This is a report from Manila in the beginning of the drowning season, a little more than a week after the President of the Republic makes a car siren the standard for good and evil. In the spirit of goodwill towards a misunderstood administration, this column adopts the language of His Excellency, and records the state of this week’s nation to the tune of a whining “wang.”

Wang goes Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, who answers a demand for a public apology by humbly apologizing in behalf of the Bureau of Immigration while forgetting to apologize in behalf of Justice Secretary Leila de Lima.

Wang goes the Freedom of Information Bill and the right to reproductive health, as the President bowed before the almighty wang of Holy Mother Church in his State of the Nation Address, forgetting to acknowledge the Muslim Imams and the witnesses to Buddha and Jehovah and born-again Christians. Artists are charged with blasphemy. A series of video clips demonstrate hazing in the Philippine National Police. Actress Maricel Soriano’s maid claims her boss gave her the dirty finger.

The “wanging” goes on as the wankers surge forth, and yet in a week of bad deals and worse atrocities, the state of the nation takes on an odd glitter.

An elected official caught in a national controversy resigns from his elected post, offering the first dignified political exit to recent history. A team of athletes stripped of their status goes on to fight in the world championships with borrowed paddles and a depleted membership to prove that politics cannot stop the rage of dragons. A general is held accountable by two of his victims after five long years of waiting. The state’s cultural agency holds its ground in the face of a moral juggernaut, even as the oldest university washes its hands. Ruffa Gutierrez gets back her shoes, and a taxi driver is justly rewarded for owning a conscience.

The President may appear odd in his State of the Nation Address’ attempt to convince congressmen that poverty is a matter of national interest – odd because his argument appeals not to congressional duty but to congressional self-interest –but his attempt, spoken as the son of the elite, may be what is necessary to push poverty into the forefront of the congressional agenda.

“How can [the poor] buy products and services from businesses if they do not have a proper income? When a poor father turns to crime in order to feed his family, who would he victimize, if not us? When people cannot properly take care of themselves and fall ill, do we not run the risk of getting sick as well?”

“We,” it is to be assumed, refers to the President and the small group of landed gentry and Porsche-owning celebrity in the House of Representatives whose pineapple silk and butterfly sleeves control most of the nation’s national wealth.

Much has been said about the State of the Nation Address, and this column offers little more. This much must be said – finally, there stood a president whose speech did not include any references to heroic fathers or sainted mothers or revolutions of prayer and confetti made possible by the will of God and people.

He was Noynoy Aquino, finally president, whose father and mother were no longer trotted out at public events to serve as props to their son’s claim to power. Instead he built his own mythology, and although jacking the juice out of his “wangwang” metaphor a third of the way through was not particularly inspiring, there’s something to be said about the persistence of his thrust. In the course of a 53-minute speech, the President brandished his metaphorical wang 23 times against the evils of corruption, the sale of second-hand helicopters and the dangers of overpriced caffeine.

This is a report from Manila, in the beginning of the drowning season, where one less car siren is perhaps as good a standard for progress as is the unemployment index. And although it is premature for His Excellency to announce that “We have put an end to the culture of entitlement, to wang-wang: along our roads, in government, in our society as a whole,” there is much to celebrate, even one less wanker with a grip on the state of the nation.

Girly is a single mother to four boys and a baby girl. The children are in school, and they are good boys, smart boys. She has had three husbands, and knows that the child will be the last – she has learned not to look for love.

Every morning, she wades into the water and digs in the muck for the plastic bottles of soft drinks and mineral water that have washed into the river. Each bottle is cleaned carefully of soil and grit. They are more expensive this way, she says. She wades to her home, a small woman in a white dress whose neckline shows off the ample breasts of a heavily pregnant mother. The dress is a donation from the time a fire burned down the shanties.

On July 31, a demolition team will rip down the homes of several hundred families along the waterways of E. Rodriguez, and with just cause. The city government has recognized that shanties crowding waterways do not only endanger those who live in them, but also a city unable to manage the floods storming an already crowded metropolis.

Girly says she will not be removed. The government has taken her and her neighbors on a long bus ride to Montalban to show them their new homes, and she says she would rather risk running from E. Rodriguez’s floodwaters than the landslides in Montalban. There will be no jobs there, no schools or hospitals or the possibility of digging for plastic in the muck. Residents once relocated to Montalban because of typhoon “Ondoy” have already made their way back to crowd E. Rodriguez and the slums of Marikina.

Today, the squatters of E. Rodriguez have a message for the city government. Girly is ready with her placards, and the women have readied the pots for the noise barrage.

On the day the demolishers come, Girly will be eight months pregnant. She will stand in her borrowed dress before the backhoe and the men with batons. She is not afraid, she says. She is strong. She is a mother.

