Category: ninoy

SONAkakadismaya

aint enough to expose gma’s overspending and then to tell us how he’s going to streamline the system so public funds aren’t wasted or lost to corruption.   aint enough to expose how much money goes into perks for lowly-paid high-government official appointees just to shame them into resigning.  aint enough to run after smugglers and tax evaders.

not all the anti-corruption campaigns and the most judicious kind of public spending are going to make much difference, whether in the short run or the long term.   there still won’t be enough money to address the food, education, health needs of the masses if nothing is done about our increasing population, growing by leaps and bounds, and about our economic policies that are tailored more to foreign interests than national interests.   and what about our debt & payment policies, are we never going to renegotiate?   are we forever prioritizing debt payments over the the well-being of millions of disenfranchised and marginalized filipinos?

prof. clarita carlos (gma7) is right. it’s not enough to choose a straight road over a crooked one.   question is, where does the road lead?   if his message to the cpp-npa-ndf is any indication it”s like the same road every president before him has taken: rightist road, status quo.   uncle sam must so love him.

Tungkol naman po sa CPP-NPA-NDF: handa na ba kayong maglaan ng kongkretong mungkahi, sa halip na pawang batikos lamang?

batikos lang ba ang call for agrarian reform?   and better pay for teachers?   fair trade vs. free trade?   an end to oligarchic rule?

Mahirap magsimula ang usapan habang mayroon pang amoy ng pulbura sa hangin. Nananawagan ako: huwag po natin hayaang masayang ang napakagandang pagkakataong ito upang magtipon sa ilalim ng iisang adhikain.

pulbura issues from the right too, as in the hacienda luisita massacre atbp.

Kapayapaan at katahimikan po ang pundasyon ng kaunlaran. Habang nagpapatuloy ang barilan, patuloy din ang pagkakagapos natin sa kahirapan.

it’s not as if the left rose out of nothing, and then there was kahirapan.   the kahirapan was there to begin with, thanks to oligarchic rule, kaya nga dumami at lumakas ang hanay ng kaliwa.

Dapat din po nating mabatid: ito ay panahon ng sakripisyo. At ang sakripisyong ito ay magiging puhunan para sa ating kinabukasan. Kaakibat ng ating mga karapatan at kalayaan ay ang tungkulin natin sa kapwa at sa bayan.

sakripisyo nino?   ng mahihirap pa rin?   puro sakripisyo na nga sila.   those are words better addressed to his own class, his fellow elites and landowners atbp. who refuse to share the nation’s resources.

say ni teddyboy (anc) re the speech and the new prez:

“it was an indictment. When he was talking, it was Ninoy Aquino. I was with Ninoy when he was at his most flamboyant. It was like bullets flying out of a machine gun…There was no vision, but facts.”

sorry, i don’t see the resemblance.   ninoy before martial law was hot.   noynoy is cold.   at his wisest, after seven years seven months in jail, ninoy had a vision for the country that included the left, whom he never brushed off as a “noisy minority.”   a pity that the son either seems to have no idea of it or the son chooses to ignore it.   SONAkakapanghinayang.

not yet, noynoy

huwag ka sanang magpadala kay conrado de quiros o kay alex magno o kay bongbong marcos (strange bedfellows, eh?) na hinahamon kang tumakbo for president sa 2010, na para bang if you dont seize the day ay tipong you will miss the bus altogether.

i so disagree.   while it is true that you could win because of the ninoy-cory-kris connection, are you really ready?   the nation would expect great things of you.   the nation would expect you to be a president extraordinaire who would at the very least bring about a palpable improvement in the lives of millions of filipinos looking for jobs here at home and food on the table three times a day.   that won’t happen just because you aren’t a liar, a cheat, or a thief.

i agree with tony abaya, what we need is a forward-looking president, a truly revolutionary president, someone with the attributes and visions of lee kwan yew, mahathir mohamad and gen. park chung hee.

… it is someone who has the qualities of these three foreign leaders that the Philippines badly needs in order to overcome decades of consistently poor governance, restore our badly battered self esteem, and draw for us a credible vision of what we want our country to be.

