Category Archives: politics

Of mockery and terrifying Twitter threads

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First off, I am incensed, even though I already expected this, that the Dutertes are mocking the electoral process. As I mentioned here before, Bong Go and Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa are just placeholders for Sara Duterte and her running mate until Nov 15, the deadline for any changes in the certificate of candidacy. It is yet to be revealed who will give way between her and Bong Bong Marcos. There are talks that it was Duterte (or former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the mastermind behind Sara) who floated the tax evasion conviction of Marcos Jr to the public so he would be forced to slide down and give way to Sara Duterte. His conviction makes him ineligible to run for any office.

Whatever. This means the Marcos apologists and DDS would be divided. But then this would be a very dirty election, with China intervening again. They’ve already shown their endorsement of Marcos Jr. Remember the “7-hr glitch” during the 2019 elections? State Grid Corp of China owns 40% of the National Grid Corp of the Philippines (NGCP). The Chinese entry was done during the Macapagal Arroyo Administration. It was also during her rule that the ZTE corruption scandal broke out. See the network of evil here?

Incidentally, NGCP is required under the law to list on PSE for transparency because it a monopoly. And guess what? They refused to do so and found a loophole in the law. It’s the Filipino shareholders who did a reverse takeover of a shell company and is making a follow-on offering, some kind of share swap so it would appear that NGCP would become a listed entity because it now has become a subsidiary of a listed company. After structuring the deal, JP Morgan resigned as one of the joint global coordinators for the deal. The Chinese shareholders would not be exposed at all and there is still no transparency. The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) allowed it. When I was pursuing the story, I asked ERC about the spirit of the law and would they allow this as per EPIRA law? They couldn’t comment, saying they haven’t seen the IPO filing yet at that time.

At the end of thw day, it’s still the Dutertes/Marcoses/Arroyos who are running the show, having this unholy alliance with the Xi Jinping.

I had a terrifying night last night. I read this Twitter thread about cave diving in rivers and the open sea and the tweets and story links made me feel like I was suffocating. One Reddit entry described nitrogen narcosis so succinctly that I felt as if I was the one suffocating.

As a freediver, albeit amateur, some of my worst nightmares are running out of breath, currents that could sweep me away or under, and nitrogen narcosis, if not the bends, when scuba diving.

Nitrogen narcosis is one of the reasons why I didn’t want to go scuba diving even if my sister went for certification. Another reason was the bends. There are only two decompression chambers here in the Philippines as far as I know. One is in Subic and the other is in Cebu. If I would need decompression in Anilao, I would be dead.

I did not finish this video of a reckless Russian-Israeli diver who attempted to go under the arch at the Blue Hole off the coast of Egypt, in the Red Sea. It was horrifying.

https://youtu.be/YhPdB5fxKA0

He was not a technical diver, he was ill-equipped because he was carrying one ordinary tank of breathing gas, plus his gear was too heavy for the compression that he experienced at great depths, which prevented him to ascend. Add to his confusion is his apparent nitrogen narcosis.

Being out in the deep blue sea can disorient you; you don’t know which way is up or down. I felt that when we were in Balicasag in Bohol when I attempted to dive away from the seawall and be suspended in the big blue open sea. It was surreal. It would be more terrifying if you were like 30 m deeper, when the light is already faint.

I was scared for J at that time as he kept on diving along the seawall, deeper and deeper. When he did that, I just hovered above so I can easily pull him up if gets caught in an undercurrent along the seawall or if he blacks out. One of the dangers of freediving, aside from running out of breath, is blacking out from the quick ascent from the deep or when surfacing. Many professional freedivers have died of it.

That’s why I wanted to be certified as a freediver so I would be properly trained in ascents and breathing. I would also know what are the other protocols, such as having a knife with me on my weight belt so I can free myself from entanglement or from predators.

However, after reading the stories of cave divers and underwater sinkholes…

Balicasag island, Bohol. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Rut

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woman in white shirt showing frustration
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I’m in a writer’s rut. I can’t bring myself to write this week and I have one analysis piece that I need to publish before the month ends (like tomorrow!!!) and another feature that is awaited by my interviewees. Productivity is half although my editing is still sharp; it’s just that I can’t write.

