digging digong

this is my 3rd attempt since his monday presscon to finish a post on president-elect duterte.  i keep getting overtaken by events – the thursday presscon was a zinger, too, and so was the friday decision to stop with the presscons for the nonce, and what about that saturday night thanksgiving speech, oh my gods.

it’s been a week and on facebook ay nanggagalaiti pa rin ang journalist circles over duterte seeming to make excuses for the journalist killings instead of saying … umm, whatever they wanted him to say, i guess, like something pnoy would say, or gma, in their politically correct ways and words that signify nothing really, because the killings went on anyway under their watch.

in a facebook message exchange with jojo abinales, the professor in hawaii who hails from mindanao, he brought up digong’s statements re journalists and thinks that maybe the prez-elect was actually referring more to broadcast journalists, not the writers.

Sa probinsya they are the pundits. So no wonder he cited Jun Pala who was a broadcaster who threatened people, could easily be paid. Kasi I doubt if he reads the newspapers or even Interaksyon or Rappler. But he listens to talk radio like all Chico de Calle … You may have to listen to talk radio for a while. The Tulfo types. Now put that in a Davao context. … Have you listened to his TV show Mula sa masa Tungo sa masa? Some of it is in YouTube. It is hilarious. I think he believes the journalists are like his interviewer in that show. One question lang and he then rants and raves.

yes, that weekly tv show worked for davao, the mayor sharing the latest, speaking his truth, from long immersion in politics, taking the time to explain, even if not in a linear or logical manner because he likes to suddenly backtrack for some history or go sideways for some synchronicity or flash forward for some prophetic promise, and then he’s back to the present, or not.  it works for me, too.  i am loving this exposure, finally, to the mindanao state of mind and to bisaya / dabawenyo the language and culture.

meanwhile, pinag-uusapan pa rin, the alleged pambabastos ni duterte sa isang lady reporter nang  kanya itong sinipulan sa monday presscon.  digong defended the whistling on thursday: “whistling is not a sexual thing,” sabi niya.   actually it is.  that kind of whistle at a woman springs from human sexuality, the male-female dynamic that keeps humanity multiplying, although i would concede, nay, insist, that whistling is the least offensive of sexual signals, and can even be pleasing to the target.  ask any man, woman, lgbt who has been whistled at in a friendly setting.  in my youth it was taken as a compliment, with good humor, because there is no real threat, with apologies to the feminists, lol.  mas problema talaga ang reaction ng asawa o boyfriend o tatay o bro, who tend to go macho and patriarchal and  get offended for their woman and feel the need to speak up to defend her honor.  but was her honor sullied at all?  i don’t think so.  to her credit, she handled it all rather well, cool na cool nga.  but yeah, maybe it’s just me and my sexually liberated (kuno) aging hippie self, haha.

i didn’t vote for duterte but i certainly respect the incontrovertible win of this rogue mayor from mindanao who dares challenge the church and the oligarchs and the drug lords that have long ruled our lives (and  look where we are now).  so his putanginas don’t bother me – kagalit-galit naman talaga ang sitwasyon.  no filter, no holds barred, no hypocrisy, is good, even if it takes getting used to.  ang nakaka-tense, yung death threats, but then again drug lords do deserve death for dealing deadly drugs.

media peeps just have to be better prepared to ask follow-ups immediately, right then and there, for the sanity of us all, instead of being rendered speechless by the unexpected from digong and then raising a howl later, like losers.  and yes to a communications team that would, for starters, go on damage-control mode right after a presscon, answering questions, explaining contexts, whatever, until media peeps get the hang, beyond soundbites, of the new prez, or until digong metamorphoses, as he threatens, into a different version of himself once he is president.  or maybe he was joking?  abangan.

COMELEC, coincidences, crossroads

COMELEC wants us to believe it was pure coincidence that smartmatic’s marlon garcia tweaked some code (to change ? to ñ) just when bongbong marcos’s 1 million-vote lead started to dwindle and leni robredo started catching up, allegedly in smooth flows, that now sees robredo ahead by 200k or so and claiming victory.

pure coincidence daw.  nagkataon lang.  walang koneksyon.  i’m sorry but in occult thought all coincidences are significant.  sharing here some of my essay Falling chandeliers and other omens that inquirer published back in 1998 soon after erap’s inauguration when he first stepped into the palace for his first cabinet meeting.

Filipinos are a superstitious people. We see meaningful relationships between apparently unconnected events that happen to occur at the same time or in close sequence: the number 13 and the Estrada presidency, the chandelier and the inaugural, the chandelier and the number 13. It comes from an intuitive grasp of Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity which, going beyond science (cause-and-effect), “takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance” and which is the very principle underlying the use of the I Ching and astrology (among other occult arts) in making sense of “the essential situation prevailing” for any one person or group at any moment in time.

This is why we continue to be disturbed by the story of a Palace chandelier crashing to the floor just a few seconds after President Estrada passed beneath it. The President had just taken his oath that noon in Barasoain. He had just arrived in Malacañang that afternoon and was on his way to swear in the new Cabinet officials when the chandelier crashed. Happening as it did in the first few hours of the new administration, it changed the quality and temper not just of the rest of the day – hitherto happy and hopeful – but of the rest of the presidential term.

