Tag Archives: EDSA

komentaryo

Driving distractions

It looks like the Department of Transportation and its connected agencies will be forced to postpone the implementation of RA 10913 or the Act Defining and Penalizing Distracted Driving. Senators JV Ejercito and Nancy Binay have stepped in (JournalOnline, 22 May), knocking some sense into the DOTr’s over-interpretation – if not power trip – which will allow them to penalize drivers for even taking a drink from a coffee tumbler, or having rosaries hanging on their rearview mirror, or air fresheners on their dashboards.

Essentially, RA 10913 only penalizes the use of mobile and digital devices while driving, i.e., having it in your hands when you should have those hands on the wheel, reading or writing a text message when your eyes should be on the road. But Senator Binay says it best about the DOTr’s IRR: “Parang kung saan-saan na napunta.”

Thankfully, there is enough katangahan in the IRR for it to be stopped – if not for us to protest and resist being penalized based on it.

More importantly, it has highlighted the question of distractions, what that means for drivers, and what else we should be blaming for road mishaps.

I’ve got my line of sight on those billboards. (more…)

komentaryo

Revisiting EDSA ’86, failing the revolution

The failure happens first on the level of being disallowed to take photos in the Ayala Museum, something that’s even stranger when the exhibit is purportedly about people power, and yet the people aren’t allowed to take photos anywhere in that museum, a reminder really of why I’ve stopped going there.

It took an exhibit like Revolution Revisited (Ayala Museum, Makati City now up at on a mall and campus tour) by photographer Kim Komenich to make me step foot in this museum again; it is also an exhibit that I can barely be happy about. Komenich’s curatorial note attached to the exhibit is a failure in itself, a re-writing of history from an obviously removed perspective, one that has stuck to a narrative of EDSA 1986 that has since become highly questionable, if not proven false.

Two of the more glaring things: many factors informed the people’s march to the streets on February 22 to 25 1986. There was the cheating in the snap elections, the only one that Komenich acknowledges, but also: the civil disobedience campaign that had Cory and the people going up against the oligarchies and capitalists, the military defection of Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel Ramos even when that was filled with too many silences still, and the truth that since Ninoy’s funeral march the people had gained an amount of courage that just kept on growing, through the Cory campaign, then the snap elections and poll watching, fearlessly ignoring the possibility of being picked up by the ever-watchful Marcos military.

Another glaring historical mistake was the assertion that February 25 1986 was the birth of what Komenich calls “the people power phenomenon.” What of tanks being stopped on February 23? What of people welcoming defiant soldiers who refused to disperse the crowds on February 24? What of artists and celebrities coming out to the streets and providing entertainment through the wee hours of February 23 to February 25?

I cringe at the idea that the 25th was the one day that gave birth to people power. I dare argue that its birth happened when people showed literally the kind of power they hold collectively, not when the dictator and his family began packing their things to leave Malacañang. I daresay that people power was born when people joined Cory’s civil disobedience campaign and literally refused to buy San Miguel and Nestle products, emptied Rustan’s of its shoppers, closed down banks, deemed the economy unstable. These were the same people who thought to, who knew to, stop tanks at EDSA. They proved people power then.

Komenich’s reading of EDSA ‘86 to be about cheating in the snap elections and the Marcos dictatorship ultimately just allowed it to revolve around the Cory-Marcos dichotomy, which wasn’t all that those four days was about. This reading of EDSA ’86 actually set this exhibit up for failure.

Which is not to say that it didn’t try to speak of the people, too; except that the way it did only begged the question: but in what light? The exhibit begins with photos of the every man pre-EDSA ‘86: a farmer with a carabao in the fields, a woman carrying a new born baby surrounded by even more of her children, a malnourished boy looking out onto the world. Then Revolution Revisited goes back and forth, from a photo of Cory Aquino’s proclamation rally and the aforementioned every Pinoy in 1986, to 1983 onwards with photos of Lean Alejandro, Evelio Javier, Ninoy Aquino and the snap elections. What was more surprising to me than the fact that our local photographers have their own versions of these photos, is the fact that of the four days of EDSA, what this exhibit had was only three days — three days! There were no photos of Day 3, February 24 1986, unless my turning around and going back to look for even just one photo was a failure in curation.

Day Three of course was a crucial time of defections and false alarms, people jumping and celebrating, government stations being taken over, as well as the threat of Marines in Camp Aguinaldo poised to shoot at Crame. Its absence in a revisiting of EDSA ’86 just seemed like a huge dark gaping hole.

