pulitika – Katrina Stuart Santiago

While political pundits in mainstream media claim that Sara Duterte’s resignation from the Marcos Cabinet was expected, it is important to speak of its timing. After all, on and for social media and digital platforms, everything is content, and major announcements like this one is fuel for mass drops and mileage. Over in the other country that is the Marcos-Duterte Tiktok algorithm, this resignation was not only expected, they were ready for it.

Since two days ago, the VP has taken over the algorithm like it’s nobody’s business, unseating the dominance of the Roque-MrSupranational memes, the West Philippine Sea content, and the usual Marcos-activities-based content. Considering that we had just come from Independence Day celebrations and the President continues to travel the country to distribute all sorts of assistance himself, there is usually enough content that sustains him. But Sara’s army has been pretty solid, churning out content that drowns out everybody else. Unsurprisingly, this includes a bunch of SMNI and SMNI-related accounts, solid Duterte accounts, and even accounts with low mileage, but which have been mass dropping support-Sara videos.

And when I say they were “ready” for it, I do also mean that the content has been making connections the mainstream cannot even begin to talk about. For example, highlighting the fact that it was also on June 19 two years ago when Sara had taken her oath as Vice President, which allows them to spin her resignation as an act that brings her back to the position she had won—the one that proves the love and support of “the people”—and not the position(s) that were given to her by the President turned non-ally. There also seems to be massive content that quickly drew the line between her and the President, not just ending the Uniteam illusion, but also championing the Sara side of it, the one that was green, the one that was about the eagle.

As with the Marcos legacy campaign of 2022, there is much here that harks back to the Duterte father’s 2016 campaign, with content declaring in so many words that change is finally coming, because Inday Sara is now free from her cabinet positions, now on a clean break from the administration. This means a major change for “the opposition”—a label that the Duterte propagandists claim is theirs. Tied to content that came from the last Maisug rally in Pampanga, where the older Duterte declared that they were not wanting to take down the Marcos government; and where the younger Duterte mayor insisted that all they were asking for was that the President “listen to the majority”—referring of course to themselves; the declaration of a stronger “opposition” now that the Vice President is free to be opposition, has become a very seamless narrative.

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If there’s anything that one has consistently been reminded about throughout 2023, it is that we still do not know how to deal with the propaganda landscape that the Duterte leadership had established for six years, and which, regardless of the Dutertes’s “lesser” position politically, is the game we are all stuck playing.

I speak of 2023 because in 2022, we were all just in a post-election haze, regardless of where we were / are on the political spectrum. If you were on the side of Marcos-Duterte, you were just on a high, doing the parties, enjoying the perks that come with having campaigned for the winner. If you were on the side of Robredo-Pangilinan, then you would fall under either of two groups: the ones who disengaged completely from politics and governance, maybe in disgust, probably as a by-product of despair; or the ones who tried to keep the anger going by carrying on as if nothing had changed — after all, a Duterte is still in power, and Duterte himself seemed to have set the stage for a Marcos win.

Presidential sister Imee has said it in so many words: President Duterte had eradicated their enemies.

But also, and this seems important to realize for all of us, Duterte had set the stage for this present, where the opposition, at best, has completely lost its footing, regardless of where we are on that spectrum that spans the Liberals and the Left. (more…)

It would be silly to talk about the present of politics in this country without acknowledging two, maybe three, things.

First, that we are at a standstill. From the ranks of our specific educated, middle to elite classes, generally woke and politicized, that campaigned hard for a Marcos-Duterte loss in May 2022 — there is little movement happening. Sure we went back to our old lives since May, we went back to the daily grind, but that is a movement that is about survival for majority of us — we have no choice given skyrocketing prices and the multifarious crises nation faces. We have no choice, and know no other way, but to go back to the lives we had pre-elections, no matter how frustrated, angry, sad we are. No matter how little we understand (or how much) of why things turned out the way it did.

Which brings us to two: here, where we are, a year after the 2022 elections, we have to admit the possibility that we have stood still all along — because that is what happens to movement when all it does is go around in circles, or repeat its own mistakes, or deny how big the enemy is and how the battlefield has changed.

It is what happens when we cannot get over ourselves, when we only listen to what we have to say, when we insist that we are the only ones who know what’s happening, who know what should be done, who have the answer to questions — because we lived through a past that was similar, because we are older, we are the fourth estate, which is replaceable with what’s unsaid: we are the gatekeepers, we are the bearers of truth, we are sacred cows, not to be questioned, not to be critiqued.

It is what happens when we refuse to see the possibility that maybe we should start with first asking the right questions, so that we get the productive answers, in dialogue with as large a group of people as possible, open to the probability that the ways we know, the perspectives we take, might not apply to the present anymore. (more…)

It would’ve been silly to be surprised by the acquittal of the son of Justice Secretary Boying Remulla on charges of illegal drug possession. That this sentence even exists is its own absurdity: at any other time, and at any other place, a government official, especially of an agency that has to do with Justice, would be the first to step down given a case of this magnitude, if only to be able to say that his position should not be reason for the wheels of justice to turn any differently for his son Juanito Jose Diaz Remulla III.

But we know by now that Secretary Remulla staying on as Justice Secretary is a symptom of what has ailed governance since the Duterte years: a lack of shame from our government officials, which is to say their ability to take on and keep jobs regardless of whether they deserve it, or have credentials or credibility, and really, their predisposition to keep political power on sheer kapal-ng-mukha.

And so it seems more productive to see these moments as an opportunity to talk about Justice in this country and highlight how it applies only to a few, how due process and speedy trials only work for those who have connections to those in power. The best way to prove it would be through the experience of our political prisoners, grown exponentially during Duterte years. (more…)

Mula Tarima Hanggang (University of the Philippines Press, 2014) is Ericson Acosta’s new book of poetry and songs, one divided across the periods within which he wrote them. The heart of the book are the poems he wrote while in detention; framing this are poems on the bigger space that the poet navigates beyond jail, from Cubao to nation.

Given who Acosta is, you might imagine that you already know these poems: many writers have been jailed before him after all. You might also think of activist writing to fall within a particular aesthetic: the raised fist on the page can look the same, sound the same, be the same.

But where an argument can be made for the redundancy – the easiest one being how systems do not change, and therefore the demands of the people remain the same – the bigger argument that Mula Tarima Hanggang makes is for the poet’s voice as independent and distinct, no matter that it might form part of the bigger narrative of militant literature.

It is no different from every text’s insistence that it has something new to say. Acosta should not need to prove himself deserving of readership any more than the next poet.

The silenced artist

Tatuan mo ‘ko, kosa, sige pa.
Tatuan mo ako ng kamao.
Tatuan mo ‘ko ng maso, ng karet, ng tabak.
Tatuan mo ako ng bangkaw, ng AK-47.
Tatuan mo ‘ko, tadtarin mo ‘ko ng pag-asa at ng tapang.* (more…)

Katrina Stuart Santiago

Katrina Stuart Santiago

Category Archive for: pulitika

Four cases, one justice system

The poet is alive