to judge the Church by its own standards is to condemn it for failing to speak against an industry that suggests love can be achieved via the right shampoo (for long, straight hair) or through the constant application of moisturizers (for whiter skin in just seven days). Where was the Church, for example, when a barefoot Marian Rivera ran laughing in sun-tanned splendor past a drowning man to secure her PLDT load?

The insistence on malicious interpretation—should PLDT then be condemned for violating the Seventh Commandment?—is Castro’s own concern. It is odd to assume children see the world through the CBCP’s own paranoid lenses. There is, after all, little malice in two children calling themselves sweethearts. Following this logic, every decent God-fearing parent should take their belts to small daughters who come home with crushes on the boy in red stripes who reigns over the sandbox, should assume the beginnings of a life of sin when a 7-year-old son offers his last cookie to the pig-tailed girl next door.

The problem, according to Castro, is that young children should not be told of courtship at such a young age, the same argument he has been using repeatedly against sex education. “Instead of teaching them about the values of loving their parents, loving God, and loving nature, they are being taught about human relationship that is not proper for their young age.”

And still the Church said nothing when McDonald’s “Huling El Bimbo” commercial became a viral hit in 2009—a narrative that revolved around a pair of childhood sweethearts—perhaps because the publicity was not as crucial.

This is by no means a condemnation of the Church or a religion as a whole. It is instead a criticism of the holy men like Castro who bestow hell and damnation on all individuals whose religions and moralities differ from that of God as defined by the Vatican. These men paint themselves as martyrs and crusaders, willing to face evil for the sake of saving their people.

“In this world that is growing steadily to be a militant secularist and anti-religious environment,” he says, “we are faced with a number of choices—to shirk from the challenges to stand up for the Faith so as to avoid “confrontation.”

It makes the whole issue more damning against the Church, especially when the man who claims to speak for morality, Castro himself, has demonstrated the same sort of slavering loyalty expected of the various spokespersons employed by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. It was Castro who immediately denied the Church had anything to do with a controversial parish announcement denying communion to RH bill supporters, even when that parish admitted drafting the same announcement.

It was also Castro, in spite of the Church’s much-vaunted concern over the state of political Philippines, who informed then ANC reporter Ricky Carandang that it is better to vote for a crook rather than for the politicians who supported contraception. And when the BBC exposed the extent of sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests and the silence of the hierarchy, even while the Pope sent apologies to families of sodomized boys and traumatized girls and admitted forgiveness cannot equal the justice predatory priests escaped, Father Castro, executive secretary of the CBCP Episcopal Commission on Family and Life, self-proclaimed defender of the rights of children, wrote in his own blog that in spite of the Church’s cover-up, the Church committed no sin.

“What cover-up is to the secular media is the prudent judgment of the Church on her members. [The Church] does not pass judgment and imposes penalty in a public manner. She does so silently, as a good mother does to her erring children.”

McDonald’s has served no one by its failure to stand up to the intent of its work; neither has the Church served itself by allowing men like Castro to read the gospel. Any other man would have been ignored as a coward and a hypocrite. This is not an issue of French fries and public compromise. The issue is truth, and it’s a principle I am told Castro’s God died to protect.

After their execution, Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda offered the government’s sympathies to the families left behind.

“It is a sad day for all of us,” says Vice President Binay, whose efforts in behalf of the convicts secured a month’s reprieve in the executions. “Until the last moment, we did everything we could to save the three.”

The Philippine government has not made any secret of the fact the three drug mules were guilty of their crimes. They admit it; their families admit it. Presidential spokespersons are careful in saying they do not condone the crimes. The President said they were asking for leniency. The appeal to China was hinged not on injustice, but on “humanitarian reasons.” In short, the Philippines asked China not to kill, because killing is inhuman.

Only Binay knows just how sincere he is in his defense of the dead drug mules. There is no doubt as to his political savvy, as he offered sympathies and scholarships to those left behind. Immediately after his much-publicized appeal for Chinese clemency, Binay’s approval ratings soared far above President Aquino’s. The fact that his role as savior is tainted with hypocrisy has done little to affect the surveys. It was Binay, after all, who only a month before the executions announced his support for the restoration of the death penalty in the Philippines. Binay demanded the death penalty after a spree of killings that left the charred remains of car dealers became national news.

“We are talking about Filipino culture here, and Filipino culture requires discipline,” he said in a January interview over GMA7.

The restoration of the death penalty has long been the knee-jerk reaction in the aftermath of public violence. “Public,” because violence and death are daily realities in the Philippines; it is only for the rare crimes that pierce public consciousness that officialdom is galvanized into calling for the noose. Mr. Aquino’s own mother Corazon Aquino certified as urgent a bill proposing death as punishment for rebellion after a bloody 1989 coup. High-profile murders during the Ramos administration created the new death penalty law in 1993. President Joseph Estrada ordered the deaths of seven men in his term. Rapist Leo Echegaray was the first of the executions. “The crime committed by Mr. Echegaray was an act of bestiality which deserves the stiffest punishment under the law.”