She has already sent away the children. They might get hurt.

Curfew begins at 10 p.m in the shantytowns of Navotas. A reminder is spray-painted on the wall of a police outpost – If you walk, you walk with God.

The homes begin on the edge of a cemetery, where the dead are piled in layers like floors on an apartment building. A group of young boys plays basketball. The hoop has been nailed to a marker six feet above the ground, right over the date of birth.

Navotas is where 27-year-old fisherman Jerwin de Antonio used to live before he was killed on April 21 this year. De Antonio had been jailed for drug use when he was younger, and had spent the last years supporting his sisters and mother. His membership in activist group Anakbayan was still provisional on the night he was arrested. Although his death has been pegged as another activist execution, De Antonio only expressed interest in joining, but never had the time after long hours on the lake.

Karapatan’s report said that three policemen forced De Antonio into a patrol vehicle. He was beaten up, booked for vagrancy, and beaten again. Witnesses say the policemen told De Antonio to run and then gunshots were heard after which they were seen putting him inside a tricycle. He was declared dead on arrival at the Tondo General Hospital. He died of four bullet wounds. His sisters found his body in the morgue.

The three policemen were suspended after the initial clamor, but are now allegedly back on the streets. No cases have been filed.

A police report calls the shooting self-defense.

In the cemetery outside, the basketball has been stored inside an open tomb. A shrieking swordfight has begun among the smaller boys. The swords they clutch are dirty bones.

Along Mother Ignacia Avenue, in a small room four feet square, a woman named Julie holds her week-old baby. The boy is her fourth, and they have yet to decide on a name. Her husband Joseph would like the boy named for himself, but Julie refuses. She says, smiling, that the boy might grow up into his father.

Three other toddlers crowd the room; two of them cling to Julie’s legs while another laughs with Joseph. Julie hikes up her shirt and cups her breast. Her stomach is covered with sores, her nipple is dark with infections. The baby begins to suckle.

This is a rare night for Julie and Joseph and their family. Most nights are spent along Panay Avenue, inside a blue van parked across a convent. They have lived in the van for years. Showers are rare for the couple, although the small children are bathed every two days. The van is crowded with old blankets and small toys, a pink Barbie backpack is hung on the place of honor. When typhoon “Falcon” flooded Panay Avenue, Julie wrapped her babies in blankets and rushed them up the church steps. Only her daughter’s schoolbag was saved when the water engulfed the old van.

In the weeks after, Julie and Joseph thought of adoption. Joseph said he would allow it, for as long as he never saw his child first. Julie said she couldn’t put another baby through the life she leads, especially after someone stole the pedicab Joseph used to make a living. His one dream is to be a janitor with a regular paycheck, but every time he is given a chance, employers discover he has no IDs, no money for an NBI clearance, and cannot read or write. It does not stop him from haunting the front offices of Quezon City buildings. Now he assists residents parking cars.

The night Julie gave birth on July 7, Joseph took her to the small shanty along Mother Ignacia, borrowed from a sympathetic squatter who said she could stay until the floods stopped coming. It was an easy birth, she said. One moment the baby was inside her, the next moment he was hers.

Joseph walked down Panay Avenue that day with a grin on his face, announcing to anyone who would listen that he had another son.

They will go home soon, they say. They will see what is left of their home. At least, says Julie, nobody can take her children away.

The mayor did not hesitate; neither did she mince words. She gave the police a tongue-lashing, and ordered them to stop the demolition. She turned on the residents, and demanded they drop their weapons. This was the daughter of the notorious former mayor of Davao, the man marked as the “Punisher,” whose alleged Davao Death Squads had bled out the rabble from the populace and restored order to his fiefdom. It was the female Duterte who by the authority of her voice alone had angry residents literally at her feet, who demanded that the police behave according to procedure. And after she successfully brought about order, it was Duterte, new hero of Davao, her father’s daughter, who called for the sheriff and shot off four blows, one-two, one-two, against the man’s surprised face.

That Sara Duterte had found it fit to assault a constituent, in the presence of national media, is a commentary on the state of national morality. I use the word loosely, as morality in this country carries the uncomfortable image of Catholic priests howling excommunication at progressives who believe a woman’s uterus is her own. By morality I mean the basics of law and order, the questions of right and wrong taught to a society unwilling to live by the law of the gun. You do not steal. You do not kill. You do not take a van of journalists with the intent to bury them on a hill in Sitio Masalay, Ampatuan, Maguindanao. You do not beat your wife and say it is your right, you do not rape your daughter or murder your brother, you do not, for example, use your authority to call an unsuspecting man into your presence and use your fists to make a point—especially since the man has been properly cowed by your authority.