Meanwhile, the stretch of colored photos at the end of this black and white exhibit  highlighted even more the distance of the power players from the people who made EDSA happen. That these personalities were allowed to speak about EDSA seems like the most redundant of things: we know what presidential daughter, now sister, Pinky Aquino-Abelleda, as well as Fidel Ramos, Juan Ponce Enrile and the rich of this country, would say about EDSA ‘86: they’ve been saying it the past 25 years.

And then there is this: these personalities are already the ones who contribute to a mainstream narrative that speaks of EDSA ’86 on the superficial level of unity and the general notion of change. They are also part of the oligarchies and powers that Cory had set out to fight through the civil disobedience campaign. Pray tell why would I want a businessman and capitalist to talk to me about EDSA ’86?

Ah, but Revolution Revisited also lets the faces of the every Pinoy in the beginning of the exhibit to speak at this point. Their photos are taken within the same contexts as before, reminding us that the farmer is still a farmer, the impoverished mother is still such, except that it’s been 25 years. Yes, nothing has changed for them, and this they also say in so many words. The malnourished boy has since died, and his family is still as poor as they were in ’86.

Thus this exhibit ends with the heaviest of feelings about EDSA ’86, highlighting the idea that it has led to nothing, that it was to a certain extent pointless. To have ended with the impoverished and the constancy of their conditions is to forget that EDSA ‘86 was a promise of possibility. That the poor are still such, that the conditions have stayed the same, is the fault of those big personalities who were in power yet have failed to truly affect change. It is not the failure of EDSA ‘86, or of people power at all.

Revolution Revisited in this form is thus just a reminder of the fact that Komenich’s  perspective is that of someone who might have lived with us in those four days of EDSA, and who might think himself one with us. But ultimately this exhibit is reminder that he is just a foreigner who fails tremendously to see and celebrate EDSA ’86 for what it was then, and what it should be about now: a time when the greatness of a people was proven by their collective ability to be fearless and courageous in the face of possible death.

This exhibit’s revisiting of EDSA 1986 fails the people power revolution; as such it also ultimately fails all of us.

Revolution Revisited ran until March 5 2011 at the Ayala Museum, Makati Avenue corner Dela Rosa St., Makati City, and is now on a mall and campus tour.

 

EDSA 1986 historical facts from reading Chronology of a Revolution by Angela Stuart-Santiago. All of it is up at EDSARevolution.com.

komentaryo

one month of P-Noy: notes of a Pinay

the irony should not be lost on any of them, really. after all they’re the newly-created, seemingly hi-tech, and youthful (!) aspect of the Noy government, and as the communications group, they should know of the contradictions inherent in their mere existence.

they who are tasked with “communications” different and separate and new(?) from what we’ve seen as the office of the press secretary all these years. but save for putting up twitter and facebook accounts, and a website, we have yet to hear and see why this is important at all. ironically, they speak of this as if it’s a new and fancy creature that’s all about the Noy government’s notions of change. but really.

you do not need a whole office to create websites and accounts, nor do you need a whole bunch of new people who are purportedly adept at communicating. look at Gang Badoy’s Dear Noynoy. and really Manolo Quezon III’s (now member for the communications group) websites. it seems that all it would take is to hire techies for these sites, and then have Noynoy do the good things that are worth writing about.

but talk about this communications group inevitably leads to how we, the people, are this government’s new boss, and in which case, that this is one way to connect with the citizenry. true true. but really, you will respond to each and every citizen’s complaint? that Quezon and Ricky Carandang believe they can do this is the strangest of things; that they joined government for something that has yet to be defined and constructed and proven necessary (at this point!) is even stranger.

the truth is, you don’t need a whole office of three people to do this. you need a whole fluggin’ call center. I can complain to you easily about 40 horrid things that government in this country has done to me. I bet my parents will have double that, my brother maybe 30 because he’s been gone a while. add my one barkada of 4 people  x 40 complaints, another barkada of 4 x 40 complaints, and easily that makes 550 complaints.

and I tell you that these are the valid complaints, nothing on Kris (because they deem that irrelevant don’t they), and just one each on Hacienda Luisita (lest we be called the noisy minority that is the Left when the question should be: why aren’t your activists noisy to begin with?). I can tell you that mine will range from horrible facilities in the public schools I’ve studied in to corruption in education, from the convicted Aquino-Galman boys who have been suffering in jail for far too long, for something that they insist they didn’t do, to the hazy crazy fraternity wars that are all encompassing but which we don’t know a lot about. mine will come from my experiences as a teacher across the different universities, and as an activist teacher who spoke to real live public school teachers about their impoverished lives. mine will come from the violence I’ve experience at rallies, the violence inflicted on activists, and this continued violence: P-Noy refuses to put his foot down and Free the Political Prisoners!

the one thing I wish he would take from his mother, the one thing he doesn’t seem to want to do.

where does this communications group even begin to imagine the possibility of (1) responding to these complaints, (2) justly choosing which ones are “valid”, and (3) that we, the complainants, are the bosses here?