The argument is stunning in its simplicity—death is a lesson to the criminal, his death will deter future criminals. And yet there is the question of the effectiveness of death as deterrent. According to position papers by the Free Legal Assistance Group, “The overwhelming conclusion from years of deterrence studies is that the death penalty is, at best, no more of a deterrent than a sentence of life in prison.” The average crime rate in fact rose by 6.5 percent in 1994 with the re-imposition of the penalty, with rape rising by 44 percent in 1995.

Politicians, with very little effort, are suddenly viewed as avengers, feeding public anger while creating the illusion of a solution. And yet it is also one of the most-loved bargaining chips of the state. Estrada, who vowed he would veto any move to repeal the death penalty, promised to repeal it himself after strong lobbying by the Catholic Church and the European Union. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who began her political career opposed to the death penalty, announced she would order the immediate executions of up to 95 convicted kidnappers after a surge of violent kidnappings among the Chinese community and foreign missionaries.

“Let us prepare the lethal execution chamber for those champions of darkness for the sake of our society,” she said.

Yet in 2006, she signed a law abolishing the death penalty—the day before she left for the Vatican for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI.

The list goes on. The death penalty after the Maguindanao massacre, the death penalty after the Alabang Boys controversy, the death penalty after the botched Manila hostage rescue. Now it is the Vice President, new hero in a nation of the forgetful, who supports the return of death. Today, two bills sit in Congress for the restoration of the death penalty. One demands execution for capital offenses, including car theft with homicide and the trafficking of dangerous drugs. The other, filed by Rep. Jane Tan Castro, makes death punishment for illegal logging.

This is what lives are reduced to: bargaining chips and distractions, even as the justice system has proven time and again its fallibility. Capital punishment would have murdered Hubert Webb, whose acquittal today has him tossing a basketball at his father. Even in the United States with its more sophisticated investigations and more stable justice system, at least 121 people have been released from death row after evidence of their innocence emerged. During Estrada’s term, one convict was killed just as Estrada called to offer a last-minute reprieve. Former Supreme Court Justice Artemio Panganiban has continued to claim the execution of Echegaray was not lawful.

And so we wait, while three families mourn, for the next controversy that will send the gentlemen of Congress scrambling to file yet another death penalty bill. Perhaps the lesson is simpler, and there is no contradiction. Perhaps Binay is a hero, and the lesson is this—that murder as punishment is inhumane when China pulls the trigger; that it is justice in the hands of a Filipino executioner.

There are some who say the king was once a just man, and a wise one, whose heart turned dark at the taste of power. Others say he had always been mad, and hid his madness behind a cunning charm.

The king had a queen, the most beautiful in the world, and again there are those who whisper that it was she whose madness turned the king’s. So they ruled, the black king and his butterfly queen and their army of bloodthirsty knights, from a golden castle built on a lake whose waters turned a darker red with each cruel year.

And then the hero came. It was a long, grim battle, and as the hero died bleeding, an army rose, led by a woman in yellow who came to mourn the hero she loved. They marched to the castle, unarmed and unchallenged, a crowd of peasants and merchants and loyal knights singing of peace and love. The dark king fled before the yellow army, his mad queen tripping over the diamonds that fell from her cupped hands. The people rejoiced, the woman in yellow was crowned queen, and peace reigned in the land where a golden castle stood on a lake of shining waters.

Sometimes the story changes. Swords turned to flowers, the cannon-fire into rose-colored smoke. The woman in yellow walked with an angel of God by her side. The dark king’s cruel men were once knights forced to evil by a powerful spell. What did not change, as the story was passed on from father to son and mother to daughter, was the truth the mad king hid for many years: when a true hero rises, good will triumph over even the most evil of evils.

The story does not end with the defeat of the mad king, but that is the part that is not told very often to the children born during the reign of the lady in yellow. I was one of those children, born 25 years ago into a free country. I understood that evil had a face and a stench and a name that often, but not always, ended with Marcos. Good was colored yellow.

It was a story that was told when I was 15 and a man named Erap was stripped of his presidency and called a thief. The heroes were named: Joker Arroyo, Chavit Singson, Clarissa Ocampo, Hilario Davide, Loren Legarda—she of the tears and the pink suit. Many of my generation joined the march, glad to finally be part of the legend, to be on the side of right, among the fist-pumping crowd behind the Cardinal and the Widow. Good won that day, they say, Joker Arroyo’s nation would not be ruled by a thief—a man who did not have the decency to disappear into the dark, who continued to charm his millions of barefoot supporters, many of whom took up the banner of Edsa and ran howling in defense of Joseph Estrada, President of the Philippines, alias Asiong Salonga. The heroes did not call it a revolution. It was a mob, they said. And so a new queen was crowned by God and country, a small woman who stood in opposition to the villain whose swagger and smirking moustache offended more than his alleged thievery.

The promise was the same. Here was the new hero, come to bring order into the chaos of Estrada’s gambling government. The street protestors returned home, their duties done, secure in the knowledge that the story had reached the natural happy ending. And so Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo lied and cheated and compromised the fledgling institutions rebuilt after martial law, going about her business while the country waited for the promised change. By the time the red queen was named, even the myth failed, and no amount of revolutions and prayers and yellow power could shake the composure of the “mother of the nation.” The dead had been buried, or stolen away. Still the heroes came, and were cast quickly into their roles. Jun Lozada, surrounded by a pack of clucking nuns. Joey de Venecia, who in spite of his unwillingness to play politics, ran for senator the election after his national confession. Today, they are just part of the story.