The Duterte incident is not a matter of local authority, as Sara and the citizens of Davao claim. It is a matter of national concern when a public official believes that she has the right to take out a metaphorical gun and punish somebody without the benefit of court or counsel. Sara Duterte’s assault was not an instance when a champion stands between right and wrong. It was an instance when an insulted ego finds itself unable to lash out. She said it herself. She was angry at the sheriff for dismissing her authority. She had asked for only two hours.

The danger is not limited to the rift Duterte has created between already tense groups.  Duterte, in spite of her new role as savior of the people, herself supported the demolition, and was angry only because enforcement occurred without her presence. The residents worship her now, but they are residents who will still have to be evicted, the courts will still have to enforce, and the incident only increases the probability that blood will be shed on the day that happens. If another sheriff walks in, armed with the proper papers, who unlike Andres has the unequivocal backing of a judge, fists will fly, and it won’t just be one cop in the hospital with an arrow through his leg.

The reason power without limitation is dangerous is because no man is infallible, wherever his heart is. In 1972, another man claimed that authority. His name was Ferdinand Marcos

“I don’t care,” Duterte told media, saying that if she were cited for contempt, the local judiciary would find itself penniless.

“Say goodbye to your budget. You asked for additional fund? My God, I am having difficulty with the budget. They will cite me for contempt? I will also cite them for contempt. Starting tomorrow, no more gasoline for them, no allowance, no job order!”

It begins with this, and continues with her father’s declaration that if positions were reversed, he would have taken a gun to whoever threw the first punch. That Duterte fought for the right side does not matter, the same way Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan’s claim his butchery of Central Luzon was a campaign for the security of the Filipino people. And yet the progressives, those who know better, those who have counted the bodies and watched the mothers weep, say this is all right. BagongAlyansangMakabayan-National Capital Region (Bayan-NCR) said in a statement that Duterte’s assault was a “rare showcase” of a local official showing concern for her constituents at her expense—forgetting that Andres himself was a constituent with rights. Neither does it help the legal profession when the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) offers its support to an erring colleague who has, for all intents and purposes, put herself above the law. Duterte, the group said, stood for the rights of the “poor and powerless.”

“While we must of course follow the ‘rule of law’, this is subsidiary to social and compassionate justice, equity and humanitarian considerations,” NUPL secretary general Edre Olalia said.

Assault is not humanitarian, it is assault no matter who throws the punch. And yet the divide in national sympathy may not have occurred if Duterte were a man who punched a woman, or if Duterte herself had punched a mother who ignored her authority by refusing to be evicted.

It is rare that situations are this clear-cut. It is not, as Etta Rosales of the Commission on Human Rights says, a moment with “traces of human rights violations.” Neither is it reasonable for Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo to say he “understands” Duterte. What is necessary is for the government to demand both apology and restitution, to draw its own line two years after another government allowed a yellow backhoe to rip through it. It is a case when democracy fell before one woman’s temper. Now Rody Duterte defends his daughter, and says he would have done worse. Now Sarah Duterte counts her crowd of supporters, and refuses to apologize.

This is the story. Sara Duterte was insulted. She swung out her fist, and beat up the man who made the mistake of insulting Rudy Duterte’s daughter. All over the country, other men are making other mistakes, and Sara Duterte says this is what should be done.

Cue the credits. The villain is laughing. The hero is dead.

The story begins in July of 2006, in a remote hamlet in the town of Hagonoy, Bulacan.

“Four armed men passed us holding Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan. Ate Sherlyn was screaming and begging for help while they were being brought out of the alley.”

Karen was blindfolded with her own shirt. Sherlyn was two months pregnant. Both were college seniors, active among farmer groups, and members of the activist group League of Filipino Students, often accused of being a recruiting hub for the New People’s Army. A farmer named Manuel Merino heard the girls scream that July morning, and ran out of his house to help.

“When the armed men caught sight of Manuel Merino, they rammed a rifle at his throat that caused him to fall to his knees. The armed men brought him along and put him in the jeep.”

A 14-year-old boy nicknamed Jollibee told this story before the Court of Appeals. He was one of two witnesses who filed a joint statement after the abduction of UP students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno.

The complaint named as respondents Lieutenant General Romeo Tolentino, Major General Jovito Palparan and Lt. Mirabelle Samson, among others, all under or commanding the AFP’s Seventh Division, the AFP division that controlled an area that had seen the deaths and disappearances of dozens of activists.

Jollibee hesitated only once, when he caught the eye of a grinning Lieutenant Colonel Rogelio Boac, one of the respondents and commander of the Task Force Malolos Special Operations Team designated to fight the communist insurgency. The 14-year old looked away, and missed the sight of an AFP lieutenant colonel sticking out his tongue at a minor inside a court of law.