Quezon though points out a more complex job, and this one is infinitely interesting:

“My specific functions will focus on strategic planning in terms of messaging (including market research and polling), as well as editorial aspects of official communications, which in turn ranges from editorial guidelines and policies in general, to the Official Gazette in particular (bringing it from the 20th to the 21st century), to corporate identity and institutional memory.”

if messaging is the task, then please begin with taking down those billboards and tarpaulins with Noynoy saying “Mabuhay ang Mabuting Pilipino!” it’s uncomfortable to be told by my president longlive the good Pinoy, when it’s entirely possible that i will not be considered as such given his standards. same goes for those tarpaulins with Noy and Binay saying “Kayo ang Boss Namin.” as if naman. to have these slogans on the streets makes it seem like hard sell, and really, like it is a lesson being ingrained in our heads. is it suppose to make us feel good about this government? i’d feel good about a government that wasn’t spending on billboards and tarpaulins, to tell you the truth.

too, given advertising on our streets alongside the remnants of Bayani Fernando: pink and blue fences, footbridges, toilets! they must realize that sometimes it’s a reminder of what’s just so wrong on our streets, the cleaning of which should’ve been the first thing done by government. with “Bawal Tumawid, Nakamamatay!”  or a Kris Aquino billboard selling appliances within sight, the Noy-Bi tarps and the Noy billboards just seem like advertisements too, that just might be as dangerous as crossing the streets of EDSA.

but maybe this isn’t the point? because there’s also the editorial aspect of it, speechwriting (ooh, how they celebrated after the SONA ‘no?), and the creation of identity. which seems ironic really, as we all know what kind of identity this presidency wants to establish: that of being less than liable for the state of the nation. after all they just began by pointing a finger at who’s responsible for this mess, and throwing the ball on our court: Noy can’t do this alone, we must begin with ourselves.

which is all true, but haven’t we all been helping this country all this time? i pay my taxes, follow the law, involve myself in issues in many ways all this time, and yet. it takes two years for me to get my SSS benefit, i had to put out more than an old business was earning just to renew my permits, have dealt with too many a corrupt public official. i’ve suffered in the face of the civil service code, have been oppressed by both the public and private school system, have lived with very little and delayed pay, and almost no benefits. i have suffered because of the lack of a reproductive health bill that protects the mother, that makes medical institutions more respectful of women’s rights to decide on their and their baby’s lives.

having lived through this, as many others have lived longer with it, there’s nothing in the messages that this government has sent that relieves me, or makes me hopeful. the small solutions – catch a tax evader here, a tax evader there – aren’t what will make me proud. it’s the bigger ones. revise the system, revise the aspects of it that fail to work. talk about education and what it is that two private school officials (Fr. Luistro for Dep Ed and Licuanan for CHED) would know of the public school system that is in the throes of corruption, literally and figuratively. and really, the Aquino sisters giving away school supplies doesn’t solve a thing. not one thing.

or maybe all the communications group needs to begin with is this: try and be more credible. because saying that Ricky Carandang was to begin with on Noynoy’s side, even when he was working as a journalist in ABS-CBN, has debunked altogether the whole network’s press releases about being unbiased throughout the campaign and in the present. of course that has always been hard to believe about ABS-CBN, but the Carandang question adds another layer to this judgment of the Lopez-owned media empire, and its relationship with the Aquinos. sayang talaga the credibility that Maria Ressa had tried so hard to work on for the news and public affairs division.

oh well, but that’s their loss. of credibility, i mean. and of relevance. and of being seen as objective and critical actors in the newly staged performance that is the Noynoy presidency.

a badly-directed variety show circa 1990s for the inauguration? check!

interviews with image consultants and couturiers for Noy’s outfits? check!

writing the script for this show that seems to be on technical rehearsals within its 100 days? check!

a disbelieving citizen that wants to be surprised, has no institution to answer to, and is as independent as people come: check check check.