The RH fund cut, savings, and DAP

Katrina S.S.

THE P1-billion cut in the Reproductive Health budget, specifically for Family Health and Responsible Parenting, was not in the least surprising. Because for all of government’s press releases about transparency and matuwid na daan, the budget and the decisions that are made about where and how to spend public money remain shrouded in secrecy. Just because documents are made available to us does not mean everything’s happening above ground. And when transparency means going through long lists of line-item budgeting and reams of paper, it’s easy to see how government can take every opportunity to slip one past us.

Read on…

baboo mondoñedo (1948-2015)

in the dying years of martial law jorge arago and i were working for environmentalist junie kalaw, writing and editing the journal Alternative Futures (1984-1986), when one day junie walked into the marietta apts. office with baboo and called us to a meeting.

no one introduced us, as though it was expected that we had already met.  of course i “knew” her, the way i “knew” other famous alta sociedad fashion models who graced the covers and pages of the women’s magazines in the sixties.  but we had never met, so at some point i introduced myself, and she smiled and nodded, “the famous one!”  wala akong nasabi, except, haha.

i was “famous” only as astrologer and only to a very small circle of malate artists, mostly male.  i wasn’t very popular with the girls — one who never asked for a reading said, bakit kailangan pa ng birthtime; another who asked for a reading said some days later, i was disappointed, you know, i think you’re overrated.  LOL.  so it was like baboo was teasing, giving me a sense that she had a measure of me, and i liked that.

next time we saw each other, she handed me a brown envelope containing her birthchart and that of ferdinand marcos.  i still have them, and no, she didn’t ask for a reading ever.  she just wanted me to have them, i guess, for my information.  that’s how i learned she was a fellow virgo (like marcos), and we were classmates in a crash course on junie’s environmental advocacy, and the new age paradigm of wholeness, and the interconnectedness of all things.

it was the year after ninoy’s assassination, baboo was already based in baguio and, with laida, had been venturing higher up the cordillera that was balweg country and finding common cause with indigenous communities dreaming autonomy in a future without marcos.

in september ’84, after attending a baguio conference on filipino spirituality, junie and i went up to sagada with baboo and laida, padma and tootsy, and met up with butch perez.  plans were made for a trek higher up the mountain, with subversive intentions of course.  an adventure i passed on though, as i was sure i couldn’t keep up with baboo and ladia who were so at home in such dizzying heights.  sagada was high enough for me.

at some point before we parted ways, they for the trek up, me and the kids back to baguio, baboo took me to a bar for a happy hour chat that turned out not too happy as we found ourselves talking about, and disconcerted by, a tangled web not of our making.  we lost touch after that.  i ran into her a few times — at a memorial mass, at a spirit of ’67 gig, at a wedding, at a PEN conference — but distance had set in.  no chika, no catching up, no picking up where we left off.

it was impossible though not to hear what she was up to — that she was writing a column for a baguio paper, and poetry, and later a book of essays, and also painting and exhibiting; and that she was one of the artists who put up cafe by the ruins; and when the baguio earthquake struck while she was in manila, that she lost no time finding a way back home, past landslides and all other obstacles, already thinking soup kitchens and the logistics of getting relief goods to her beloved baguio.  i thought it was kinda heroic, and so baboo.

in 2011, thanks to facebook, we were suddenly in touch again.  laida had given her a copy of my book Revolutionary Routes, and she couldn’t put it down, her mother was from quezon, too.  she liked it that my lola’s stories were also about food and its preparation from spanish times across the revolution to american times.  in 2013 when katrina and i were raising funds to independently publish a last book on EDSA, she sent a generous check, a vote of confidence that touched me to the bones.  after she had read the book she asked for a couple more, one inscribed for tootsy and senator sonny, the other for senator ed angara.

we didn’t get to pick up where we left off, but that’s okay.  life goes on.  last september, glossy mag Metro Society asked katrina to interview tootsy for a cover story on future first ladies (with shalani and heart).  i thought it was karmic: our daughters were meant to meet.  under their own steam.  nothing, or almost nothing, to do with their mothers.

it’s all good, baboo.  the web holds.

Rizal’s prophecies fulfilled

Oscar P. Lagman, Jr.

Tomorrow being Rizal Day, we honor Dr. Jose P. Rizal by reading and pondering his writings. As he wrote prolifically, we choose today to contemplate on what he wrote for La Solidaridad, the newspaper published by Filipinos studying in various universities of Europe, from September 1889 to February 1890. In that series of articles Rizal envisioned what the Philippines would be 100 years from then.

