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Meralco’s heartlessness #OldNormal

Many things surfaced in the midst of this Covid-19 crisis. There’s the violence of inequality and the blindness of privilege. There’s the lack of vision and planning for a massive public health emergency that any government should’ve known was coming early in the year. There’s government’s incompetence and violence, the President in-over-his-head (yet again!), his men grasping at straws and deciding that going deeper into debt is the answer to our woes. There are Duterte’s cronies and allies, getting away with keeping their businesses intact and operational, probably even earning from this crisis, and now all set on getting a tax cut while thousands of small businesses will go under, and thousands of Filipinos go hungry.

There is also the fact that big business will abuse the people. It’s not a matter of when, but a matter of how. And the past four years this Duterte government has stood by and watched these abuses happen; during the lockdown it did nothing about construction workers left by developers to fend for themselves at construction sites, grocery workers walking inhumane distances to and from work, medical workers with no way to get home from hospitals.

With government turning a blind eye to these abuses, it’s no surprise that a business like Meralco will take this already difficult time and think: how do we make money in this time of crisis, when most everyone is taking a hit? (more…)

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Sir Edel

It is uncomfortable, to say the least, that I have been made part of this list of people doing tributes for Sir Edel today. I cannot claim to have known him personally, nor to have had long conversations with him about his work, or mine, or about life in general. But I said yes because his death has left a gaping hole that even I am surprised by. I said yes because soon after Sir Edel died, my college friend Raia messaged me and said she’d wait for this tribute, that I must write it for both of us. I said yes because in the midst of this crisis, that we are unfortunate enough to experience with the most incompetent and violent of governments, we are also in the throes of a propaganda war like no other, even as we can only battle with our own demons and emotional turmoil, and for some reason Sir Edel’s is one of many voices that resonate for me in times like this one.

But unlike many tributes, this thing I’m fashioning will not have fond memories, or funny anecdotes. Neither will it wax romantic about Sir Edel’s value to our intellectual landscape, or his influence on the younger generation of activists and writers. I am in no position to do that.

What I can do instead, is tell a story. (more…)

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Defending a rapist? Sobriety and hunos-dili, please!

Hate and lies don’t stop in a time of a pandemic—we are after all under a government that lives off this kind of propaganda. But when it comes from regular people who deserve respect for fighting for the poor and oppressed, the farmers and the peasants and the workers, you can only be taken aback, to say the least. That they would even take the time to fashion you as enemy, throw shade in your direction, especially on social media comment threads where discrediting a person is quick and easy, here and now, well, there is a time of reckoning for that.

This is not that time, but it is the time for some clarification. So let me take precious energy to talk about the accusation that I “defended a rapist” last year. A controversial, sensationalist statement to make, a juicy piece of news to hear about the person who wrote a review of Ang Huling El Bimbo in 2018, and questioned its handling of the rape of the lead character Joy; the same person who likes to see herself as a feminist, who writes about being woman in this country, who builds upon the kawomenan of many others. But of course via people like artist and peasant advocate Donna Miranda, what will surface is nothing at all about what I’ve written, or the play in question. Instead it will be this statement from her: “Gusto ko man basahin ang review na yan nahihirapan ako bilang nagtanggol ng rapist yung manunulat a year after.”

What a way to take down a person: throw a one-liner, attack her, try to ruin her credibility. Who cares if it’s true?

(more…)

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DOH, #Covid19, public information: crisis and gov’t distrust

Here’s something that’s become clearer now: Duterte’s rhetoric—that one that’s been sold as a personality quirk, that cracks inappropriate jokes, that same one that shifts towards violence every chance it gets, that dismisses important issues by saying it’s fake news, that evades critical demands of nation by delivering empty soundbites and/or talking about the drug war over and over again, or his perceived enemies like media and America—this Duterte rhetoric is government’s communications policy.

Sure, it might not be written anywhere, but it is the rhetoric that Duterte’s men and women have used, especially when faced with questions from a populace now unable to contain its dismay and disgust. Keeping us preoccupied with soundbites also means we lose precious time for piecing together the parts of the various crises we face.

We see this strategy being used for the COVID19 crisis.

Click here for the rest of it on Disquiet.ph.

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Duterte winning: The VFA, timing, divide & conquer

I’ve written before (and often) about the Duterte strategies that have kept him and this government afloat. When I did so, he was still awake most of the time, and not disappearing on us in times of tragedy, there was no major public health concern like COVID19, no volcanos exploding, no communities losing their homes and livelihood while the President slept.

We are undoubtedly in worse times now, and yet we still don’t get it.

Proof of that pudding? When Duterte declared the cancellation of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). And what did we see? The members of the Left, supporting Duterte on this declaration, asserting that it is “just and necessary”, and the Liberal stalwarts putting it into question by highlighting this government’s pivot to China. On social media the rhetoric is vicious, where the discussion is limited to “tuta ng Kano” o “tuta ni Duterte”; where anyone who even so much as refuses to stand with Duterte on his VFA declaration is seen as a US-ally, or as an enabler of US Imperialism.

Probably the worst example of how terrible things are is Walden Bello attacking retired Justice Antonio Carpio for being on “the wrong side on the VFA issue.” But one must ask: is the Duterte side, the right side to be on?

(more…)