I need to get out tomorrow or else I will suffer from writer’s block. I will just sleep this off again. I need to be in a coffee shop for a change of scenery. Bo’s Coffee near my house probably and then I can transfer to Starbucks on the other side of the village much later.

I was like this in 2014 then after my gall bladder surgery, I resigned and signed on with my current company.

I can’t seem to put my finger in it why I’m having these productivity meltdowns more often. The seven-year-itch probably? Or lockdown burnout? I don’t know but I gotta cure this fast.

Vegetarian. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I don’t think I’ve had pork for more than a week now. I’ve been going vegetarian most days and like this one, I’ve had string beans in coconut milk and a fancy egg drop soup with leeks for dinner. I need to have more calorie-deficit days to make up for the food I consumed in my mom’s house when she ordered a lot of stuff to celebrate my birthday last Sunday.

Meanwhile, a few minutes ago my househelp asked me about Dekada ’70 (The ’70s), a novel by Lualhati Bautista. I told her it’s a fictional story of the Bartolome family set against a real historical backdrop–during Martial Law. I told her do not watch the movie, it’s better to read the book because the movie was watered down. She said she tried looking for it at National Bookstore because it’s an assigned reading for her Philippine Literature class. Right there and then, I bought the book off Shopee and within minutes I told her the vendor should be sending the pocketbook by Saturday.

I was delighted that her teacher is progressive enough to make her students read this.

I read this in high school and I think I wrote a paper about it for my Filipino class. It was one of the biggest eye-openers for me and since then I started researching about what really happened in those times. I read more books about it since it was a dark time for Philippine journalism as well. Of course, Martial Law was pivotal for my family too because this has shaped the politics of my parents. My mom was a member of Kabataang Makabayan (a student activist organization) whose members were imprisoned, tortured, and killed during that time. My father’s activism came in later but until his dying day, he was still affiliated with the reformist leftist groups (the breakaway from the the Maoist group of Jose Maria Sison).

We also did the Martial Law project for my former TV network and I was supposed to interview then Bangko Sentral Deputy Governor Diwa Gunigundo for this project but some personal matters took over and the interview did not push through. I hope I can do it soon for a special project. Anyway, Gov Diwa was imprisoned during Martial law when he was the editor-in-chief of The Philippine Collegian–the student paper of the University of the Philippines Diliman that openly criticized Ferdinand Marcos when nobody in mainstream media dared. My mom said even non-UP people were grabbing copies of Kule (Philippine Collegian’s nickname) when Diwa was EIC because “it was the only one publishing the truth at that time; everything published by others was propaganda and lies.” When Diwa and I once chatted, I told him he probably knew my uncle, my father’s cousin, Nick Atienza, who was also imprisoned at that same time at Fort Bonifacio (which is ironically the posh BGC now) and was the secretary-general of Kabataang Makabayan at that time. Diwa was shocked. He shook his head. “Nick was just three cells from me. I could hear them (military) torturing him every night, bashing his head like a troso (lumber) against his cell wall. It’s a miracle that he lived through that. Nick suffered the most horrible torture ever known among the Martial Law detainees who had lived,” Diwa said.

Nick Atienza had trouble walking for the rest of his life because of the shrapnel still embedded in his legs. My parents recommended to him my father’s orthopedic surgeon to help him with his problems. When my dad’s doctor learned who Nick was and how he obtained his injuries, he waived his professional fees. Since Nick was also a faculty member at UP, he probably had other fees discounted as well because he was treated at UP-PGH.

So I had a teacher for my Social Science 2 (Great Political Theories) in college who proclaimed that it’s not true that Ferdinand Marcos committed the crimes that people had thrown at him and there were no human rights violations during that time. I barked at my teacher and told her, “So what can you say about an uncle of mine who was tortured at Fort Bonifacio?” I always had heated debates with this teacher who always cited The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, justifying Marcos’ actions during his 21-year rule (“the end justifies the means”). She failed me because she was just too annoyed that I challenged her lies. When she did that to me, I went straight to the department chairman and complained. Instead of taking the removal exams, because I didn’t want to deal with her anymore, I took again that class under a different teacher. That cost me my cum laude. I was running for honors then.

