Category Archive for: komentaryo

komentaryo

Last three weeks #Pagasa2019

Throwing back to articles written during and after the 2016 Presidential campaign, because I realize these are the words I go back to, this is still why I think we need to get our acts together, beyond the partisan politicking and the moralizing elitism. And I think, three years since, that we’re getting there. We have three weeks to go, and a lot of ground to cover for the five candidates that represent change in the Senate: #22Colmenares, #23DeGuzman, #25Diokno, #36Gutoc, and #59Tanada. We gotta do better than 2016 because no one else — least of all the Liberal Party with all its cash and machinery — is doing better.  

***

Ir/relevance
May 22 2016

If there’s anything the campaign season and election results might teach us it’s how irrelevant we are to the outcomes of political exercises such as choosing our leaders.

And I mean us, the middle to wealthier classes who are on social media, writing and reading and speaking in English, our minds swirling with foreign books and films and TV. I mean us, the Martial Law babies of the 70’s, who grew up on Marcosian history but also came of age in the years post-EDSA ’86, and the democratic cultural and political space it allowed us. I mean us, who claim freedom, invoke it, live off it, but do not know a life where we fight for it with our blood, do not know to struggle with freedom from hunger, need, want.

I mean us, artists and writers, performers and creatives – cultural workers all – who, in this most divisive and critical of elections could’ve, should’ve, would’ve been the voice of reason, the voice that balances what is good with what is delusion, what is bad with what is worse, never speaking in terms that are white and black, good versus evil, because we know the pitfalls of archetypes and stereotypes, we can read spin from a mile away, we can see every shade and tint of gray.

We are skilled at distance, at seeing bigger pictures, at telling larger narratives. It keeps us sane, above the fray, disengaged even when we are in the midst. Our politics is beyond the elections, we like to believe, because the real work for nation happens after it, in the six years of necessary struggle with new leaders, in this perennial resistance we nurture because we are aware of our systemic dysfunctions, those that are never fixed, because rarely admitted.

Let it be said that during election season 2016, our partisanship and our biases got the better of us. Let it be said that too many fell into the black hole of namecalling and trolling, of taking a moral high ground that is precisely what has won this election for candidates we thought would never get into power. (more…)

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…)

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…)

komentaryo

Where were the teachers?

My question really is to the teachers of those kids, both bully and bullied: no one noticed the dynamic was different in relation to that bully? No one saw how the other kids would react to being grouped with him for projects, or being told they had to partner with him for anything? No one saw how the other kids would avoid the bully, or would get nervous, or would not look him in the eye? No one saw that kid and thought, hmmmm, he seems to be more yabang than the others, we wonder if that means anything? No teacher, across all the subjects, discussed with the other teachers if they noticed anything in relation to the kid who turned out to be bully?

Halfway through a semester in a college classroom, you tend to already see the dynamic of the collective, you see the students who dominate the activities and discussions, as you see those who decide not to engage, as you see those who try with all their might to participate no matter how scared or insecure they might be. We’re talking seeing kids, twice, three times a week. I cannot imagine teaching in high school, where you see these kids day-in, day-out, and not be able to see the dynamic of power that exists among the students you gather in the classroom. (more…)