We need someone like Lee Kwan Yew who was/is personally incorruptible and at the same time was/is so conversant with economics and international relations that he could speak ex-tempore and defend his policies before an assembly of multinational CEOs and diplomats and made/make solid sense, whether they agreed/agree with him or not.

In addition we need the strong sense of nationalism of Mahathir Mohamad who in the 1980s drew a vision – Malaysia Vision 2020, that sought and seeks to transform Malaysia into a fully industrialized country by the year 2020 – that he was able to convince the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious people of Malaysia to embrace as worthy of their national loyalty, beyond the narrow appeals of their tribes and ethnic groups. No mean feat, considering the catastrophic demise of equally multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious federal Yugoslavia in the 1990s that cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Mahathir’s nationalism also expressed itself in his readiness to fearlessly fire back at other countries, other world leaders, as well as international agencies whenever he felt they were trampling on the national self-interests of Malaysia.

We also need the single-minded determination of Gen. Park Chung Hee to transform his impoverished, resource-poor and inconsequential Republic of Korea from 1961 to 1979 (when he was assassinated) into a fully industrialized country that is now one of the ten biggest economies in the world.

… this is what the Philippines needs, a leader who can start and lead a revolution, a peaceful one, as much as possible; a violent one, if necessary.

you could be that leader, noynoy.   given your parents, the history, the genes, the values, you, more than any other filipino, can do it, can be it.    but not without serious preparation for the role, which would mean learning not just from your mother’s successes but also from her mistakes — e.g., land reform, foreign debts, atbp. — and, most importantly, by being truly your father’s son not just in terms of his sacrifice but also of his political ideology.

when your father came home in ‘83 he had a program of action that he drafted while in exile in boston.   surely that program of action is worth looking into — other  than the dismantling of military rule, things haven’t changed much, except gotten worse, since the  80s — and hopefully, you will be up to the revolutionary challenges it poses.

forget de quiros and other hopeless romantics who urge you to run in 2010.   to do so, and to fail at non-violent revolution because you are not ready, would be the end of you.    in effect, you’d be neutralized, which would be a shame.

THE UNNAMED ENEMY

Satur Sulit

August 21, 2007

twenty-four years

since the gundown

a coward’s doing

begets a hero.

we imagine a hero

against all odds

facing a dreaded enemy

and dying or prevailing

in the instance.

but there on the tarmac

that sunday noon

the enemy was invisible

is unnamed even now

the one who could not face him

who wanted him dead.

ninoy knew it

knew his enemies that way

he said if they wanted to

it wouldn’t take long

twenty seconds max

and it was.

he went to a not unscheduled death

not to slay but to expose

the heart of his enemy.

ninoy did not rush into battle

he knelt to his death

to free us

and freed us

from an enemy

unnamed even now.

people power, rain or shine

it was a memorable day that we all got to share, thanks to the marvel of television.   the cathedral rites were beautiful, fr. arevalo’s eulogy sublime, and the military honors stately and dignified.   the family continued to amaze and warm the heart,sharing their mom, sharing their grief, never mind that it meant being exposed to the cruel glare of lights and cameras and nosy, sometimes uncouth, media.   thank you, ballsy, pinky, noynoy, viel, and kris!

but the best was yet to come.   and it happened out in the streets, the people’s turf, where yellow crowds gathered in great numbers, lining the streets or marching with the casket, flashing the Laban sign and chanting “Co-ry! Co-ry! Co-ry!”   it reminded me so much of the snap election campaign, when nakarating kami ng mga magulang ko hanggang lucena, quezon para lang maki-rally kay cory.

there was a brief moment when i asked myself, where were all these people, where were we, when cory was leading street protests asking gloria to resign post-garci and later in support of jun lozada?   why were we not there for cory then?   but now i see that it doesn’t really matter anymore.   what matters is that we have rediscovered cory & ninoy and what they stood for.   and i have no doubt that when the time is right, People Power will rise again, rain or shine.