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.

My mother said that if you want to go into law, then you take another course which has a pre-law that you can make use of if you don’t finish law. I took up accounting. I took up ROTC in order to be a diversion from my studies, because I didn’t like my course. It was a very lonely course, you’re counting figures. So to have fun, I took up ROTC. For young people, you have to have some group.

I found out that I had some leadership skills. That was my inspiration to get through my studies. I could talk to a number of people and they would listen, you know, and do what I wanted, do what I desired. Initially I was a model cadet in the ROTC. I enjoyed that because you know, when you’re young, you like ceremonies also.

As a model cadet you have to follow orders very seriously. I was good at following orders. You have to, because in order to be a leader, you have to be a good follower. So I wanted to become an ROTC officer, so I had to be a good follower.

Maybe I was 18 at the time. My leadership was more of inspirational. I like to inspire people, instead of forcing people to do something. Because there were those who followed strict leadership, which is dictatorial, authoritative, I didn’t like that. I opted to be inspirational or persuasive. People seemed to like you with that. If you are good to them, you’ll have a lot of people volunteering to come into your company and leaving others. And so, upon finding that skill, I proceeded to become an officer.

First you establish your relationship with friendly gestures. And then you now lay down your policy. Then of course they would start behaving sometimes quite indifferent because when you set a policy, when you set rules, usually there are reactions. It’s normal, because people don’t want to be tied up, you know.

They don’t want to be told, you know. So there will be reactions. So you remove the threat by your gesture of being friendly. And so, it is easy for them to follow you because they don’t want to break your relationship. In that way you are inspirational. They don’t want to offend you, because you are a friend.
When you side with the government, then the military is a very, let’s say, is a good option. I was already in the military when martial law was declared. I finished my training already in May, June, July, December, October, October, October – I think during martial law I was undergoing training.

We didn’t have much of an idea about martial law at that time, but we just thought that maybe it was necessary because, according to what we heard and read, the country was in peril by rebels both communist as well as Muslim, that it was an emergency that should be declared to avert destruction and the takeover of the government by illegal forces.

I was engaged in the Muslim rebellion in Sulu and Basilan, and I think I did a little better than others because I stayed longer than many of us. Before GMA (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) I was already against – I was running after the NPA already.

Communism being already a discredited ideology and a violent ideology has got to vanish. It should not exist. It should not exist. Meaning it was wrong to conceptualize that ideology. Whether it’s socialist or Marxist or Mao’s, they’re all the same, you know. The difference is only in the people implementing the ideology.

I do not like mostly the, well, the whole of it. The violence as well as the government system. It’s easy to distinguish a communist. They believe in a one-party rule, and then they follow a set of beliefs that cannot be questioned. So there’s no freedom, in other words. But the real communist according to Karl Marx as written, is that it will give us total freedom, total freedom and state of utopia, but that is impossible. But that’s what they are promoting you know, paradise. You are talking of an extreme situation where everything is free, then you can do just what you want and people do not resist you because they like it. It’s really impossible! There’s just got to be rule.

In this country, a left-wing politician is the same as a communist. I could really say that it’s just the same. There are some, some differences perhaps. You can tell by the body language. Moderate communism or what we call the leftist is just an introduction to the real communism, meaning, it is being developed. Maybe he believes that he cannot be involved. He doesn’t like communism, he’s just trying to be a catalyst. Just trying to have change, reform, but then, he could be eaten by the system he joins in.

Those who claim to be for labor, for press freedom, I would like to say that these are deceptions. I personally think I succeeded in my military career. I contributed to the country. I was successful, but I feel that I ran out of time. If I had more time, I could have done more.

Tagged as “The Butcher,” retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan is blamed for the killings in Mindoro Island, Eastern Visayas and Central Luzon. He once said the tag has helped in his congressional campaign. Human rights organizations as well as the United Nations have demanded that he be investigated. Even the Arroyo-created Melo Commission also found Palparan liable for the killings in Central Luzon.

On July 7, after five years of campaigning by the mothers of Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño, the former congressman appeared before the Department of Justice to face accusations of rape, serious physical injuries, arbitrary detention, maltreatment of prisoners, grave threats, grave coercion, and torture, among other charges, against the University of the Philippines students.

Palparan calls the accusations an effort to embarrass the Armed Forces, the military and himself. He has done his duty, and the country is a better place for it.

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.

“It is therefore with a ray of hope that I am herewith filing my Affidavit Complaint,” reads her letter, “for the violation of Article 124 of the Revised Penal Code (Arbitrary Detention) or possibly murder, in the enforced disappearance of my son.”

