Category Archive for: gobyerno

kultura

Badoy, banned books, and the Marcos challenge

Every day, I spend a good hour on a Tiktok algorithm that I’ve nurtured since last year, when the election campaign began and I realized that the Marcos campaign was releasing videos and photographs from the old man Marcos years (Papa FEM to this Tiktok algo), which I thought then was, and think now is, important.

But also, it is on Tiktok that I catch what government is doing, every day: what the First Lady is doing, what Bongget (that’s President Marcos V2 to the rest of us) is busy with, which government officials delivered the best soundbite. It’s also here that one realizes how much the algorithm lives off the press briefings of Press Secretary Trixie Angeles, who is celebrated and touted as one of the better voices from the new administration. Often, this algorithm fascinates me in its complete and utter removal from the echo chambers my algorithms on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram keep. It still confounds me, sure, but only in the way that the unfamiliar always does.

But then on certain days, even I have to say that the Tiktok algorithm makes more sense. That’s what happens when you listen to Lorraine Badoy, speaking on her new show on Quiboloy-run SMNI, where for two hours every day, she is free to spout anti-activist and anti-Left rhetoric like it’s nobody’s business—which is to say to absurd proportions, which is to say to attack anyone at all, really, and tag anyone as “red.”

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komentaryo

Pointed appointments (Part 2): Bring on the women #MarcosV2

Depending on what echo chamber or algorithm you’re in, you might be seeing any (or all) of this on your social media feeds, private GCs, and public channels, since June 1 hit:

  • Complete and utter denial: we were cheated! you say. Here’s a petition! Sign this petition! Or that petition! Or this one!
  • Untrammeled anger: against anyone and everyone that you assert “enabled” this Marcos-Duterte win, which means calls for boycotting non-pink establishments and businesses, tendencies towards attacking private individuals on public Twitter, and seeing everything wrong with everything said and done by the old (Duterte) and new (Marcos) leaderships.
  • Sardonic elitism: “Ang taas ng presyo ng bilihin? Bahala kayo sa buhay niyo. Ginusto niyo ‘yan.”
  • Non-profit hope: Let’s go Angat-Buhay-NGO!

Unless of course you’re part of the other side of what is left of the political opposition. Which means you might be part of the Left and dealing with massive attacks, one after the other, across protests on the streets and in farmlands, to websites and social media, all via the ever reliable fascism of one Lorraine Badoy and NTF-ELCAC. It has been the most horrible way the Duterte government has kept the Left preoccupied the past five years—as if the incompetent anti-people governance wasn’t enough to make anyone’s head spin, and keep one’s people and resources perennially exhausted.

And then there’s the rest of us, of which I’d like to think there is a far larger number, who have so decided to just get back to our lives pre-electoral anxieties and post-electoral stresses. On the one hand, a seeming privilege; on the other, also one we have in common with the mass electorate that put Marcos-Duterte in power. After all, what is there for us to do after an election is won or lost? (more…)

komentaryo

Pointed appointments (Part 1) #MarcosV2

I totally understand many in the liberal opposition that have decided to deepen the political divide and decided to just live in their echo chambers. It is easiest thing to do. And certainly, at this point, maybe the mental and emotional well-being of many depend on this cutting off from the real.

But I draw the line at disbelieving the loss. I draw it at insisting that the 31 million isn’t real, then insisting that we are proud of being one of the 15 million. This defies logic and reason: you cannot believe one number but disbelieve the other. And if you decide you disbelieve both (and even say that the 2016 results were false as well), then you’ve got a problem: the powers were different in 2016, but Duterte won anyway. And really, if we cease to believe electoral results, then elections also cease to be an important democratic exercise for you. Turning anarchist is good, if you’re conscious that you’re doing so. Too: if the elections are not credible to you, then there is no reason to engage in it as an exercise.

I’ve said this often enough: choosing to be blind is a terrible thing. Especially when blindness means practically disassociating ourselves with what’s real. And right now what’s real is this: Marcos is President, and he is making very interesting appointments if we’re looking at all. These appointments are also very important, as these people will dictate what kind of leadership we will see the next six years. They are interesting because they are of course more than just people, but what they actually represent.

The strategy is clear in many of these appointments, if only we were looking. (more…)

komentaryo

More heads should roll: The IATF, Duterte, and StaySafe #CovidCorruption #CriminalNegligence

In June 2020, news reports told the story of how Stay Safe became the “official” contact tracing app of the government, and therefore the country: it was purportedly the hand of retired Hello Garci general Hermogenes Esperon (one of those accused of helping rig the 2004 elections for GMA) who scheduled a presentation of StaySafe before the IATF.

On June 8, former DICT Secretary Rio recounted what a friend had told him straight from someone in the IATF: “I am also open to other apps for contact tracing. Marami lang kasing kakilala si Staysafe na members ng IATF.”

MultiSys, the developer of the StaySafe app, insisted that Rio was politicizing the decision that the IATF had made. But here’s the thing: it is obviously a political decision when: (1) the app will not work for a majority of the population who are not on 3G phones, (2) the app will not work for a majority of the population who cannot afford to be online all the time, and (3) the app, despite its uselessness and violation of privacy requirements still remains as the official contact tracing app of the IATF.

Patronage politics is obviously at the heart of this decision, and the makers of StaySafe and the IATF are just banking on us not seeing it as clearly as we should have last year.

After all we were busy surviving this pandemic, a task made more difficult by the fact that the Duterte government itself has refused to give us credible and reliable contact tracing. (more…)

komentaryo

Criminal negligence? The IATF’s contact-tracing app #StateSurveillance #StaySafe

We were promised a bombshell last week, during yet another late Monday night gibberish session with Duterte. But the real deal happened a day after.

An aside: there are no bombshells to be dropped when your own comms team deletes the part where you say you won’t run if your daughter will, and then your own daughter discredits you and destroys your party’s credibility, but of course she herself is part of that circus. End of aside.

The real bomb was exploded in the Senate inquiry of the Department of Health, which might be borne of the Commission on Audit reports, but in fact has been an opportunity for us to understand better why we are in such deep pandemic shit at this point, not just given Covid spread, but more importantly, Duterte’s failed public health response.

Between Senator Joel Villanueva asking about contact tracing as the weakest link in Covid response, and Senator Pia Cayetano asking specifically about the StaySafePH App, we heard DOH Secretary Duque—he with the least amount of credibility, and the most kapal-ng-mukha—admit that the Stay Safe App is practically useless.

“I think it’s very limited, almost no impact,” said the DOH secretary.

Now Duque might be the man who just admitted that the government’s official contact tracing app is useless, but a little research and you realize that for this one it’s not just Duque’s head that we should be calling for. It’s the men in the IATF itself—the task force that’s supposed to address Covid-19 and ensure our survival—as it does lead straight to Duterte.

Former DICT Secretary Eliseo Rio Jr. had dropped that other bomb as early as April 2020, two months into this pandemic. (more…)