Twenty-five years after the first People Power in Edsa, the heroes of martial law snipe over who failed the promise of People Power. Edsa has failed, say the critics. Failed because the tyranny of the Marcoses was replaced by the oligarchies that gained power with their leaving. There are no laws, only the money to buy them. The farmers are landless, the debt is ballooning, the poor have gotten poorer and the generals still steal from the same public coffers. The heroes broke their promises while the mad queens ran mad. Look at the graves among the sugar fields of Hacienda Luisita, remember the massacre in Mendiola, see how they betrayed us, deceived us, destroyed the dreams we built together.

Still the yellow flags flew again last Friday, on the same street, in celebration and in pride. Remember Edsa, say the heroes, remember what we did. Remember what our people can do. And so the story is told again, how it was, how it should have been.

This is how the story of my country should be told, after the mad king falls and the yellow queen is crowned.

Once, there was a yellow queen, brave and bright and true. She stood among her men, who held her hand as she walked to her new throne. As the days went by, and the sounds of battle faded, many of her knights fell, some overcome by power, others by fear. Many more could no longer see which side was the side of heroes, and so chose what they liked and later forgot why. Those who knew how to play the game emerged winners, and still keep their high cards to this day.

And so the yellow queen failed, and the country with her, for they forgot that a queen cannot stand alone. And so they told the story, again and again, waiting for the hero, waiting to rise, in the hope of returning to that single moment when good and evil stood apart, and evil vanquished by songs and prayers. They waited as the kingdom crumbled, rose to rejoice at the return of the messiah, and returned downcast as the waters continued to turn red.

This is the lesson my generation takes from the years after Edsa. There are no messiahs, or perfect kings. There are only men who have the same weaknesses as the men they lead. Sometimes a good man chooses the hero’s path, and no matter if his heart is true and his blood the blood of heroes, the kingdom will fall for as long as its people demand a story that should never have been told.

A television played the news in the lobby. Chief Inspector Trajano, an affable policewoman who met with friends of the detained in the lobby, said that the raid was a result of a tip-off from a source. She said the police suspected that some masseurs had faulty papers, and that it was standard operating procedure to take everyone from the site and bring them to Camp Crame for validation. Asked why validation could not be done on site, why it was necessary to bring these men and women to the police headquarters unprotected, she said it was because there would be too many people asking too many questions.

The man from the sauna did not know this, sitting with strangers inside a room in the CIDG. He was waiting to be questioned, waiting to prove his identity, waiting, with six other confused men, to be told what was happening. The women sat in rows, in their jeans and shirts, and they did not know either. And because this was the PNP, whose reputation for torture and violence had its director general assuring the public that his men could be trusted, many of them were afraid. For as long as an individual is detained, against his will, in connection with an unspecified crime, it is an arrest. They waited two hours, and eventually a sheet of paper was passed around with instructions to detail name and address. It was, as it turned out, the extent of the “validation of identification.” No IDs were checked. There were no questions or affidavits. The man from the sauna volunteered to show his ID. The 20 women were processed before the customers. When it was their turn, the customers were taken to medical and told to sign papers they were not physically harmed by the experience. They followed “process.” When they were allowed to leave, there was relief.

I am told that the raid was unsuccessful, that the tip was proven false, that all papers were in order, and no charges were filed against any of the 27 people who were in iSpa on February 3, 2011. Republic Act 9208, the Anti-Trafficking of Women and Children Act, does not supersede the right of citizens against illegal seizures and searches. It does not, for example, permit unidentified policemen to escort individuals to the police headquarters without informing them of their rights, or telling them in what capacity they are being escorted. According to the men and women of CIDG, this is “process.” CIDG Public Information Officer Francis Vargas claims this is not standard operational procedure, that verification of identity, if necessary, should be done on-location. Neither is it procedure to raid any establishment without a pre-operation plan that testifies enough evidence exists to justify the belief that crime is being committed—evidence that appears to have been missing given that not a single charge was filed.

This is what happened when the man from the sauna was walking down the steps of the building with the friends who had arrived to make sure he was safe. A woman arrived, strode up the steps carrying her purse, in jeans, a red shirt and red shoes, a woman who demanded to know if all four of those walking away were free to go. The men at the door said only one of them had been arrested, that the rest had come to pick him up, that they were not certain if they had been released.

I know this because I was walking down the steps of the CIDG myself, after signing the form confirming I had witnessed the release of Paolo Villaluna, acclaimed filmmaker and director of ANC’s “Storyline,” my documentary partner of three years who did not understand why he was being described as an arrested man when all he did was drive to Metrowalk to sit in a sauna. He asked if he could leave, and they told him to go back inside. And so when he walked back up the steps he insisted on being told why he was being detained, and why he was being described as “nahuli.” And because I am a journalist as well as a friend, and because I knew there was only so much you can accept in the interest of keeping the peace, I asked for the name of whoever was in charge to put on record. The woman in red, angrier at every question, demanded to know who I was and why I was asking. I said I was from the media, and showed ID.

