Category Archive for: bayan

komentaryo

Throwback #Duterte (Part 2): Beyond bad words

Been going through my old columns, and realized I had worried about Duterte long before he won the elections in 2016. And that ultimately, we have gotten what we failed to address squarely all these years, and all throughout the Liberal Party presidency of PNoy. This is also what’s making HNP so powerful in the Senatorial fight for 2019. Re-posting because maybe there are lessons to be learned, maybe because I am still hopeful we can get out acts together on this last three weeks of the elections. Hope springs eternal. — KSS.

Beyond bad words, or deserving Duterte redux
December 4 2015

If I did not have concepts of human rights and violations, abuse and killings, in the back of my head, and I watched Rodrigo Duterte for the first time on November 30, I would think it refreshing how this man did his proclamation speech.

It was all extemporaneous – even seemed to lack an outline really – and was without any of the motherhood statements and clichés that we’ve heard from the slew of Presidential wanna–bes we’ve been faced with thus far.

The speech was real and honest. Speaking like no other candidate before him, speaking of everything from the womanizing to the killings, revealing how he would converse with people on a regular basis, and cussing and cursing ‘til kingdom come.

We keep complaining about spin, and how we don’t get a sense of who these candidates really are. And now faced with someone like Duterte, we don’t know what to do either. (more…)

komentaryo

Throwback #Duterte (Part 1): Deserving Duterte

Been going through my old columns, and realized I had worried about Duterte long before he won the elections in 2016. And that ultimately, we have gotten what we failed to address squarely all these years, and all throughout the Liberal Party presidency of PNoy. This is also what’s making HNP so powerful in the Senatorial fight for 2019. Re-posting because maybe there are lessons to be learned, maybe because I am still hopeful we can get out acts together on this last three weeks of the elections. Hope springs eternal. — KSS. 

Deserving Duterte
November 29 2015

If there’s anyone that I am now afraid might win the 2016 elections – because who knows what kind of electorate we have at this point – it is Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.

Yes, there are pros and cons for all the Presidential candidates and the possibility that each will win. But what Duterte promises are such simple, common sensical things. What he promises are things that all Presidential candidates should be promising, and they should be promising it with a progam to back it up. A holistic take on peace and order and public safety that need not fall back on action star rhetoric, and need not mean committing every human rights violation imaginable. (more…)

kultura

Notes on the intellectual in the time of Duterte

Wrote this for the book launch of “Na Kung Saan” by Teo Marasigan, February 6 in UP Diliman. The task was to talk about intellectuals in the time of Duterte, na nakapaloob sa forum na “Kamalayan at Kultura sa Panahon ng Pasismo.”  

I met Teo in college, in the 90’s, but only built a relationship with him in the Gloria years, in the late 2000s, when so many of us, my Nanay Angela and myself included, ended up using the internet for blogging. This was pre-Mocha, pre-paid mob, pre-Facebook boosting and trolling.  Then, people were still writing long-form articles, well-threshed out yet open to discussion, in fact begging for a discussion, naghahanap ng makakausap tungkol sa mga isyung panlipunan. May biruan pa, may collegiality. These were the years of the Arroyo presidency, before Facebook and Twitter took over the internet — and a chunk of our intellectual culture.

But of course there were many other reasons for the death of blogging and critical-political thought. There was the fact that many of the critical bloggers during GMA’s time were absorbed into PNoy’s three-headed communications team. I remember two years into PNoy’s leadership, being told by one of those writers who had ended up in Malacañang: kayo na lang ng nanay mo ang hindi pa namin nakukuha, ang hindi pa bilib sa’min.” Or something to that effect.

Natawa ako, na nadismaya: ‘yun pala ang ginagawa ng gobyerno, “kinukuha” “pinapabilib” ang mga kritiko-intelektuwal, isang paraan ng pagpapatahimik. (more…)

komentaryo

Is this still a whiff? Bato and Diño, FDCP and tax rebates

It was bad enough that Bato dela Rosa had the gall to have a film made about his life — after all, it was under his leadership at the PNP that we saw THOUSANDS of Filipinos killed in a bloody drug war that he insisted was necessary because his god … este, his President believed it to be so. Of course a film that is blatantly propaganda via hagiography is nothing new. Neither is the admission that this film is about getting him a Senate seat. Let’s not even get into whether or not he has the credibility and credentials for it (and no, Jimmy Bondoc, insisting Bato’s loyalty to the President is enough is just idiotic, also: anti-nation).

Let’s just talk about the fact that he is already an administration candidate, which means that he already has the benefit of using government resources for his campaign. And then he makes a film about his life, which he need not declare as a campaign expense, even when he himself admits it’s supposed to help him win the elections. Imagine? It’s like getting campaign ads aired without having to declare it as part of your campaign. It’s getting away with spending millions on your campaign without having to declare any of it. 

But it gets worse. Enter Liza Diño’s Film Development Council of the Philippines.  (more…)

kultura

Rappler, tax evasion, Duterte, dissent #MediaCrisis

Here we talk about the tax evasion case versus Rappler, as an off-shoot of its defense versus the SEC order to close it down. Also whether or not the support for Rappler and Ressa have died down, whether or not they are being singled out by the Duterte government, and getting some perspective on the notion (spin?) of dissent that Rappler uses to fashion itself as hero. Part 1 is here.

Do you have any observations or reactions on how other local newsrooms have responded to the tax evasion charges against Rappler and Ressa? Do you think that they’ve lent enough support to them, or otherwise?

I do think the support for Ressa and Rappler has died down compared to early 2018 when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ordered its closure. I’d imagine this to have been brought on by a number of things. There’s the possibility that mainstream media entities feel they have no choice but to fall silent about freedom of the press issues lest they become Duterte’s next targets. I’d like to think that to some extent many media practitioners can see right through this spin that fashions Rappler and Ressa as heroes, even as so many others are doing the same work they are — if not better work than they are. I’m sure there’s also the part where media entities just make that decision about which issues matter more — after all in the time of Duterte, when impunity, oppression, misogyny, and incompetence are on the rise, what to use our energies on is the first decision we make. (more…)