Category Archive for: gobyerno

komentaryo

#Eleksyon2016: Rage

Walang paglagyan ang aking galit. At lungkot. At galit.

To my mind, there is no reason for farmers to have been killed on April 1. No reason for farmers to have been gunned down. No reason for the violent dispersal. Not today, not on any day.

On radio, some military official said soon after the news broke about the violent dispersal of farmers in Kidapawan: the rallyists started it. They are not real farmers. They are professional rallyists. They have done this before. They threw rocks at policemen, he said. And the police are the ones who are injured.

That the spin didn’t surprise me is telling of what we’ve had to deal with the past six years with matuwid-na-daan. (more…)

komentaryo

Social / media bias #Eleksyon2016

If I were the Liberal Party, I’d be congratulating myself. After five years they have successfully dumbed down public discourse, selling us the true, the good, the beautiful about matuwid­ na­ daan, making us believe that it is all we need, handling criticism and crises via spin, always using notions of anti­corruption and transparency to respond to anything at all. (more…)

kultura

#womensmonth2016: censoring our words, our bodies

the trailer of the movie “Ang Taba Ko Kasi,” a trailer that has been online since February 1, a good month and half ago, has been deemed by the Movie Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) as unfit for public exhibition. lead actress Cai Cortez posted the MTRCB decision on her instagram, obviously and understandably exasperated by the decision.

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(more…)

kultura

#womensmonth2016: those darn shoes

notmyshoes

while elsewhere in the world the discussions for women’s day and women’s month 2016 have been on the level of celebrity women’s bodies and slutshaming, role models and raising our young girls, in the Philippines we have a government that cannot even pretend to know what women need, much less what we want. (more…)

kultura

Cultural crisis #APEC2015

On November 18, Malacañang issued a non-apology to the public who had been inconvenienced during APEC 2015.

A non-apology worded as a thank you “for your patience and understanding over the inconvenience brought about by our enhanced security measures.” And then it spun the difficulty of the commute to work, the fact of absences and tardiness that will mean less wages, and said: “You have shown to the 10,000 delegates what Filipino hospitality means.”

If it’s to sacrifice our time, energy, earnings the past week – well, we were forced into that kind of hospitality. If it’s Manila streets emptied of people and vehicles, shops closed, turned into ghost towns – that does not speak of the Manila we know at all.

If it’s the display of culture as revealed by the final APEC Dinner Performance for Leaders – then please lang. Not in our name.

Because that was a monstrous failure, an ill-conceptualized variety show, that was far from displaying “the best” of Philippine culture. (more…)