The search

When the abduction was reported, human rights volunteers went to the 56th Infantry Battalion headquarters in Iba. A stainless steel jeep with plate number RTF was found parked inside the compound. The military denied its existence.

In an episode of the TV show “Debate,” host Solita Monsod asked Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan, nicknamed “The Butcher” by activists, about the allegation that the military was responsible for the abductions. He claimed his soldiers knew nothing of the incident, but said there had been two girls and a man picked up in the area, “But they are real NPA, who for five years were dominating the area.”

Task Force Usig, formed to investigate extrajudicial killings and disappearances after international pressure on the Arroyo government, claimed that investigating the disappearance of the two UP students was a task that did not fall under its mandate. The local police, they said, should investigate the case.

The local police, in the person of one Police Officer 3 Ponciano dela Cruz, claimed that there was no student kidnapping. He claimed the police could not investigate without an existing complaint filed in the police blotter. Told there was a complaint and given the filing date, he claimed that no family member had come forward. Told the name of the sister-in-law who personally went to the police station to file the report, he claimed nothing could be done as no witnesses had stepped forward. Told that witnesses had been stepping forward for weeks in open court, he was indignant. “Why did no one tell us?” he asked.

At the end of the conversation, the man who did not know there was a kidnapping gave his assurance that he and his men had been working doggedly for weeks to investigate the crime.

The trials

Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan, retired commander of the 7th Infantry Battalion, failed to appear four times at Court of Appeals hearings, citing anniversary parties, meetings with the President, fevers that demanded hospitalization, until the court threatened contempt.

“General, Sir,” asked the petitioners’ counsel, “is there a war going on between the government and the Communist Party of the Philippines?”

“It is a conflict, not a war,” Palparan said.

Asked the same question, Boac answered. “If you think so, I agree.”

Samson’s answer took much thought. “Maybe.”

Palparan claimed that there were groups of militants “posing to be legal and ordinary” but which were actually enemies of the state. Asked to name them, he said he was unsure. Reminded of his statements to the press, he said he “cannot recall.”

The CA Special Former 11th Division dismissed the petition for habeas corpus on the ground that it was not the proper remedy in the case, and recommended the filing of criminal complaints. The decision also included the following note:

“The respondents were not telling the whole truth as they appeared to be evasive in their declarations. They were persistent in their denials but their assertions contradict each other.”

Samson, when asked about her knowledge of her team’s tactics against the Left, claimed she was not aware of any manual or guidelines.

“What do you do,” asked the lawyer, “operate on instinct?”

“Yes, your honor,” she said.

The witness

In November of 2006, a Bulacan mining worker named Oscar Leuterio surfaced after five months of disappearance. He swore to a statement that narrated months of torture and captivity in what he claimed was Fort Magsaysay. The 48-year-old, whose statement was interrupted by coughing fits, said that women fitting the UP students’ description were also held captive, along with a man whose torture he witnessed. The man was his friend, Manuel Merino.

The AFP, in a letter to the editor of this paper, complained that Leuterio’s testimony was “despicably inaccurate and farcical.”

On Aug. 13, 2007, a 22-year-old farmer named Raymond Manalo appeared after being abducted more than a year before. His story, described by the Supreme Court as “harrowing and believable,” described thievery, murder and torture by the military. He named Palparan as the leader, and claimed personal contact. On April 2007, he said, he saw Sherlyn naked, both wrists and one tied, leg propped up. He said she was beaten, electrocuted and half-drowned. He saw Karen, dragged out of her cell, burned with cigarettes and raped with pieces of wood. He said he was there when they killed Manuel Merino. He identified the soldiers as elements of the Philippine Army based in the 56th Infantry Battalion headquarters in Barangay Iba, Hagonoy, Bulacan under the command of Palparan.

Palparan denies all of these, and adds that Raymond Manalo is a proven member of the New People’s Army. “We have records of that. He’s an enemy.”

The wait

Since the abduction, the mothers of the two UP students have become constants in human rights protests. Raymond Manalo and Oscar Leuterio remain in hiding.

Jovito Palparan was voted a congressman of the Republic of the Philippines.

Last week, five years after the abductions, the Department of Justice served retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan with a subpoena, after the Supreme Court demanded that he and his men release Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno.

Malta may be cause for celebration for the progressives, whose champions lost no time pushing House Bill 1799 to the House committee on revisions, but it is also a reason to give thanks to the Lord God, at least according to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.

“Being the only country in the world that has no divorce law is an honor that every Filipino should be proud of.”

Archbishop Oscar V. Cruz said that love for the family was at the core of the cultural identity of Filipinos, and should not be destroyed through divorce.

