screwed by manangs

read ricky carandang’s screwed and manuel buencamino’s “manangs” acquit a rapist.   my sentiments exactly.   what a huge setback for the women’s fight against sexist politics.   biglang we’re back to the dark ages when women were seen as sex objects incapable of saying no except when playing hard-to-get for extra favors.   biglang we’re back to the old biases and stereotypes, among them that girls who don’t behave with strict decorum, who dress to look ‘n feel good, who drink alcohol, dance dirty, flirt mightily in public, who just wanna have fun, are asking for rape.   wtf.   where are these women justices coming from?  opus dei?   catholic women’s league?  what books are they reading?   mills & boon?   barbara cartland?

read too rina jimenez-david who calls them “maiden aunts” and patricia evangelista who calls them “virtuous ladies”.   which set me wondering, teka, baka naman mga old maid nga ang “learned ladies” na ito of the court of appeals, and so maybe they don’t know any better about men and sex and rape, and quite possibly they’ve never been drunk in their lives?   so i googled them all, only to find that all three are wives and mothers, and maybe grandmothers, wow, good luck na lang sa karma.

both justice monina arevalo zenarosa and justice myrna dimaranan vidal were born in 1939.   zenarosa took up law in ust and feu, vidal in feu.  both are turning 70 and retiring this year.    hmm, formative years right smack during the japanese occupation and the liberation.   general douglas macarthur must be one of their icons.

justice remedios salazar fernando is a different story.   born in 1953, studied law in ateneo, so far she has been quite popular with post-EDSA administrations and has been having quite a rising career.

She was named Chairman of the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board in July 1987 where she concurrently held directorship posts at the Light Rail Transit Authority (LRTA)and the Office of Transport Cooperatives. In the latter part of 1991, she held the position of Officer-in-Charge/Assistant Secretary of the Land Transportation Office in a concurrent capacity.

In 1992, she was appointed Commissioner of the COMELEC. On May 21, 1999, she was appointed Associate Justice of the Court of Appeals, being one of the youngest to have been appointed to the position. She received several awards from both private and public sectors, such as Ten Outstanding Young Men given by the Jerry Roxas Foundation, Most Outstanding Capampangan, Woman of Distinction Award by the Soroptimist International, etc. When she retired from the COMELEC, she received an Award for Outstanding Service from the Senate of the Philippines.

i bet she has a moist eye on the supreme court.   i suppose this subic rape case decision is in aid of that?   how sad, specially for a baby boomer whose generation birthed the women’s movement for equal rights.

by the way, if you’re one of those who don’t feel competent to judge for themselves whether what smith did to nicole was rape or not because transcripts of the trial have not been released, so you’re willing to give the three  justices the benefit of the doubt, they must know what they’re talking about, you’re taking their word for it, smith is innocent, well you might want to make tambay sa subicrapecase website’s summary of  court proceedings.   it was rape.

smith walks free

anc breaking news around 5 p.m.: u.s. marine in subic rape case acquitted.

The Court of Appeals (CA) on Thursday acquitted US Marines Lance Corporal Daniel Smith of raping a Filipina in Subic back in 2005, and ordered released immediately.

The ruling was part of the 71-page decision penned by Justice Monina Zenarosa of the CA’s Special 11th Division.

wasn’t it just a couple of days ago when the supreme court was ordering the court of appeals to investigate in 90 days the leak of a draft decision acquitting smith, sabay order smith’s lawyer to explain in 10 days why nicole’s “recantation” was notarized at his lawfirm?

The Supreme Court has ordered the Court of Appeals to investigate the leak of a supposed draft decision reversing US Marine Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith’s conviction for the rape of a Filipino woman in 2005.

In a resolution, the Supreme Court First Division also ordered Smith’s lawyer, Jose Justiniano, to explain why the victim “Nicole’s” supposed recantation was notarized at the Sycip Salazar Hernandez and Gatmaitan law office, to which Justiniano belongs.

so the court of appeals no longer recognizes the authority of the supreme court?    so the court of appeals is now (as ever?) heeding a higher power?   a higher power na masyadong nagmamadali.   i wonder what the chief justice has to say to that.

and i wonder what the trade-off is for gloria.   gloria forever?   ngek.

ted in tears, ted in trouble

so why did the police behave so badly when they found out about ted failon’s wife trina?  i think because they were mad as hell that the shooting had not been immediately reported by the family or the hospital or their spies.  mahigit tatlong oras na ang nakalipas nang malaman nilang itinakbo ni ted sa ospital ang duguang si trina.  ibig sabihin, walang nag-tip sa pulis, they’re so out of the loop, ano ba yan.  siyempre, napahiya sila, and they took it out on ted and trina’s sibs and the househelp.

so why were the police so unbelieving that it was a suicide, preferring to treat everyone as a suspect?  because the crime scene had been tampered with by the time they were notified.  this is where ted has some explaining to do.  according to reports he was in the hospital for an hour or so and then he went home, i suppose, to be there for the young daughter karisma.  so had the househelp cleaned up na the bathroom by the time he got home?  or did he himself give instructions to clean up, to spare the daughter, thinking that since it was a suicide, no crime had been committed, the house was not a crime scene?

