Category Archive for: komentaryo

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…)

komentaryo

Winning VS Duterte: Stand against #ChaCha

If there’s anything we might all agree on in relation to how the Duterte government operates, it’s that it has taken spin and distractions, smoke and mirrors, to a whole different level. Sometimes it’s like they’re throwing in the kitchen sink for good measure, often enough there’s some sacrificial lamb.

It is of course the President’s big mouth which does the best job of disengaging us from what matters. Take all those instances when we should be talking about something important like the killing of farmers and peasants, the failed drug war, inflation, the excise tax on oil, China’s takeover of our seas, the entry of an unbelievable number of Chinese migrant workers, the militarization of government, and count the number of times instead that the president decides to drop a misogynistic statement here, or an expletive there directed at (a) the Church, (b) activists, (c) the poor, (d) human rights advocates and organizations, (e) “terrorists” (f) critics (g) all of the above.

Which is to say that at a time like this when we have so much on our plate of things to think about given the aforementioned urgent issues, it is also pretty clear that this government, along with its puppet (or puppeteer) Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, is banking on precisely these overwhelming, exhausting times so they can continue with their ChaCha moves.  (more…)

komentaryo

Populism, the Liberal Party, and a new campaign strategy: Winning VS Duterte

I did not vote for Mar Roxas in 2016, though I did vote for Kiko Pangilinan, Risa Hontiveros, and Leila de Lima, as I did for Bam Aquino in 2013. I didn’t campaign publicly for any of them. In fact the only person I publicly campaigned for in 2016 was Neri Colmenares. Given short memories, it bears repeating that I was heavily critical of the Liberal Party government of Noynoy Aquino. I thought that there was an undercurrent of elitism with which the governance operated, and this revealed itself slowly but surely throughout the six years, in policies, in actions (or lack thereof), and often from the mouth of PNoy himself, sometimes of his Cabinet members. I thought it problematic that they equated social media noise and traction with public opinion; I thought they enabled entities like Rappler to earn from, build upon, false notions of wisdom-of-the-crowd. Information dissemination and transparency were fantastic though, and I miss it terribly now.

It seems like years ago, doesn’t it? An administration like Duterte’s can make us feel this way, with just a little over two years of suffering. This is a governance of chaos-by-design, of disinformation and lies, of destruction and distractions, of literal and figurative violence. It’s exhausting to be critical because nothing is going right, and we are kept in the dark about what exactly is going on. Two years in and there’s still no clear platform for governance, and certainly no clear vision. A constant: Duterte’s rhetoric of violence and vitriol, half the time hyperbole, the other half lies, which we’re told by his men we shouldn’t take seriously. Other constants: incompetence from inflation to traffic to food crises; and Duterte’s threats to leave his post, from letting a military junta take over to declaring a revolutionary government, to railroading charter change and federalism in Congress.

The current state of the nation is enough to build a campaign versus Duterte in the 2019 elections. We know that the more non-Duterte Senators and House Reps there are, the bigger the chances that the people will be represented instead of silenced in Congress, the lesser the chances of any anti-people Duterte law being railroaded. Those of us who might be critical of LP should know it’s time to set those concerns aside for the bigger picture, the more urgent task.    (more…)