“That is a distinction! I’m very proud of that!” he said.

It is not a surprise that the Philippines remains alone in its exercise of national irresponsibility, as it also remains one of the few democratic nations to claim that a condom is a murder weapon, and that the preaching of abstinence will stop the hormonal manifestations of the Catholic God’s temple of the spirit. Pride in the Filipino culture does not pay for the education of children whose fathers regularly beat their wives. Perhaps Cruz refers to the Catholic Church, whose breast-beating sons of the cloth can now stand tall among the world’s priests as the only nationality able to beat back progress, even the possibility of progress.

It has never been particularly difficult to spout morality in Manila, largely because politicians hold the same patronizing view of the Filipino citizen. For the Church, legalizing subsidized contraception means that every virginal pair of legs will open along with the possibility of abortion, prostitution and the gates of Gomorrah. Now, with the possibility of divorce, suddenly every couple will separate to “ultimately tear up society.”

“On a personal life of prayer,” says CBCP secretary general Monsignor Juanito Figura, “‘deliver us from evil, Amen.’”

To allow the Filipino a choice implies that the Filipino will go the way of evil. Choice is dangerous to the Filipino, who cannot think for himself, who cannot weigh the values of family and sanctity. It is the priests who know better, because God says they do. It is the politicians who know better, because they think they do. Senate Majority Leader Tito Sotto, for example, who says those pushing for the legalization of divorce are attempting to weaken the Church, believes that Filipino couples should not be given options.

“If there’s a divorce law, couples facing some minor problems may choose not to work on their marriage anymore.”

Cagayan de Oro Representative Rufus Rodriguez takes it further. All couples will divorce. All children will belong to single parent families. All society will suffer. He cannot allow a law that “opens the floodgates for all to get divorce.”

“Children will grow up with only one parent. That’s the worst punishment we can give to our children.”

It is not a surprising stance from the Catholic Church, whose inability to differentiate free speech from religious intolerance airs live on national television at debates over the Reproductive Health bill. Men and women cannot be trusted to do what is right, yet they are expected to make no mistakes. It is a ridiculous stance for politicians to take. The Filipino, they imply, has the intelligence to decide on who runs the nation and the implications of value-added tax, but they cannot be trusted to decide on who they marry and when to have sex. For a secular nation that recognizes the rights of Muslims enough to allow them separate laws – including divorce – it is the height of discrimination to deny that right to Buddhists, Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Catholics of varying persuasions whose gods are not necessarily the same as the Old Testament tyrants the CBCP seems to uphold.

Many of divorce’s proponents talk about spousal battery and the rising numbers of abused women. Although Cruz claims that the Church is willing to void marriages that prove battery, he forgets that only the wealthy have the capacity to spend the P300,000 necessary for an annulment. Even if an indigent woman has the means to secure an annulment, many do not, for fear of being left unable to support themselves and their children. The divorce law makes this a legal requirement to divorce. And still, even with its own concession that battery is an exception, the Church continues on by claiming that abuse is in itself not such a heinous act.

“Why would a husband beat his wife? We have discovered again that it’s a vicious circle and poverty is the biggest reason why a husband would beat his wife. Unemployment is also another reason. These are all social concerns that the government should address instead of coming up with remedies which are just temporary, band-aid remedies.”

The murderer may have killed because of poverty, and the thief may have stolen in aid of a dying mother, but they are thieves and killers just the same.

Bills such as these are distractions, claim the Church. They do not prioritize the true cancers of society: poverty, corruption, prostitution. This is the same Church whose accusations of a lack of proper prioritization by the government come hand in hand with its declaration that the rape of a young girl by her father is less offensive than the abortion committed to save her life. Yet these bills are not in themselves meant to be answers to national concerns. Divorce does not solve poverty; neither does contraception. The RH bill may curb overpopulation, but it is not the only reason. More than the resolving of national interests, the state’s responsibility as a democracy is to protect individuals from discrimination, even from the state itself.

The ills of divorce, and they are manifold, are not for the government to weigh. It is for the wife, the husband, the children, whom the government now considers unable to make these decisions. The penalty for a wrong decision at the age of 20 should not mean a lifetime with an unsuitable husband. The right to live freely is fundamental to a citizen of democracy, and for as long as these rights harm none and are not against fundamental laws.

Although the gentlemen of Congress may find it crude, that right implies the right to pursue happiness: to have sex when it is consensual, to leave adulterous husbands and nagging wives, to determine lives that are not at the service of anyone’s God but their own.

On Thursday, the gentlemen of the Presidential Communications Group put the slow collapse of the yellow juggernaut squarely on the shoulders of the nation’s opinion writers.

