komentaryo

(Middle Class) Crisis: Why rising from May 2022 has been difficult

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…)

komentaryo

Four cases, one justice system

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…)

komentaryo

PH airspace shut down, overseas dev’t assistance projects, and asking better questions

It’s become normalized since the 2022 election results that at least on the shamelessly middle/upper class echo chamber of Twitter and Facebook, little is done to flesh out issues. After all, it is easier to just pin the blame on Duterte-Marcos. After all, we are angry and exhausted, and would want nothing more than to draw that line between ourselves and the 31 million that voted Marcos-Duterte into power.

While the impulse is understandable, anyone would be hard put to prove that this is the right way to deal with issues at this point. Not when issues are important and critical, and especially when we are so easily distracted by noise, both deliberately manufactured and inadvertently skewed away from asking the right, more difficult, questions.

The mess at our airports on January 1 is one such instance. Because the noise has been primarily about pinning the blame on Duterte—he who inaugurated the Communication, Navigation, Surveillance and Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) project—and on Marcos, who has generally fallen quiet as he is wont to do, what we’ve evaded are actual questions about Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) projects, the delays that this particular CNS/ATM project faced, and the three (count that!) presidents under whom this particular project fell—Marcos excluded.

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kultura

The poet is alive

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…)

kultura

Badoy, banned books, and the Marcos challenge

Every day, I spend a good hour on a Tiktok algorithm that I’ve nurtured since last year, when the election campaign began and I realized that the Marcos campaign was releasing videos and photographs from the old man Marcos years (Papa FEM to this Tiktok algo), which I thought then was, and think now is, important.

But also, it is on Tiktok that I catch what government is doing, every day: what the First Lady is doing, what Bongget (that’s President Marcos V2 to the rest of us) is busy with, which government officials delivered the best soundbite. It’s also here that one realizes how much the algorithm lives off the press briefings of Press Secretary Trixie Angeles, who is celebrated and touted as one of the better voices from the new administration. Often, this algorithm fascinates me in its complete and utter removal from the echo chambers my algorithms on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram keep. It still confounds me, sure, but only in the way that the unfamiliar always does.

But then on certain days, even I have to say that the Tiktok algorithm makes more sense. That’s what happens when you listen to Lorraine Badoy, speaking on her new show on Quiboloy-run SMNI, where for two hours every day, she is free to spout anti-activist and anti-Left rhetoric like it’s nobody’s business—which is to say to absurd proportions, which is to say to attack anyone at all, really, and tag anyone as “red.”

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