“Isulat mo ito,” she said. It is difficult to describe on paper the degree of resentment that came with the answers. “Police Superintendent Emma Libunao, chief of the CIDG’s Women and Children Protection Division.” And she cocked her head. “Ako ’yun!”

She announced that what had occurred was a legitimate police operation under Republic Act 9208. I wrote it all down, bent to press my sheaf of papers against my thigh, as a policeman and the crowd of alleged arrested looked on. I saw a finger thrust at my writing, looked up to see Libunao glaring a foot away. I straightened up, still writing, and I asked if there was a problem.

And this is when Superintendent Emma Libunao, chief of the CIDG’s Women and Children Protection Division, drew her arm back and lunged. I do not know if she meant to punch or to slap, but I saw my director’s hand snapping against hers, saw her face thrust against mine, the hand stopped just short of my neck. And the seething woman said, “Kanina ka pa!” One of her men held her back. Assault, we said. That’s assault.

Her men stepped between us, with Chief Inspector Trajano calmly asking me to step back, saying everyone was having a bad day, saying it would all pass. It did not stop one of Libunao’s men from jeering. We were asking for it, he said, because we kept asking questions.

That the chief of the women’s desk is comfortable swinging her fist at a female civilian is not an incident of monumental concern in a state where torture, rape and drug trafficking in the hands of the PNP headline the newspapers. Yet it is not difficult to imagine how the PNP treats its detained, those without the protection of press IDs hanging around their necks, or friends who are there to bear witness. It is also not difficult to imagine what happens if they demand answers.

When we left, Libunao was prancing around the lobby of the CIDG building, describing how she had been assaulted by questions.

Perhaps she was having a bad day.

CBCP’s Castro may claim that the statement is false, and that it does not come with the blessing of the CBCP, but he misleads when he claims he is unaware of its source. Santuario de San Jose’s secretary Ella Dula did deny to various news agencies that the parish posted the statement, but she admitted it was drafted by the parish pastoral council.

Dula told ABS-CBN that “Yes, there is a statement but there was no announcement during the weekend. I don’t know how it was leaked.” She told GMA News that the council was surprised, and insisted that it would never have released the statement as it was.

Castro calls the statement black propaganda, claiming its only goal is to cause agitation and anger among Catholics.

The Church is forgiving, he says, for there is no need to punish those who support the bill, because they are only acting as a result of ignorance and goodwill.

Perhaps the Church was less forgiving in 2008, when Ozamiz Bishop Jesus Dosado barred Catholic politicians who openly supported and advocated “anti-life” legislation from receiving Communion. CBCP News Online quoted Dosado as he spoke to a gathering of Catholics that one cannot be called “a Catholic in good standing” if one can “publicly hold views that are contradictory to the Catholic faith.” He said he had the right to refuse Holy Communion to such legislators, and added in his pastoral letter a no-communion policy for politicians promoting reproductive health and artificial birth control.

Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez, chair of the CBCP public affairs committee, did not call Dosada’s pastoral letter black propaganda, neither did Msgr. Achilles Dakay, media liaison officer of the Archdiocese of Cebu, who said that warnings will be made before the Mass for congressmen to refrain from receiving Communion.

Santuario de San Jose’s draft statement is a far cry from a pastoral letter in the CBCP website written by one of its own bishops, and still the CBCP now speaks as if banning Communion to wayward members of its flock is an act unthinkable in its severity. Castro’s outrage is odd in the context of 16 years of deadlock between the Church and reproductive rights groups, but perhaps the defensiveness is telling. The RH bill has already been consolidated and is on its way to plenary, with its 2012 congressional appropriations secure. With a majority of the population supporting the bill and politicians publicly announcing their commitment, even online outrage over a leaked draft is a cause for CBCP concern.

Which is not to say the Church does not have the right to ban Communion, or excommunicate the growing percentage of the population that supports reproductive health. The lines are being drawn, not between Catholic and non-Catholic, but between those who support the RH bill and all it stands for, and those who don’t. Religion, for a long time a matter of birth and tradition in Roman Catholic Philippines, is quickly becoming a matter of individual choice in the face of a 21st-century brotherhood that calls a condom a murder weapon and sexual intercourse the severest of sins. There is nothing wrong with the Church’s interference in national issues, and the manner by which it deals with its flock. The Church is not a democracy, and the thousands of disillusioned are welcome to the cathedrals of a thousand other gods.

It is a Catholic government the public should fear. Just last month the Aquino government announced the inclusion of the RH bill in the 12-bill list for prioritization, consistent with his statements in the campaign of 2010. This month, after speaking with the CBCP, the bill was removed from the list, pending talks with Catholic bishops, many of whom publicly announced they will not compromise. Even the most practical of considerations—public approval—does not justify the Aquino government’s withdrawal of the RH bill from this year’s priority list. The near-election of Joseph Estrada in 2010, in spite of the Church’s lobby against the candidate they painted as a womanizing buffoon, is proof enough that there is no such thing as a united Catholic vote.

