komentaryo

History #MarcosNotAHero #November8

It is utterly depressing that for such recent history, and with so many of Martial Law’s victims and survivors still alive and well, speaking up and screaming at the top of their lungs, that here we are divided about the burial of one Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Worse, that the Supreme Court would be so divided as well, right down the middle if we are to believe the grapevine, with seven-for and seven-against the burial of the dictator at the heroes’ cemetery.

The President and history
Ironically, this is all happening under one President Duterte, who invokes history all the time.

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komentaryo

Media, gov’t comms, #LawinPH

One of the questions that dominated the discourse pre-Typhoon Lawin was: what the heck is government doing?

The truth was, we weren’t hearing much about what was being done, who was doing what, and whether government was prepared at all. It didn’t help that too many members of the President’s Cabinet –including the heads of communications – were with him in China, and so there was absolutely no sense at all that there was anyone in control of delivering information about the typhoon, one that was said to be akin to Typhoon Yolanda of 2013.

Here’s the thing: when you come from an Aquino government that had three communications offices, having no functioning communications office for President Duterte is nothing but a liability.

For the public and the government itself.  (more…)

komentaryo

Sacred cows, criticism, and the media as enterprise*

When your teacher asked me to come in to speak with you, my first reaction was: are you sure? baka masira ang buhay ng mass com students mo.

See, I am not trained as a journalist, nor do I practice it as a discipline. I’m not part of mainstream media, and consciously so. In college, I was a comparative literature major. My MA degree was on philippines studies. Much of my early history as writer had to do with following the arts and culture beat and doing mostly reviews and pop culture criticism. All that time I was conscious of how there is a journalistic practice that would do the arts beat, too, and that they were mostly writing about press conference and going on junkets, attending premier nights and socializing, and with all due respect to the lifestyle journalists, it’s just not my cup of tea.

But criticism is. As a practice and as a discipline that allowed me to do art reviews with a degree of credibility. Long before I started doing that for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and GMA News Online, I had been maintaining a blog, radikalchick.com, where I had the freedom to write what I wanted, regardless of readers and followers. (more…)

komentaryo

Brutal: the police and the President’s public

Early this month, I had wondered about the missing apology from Duterte supporters given the uncalled for, unfair, and absolute harassment of media workers in relation to the President’s failed ironic claim to the analogy between him and Hitler. It seemed important to point out that there was a need to rein the President’s supporters in, especially when the President himself apologizes when he makes a mistake.

That is extraordinary because we came from a previous government that refused to apologize for anything at all.

It is ruined by the fact though that too many of the President’s followers seem to think they can make no mistakes, and that always going in for the kill — looking at biases, dismissing criticism, questioning allegiances — helps the president and this government at all. Often it only reveals that too many of them who scream at the top of their lungs, behaving badly, thinking they’re defending the President, actually end up becoming his liability, too.

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komentaryo

OVP versus NAPC: poverty, aid, vision

It was interesting, to say the least, to hear about the Office of the Vice President (OVP) holding what they were calling The Partnerships Against Poverty Summit today, October 10. I wondered why it was that after 100 days, Vice President Leni Robredo has gotten away with pretty much doing nothing as Housing Chief — promising only that the roadmap would be complete by the first quarter of 2017 — complete with the assertion that “100 days is too short to hit targets,” yet here she was doing something else.

This summit is part of what they are calling the OVP’s Anti-Poverty and Advocacy Program, the goals of which are yet unclear, but which, if today’s poverty summit is any indication, is not only highly problematic, it is also absolutely redundant with the existing government Departments of Health and Social Welfare and Development, and the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC). Most disturbing of all: it goes against and is not at all a complementary project to existing government projects — which is what the VP herself said about it in a press con on October 5. (more…)