“We don’t have any problem with the Malacañang Press Corps,” says spokesman Edwin Lacierda. “There’s no problem with the news itself but perhaps with the columnists who are always criticizing him.”

It is an odd sort of compliment Malacañang pays to what I suspect is one of the nation’s most frustrated professions. At a time when the already thin layer of middle class is narrowing, just as the children of a swelling metropolis are deprived of food and education, the Aquino administration sees fit to blame negative public opinion on the newspapers the public cannot buy, published in a language the public can hardly read. It is as odd as blaming condoms for the rise in abortions or President Aquino for the massacre in Maguindanao, or Ninoy Aquino for his daughter’s verbal diarrhea. Much as has been said of the egos of columnists and opinion writers, I suspect not one would claim credit to changing public opinion enough to pull down the ratings of a popular President who has done no wrong.

I write this today at the slow center of a regular week in Manila. “Slow” is relative, slow means the massacres are at a minimum and the floods are slow to rise. There is nothing particularly odd, for example, in the two inches of floodwater whooshing past the glass doors of SM Megamall while the rest of the nation celebrated the inevitable Pacquiao victory, or in the fact that a family of 15 pays P1,500 every month to live in a cardboard box on the third floor of a four-story shanty in the middle of San Andres Bukid, Manila. Only one among the 13 children goes to school.

“There is no problem with the news itself,” says Lacierda. There is a decided lack in positive writing, says the President. The good news has been cancelled out by negative write-ups.

Last week, a 13-year-old boy died while foraging for metal in Makati, the victim of three policemen. Witnesses say Christian Serrano and two other teenagers were scavenging for scrap metal at an abandoned building in Kamagong Street when a Makati police mobile arrived. One shot was fired allegedly to chase the boys away. A second shot caught Serrano in the back. He was pronounced dead on arrival after being rushed to the Ospital ng Makati. His mother says it was her son’s first time to forage. Christian had wanted to be a police officer.

A few days later, a policeman assigned to move vendors away from Baclaran Church sidewalks died at 6:45 a.m. at the San Juan de Dios Hospital. Police Officer 3 Mapilindo Prades was the last to head home after operations when he was shot in the head along Redemptorist Road by one of the vendors.

Lacierda said opinion writers should sit down with the President for them to be apprised of his policies and programs. “Constant exposure” comparable to reporters covering Malacañang might help them in reporting less negative stories.

On May 13, veteran journalist and University of the Philippines professor Lourdes “Chit” Estella-Simbulan was killed as a speeding passenger bus rammed the back of the taxi she was riding on Commonwealth Avenue.

After the accident, Lacierda made it clear that one of the “pet peeves” of President Aquino was bus accidents “that should not be happening in the first place.” The President, properly peeved, was quoted that “He wants the bus companies to be properly supervised and monitored. Maintenance concerns should be the top agenda of bus companies.”

Several days later, at 4:30 a.m., 10 people were injured when two speeding passenger buses collided with each other on Commonwealth Avenue. Several are in serious condition. There is no word yet if the President is also peeved.

“But these are all columnists,” says Lacierda. “They have their own opinions, they have their own jaded view of certain events.”

This is not an attempt at political commentary, nor is this the Sunday outing of the mythical creature the conservative public and the national government call objective journalism. I do not believe in objectivity. The choice of story, the arrangement of sentences, the manner of weighing facts, the use of one word over another, the employment of standards, all of it is analysis, all of it opinion, legitimate or otherwise. There are bad writers, and good writers, and ethical news as well as unethical. It is not a positive outlook that defines the critical writing that can help a nation, it is rational argument, an insistence on balance, and a commitment to facts and fair play that characterizes good opinion writing, qualities in constant play in the writing of Pete Lacaba, Glenda Gloria, Jose Dalisay, Raul Pangalangan, and the late Nick Joaquin. None of these writers while they wrote can be considered cheerleaders for any particular administration, and yet their work stings not of jadedness, but of outrage.

The good may have been eclipsed by the bad, and that may be a good thing, as the death of five becomes irrelevant after the brutal deaths of many in a bus on a public grandstand. Perhaps the 10 men and women who were riding the two buses along Commonwealth Avenue last Thursday should also have been more jaded before they paid for their tickets. Perhaps Cyen Esclanda of Cabusao, Camarines Sur, one of the children selected by organizers to speak to the President via video link during World Water Day, should also have been more jaded after the President’s promise of water services in his town of 17,500 people—after all, as Newsbreak reported, Cabusao is still not considered one of the government’s 115 priority towns for water. There’s no need to tell the mothers of the millions of infants about to be born into poverty to be jaded, and no call to inform the thousands of nursing graduates without jobs.