Still, irrelevant of majorities, surveys and votes and the stunning loss of Ang Kapatiran’s JC de los Reyes, the choice to push back RH is a discriminatory one. It is a single religion that stands in the way of providing a public with differing beliefs the right to protect their reproductive health. Unlike the Church and its right to arbitrariness, the government has no right to impose its Church—or fear of the Church—on the lives and choices of the citizenry that empowered it.

The government may claim it is not cowed by the Church. Mr. Aquino’s withdrawal, they say, is a function of re-prioritization. The administration promises continued support for reproductive health. Perhaps these claims should be given a name—propaganda.

The non-event of New Year’s Day was followed by a year acknowledged as the Aquino year. The national government began an aggressive program aimed at social welfare and poverty reduction. Using funds from the billions-worth sale of the Marcos jewels (including $58,286 tiara of pearls and diamonds; a $44,410 diamond-studded hair comb; a matched set of bracelet, earrings and brooch in sapphires, rubies and diamonds priced at $1,487,415; and an emerald and diamond pendant worth $74,825) President Benigno Aquino III employed many of the nation’s jobless in a massive school-building effort, with thousands of university scholarships offered to employees and school loans to all who passed the basic entrance exams. High-school education, with allowances for transportation, meals and school supplies, was considered a matter of simply filling out the forms.

The President also conducted a major reorganization in his Cabinet, first removing the microphone from the grip of Communication Secretary Sonny Coloma, who announced in a press conference that the Aquino government would have nothing to do with the victims of urban flooding, widespread poverty, police brutality and possibly the dengue epidemic, reasoning that any and all recent tragedies were probably a result of the previous government’s evils, and thus not the burden of the current administration. The President himself corrected Coloma in a midnight press conference, thanking the national media for pointing out the inadequacies of a spokesman whose foot appeared to have found permanent placement in his mouth.

In a move that landed Aquino on the front page of Time Magazine and nominal adoption into the Communist Party of the Philippines, the President turned over Hacienda Luisita to the 10,502 farmers who had been tilling its soil, much to the disgust of the Cojuangcos of Hacienda Luisita Incorporated. He also disconnected his sister’s Twitter, Facebook and mobile accounts, and informed the national media he would date whomever he damn well wanted to date. In the interest of sending the right message to the nation’s impressionable youth, he passed the Reproductive Health Bill, and suggested that the Church either make good on its threat of excommunication or pray for his pursuit of the next Mrs. Aquino.

In a bid to increase tourism, the President removed TV show host Boy Abunda from Abunda’s advisory capacity, suggested that all talents and agencies hired by government should be required to undergo courses in geography, ornithology and intellectual property and rerouted millions from the Department of Tourism meant for the conceptualization and launch of a national tourism slogan to the Department of the Interior and Local Government for the training of its police officers. The move, drastic as it was, ensured that not a single foreigner found himself held at gunpoint in a bus creeping down to the Quirino Grandstand. The Department of Tourism reports the removal of the Philippines from the international tourism blacklist.

The Catholic Church, after finding out that there was life after the passing of the reproductive health bill and the legalization of jueteng, turned back to the half-forgotten vocation of helping the poor, comforting the afflicted and spreading peace, love and the word of God. It was with relief, and no small amount of back-patting, that the government discovered the population was built not just of stomachs but of souls.

Changes did not only emanate from the presidential office. The nation’s middle class, galvanized by its activist president, took pains to ensure the success of his programs, shaming the elegant denizens of the upper class into putting their money where their slogans were.

2011 was also the year of academe’s victory over the Supreme Court, with the discovery of the plagiarism of the 1987 Constitution and a large portion of Anakin Skywalker’s monologue from the “Attack of the Clones.” The incident forced the Supreme Court to reconsider its former disregard of Supreme Court Justice Mariano del Castillo’s lack of imagination.

In the latter half of 2011, many other developments occurred that made enterprising reporters give serious thought to switching career paths. Warlords were disarmed, and the Honorable ex-Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan was tossed into jail beside the killers of the Vizconde family. The Ampatuan case became a milestone in the effort of justice and human rights, and Chiz Escudero, in a moment of revelation, discovered his true calling was on the stage of “Willing Willie.” After the success of peace talks in Mindanao and treaties between the government and the New People’s Army—concluding that torture was not an effective means of confidence-building—many war correspondents switched to the lucrative and infinitely more hazardous profession of wedding coverage. Those with experience in Basilan and Jolo found themselves swamped with offers from harried grooms, all of whom discovered the sunburned men used to shooting angry terrorists came in useful in the handling of hysterical brides and enraged mothers-in-law.

No more reporters were sent out to cover New Year’s Eve fatalities. Many columnists, this writer included, discovered that there was little need for fiction in a universe where a word count, boredom and nicotine became the only enemies of the nation’s free press.

Happy New Year.

“You mentioned quite conclusively … about Secretary Coloma’s being ‘asked about the rights of the 43 health workers who have been tortured and illegally searched and arrested by elements of the AFP and the police.’ Then you continue to demonize the AFP by claiming that many of the ‘much-violated members of Morong 43 have had the honor of having members of the AFP wipe down their female organs.’