Clearly, a warning. If it were not an attempt on the President’s life, then a warning of danger, of sinister human forces at play. If an accident, then of forces less menacing but quite as startling and disturbing. The message is, expect the unexpected, a pattern has been set.

the rest is history.  we all know what happened to the erap presidency.  which is to say that COMELEC ignores allegations of electronic cheating at its own, and the nation’s, peril. COMELEC asks too much of the citizenry when its officers ask us to take their word for it, when they ask for our trust, a trust they still have to earn.

i know a recount, or re-feed, or an audit — whatever it will take to give us the true count of votes cast for president, vice-president, and senators — will take time, and i’ve been expecting COMELEC to play the no-more-time card.  but the president will be proclaimed in time, no doubt, and we just have to make sure nothing happens to him, and maybe stop stressing him out, lol, until we have a vice-president.

but seriously.  this is too important to sweep under the proverbial rug yet again.  i hope leni wins, but fairly and squarely please.  if bongbong has the numbers pala, well, it’s our failure, not his.

meanwhile, the Left is at a crossroads, too.  that was a stroke of genius indeed on the part of the incoming prez.  in-out na lang basta ang mga komunista, lol.  and the challenge is to level up, guys, show us your stuff, or forever hold your peace.

cut PNoy some slack, and digong, too

i don’t know what the Left is up to, but between jose maria sison all the way from europe and satur ocampo here at home along with the makabayan bloc in congress, they sure are making a lot of noise, making kulit the presumptive prez about charging and arresting the incumbent prez (and his dbm sec) for plunder once the latter steps down.

come on, guys, cut PNoy some slack.  why can’t it wait?   it’s just another month and a half.  let’s give him the space to exit with some dignity naman.  talo na nga ang manok niya, konting simpatiya naman.  surely you know how that feels.

and take it easy with presumptive prez digong, too.  all this whining about digong’s “neoliberal” 8-point economic program is premature.  right now the duterte camp’s priority, i would think, is to calm the market.  which is good.  so give him, and nation, a break naman please.

unless, of course, the idea is simply to agitate, strike everywhere na lang, never mind that, given the disgraceful antics of COMELEC and smartmatic, there’s enough agitation already over the counting of votes, not to speak of bongbong marcos’s strong showing.  i can’t believe nga that you guys don’t seem to care how many votes your candidates truly got, kahit pa talo na.

or is all the noise in aid of distracting us from the fact that you guys lost this one yet again and risa didn’t.  but isn’t that balanced out by joma sison’s direct line to duterte?  naguguluhan tuloy kami.  lousy PR, guys.

you had it coming, this from duterte spokesman peter tiu laviña, no less, who i am told knows whereof he speaks, especially with regard to the extreme Left.  his statement in full, publicly shared on facebook 12 hours ago:

A mistake not corrected becomes an error. A mistake may not be intentional, but to commit the same could be fatal. Leftist groups have rejected the hands of friendship and cooperation by the incoming Duterte administration by mouthing their usual criticism of others but not undertaking their own criticism, self-criticism.

They made a patented error in reading the national situation and made a grave one in pulsing the mood of our people. They did it in 1985 and did it again in the 2016 election. They boycotted the election in 1986 and went with another candidate 30 years later. For groups that claim that they are patriotic, nationalist and anti-imperialist, many were aghast in their decision to go with someone who abandoned our country and once pledged allegiance to the US.

At least their units in Mindanao which were more grounded did not go with the selfish, myopic and opportunist posturing of its national higher organs. In their desire to push one of their national officials to be senator, they rush to a hasty decision rejecting calls to wait for the maturing of the political situation before deciding. Having done these mistakes, they want to continue with their old ways of critiquing, critiquing, critiquing. I am truly sorry for these leftist groups which will be left out in the march of history with their dogma and belligerent styles and methods of work. They need to right their wrongs and stop becoming roadblocks to genuine change. They should bring down their utopian dreams closer to reality. Sustained gains even little by little here and there to advance the cause of the masses are better than none at all. To perpetuate the sufferings of the masses is treasonous, a betrayal to serve them.

Their ways of pressuring others with the barrel of the gun and noise by the minority are now passe.

Here is an unsolicited advice to them – dialogue with the incoming government instead of mounting black propaganda to be heard. And listen to your units in Mindanao. Otherwise, you will be proving to be yet another bunch of trapos.

Elections over but not the count

Teddy Locsin, Jr.

… It is said that any irregularities or peculiarities in the conduct or count of the automated election, must be substantiated by those who point them out. Only idiots say that. The only duty of voters is to point out seeming irregularities—and immediately the onus shifts to the COMELEC to explain them away—but never, never, never to brush them off. It is possible that after trying in vain to eliminate the tremendous lead of Duterte, by knocking out VCMS in parts of Mindanao, Visayas, Luzon, and all of Metro Manila including Quezon City, the cheaters gave up. They turned their attention to lesser positions like the VP and the Senate, Congress and local officials. But if we leave it at that, then basically we should hold incontestably honest elections only for the president and let him appoint all the rest. That would be cheaper.

No, the burden is entirely on the COMELEC to answer each and every concern. No burden lies on the suspicious to substantiate their suspicions. But what about the presumption of innocence? Doesn’t that extend to the COMELEC? Sure, if you went to a lousy local law school. The presumption of innocence does not apply to institutions nor to anything or anybody else but an individual accused until he is found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt in a court of law after a fair trial.

What about the lesser presumption of governmental regularity? Again, if you went to the right law school that does not mean that government acts are presumptively regular. It merely begs the question whether government acts are regular when the irregular is the new normal like now.

So by all means demand the answers to all objections, allay all fears, dispel all suspicions, and if need be recount the vice presidential election—and if you ask me the senatorial as well. Because a republic cannot long live with a fundamental mistrust of itself, with the self-consuming suspicion that people en banc are laughing behind their ample sleeves all the way to the bank.