I was expecting my parents to berate me for failing. But my father said: It’s better to fail than to accept lies being fed to you. It’s better to stand up for what you believe what is right.

And this has been my guiding principle ever since.

Smitten

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The Yamaha P-125 is on sale at Yupangco.

I should be saving money for my future tiny house but I really, really want to buy that piano. I have to sell my Roland E-09 first but I don’t know how without too much work on my side. I don’t know how I will be able to sell it before the sale ends.

I can pay cash for it now but that would be reckless with Christmas coming up and stuff. The question is, do I really need it? No. But I really want it. For two years. I just didn’t want to indulge my wants before because there were more important things to spend on the last three years and I needed to be more practical.

Music is one of my passions. I wonder how long can I hold off buying this thing. I need to buy a new microwave oven because my old Whirlpool (which I think is already 10 years old) already conked out.

I’m so tempted to drive over there tomorrow and test the piano.

I received today a Tumindig shirt birthday gift from a friend.

For the uninitiated, the Tumindig shirt/movement/logo started as a protest symbol against Duterte. You know how he and his minions love to do fist bumps as his signature stance (which is really cheesy, by the way, but the masses love it). So the fist bump stood up (tumindig/tindig), an act of defiance or a symbol of people waking up. This character was created by a comic illustrator that goes by the monicker/nom de plume Tarantadong Kalbo (“bald dumbass”) and people had been customizing this tumindig symbol by dressing it up according to the occupation/personality of who wants to adopt it to indicate his/her defiance vs Duterte.

When we still had a printing shop, I had a shirt made with national hero Jose Rizal (who was executed by the Spaniards for his subversive novels) muffled to protest the passage of the Cyber libel law (they wanted us to become the next Singapore with no freedom of speech). I wore it to a business conference at Manila Peninsula, which almost cost me my entrance to the event because I didn’t look like a business reporter. Good thing the person manning the registration knew me that I was a regular at their business conferences.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I have a long history of wearing protest clothes and my friends know this.

I’m slowly adding Christmas decor because I want to end my dreary year with some cheer. I took one Christmas lantern from my mom’s house (and she has a lot) and this one is so bright that I no longer need to buy more solar-powered lanterns so we can hang outside.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I could order patio furniture from Ikea but what will I do with them after we move? We already have patio furniture in our future tiny home. Let me weigh the options…But I’d like to grill and eat outside with the girls and I promised some friends we can grill some steak and fish and have drinks before Christmas break. Since my friend K will likely stay in the city again for Christmas (K’s entire family is in the US), I think we should have another get-together with our friends, if they can brave the traffic going to QC.

Hmm…stuff in Ofix are cheaper…

Girl power

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Duterte and his administration are really afraid of women. For all his misogynistic attitude towards women, deep down he is really scared of us. Look at those who rose up against him: VP Leni Robredo, Sen. Leila de Lima (jailed), Hidilyn Diaz (harassed by government), and Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

He loves to harass and belittle female journalists. It is a scary time to be a journalist in this country. We had been a hotspot for journalist killings for years now (we were the most dangerous place for a journalist next to Iraq for quite some time now) but it has heightened during the reign of Duterte. I am glad I no longer have to report national news and suffer through his Q&A, press conferences with Harry Roque, or even monitor Duterte’s late night ramblings.

“Many Philippine presidents have attacked the press, but only Rodrigo Duterte, of all the presidents, have publicly subscribed to the idea that journalists are fair game for murder,” Varona says.

Attacks and harassment: Women journalists in the Philippines on the cost of truth-telling

Because of the dangers we are facing with Duterte’s rise to power, some veterans in the industry like Howie Severino, Glenda Gloria, and Sheila Coronel, called us to a meeting in a secluded restaurant in Quezon City just to talk about forming a guild so that we can protect ourselves and fight back. Sadly, nothing happened after that initial meeting because we were just too damn busy trying to survive our day-to-day work of churning out stories. This was the week I got brutally attacked by government-backed online trolls that even harassed my office in Hong Kong.