“We wonder who your sources are and where this distorted information is coming from for you to categorically accuse the AFP of all those things. What about your sources for Morong 38? Was it from Bulatlat.com, Karapatan, or from activist-friends from UP, (who have) nothing good to say about the AFP? ”

The colonel goes on to insist on my biases and lack of ethics, and although I admit my bias in favor of human rights, I would like to assure the colonel that the piece was a result of both research and personal coverage of hearings and media briefings, as well as personal interviews with many of the involved parties.

The fact that the 43 health workers were illegally searched and arrested was one of the points discussed during the trial of the 43 health workers, along with the proven fact that a single search warrant for a yet unidentified man was used to barge into the Morong resort.

It appears to be the same opinion shared by the national government today.

The allegations of torture, contrary to what Colonel Parlade believes, were not sourced from human-rights group Karapatan, website Bulatlat.com or “activist-friends in UP,” although the derogatory fashion by which the spokesperson of the AFP speaks of these groups is testament in itself of the Army’s attitude toward activists in general and the Left in particular.

The “categorical statement” of torture in the column, that “much-violated members of Morong 43 have had the honor of having members of the AFP wipe down their female organs” was the result of a personal interview with Maj. Gen. Jorge Segovia, commander of the Second Infantry Battalion, the officer initially charged with the detention of the health workers. It was televised on February 25 over the ABS-CBN News Channel.

Segovia admitted, on record, that most of the 43 health workers, whenever they needed to void themselves, were individually handcuffed and accompanied by AFP soldiers in trips to the bathroom. The health workers, blindfolded and cuffed, were faced with the choice of soiling themselves or accepting AFP assistance. Many of them allowed members of the AFP to unzip their pants and touch their genitals.

Jane Balleta herself, of the Morong 43, admitted this much in a personal interview.

Segovia offered assurances that women were handled only by women, and men only by men, perhaps unaware that sexual harassment is not gender-based. Colonel Parlade will be pleased to know that Segovia did not believe what transpired was torture. International human rights codes and the University of the Philippines School of Medicine all state this constitutes sexual harassment and torture. Blindfolding itself is considered torture in Republic Act 9475, the anti-torture law. I am of the personal opinion that a situation that demands unknown hands to wipe down my vagina is sexual harassment.

“Are you having a hard time,” says Parlade “accepting the fact that your Army now is not the same abusive Army of yester years? Is your fear that intense that if the Army has indeed evolved professionally you will be out of job and will have nothing bad to write anymore?”

It would be helpful as a journalist if the colonel would state which “yester years” he admits abusiveness in the Army could justifiably be reported. If he believes the Aquino administration’s Army has evolved from Arroyo’s, it further proves the dangers of a questionable Army arrest during Arroyo’s nine-year reign, and concedes abusiveness that the AFP has routinely and consistently denied.

It is difficult to accept “the fact that your Army now is not the same abusive Army of yester years” precisely because it is not yet a fact, and repeated instances, including this letter, have shown a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.

“Well, too bad for you and all those critics who continue to block their own government in our resilience to genuinely improve our services to our people. We are far from perfect but however unfairly you label your Army, this organization will continue to strive to live up to our sworn duty of protecting you and the rest of your family.”

I would also like to assure the colonel that my job security is not dependent on the commission of human- -rights violations by the AFP or by any other institution. It is kind of him to consider my financial state, which is rarely healthy, but enough to survive on even without the occasional massacre.

The colonel, in concluding his letter, recommended that I find “better ways to love” my country. In the same way civilians recognize the bravery and courage of men in uniform, it is perhaps necessary for the colonel to understand the function of criticism—it is not, as he claims, simply to “wittingly destroy” organizations “that keep democracy vibrant,” neither does criticism exist “to block their own government in our resilience to genuinely improve our services to our people.” Criticism, when followed by discourse, exists to improve by pointing out flaws in a system unseen or condoned by those within the system.

I will not end this column with a judgment against the Armed Forces, whose many brave men and women have made possible much of the security we enjoy today. I end with a judgment on an individual, who, perhaps, like the spokesman of the President, should not be considered a mouthpiece for the entirety of an institution, simply because the men and women who stand behind these institutions should not be damned because of one very confused man.

Welcome to Manila, 2010, where the honorable justices of the high court celebrate intellectual theft at the same time the Department of Tourism scrawls a happy face on Poland’s tourism logo and calls it beautiful. The presidential sister smiles graciously from a billboard pimping skin whiteners while the barefoot burn brown under her mile-high smile. A former vice president reads the news side-by-side with President Aquino’s ex-girlfriend, now wife of the President’s “vice president,” competing for prime time ratings against the President’s intended wife, now ex-girlfriend.

In Congress, a joker reigns and a dictator’s wife flaps her butterfly sleeves to throw support behind the passage of the human rights compensation bill, stressing that she is the “number one human rights victim.” Cult leader and parricide suspect Ruben Ecleo Jr., out on bail for “health reasons,” is now the honorable representative of Dinagat Island. The former president and now congresswoman Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, also out on metaphorical bail, recently delivered a lecture to the people of Syria.

“If we take to heart the lessons of recent history, embrace the virtues of creativeness, flexibility and pragmatism, and look for the opportunities as well as the perils that reside in our interdependence, we shall be rewarded for the risk, we too shall find the path to prosperity most suited for us.”

