Category Archive for: pangyayari

Writing, criticism, hope

In the five years that I’ve been doing this column, and the nine years of writing independently full-time, the most fulfilling parts of it have been about being able to talk to students who wonder about writing. Often the questions revolve around notions of fear, which automatically go to the presumption of courage: that it is brave to write about things that others wouldn’t write about, or to have a contrary opinion from what dominates the discourse.

Yet it would be delusional to imagine that sitting in front of a computer, in the safety of my own home (or my middle-class spaces), writing about issues that to me are important, is bravery defined. In the provinces, broadcast and community journalists are being killed, activists are being illegally detained and threatened, communities being militarized.

To be trolled or threatened on social media is nothing compared to that. (more…)

President Duterte has made a big deal about how his government is transparent and incorruptible. We have proven the former false. Given a toothless Freedom of Information (FOI), the threats and attacks on media and critics, and the all-around culture and rhetoric of violence and propagation of fear – we all now know that transparency is nothing but a soundbite.

The latter? Well, as with the previous government, we are seeing how sometimes, it’s not even corruption that is the problem as it is selfish interests that serve no one but the elite in government and the oligarchs they protect. Case in point: an anti-people tax reform policy and PUV modernization, an infrastructure program that will bring us “hell” (according to Sec. Ben Diokno) and fatten up our foreign debt, the militarization of Lumad communities, the protection of military and police officials – including those that do wrong.

Ah, but as with Daang Matuwid, President Duterte insists that corruption is one of our biggest problems, and as such, he has said often that just a “whiff of corruption” and a government official would be fired.

One wonders when he’s going to smell the stench of what’s allegedly going on at the Department of Tourism (DoT). (more…)

Welcome to hell

If there’s anything we’ve lost the past year, it’s a sense of propriety and order, of just common sense about what the role is of government and our officials when it comes to speaking to the populace. Sure Daang Matuwid had its own share of communications foibles, and yes they were elitist through and through.

And yet the same might be said of the Duterte government, especially his men, who speak with utter carelessness, and then demand us all to see that they were merely being “taken out of context.” See here likes the problem with these times: we have allowed government officials to get away with insisting that everything’s a matter of opinion, never mind right and wrong.

Case in point: Budget Secretary Ben Diokno has promised “hell” given the government’s infrastructure program. (more…)

The problems of the sectors of arts and culture in this country are multifarious, and there is no doubt that any of us cultural workers who are at the bottom of the totem pole can only believe in the possibilities of change, and look forward to it, too. Many of us try and work towards that change, but if cultural work is your bread and butter – and you’re not one of the lucky ones who comes from privilege to begin with – then you have no choice but to compromise along the way, work with institutions and hope to change these, be critical of the ways in which our creative freedoms (usually all we have) are disrespected or abused.

But as I’ve said before: President Duterte appointing the un-credentialed and inexperienced, incompetent and incredible, into positions of cultural power do nothing for our psyches, even less for our morale, and absolutely nothing for the conditions of our labor.

Installing someone like Nick Lizaso into the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), for no reason other than that you know him personally, and denying completely the right of the sector to decide for itself who it might want as leader – that is not any kind of change, President Duterte. (more…)

Lost all of Tuesday this week to the Senate.

The day started with news of Senate Resolution 388 affirming and supporting Martial Law as declared in all of Mindanao by President Duterte. What we knew was that 15 Senators were signing the resolution, excluding the Senate minority of five people – Bam Aquino, Franklin Drilon, Risa Hontiveros, Kiko Pangilinan, and Antonio Trillanes – and Grace Poe and Chiz Escudero whose names weren’t on the released copy of the resolution.    (more…)