For four years, Edita Burgos believed her son was alive. This is not her first time to file a complaint, or her second. In the four years since several armed men hauled 37-year-old Jonas Burgos out of the Hapag Kainan restaurant at Ever Gotesco Mall along Commonwealth Avenue, Edita Burgos has filed no less than six complaints at various institutions, signing her name at the Philippine National Police’s Criminal Investigation Division, at the Commission on Human Rights, at the Court of Appeals, all the way to the Supreme Court.

Today, Edita T. Burgos, mother of a missing person, “Jonas T. Burgos, Filipino, 41,” will file her seventh plea for judicial aid, this time for the criminal offenses of arbitrary detention and obstruction of justice against several high-ranking officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

In June of 2010, the Supreme Court claimed that the Philippine National Police and the AFP had failed in their duty “to conduct an exhaustive and meaningful investigation into the disappearance of Jonas Burgos,” and expressed dissatisfaction with the findings of both military and police. The high court said “serious lapses” in data prevented them from ruling on the claims filed by the Burgos family. The Court then assigned the Commission on Human Rights to take over the investigation.

On March 15, three months ago and almost a year after the order, the CHR submitted its report to the Supreme Court, which includes the filing of criminal charges against a Maj. Harry A Baliaga Jr., identified by a busboy in Hapag Kainan as one of Burgos’ captors. Another witness identified Baliaga as an officer assigned to the Bravo Company of the 56th Infantry Division. According to the CHR, “Most, if not all the actual abductors would have been identified had it not been for what is otherwise called as evidentiary difficulties shamelessly put up by some police and military elites.”

Jonas Joseph T. Burgos may or may not be a member of the New People’s Army. His mother is unwilling to say otherwise. Some of his friends admit he may have once been part of the movement. Newsbreak Magazine claims sources who have put Jonas among the members of the communist movement in Bulacan, the same area where more than 20 activists (including UP students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño) were either killed or abducted in the last decade.

Members of the movement, some of them rebel returnees, identify Burgos as “Ka Ramon,” an intelligence officer for the NPA. “Ka Ramon” is the same name General Hermogenes Esperon gave Jonas Burgos in a May 14, 2007 document submitted to the CHR. In his testimony before the Court of Appeals, Lt. Col. Melquiades Feliciano, commander of the 56th IB, testified that “Ka Ramon” was on the military’s Order of Battle – the list of all enemies of the state selected for neutralization.

When Burgos was dragged out of Ever Gotesco Mall screaming “aktibista lang ako,” a security guard took down the number of the getaway car, TAB 194, later traced to the plate of a vehicle impounded by the AFP’s 56th IB.

The AFP has offered a range of reasons why the plate number of a confiscated vehicle in its custody ended up decorating the tailgate of a car racing down Commonwealth Avenue carrying the missing Jonas Burgos. AFP officials said the plate could have been stolen by members of the NPA to frame the AFP. They said the illegal logger from whom they snatched the car may have had a grudge on the military, and found a way to install the plate on the abductors’ vehicle. They said the battalion was away during the incident, leaving the compound open to robbers.

Edita Burgos says she does not understand the goals and methods of the New People’s Army, but she knows her son, and all she wants is to have him back. He is a Filipino and a citizen, rebel or no rebel. She has stood before reporters and human rights reporters from Manila to Geneva, holding up a photo of her lost son, the boy she says is most like his father, press freedom icon Joe Burgos.

President Aquino says he has not forgotten Jonas Burgos. He says they are looking for him. He says, at the very least, they want to know what happened to him. When he released the Morong 43 last December, he talked about Jonas Burgos.

The word “impunity” has been used many times in the last decade, to describe a state where murderers go about their bloody business, with no fear of capture or accountability. It was a state that Aquino promised to end with his presidency. Yet impunity does not need a small woman in a blue dress to applaud the work of butchers, or to command the massacre of the enemy. All impunity needs to flourish is the awareness that justice is unlikely, and that those in power have concerns more important than the death of a journalist in Palawan. As of March this year, 45 extrajudicial killings have been documented under Aquino’s watch, according to the group Karapatan.

If the facts prove true, and Jonas was indeed abducted as a member of the New People’s Army, there is a reason his family is willing to add the possibility of murder to this seventh complaint. In 2007, Bulacan farmer Raymond Manalo and his brother escaped from what he described as months of torture when he was caged, beaten, burned and made to drink his own urine by members of the Armed Forces, in a testimony that the Supreme Court described as harrowing and believable. Manalo claimed he saw the rapes of UP students Empeño and Cadapan, as well as the murder of another farmer. Edita Burgos knows this. Her sons know this. And so she says she believes he is still alive, all the while admitting that many times, she is afraid he is cold and hungry.