In the high cathedrals, the sons of Holy Mother Church are demanding clarification from the Vatican, whose pope has announced support for the use of condoms in the prevention of HIV, thereby throwing his support behind the twin evils of promiscuity and outright murder. From the depths of the underground, a fugitive senator who won on a platform of law and order now plays cops-and-robbers while sending press statements via Facebook.

“I prefer to suffer in pain but with dignity, sitting alone with my conscience for the rest of my life, rather than do time in jail for a crime I did not commit.”

It is December, the starlets are out with their Christmas albums, the malls are singing the great grand song of capitalism. In the news, the Philippines beats out India as call center paradise, and Manny Pacquiao is raring to beat out poverty in his privilege speech. Jason Ivler accused the Republic of the Philippines of violating his human rights when they arrested him—perhaps believing that shooting at NBI operatives with an M-16 did not constitute a human rights violation.

In the streets of Manila, Dirty Harry launches a holy war against pedicab drivers, while a woman named Margie waits for developments in the case filed for her husband Darius, whose tortured screams from a mobile phone video hit national airwaves as a policeman gleefully pulled at his prisoner’s penis with a string. Margie counts her husband’s tattoos from a TV monitor and says all she wants for Christmas is to win the case. The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group says no case can proceed unless the man who shot the video, perhaps out of the goodness of his heart, comes forward to identify Darius.

In a Sta. Mesa shanty, a mother survives a suicide attempt and admits to strangling her 13-day-old child. In Lawton, a 15-year-old boy allegedly picked up by police agents was found in a sack behind the post office. In Laguna, two cops were tagged in the attempted murder of a pregnant woman.

Welcome to the friendliest country in the world, where tarsiers grin under coconut suns, and waves sparkle blue against the whitest of white sands. In the jeweled isles of this pearl of the east, Sharon Cuneta apologizes to Aga Muhlach, the West Tower’s fumes still seep into neighboring homes in spite of the management’s placing “a big piece of plywood” as barrier, and the President announces he will spend Christmas alone this year—the fault of an unsympathetic media whose exploitation drove away possible presidential consorts.

“If ordinary citizens are granted their right to privacy, how am I different?”

Pilipinas, kay ganda.

In the end, when my director says cut and the boys pack away their cameras, we leave with thanks and no promises. Sometimes I catch my director, the madman with his tattoos and silver studs, pressing what would have been his talent fee into the hand of a barber whose one regret is that he can never afford to bring his children to Jollibee. One day my assistant director showed up lugging a sack of his clothes, to give to the 17-year-old sixth-grader who lost his father and mother and still continued to study by the light of an oil lamp—because “I want to be the first person in my family with a high school diploma.”

And then there is Julie and Fernando.

They live along Panay Avenue, two blocks away from ABS-CBN, at the shrieking center of a screaming city, inside a blue van with the word “egg” in fat baby blue letters painted over its doors and windows. The tires are flat, the steering wheel long gone, and three small children crowd the front seat.

Fernando is a 35-year-old farmer from Bulacan, who came to Manila to work as a janitor. Julie is 25. They fell in love in the cafeteria where she worked the counter. He was handsome, she said. He said she was beautiful. When Fernando lost his job, they took to the streets with their babies, picking up trash in a wooden cart painted a happy yellow. This was where they ate, where they slept, where they kept their tin pots and piles of trash for selling. They spent nights in empty parking lots, spent days wandering crowded streets for the P150 they would earn if they were lucky. They found the van nearly two years ago, sitting alone on the road, filled with refuse and the occasional rugby boy. Julie asked permission from the van’s owner, who let them live inside, their few clothes hung on lines along the windows.

The toys are few: a grey plastic elephant the length of a thumb, a small car from a rubbish heap, a yarn bracelet in lilac and pink. Their oldest goes to preschool, her yellow uniform hung carefully with a backpack beside a small pile of clothes. There are no toilets and showers in the world of Fernando and Julie. She is embarrassed to admit this, but there is nothing else that can be done. They wrap body waste in plastic, piss into metal pails for throwing, and head to Q-mart to take baths at P10 a person.

Some nights, when the heat is too much and the baby cries, they sleep on the convent steps, the missionary sisters of St. Charles Borromeo smiling at them in the mornings. Julie used to cook with wood and fire, but Fernando says they’ve stopped. Someone stole their pots and pans when they were away on the streets.

There is a yellow ribbon pasted on the back of the van. During the run-up to the 2010 elections, Fernando volunteered for the presidential campaign of Benigno Aquino III. Julie says her family has long been a fan of the late Ninoy Aquino. Fernando registered at the polls, helped carry chairs, hung posters at the house on Times Street. He cannot read or write, has never in his life deciphered the letters of a street sign, and will not recognize the Aquino name if he sees it. So Julie colored the empty circle for him, and Fernando was happy. He said he wanted to be part of making a good country.

There are rules they live by. Do not steal, because people will help you if you ask, but they will hate you if you take. Do not ask money from family, because family will resent you forever after. Keep the van clean, because the local officials might decide you’re more trouble than you’re worth. Sleep lightly, because both eyes closed means someone may do to your pedicab what they did to your pots and pans. Take a bath once a week, but make sure the children are bathed every day. And stay together, no matter what happens.