Or it might be that Lacierda is right, and the reason Christian Serrano’s mother does not think highly of this government is not because her 13-year-old died with a bullet in his back, it is because she has been reading this page the past year.

The military men called him a renegade. His people called him a hero. After Mexican troops massacred his family, he eluded capture for decades, resisting colonization, demanding his people’s freedom, disappearing into his beloved Sierra Madres even as 5,000 American soldiers thundered in pursuit. His small band of warriors stood as the last line of Apache resistance against white America. His name was legend long before he surrendered in 1886. They called him Geronimo.

More than a century after, another American leader watched over the capture of his own Geronimo. For 40 minutes, America’s first black president waited as several special operations teams invaded Pakistani airspace on a mission targeting America’s most wanted criminal. President Barack Obama heard the announcement at the same time as his team of aides and advisers did. “Visual on Geronimo.”

Later, word came that “Geronimo” had been killed. The news reached the President as “Geronimo EKIA”—Enemy Killed In Action.

Geronimo was the name the US military gave to al-Qaida’s Osama bin Laden.

It is now the naming of Geronimo that has cast a pall over America’s national triumph. The Native American minority protested the move, calling it “deeply insulting” for the Obama government to compare their ancestor to a terrorist responsible for the murder of thousands. For a people whose history is bloodied by violence, death and subjugation, whose names were taken away and replaced with the names of white men, the affront runs deep. Their Geronimo was a hero, and America made him a terrorist.

“Right now Native American children all over this country are facing the reality of having one of their most revered figures being connected to a terrorist and murderer of thousands of innocent Americans,” said Fort Sill Apache Tribal Chairman Jeff Houser.

Aquino
They say he was the last of the statesmen. At a time of murder, torture and abduction, he challenged a dictatorship whose one policy was survival.

The government called him a communist. The people called him a hero. After martial law was declared by a dictator in 1972, he continued as one of its staunchest critics, earning him imprisonment and eventual banishment. The story is told that he knew of his fate long before the day he fell bleeding on Manila’s airport tarmac. His assassination became the catalyst for a revolution that destroyed a tyranny and returned hope to a much-abused people. His name became part of a myth that defined the best of the Filipino. His name was Ninoy Aquino, and they called him a hero.

When his son ran for the Senate in 2007, he promised the same fearless leadership that had killed his father and made his mother an icon of freedom.

“We have to be different from those that we are opposing or replacing, otherwise we’ll just have a merry-go-round, and nothing will really change.”

Asked how he felt knowing he would sit across men who had once threatened his life and that of his family’s, he said although he would work with them, “If they stand up for something which I think is wrong, I will oppose it as far as I can in all legal ways possible.”

This is the same man who ran for the 2010 presidency using the mythology of good against evil, reminding the country in every speech and every commercial that his name is Aquino, his father was Ninoy Aquino, martyr and statesman, his mother was Cory Aquino, saint and leader. He won the presidency on the strength of naming—he was the son of heroes, and his name was Noynoy Aquino.

Aquino said his family celebrated the Edsa People Power Revolution of 1986 because this has been the “defining moment of the country’s departure from the darkness.”

Hero
They say he was a tyrant who was once a good man. It was greed that turned him. For many years, the country suffered under a leadership whose generals lived like kings while millions went hungry. In 1986, the people overthrew him, after the death of Ninoy Aquino and the rise of yellow-clad Cory. His name was Marcos, and now he is to be named hero.

His son, Sen. Bongbong Marcos, thanks the 190 congressmen who support the resolution seeking to allow Ferdinand Marcos’ burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. His father deserves it, says the senator. It is a debt the nation owes.

The Marcos children have denied their father’s involvement in the abuses that occurred during the dictatorship. They say their father was a hero, that his name has been demonized by enemies of progress. They are victims of injustice. Imelda Marcos, the woman they once called the Iron Butterfly, whose lavishness has made her name synonymous to unnecessary extravagance, now lends her name to a line of jewelry and to the congressional seat of Ilocos Norte. She calls herself a patron of human rights. This after a decision, 25 years coming, that awards compensation to the 7,526 victims of torture, enforced disappearances, rape and abduction who suffered under martial law.

Before he was elected president, Noynoy Aquino committed to maintaining the standard of heroism that his father began and his mother continued. Men like Ferdinand Marcos did not have the right to aspire to the name. He said the country continued to suffer from problems that were created under Marcos’ rule.

“Why should we honor him by burying him at the Libingan ng mga Bayani?” he said. Aquino’s campaign manager Florencio Abad Jr. spoke for both his candidate and the party.

“That is reserved for heroes and we do not concede that Marcos is a hero. We still have to find closure to many abuses our people suffered in terms of political repression, the conjugal hypocrisy and many other issues.”