Of those who governed the country, he wrote: “If those who guide the destiny of the Philippines should, instead of granting the reforms that are demanded, continue to erode the state of the country, exacerbate the hardships and repressions of the suffering and thinking classes, they will succeed in making them risk a troubled life, full of privations and bitterness, for the hope of obtaining something uncertain.

“What would they lose in the struggle? Almost nothing. The life of the large discontented class offers no great attraction that it should be preferred to a glorious death. Poverty inspires adventurous ideas, stimulates a desire to change things, and diminishes regard for life.”

It seems Rizal had visions of Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship. Millions of discontented Filipinos, including those from the uppermost level of Philippine society, risk life, liberty, and fortune in February 1986 to put an end to the dictator’s rule in the hope of getting something though uncertain that something may be.

The consequence of Mr. Marcos’ suppression of the press seems to have also been predicted by Rizal. He wrote: “Is it preferable to govern in the dark or to govern with understanding? If the great Napoleon had not muzzled the press, perhaps it would have warned him of the danger into which he was falling and it might have made him understand that the people were tired and the land needed peace.” Mr. Marcos fell from power because he muzzled the press and thus failed to understand that the Filipino people were tired of a life of privation, submission, and oppression.

Rizal also foresaw the many coups d’etat staged against Marcos’ successor. Wrote he about insurrections: “All the minor insurrections that had broken out in the Philippines had been the work of a few fanatics and discontented military men who, in order to attain their ends, had to resort to deceit and trickery or take advantage of the loyalty of their subordinates. Thus, they all fell. None of the insurrections was popular in character nor based on the basic need of the people nor did it struggle for the laws of making of justice. Thus, the insurrection did not leave indelible memories in the people. On the contrary, the people realizing they had been deceived and their wounds healed, applauded the fall of those who disturbed their peace.”

He could have very well been describing the putsches led by then-Colonel and now Senator Gregorio “Gringo” B. Honasan II, the last one disturbing intensely the merry observance of Christmas of 1989.

While they cried for reforms in the Armed Forces, the leaders of the coups did not offer any specific program. They appeared to the people as just out to grab power. Interestingly, two leaders of military adventures are now running for vice-president. Both are at the bottom in the rankings of the voters’ preference for vice-president, outranked by a widow with much less experience in government.

Rizal also wrote: “We said, and we repeat it once more, and will always repeat it, all reforms of a palliative nature are not only ineffective but are even harmful when the Government is beset with ills that need radical remedy.” President Joseph E. Estrada did not even offer palliatives. He offered only himself. The squealing masa, who voted him into office, were contented, nay ecstatic, in just having him as president.

When the Philippine Daily Inquirer exposed not only his utter lack of awareness of the function of the presidency but also his nocturnal bacchanalian activity, and subsequently his plunder of the country’s coffers, the upper crust of Philippine society decided a radical remedy was needed. President Estrada met the same fate President Marcos did.

Our judiciary as has been described as the best judiciary money can buy. Judges and prosecutors for sale abound in our justice system. President Estrada, of all people, called the members of the judiciary as hoodlums in robes.

The incoming administration should heed the words of Rizal on Justice before another prophecy of Rizal is fulfilled. He said “Justice is the foremost virtue of civilized society. It subdues the most barbarous nations. Injustice arouses the weakest.”

Rizal also wrote that the Islands will probably adopt a federal republic. There is much dissension and resentment in many parts of the land towards Imperial Manila. Manila, the official seat of government, has too much control of the governance of the entire nation. The dissension and resentment have sporadically flared into violent armed conflicts.

Peace might descend upon this troubled land if the different regions, distinguished by ethnic origin, language, religion, culture, and natural resources, were allowed to conduct their own affairs and determine their own destiny as Rizal envisioned.

HOMELAND

Victor Penaranda

In the tropics whatever happens
Seems in excess of the expected:
The sun dazzles; the rain pours;
Typhoons visit the islands regularly,
So uncanny, we gave them names
So the most forceful and unsettling
Among them cannot be forgotten.

Our volcanic heritage is undeniable,
Restless or dormant beyond extinction;
Its awesome presence organic to the bone,
Electric in the manner we recognize
Or behold the morning or vein of lightning,
In the way we smile to defy gravity
Or what cannot be asserted in humidity.
The weather becomes unpredictable
As we grow older, as the earth trembles,
Tremors in our bodies silently, nervously,
As relationships fray nearly beyond repair,
Making us firm believers of uncertainty.
The fragile unity of the magical and practical
Compels us to school our children secretly
On the habits of chameleons and dragons,
To teach them to love like ocean without a shore
Until they find a familiar river in the dark night,
Learn how to swim upstream without a clear reason
And why they turn luminous on their way home.