Today, Edita Burgos goes to court. The numbers of those who used to fill the streets in protest have dwindled. A few go with her, a little more than a dozen, a motley few with tired eyes. They are the mothers and brothers and sisters of the lost, all silent, all searching for their own Jonases, all willing to stand behind Edita Burgos, holding up placards with the face of Jonas Joseph T. Burgos, 41.

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.

Every one of us is a servant of God. Whatever we do is in the service of God. Every minute, every minute of our life. God is everywhere. God is not situationary.

Are you accusing CBCP (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines) of religious intolerance? You’re not only accusing CBCP of religious intolerance, you’re also accusing them of living in the dark ages. For as long as we live in the Philippines, for as long as we profess as Catholics, then we must abide by and follow the precepts of the Catholic Church, as declared by our Catholic authorities or bishops, our cardinals.

It would seem you are allergic to God. It has been a practice to start our sessions with a prayer, do you mean there is no place for God in our sessions? The distinguished sponsor should not begrudge me for asking questions like this.

This bill offends God. You’re saying contraceptive is popular? Let me tell you that the matter of right and wrong is not a popularity contest. You are trying to right a wrong by citing other countries, just because it’s right there does not mean it’s right here. May I remind you that we are not living, nor moving to Ireland.

Don’t interrupt me because you are trapped in your own words. If you are a Catholic, then you are a Catholic congressman.

This measure is detrimental not only to the moral values of the Philippines.

This is US imperialism in disguise. We will spend millions to buy these American products. These cause-oriented groups are being used in order to promote the advocacy.

The evil of RH bill is that it leads mostly Catholic women to temptation because the government will help them and supply them contraceptives.

The poor do not need contraceptives. They need food, clothing, shelter. They don’t need condoms. They need education.

The gospel of the condoms should not apply to those who profess a Catholic religion. My question is, do you believe in the words of God?

So says Bagatsing
As taken from the May 24 transcript of the interpellation of Manila Fifth District Rep. Amado Bagatsing during the plenary debates on the Reproductive Health bill.

The RH bill is a direct attack on the teachings of the Church.

There is no compelling reason for a new law specifically just to give funds to contraceptives. They are already available. Population is not the problem, but programs that can generate money.

Sexuality education of children can be handled by parents. Parents could take seminars.

The use of contraceptives is abortion. It prevents pregnancy. It stops the egg from meeting the ovum. We’re only playing with semantics. You prevent them from meeting. When you prevent, in English, the word is abort. When you stop something from fulfilling its obligation, it is as if you are stopping life. It is as if you are aborting life.

Is that so hard to understand? Abortion is hidden somewhere in the RH bill and may be legalized. Contraceptives have ill-effects on women.

I cannot be wiser than the Creator. The Lord said, “Go forth and multiply.”

So says Golez
As taken from a 2010 personal interview with Parañaque Rep. Roilo Golez and from the plenary debates on the RH bill.

I have a very systematic presentation on why I am against the Reproductive Health bill. The most major element here is the definition of conception.

What is conception? Ah, I consulted the Internet ah, one of the major medical websites in the Internet, medicinenet. com, it defines conception, the number one definition of conception is as follows: the union of the sperm and the ovum, which is synonymous with fertilization. That is the medical definition of ah, of conception and that is how I define a conception also in my bill.

The medical definition, the prevailing medical definition as far as this presentation is concerned as provided by medical dictionaries available in the website, is the moment of conception, is the moment of fertilization.

If you look at the Reproductive Health bill, by definition reproductive means reproduction, but the bill in fact prevents reproduction. It’s an apparent misnomer.

It’s in fact an oxymoron. It’s the opposite.

We have here the definition of conception as defined by the most accepted encyclopedia right now in the world, Wikipedia.

There should be no confusion about what is a conception as medically defined. If you search the word “conception” in Google, this is the first item that comes out. Here is the sperm, and here’s the egg. This will be my documentary presentation.

It’s a question of religious conviction. There’s no conflict. If you look at the concept of the separation of Church and State, it is basically that the state should not interfere in church matters and not the other way around. It is not the church interfering in a state matter but the state should not interfere in church matters, that is the more fundamental definition of ah, separation of Church and State.

For example, if the church would like to have Masses on a Sunday, the state cannot interfere. That is a matter of a religious conviction.

The moment you become a member of a church, you have to comply with the guidelines from the church and in the case of the Catholic Church, the principal interpreter of a Catholic doctrine would be the bishops.

I comply with the doctrine of the church.

As taken from the book of Leviticus, Chapter 24, verse 19-20, 21-23

And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him; Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.

Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country: for I am the LORD your God.

And Moses spake to the children of Israel, that they should bring forth him that had cursed out of the camp, and stone him with stones. And the children of Israel did as the Lord commanded Moses.

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.