The surveys that came out this Christmas announce 69 percent of Filipinos in a population of 90 million will spend the holidays happy this year. Happy is an odd word in the narrowing vision of families scraping by; happy is just the difference between a meal and no meal. On Christmas Eve I saw Julie sweeping the sidewalk outside the van, the baby tripping over her feet. She smiled, and said there was no money for Christmas dinner. We planned for this, the boys and I, and although what we gave may not make a world of difference to the rich and the powerful, it makes for a thin buffer against the daily challenge of staying alive.

There are flies that flit over the open van, and there is dirt no matter how much Julie sweeps, but they have tied a crumpled red ribbon on their pushcart, and carefully lettered “MERRY X MAS” and “HAPPY NEW YEAR” on the back of campaign posters hung in place of the van’s missing front windows. This is not the life that they should be living, not the life anyone should be living. This is happy by default. They do not ask for charity, they ask for a chance, in spite of the accident of birth that makes one man a president and another a scavenger.

This is for Julie and Fernando, and for the other Julies and Fernandos who attempt happy Christmases this year. I write with the hope that by telling their story a President will remember to say his thanks, and those with joy to spare will pass by a broken blue van at the screaming center of a shrieking city, where alleluias soar with the howling of a KTV bar, and say Merry Christmas back to Julie and Fernando.

To everyone, a Merry Christmas.

Her name is Alysha. Her grandmother Arbaya tells the story. Of how her daughter Rowena left home early on a Monday morning with several of the neighboring women. Of how Arbaya got a phone call from her panicked daughter, past nine, that their convoy of cars had been held by the Ampatuan men. Of how her daughter said she was going to die, and that the media men were outside the van, already sprawled on the ground.

She called, said Arbaya, she managed to call. They were being held in Ampatuan, by the Ampatuan family. Unsay was leading them, Unsay, the son of Andal. She called before they killed her. Unsay, Unsay is going to kill us, and all the men with guns.

The men had taken them to the hills, said Rowena. They parked their trucks and took everyone.

Arbaya is raising Rowena’s two babies, Alysha and 2-year-old Alaysha. They do not understand Mama is not coming back.

Now Arbaya struggles to send both small ones to school. The families had heard that the government promised P100,000 for every family who lost a loved one on Nov. 23. They heard there were promises to educate the children. She said they got nothing, not the money, not the scholarships. All they had was the P20,000 from the Mangudadatus. And that was all.

Rowena was pregnant when she was killed. Her mother does not understand why she had to die. Her daughter was a good girl. She had finished school. She worked in an office, like Zoraida did, Zoraida Bernan whose mother wears a turban with fading silver sequins.

“I am the mother of Zoraida Bernan. She is my youngest. Her name is Zoraida Bernan. Gagil-Bernan.”

She has no story to tell. All she can say is her daughter’s name, before her voice breaks.

“My daughter is Zoraida Bernan. Gagil-Bernan.”

Zoraida Gagil-Bernan died on Nov. 23. So did Rahima Palawan, whose husband says a good morning to her grave every day. So did sisters Ela and Pinky Balayman, who were found holding each other even after they were killed. Their mother had them buried together. Ela’s birthday was on the 22nd.

“I’ve accepted they’re dead,” says Ela and Pinky’s mother, Takungan Balayman, a small brown woman in checkered green and black, hair hidden beneath a headscarf. “All people die. What I can’t accept is how frightened they were. That they had to be brought somewhere else to be killed and that they knew. I cannot stop thinking about it.”

The Balaymans live across the street from Toto Mangudadatu’s home.

“I want to poke sticks into Datu Andal’s eyes. No, not sticks. I’ll kill him where he stands. They’ll jail me either way. Why is this taking so long? But Allah knows better, may they rot in jail.”

According to Human Rights Watch, in May of 2002, then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo received a letter from 12 community leaders in Maguindanao, alleging that the Ampatuans and their allies were responsible for at least 33 killings and a number of abuses. The leaders said that many of the witnesses were afraid or had been killed. In August of 2008, another group wrote to President Arroyo alleging that Andal Ampatuan Sr. and other members of his family had been committing serious human rights abuses. Those who were perceived to have offended members of the clan have been shot in broad daylight in the middle of village squares, or at home, along with their children.

In spite of this, the guns flowed to Maguindanao. Arroyo’s armed forces authorized four special military auxiliary companies for the Ampatuans. Then Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno distributed more than 12,000 shotguns to police auxiliary forces in central Mindanao. The weaponry found in raids after the massacre included surface-to-air missiles, bearing the seal of the national government.

This is the Maguindanao built by the Arroyo government and the governments before it. Today, Arroyo sits in her own fiefdom, crowing smug at the Aquino administration, as the victims of her administration are left to tend year-old graves.

In Buluan, Maguindanao, Alysha sits on the ledge of what looks like a cement sandbox. The girl is maybe 4, maybe 5 years old, dressed in a wrinkled blue school uniform. This is where she sits and plays, outside the small hut from where Rowena Ante, daughter of Arbaya Ante, mother of Alysha and Alaysha, had left early on a November morning. This is where her mother is buried, under flowers blush pink and blooming. Her name is Alysha, and this is for her mama.