I had issues with Maria Ressa and I won’t list them down here and those who had been in the industry long enough know what those are. But I admire her grit and determination to fight this tyrant single-handedly. I had marched alongside them wearing black when they had the march for press freedom in UP.

Since day one of becoming a journalist–since I co-wrote that series on juvenile justice–I knew that every time I publish a story, I have one foot on my grave. I had been threatened with lawsuits before and I had been scared but I pushed on. Being a journalist during the time of Duterte, even if you are not covering him, is a doubly dangerous job. I was told that a powerful government official does not like me because I am vocal about my anti-Duterte stance. And he scolded me and lost his cool on national TV when I was hosting a forum where he was a guest. I was asking a fair question that everyone needed to ask. It was scary but I had to keep my composure. I was told he and other officials boycotted the forum the following year because of me.

I had friends in Reuters publicly lynched by the mob, having their IDs, photos and personal information posted on the Internet, with trolls encouraging the public to inflict physical harm on them and their families. (Upon investigation by some of my other journo friends, my Reuters friends’ personal information was leaked from their records with the National Bureau of Investigation–information that they got whenever we needed clearance to apply for visas or passports). In a country where life is very cheap (you can have somebody killed for only PHP 5,000), those are not empty threats. Their employer had to take them and their families to safehouses until the storm died down. I was so distraught that time that I had to take a break from the Philippines and went to a place where no one spoke English–Taiwan–and took a breather to collect myself for a week. I just didn’t want news from the Philippines and I just had to be away immediately.

But Maria Ressa had to endure conviction, harassment, bankruptcy, and daily mental torture and yet she plodded on. She had to wear bullet-proof vests whenever she goes out. Because it’s no secret Duterte wants her dead.

This administration has demonized us. It’s in every dictator’s playbook–demonize every journalist and create your own propaganda machine and feed your shit to the public that has lost trust on the media. Now you all have this revisionism going on and conspiracy theories that make the maleducated poor believe the lies.

Journalists in South America face drug cartels and the corrupt government officials in cahoots with them, we in Southeast Asia battle despots like Duterte and the Marcoses. Journalists in Russia, China (in HK, that is), and the Philippines face the same thing.

My daughter expressed her interest in becoming a journalist. I told her, anak, you can become whatever you want but I hope you don’t follow my footsteps. You will be penniless and you will get killed.

Mockery

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Duterte’s camp is really making a mockery of the electoral process. They fielded a clown to run for president alongside another clown, Bong Go, as vice president. Because you know what they will do? The last minute, they will do a substitution, with Sara Duterte running as president with her demon of a father as VP. They will make so much drama out of it, and the script would be like “people are clamoring for us to run so we will be making the ultimate sacrifice so we will, for the country.” And all of the DDS would be all applause.

OR

At the last moment, they will make a substitution, Sara Duterte will run alongside Bong-bong Marcos as his VP. If her ego can take it.

They have done it in 2016, they will do it again.

God save our country from idiots.

It has been two months since I last been in UP campus to buy vegetables and milktea for my kids.

In front of Bahay ng Alumni, UP Diliman. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Prices have gone up. I could feel the rising inflation month-on-month and the problem is this is a supply-side issue that cannot be addressed by monetary policy alone. It is structural that requires some fixes in the real economy.

Anyway, after the veggies and the milktea, I went to Sarang Mart because I am running out of shampoo. Even before J came, I had been buying shampoos and side dishes in that Korean grocery store. I had been using either Korean on Japanese shampoos (Japanese Lux or Shisheido) for several years now even if they’re more expensive initially but they do last a long time. I remember in my last trip to Japan, I lugged several shampoo bottles of Lux back home because it was way cheaper compared to anything I saw in Singapore and even in HK. Then I found Lux in SM, which was much more expensive than the Korean Kerastase sold in Sarang Mart but a lot cheaper than Lux in Singapore (which I often bring back home whenever I have to report for work there).

