komentaryo

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…)

komentaryo

Everything I needed to learn about writing, I learned through blogging

And I mean old school blogging via this blog, which first went up in 2008, a gift from my Kuya who had also pushed the mother to start blogging two years earlier. At the time there was an active blogging scene with intellectuals and pundits writing and discussing issues of the day, bouncing off each other, openly debating.

Trolling was frowned upon, as was namecalling. Anonymity was put into question.

I like to think of that time to have been pre-Joe America and pre-Mocha. It was also pre-social media. People were actually having conversations, threshing out issues, doing research, building credible arguments. Opinion writers in the broadsheets were called out, as was government; people were not simply dismissed based on their ideological leanings; sound arguments were the rule not the exception.

Those days are gone. (more…)

komentaryo

A whiff of corruption at DoT

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…)

kultura

The question of Bracken

The premise of Dear And Unhappy is a simple question: what of Josephine Bracken? Rizal’s wife and / or lover, depending on who you believe. Or depending on your internalized racism against the Irish woman our National Hero was enamored with — it is after all why Bracken remains marginalized in narratives about Jose Rizal’s life; it also has arguably spawned multiple texts about Bracken — the less we know about someone the more exciting our stories about her. (more…)

kultura

Political insidiousness, public complicity

Boses ng Masa is deceptively simple and painfully familiar, which is what’s both good and bad about it: the discussion is worth having, but you can see that ending from a mile away.

It’s not that you’ve seen this before, as it is that you have lived it.

(more…)