whatever actually happened, those were huge mistakes on ted’s part, not notifying the police immediately and not instructing the househelp to stay away from the bathroom (at the very least).  was it obstruction of justice?  it would seem so, but not for reasons of guilt, rather for the sake of the daughter, which should count for something.

for now i don’t believe ted killed his wife. but i can believe that trina took her own life.

i have a friend whose wife committed suicide a couple of years ago.  it was also over huge money problems that she wouldn’t share with her husband, she was supposed to know what she was doing. she also locked herself in the bathroom then slit her throat and stabbed herself several times in the chest.  it was also the husband who found her, and who removed the knife that was still buried in her chest so he became the prime suspect and was brought to court.

my friends and i were shocked and distressed.  knowing the husband as we did, we couldn’t believe he could have been so vile and violent. on the other hand, knowing his wife as we did, we couldn’t believe that the situation was so hopeless, or that she had no other way out but to die, and so violently.  in the end the forensic evidence of suicide was convincing; the court ruled that the wounds were self-inflicted, my friend was acquitted and finally allowed to grieve in peace and start over with the kids.

this trina etong case brings it all back. and only now do i see how much worse it could have been for my friend and his family had he or his wife been a public figure.  as neither was, the media were only mildly interested, and the police were  coldly professional had no axe to grind.  it helped too that my friend got himself very good lawyers.

rocking with da reyna

quite interesting how manolo’s mistake spun off debates on academic credentials & credibility in the comment threads of filipino voices.com and reynaelena.com,  and quite quite yummy how fv blogger benignO’s entry that manolo’s apology empowers “dimwits” added fuel to da reyna’s war on yet another fv blogger with homophobic ethics, yes the ilusyonado one who claims more than 8 million readers a day, lol.

naturally the conflict finds me siding with da reyna, having myself (hindi ako nag-iisa) been viciously attacked not too long ago by yet yet another fv blogger across three blogs — in fv, in his personal blog, and in mine — one irrational accusatory insulting diatribe after another, castigating me for abetting the abu sayyaf, condoning terrorism, giving away territory, even torture, moral turpitude, stinking words, apalling, disgusting, lack of humanity and womanity (!) at kung ano-ano pang kalait-lait daw about my person and my morals and my intellect, when nothing in my entry warranted it.   the same fv blogger now gleefully claiming that manolo’s apology is “full of sarcastic, if hidden wit” but the reyna just doesn’t get it, and in the next breath talking “standards of civility.” talaga naman, ano ba yan.

worse, not a peep from editor-not-chief nick, as though the utter lack of tolerance for any deviation from an arrogantly opinionated one’s opinion is all right.   as though it’s perfectly acceptable for fv to be used as a platform for sensationalist writing and irresponsible labelling.

The Ca_t is right:

…sa isang blog na ang titulo ay Filipino Voices at ang mga ipinagmamalaking manunulat ay sinasabing siyang tinig ng bayan, hindi kaya nararapat na kilatisin ng mga magbabasa kung sino ang mga taong ito?

At kung ang mga taong ito na tumatawag sa mga nagbabasa at nagkukumento stupido, hindi kaya dapat malaman kung sino sila at bakit may karapatan silang mang-insulto ng kapwa nila?

and da reyna, too:

Some writers and bloggers at Filipino Voices are guilty of being pa-intellectual. Feeling ba. Some are so uber-napoleonic with their own opinions, think and believe in all their ass that they’re the only one that is all knowing, high and mighty and what they say and write sway the nation. They believe that whatever they say would help create national policies and every one in the tralala-land gets their piece of opinion!

unfortunately, ito ang attitude ni nick-not-chief:

Ipersonally believe that the readers should be able to discern for themselves with regards to many issues..

…which is like washing his hands of any responsibility for anything.   e ano kung walang karapatan ang ilang taga-fv to speak for filipinos.    e ano kung walang karapatan kahit sino na mang-insulto o mambastos.   wtf.   is this the same nick who stood up and accused malu fernandez of stuff that some of his bloggers are now accused of?   ah, but nick is not the chief, there is no chief.

filipino voices could use a leader who would value the collective as a whole and not be intimidated by the noisy know-it-alls, never mind if their pasaway ways bring in traffic.    the kind of leader who at the very least would impose standards of honesty and civility.   otherwise fv is suspect as a source of credible information and rational opinion, because how can anyone tell that the good ones have not been infected by the bad ones?   all it takes is one rotten apple to spoil the barrel.   three or four speeds up the process.

this is also to say that i don’t agree with the conventional blogging wisdom that values more the freedom to say anything than the rightness, correctness, of what is said in the context of nation-building, especially for a collective blog that claims to sway public opinion and shape government policy.    leaving it to readers to “discern for themselves” who’s right and who’s wrong is such a cop-out and just so mainstream media.