kultura

Toni, Bongbong, history and #Halalan2022

Here’s the thing about Toni Gonzaga: she is a symptom as she is the condition itself, a very critical condition of lies, falsity, and disinformation at a time when murderers are condoned and the corrupt are shameless, when the plunder of resources has been normalized, as has the violation of basic rights, at a time when algorithms run our social media lives which, given this pandemic, is pretty much the life that we live.

Here’s the thing with Toni Gonzaga: this is ALL on her. She—as with other content creators, celebrities, influencers, you and me who do social media—is making decisions about what content to put out into the world, and SHE is solely responsible for those decisions. There is no one else she can blame for what is put on her accounts and her channels, there is no network to hide behind, no producer or manager to point a finger at.

At this point, we are seeing these personalities for who and what they are. And as Toni said: she’s got nothing to hide. And to some extent she’s never hidden that she is a Marcos loyalist—she’s just more shameless now, right on the month of Martial Law commemoration, in utter disregard for the thousands killed, the thousands more who live with its trauma, and the millions plundered by the Marcoses that all of us have suffered for.

Maybe this is the pandemic effect on her: I got nothing to hide, I got nothing to prove. Here, see me as a Marcos loyalist! I don’t give a flying f*ck. You only live once.

Here’s the thing with Toni Gonzaga: she knows, she has seen, how she will not be held accountable. (more…)

komentaryo

More heads should roll: The IATF, Duterte, and StaySafe #CovidCorruption #CriminalNegligence

In June 2020, news reports told the story of how Stay Safe became the “official” contact tracing app of the government, and therefore the country: it was purportedly the hand of retired Hello Garci general Hermogenes Esperon (one of those accused of helping rig the 2004 elections for GMA) who scheduled a presentation of StaySafe before the IATF.

On June 8, former DICT Secretary Rio recounted what a friend had told him straight from someone in the IATF: “I am also open to other apps for contact tracing. Marami lang kasing kakilala si Staysafe na members ng IATF.”

MultiSys, the developer of the StaySafe app, insisted that Rio was politicizing the decision that the IATF had made. But here’s the thing: it is obviously a political decision when: (1) the app will not work for a majority of the population who are not on 3G phones, (2) the app will not work for a majority of the population who cannot afford to be online all the time, and (3) the app, despite its uselessness and violation of privacy requirements still remains as the official contact tracing app of the IATF.

Patronage politics is obviously at the heart of this decision, and the makers of StaySafe and the IATF are just banking on us not seeing it as clearly as we should have last year.

After all we were busy surviving this pandemic, a task made more difficult by the fact that the Duterte government itself has refused to give us credible and reliable contact tracing. (more…)

komentaryo

Criminal negligence? The IATF’s contact-tracing app #StateSurveillance #StaySafe

We were promised a bombshell last week, during yet another late Monday night gibberish session with Duterte. But the real deal happened a day after.

An aside: there are no bombshells to be dropped when your own comms team deletes the part where you say you won’t run if your daughter will, and then your own daughter discredits you and destroys your party’s credibility, but of course she herself is part of that circus. End of aside.

The real bomb was exploded in the Senate inquiry of the Department of Health, which might be borne of the Commission on Audit reports, but in fact has been an opportunity for us to understand better why we are in such deep pandemic shit at this point, not just given Covid spread, but more importantly, Duterte’s failed public health response.

Between Senator Joel Villanueva asking about contact tracing as the weakest link in Covid response, and Senator Pia Cayetano asking specifically about the StaySafePH App, we heard DOH Secretary Duque—he with the least amount of credibility, and the most kapal-ng-mukha—admit that the Stay Safe App is practically useless.

“I think it’s very limited, almost no impact,” said the DOH secretary.

Now Duque might be the man who just admitted that the government’s official contact tracing app is useless, but a little research and you realize that for this one it’s not just Duque’s head that we should be calling for. It’s the men in the IATF itself—the task force that’s supposed to address Covid-19 and ensure our survival—as it does lead straight to Duterte.

Former DICT Secretary Eliseo Rio Jr. had dropped that other bomb as early as April 2020, two months into this pandemic. (more…)

komentaryo

State of OUR nation #SONA2021 #Halalan2022

It seems apt that the last State of the Nation Address of the worst, most violent, most incompetent president of our lifetime happened right smack in the middle of a vicious Delta variant that State propaganda denies is spreading, 17 months into the Covid-19 pandemic and government’s failed, unscientific, anti-people response.

It also happened after almost a week of endless rains that have sunk the poorest of our communities in flood waters. Which followed a Taal Volcano eruption that meant whole communities being forced to evacuate. Two days before the SONA, there was a level six earthquake in the wee hours of the morning.

None of these warranted an appearance from this president. Then again, that might have been a good thing: after all he thinks cracking jokes in the middle of a crisis is okay, and he believes that every problem can be solved by police presence—just like he finds comfort in IATF briefings filled with retired military generals who know nothing about science or medicine, pandemic response or public health.

Propaganda lang malakas
In the five years of Duterte the only thing it has maintained, has done well, and has succeeded in is its propaganda machinery. It’s so so good that those of us on the side of democracy like to deny it exists, if not like to deny the kind of power it has. Our denial of course is part of why Duterte has stayed in power despite our anger and disgust, the movements we have fashioned. There is no winning a war we are in denial about. (more…)

komentaryo

Generation Exhausted #Halalan2022

Since Duterte became President, consistently undoing democracy, constantly violating people’s rights, just generally trampling on all our freedoms, and swinging the pendulum to the extreme of no accountability and no transparency, layered with flagrant lies and utter incompetence, I’ve held out for Generation X.

This is not some blind, baseless assessment of what it is my generation can do. Instead, it comes from a very keen sense of where we’ve come from, what is at stake for us, and the kind of future we still want. So many of us after all have families of our own, children who will grow up in this nation we all love to hate but love regardless, and one would like to think that there are enough of us who cannot imagine leaving.

Pinning my hopes on middle class Generation X is also based on recent history. At another time when we were fighting for freedom, a civil society of private citizens, the Church, schools, businesses rose in this country and worked together towards taking back democracy. They built a civil disobedience campaign that paralyzed businesses run by the dictator’s cronies, they boycotted San Miguel Beer and Magnolia Ice Cream, pulled out their cash from crony banks, stopped shopping in Rustan’s.

We are the generation born to parents and grandparents who made this happen. And we are this generation that might have been in a great crisis of apathy in the mid-90’s, but—I’d like to think—was really about getting our head together about nation. What is wrong with it, given the status quo it keeps, and the possibilities for re-imagining the ways of circumventing it.

But then the pandemic happened.

(more…)