So I had to replenish my stock. Bought Korean curry (which my girls liked), dried seaweed, dried kelp (which I use as kombu in some Japanese dishes), beef strips for hotpot, mandu, side dishes, furikake, ramyun, and I no longer remember what else i chucked in my basket.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Photo by CallMeCreation.com

When I was going back to my car, I lost my balance, sprained my ankle, grazed my foot on the pavement (was wearing slippers), and fell flat on my back. I didn’t realize that I was that exhausted with my short trip to buy foodstuff.

I am NOT yet ok. I’m still sick with Covid symptoms, mainly fatigue, even though I am no longer infectious and I can function somewhat normally. I still easily get tired and right now my head is aching. I woke up this morning coughing and wondered whether this was still Covid or allergy.

I think I will be sleeping my weekend away.

Pink

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#LabanLeni. Art by Karl Michael Domingo via Instagram

Today all my social media accounts turned pink as people, friends and strangers alike, have indicated their support for VP Leni Robredo‘s bid for the presidency. She made her announcement today at 11 am and filed her candidacy documents at 3 pm.

She’s smart; she didn’t adopt the yellow color of the Liberal Party and the color associated with the Aquinos. The color dilaw that the DDS destroyed by equating yellow with something very negative. By adopting an off-tangent color, Leni is showing that she is her own person, not riding on the legacy of the Aquinos and not alienating other people who have anything against the Aquinos. And those who have shifted allegiances from being DDS to opposition.

Even Sandara Park, who grew up here and became super popular here first as a pop idol before going back home to Korea to be part of the girl band 2N1, has posted an irrelevant throwback photo that only Filipinos will understand. She still considers Philippines home. She was nicknamed Krung-krung here because her popularity made people go crazy (“krung-krung”) and she still calls herself that. Look at her Twitter handle.

Artists, musicians, actors and other on- and offline influencers have also shown their support.

Leni does not have the money like the Marcoses. The Dutertes have amassed quite a sizeable amount from their decades of reign in Davao and the five years they have ruled the country. But Leni has the grassroots support. People all over Twitter have been asking for details where they can donate for Leni’s campaign–and I have never heard of such movement like this my entire adult life (i.e. voting age). And this is the only time I will donate to anybody’s political campaign. Ever.

Duterte had been shooting Leni down since Day 1 and Congress had granted her office the smallest budget there is among government agencies but she made it work. During the pandemic, she knew what to do. Her office was the only one that provided free testing for the masses and facilities for healthcare workers. PPEs and equipment to government facilities. She made medical care available to the poor. If those who availed of the free testing turned out to be positive, they received healthcare packs for Covid home care and some relief goods if the patient is the breadwinner. The Office of the Vice President (OVP) will also assist those who needed to get hospital slots and oxygen tanks. These were made possible by donations by private individuals and corporates who do not trust other government agencies.

She tapped into the private sector partnerships for the vaccination of workers like Grab, Angkas, and other third-party logistics providers. This is just during the pandemic. Years prior, the OVP had a lot of programs like natural disaster quick response. The Duterte administration was so slow in deploying help to victims of calamities, so the OVP is the first to be there, like in Cagayan and Isabella during last year’s typhoons that flattened Northern Luzon. She has her shit together.

The OVP was the only one or one of the very few that had star rating from the state auditor.

She is an economics graduate from UP and a lawyer but she used her knowledge to be the lawyer for the poor and human rights. When her husband was the Interior and Local Government Secretary, she just worked on the sidelines with her cause-oriented groups. I had interviewed her husband before and he’s a very kind, hardworking, and trustworthy public servant. When I covered the plane crash that killed Jesse Robredo in 2012, it was one of the most heartbreaking coverage that I did. There was a dark cloud hovering over our newsroom at that time. His body was found 800 meters from the shore when his light plane crashed off the coast of Masbate island.

I need to fix my voter’s registration. I think I had been delisted because I wasn’t able to cast my vote in 2019 and 2016.