Now, one year after, the son of heroes has little to say. He has refused to make the decision that his own mother made in 1986 and Fidel Ramos made after, passing the controversial decision instead to his Vice President Jejomar Binay. Aquino says he is unwilling to make a decision because of his biases, forgetting perhaps that Binay himself has long been an Aquino loyalist, a man who had risked his life in the ’70s against Marcos and his men in defense of human rights. Perhaps he also forgets the presidency is not about objectivity, it is about principle—one he promised a nation that believed in his.

Surveys now say 50 percent of the public supports the Marcos burial—a reasonable result, granting also that the generation surveyed believes Marcos is a billboard model and Aquino is the brother of an actress with STD.

Naming
His name is Ferdinand Marcos, president, tyrant, thief and hero. He will be a standard for what is right and just. His sins will be the sins of the next generation of heroes.

When the story is told, the story is this: once there were heroes, until they lost their names.

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.

“If I had prior knowledge that she was high-pitched, I wouldn’t have been offended.”

His wife, who appears to see no wrong in her husband throwing around the term “menopausal” as an insult, has filed a letter of complaint against Ocampo. It was Madame Magsaysay who informed Flight Attendant Ocampo that her husband was by no means an ordinary person, but a congressman of the republic.

The same sense of entitlement is shared by the President himself, whose pains to prove he is nothing like the extravagant former queen had his press team crowing over the hotdogs His Excellency consumed at a New York visit. The dramatic compassion took a beating this month when Benigno Aquino III bought himself what is rumored to be a P4.5-million Porsche. The President claims the Porsche is third-hand, paid for not by taxpayers but out of his own pocket. Former presidential spokesperson Cerge Remonde made a similar claim when attacked with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s seeming insensitivity to the impoverished national plight—the million-peso Le Cirque dinner, he said, was paid for by another congressman, and certainly did not come from national coffers. It is an argument that matters little in a starving nation, although it appears to be too much to ask the President to hold off Porsche purchases until 2016.

The President hopes he will not be judged for it. The heavy weight of national responsibility demands some form of relaxation, and if a Porsche can make him smile, even for a moment, the public must understand.

“I want to relax sometimes, it could help me with my decisions.”

Perhaps this is the same understanding that Sandiganbayan spokesman Renato Bocar has extended to retired Maj. Gen. Carlos F. Garcia when Bocar announced on national television that the former Armed Forces of the Philippines comptroller, who had amassed a total of P303.27 million from 1993 to 2004, may perhaps be a victim of injustice.

Garcia was found with millions in unexplained wealth, holding titles of varying properties, including a unit in Trump Plaza. Garcia’s two sons were arrested for failing to declare $100,000 at the San Francisco airport, and admitted to hiding the money in their luggage. Juan Paulo Garcia, 29, and Ian Carl Garcia, 32, of Las Vegas, were indicted on December 9, 2008 on bulk cash smuggling and conspiracy charges. The brothers admitted to the accusations, and that they made false statements to US Customs and Border Protection officers about the amount of money they were carrying. The United States confiscated the smuggled dollars.

Garcia’s wife Clarita, in a handwritten and witnessed statement, admitted to receiving kickbacks and commissions from military contractors.

“During these travels, my husband always brings me along and we are each given travel allowances by the proponents/host country. … As a wife I am also given an envelope as they called ‘shopping money’ that I can use for my own discretion, no receipt of how we use the stipends are ever required. Business class airfare/first class hotel accommodations and transportation are provided by the host/proponents and this happens [sic] on every trip since 1993 to present.”

In December, the government reached a plea bargain agreement with Garcia, agreeing to drop plunder charges in exchange for pleading to the lesser and bailable offenses of direct bribery and money laundering as well as the return of P130 million worth of assets. The Office of the Ombudsman argued that their case against Garcia was weak, and that to accept the money would allow government to shore up its losses while recovering half of the amount Garcia had allegedly plundered.

It appears the nation owes a debt to Garcia, who so kindly offered to return stolen money to allow the government to pay for its debts, never mind the cause of justice. According to Bocar, the retired general could have easily beaten the plunder charge and walked away a free man. That P128 million, the remainder of the unexplained wealth, has been withdrawn by the Garcia family before the assets could be frozen seems to be irrelevant to the prosecutors from the Ombudsman’s office—they are happy enough with the results.

As to the congressman and the menopausal bitching, he hopes all will be resolved.

“Perhaps an investigation would be good,” says Magsaysay, “so that the public may know what really happened. This could have happened to any congressman or person. It’s as if because I’m a congressman I’m automatically the villain. Let’s not be like that.”

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view. The bitches are kept on leashes; the jokers hold hands with thieves.