May asawa ka na?

Bongga 8 Feb 1989

Alam ba ninyo na mas madali na palang magpa-annul ng marriage these days? During the period 1981 – 1987 daw, 115 marriages were annulled by the Catholic Church in Metro Manila, out of 575 cases filed (People’s Journal 29 Jan 89).

Samantala, under the Civil Code rin, nag-a-annul na ng marriage kapag napapatunayan na ang isa sa partners ay psychologically incapable of complying with essential marital obligations. Ang pinag-uusapan nga raw ngayon sa Konggreso ay ang pag-recognize sa legality ng annulments sanctioned by the Church. Ipinaglalaban din na annulments granted by all churches, not just by the Catholic Church, be recognized by the State.

Dati, kailangan pang pumunta sa Rome, sa Vatican, para mag-file for annulment of a marriage. Napakahigpit ng simbahan noon about the sanctity of the marriage bond. Ke baliw, ke inutil ang isa o ang dalawa, ke matagal nang hindi nag-uusap, ke matagal nang hiwalay, walang effect sa priests and bishops. What God has put together, say nila, let no man put asunder.

I suppose dapat ngang ikatuwa na mas realistic na ngayon ang simbahan, na mas nagre-respond na ito sa felt needs ng flock. However, it is not enough na mabigyan ng way out ang married couples who can’t hack it. It is just as important to reinforce, affirm, exalt, and further inspire couples for whom marriage works, and newly-weds who want their marriage to work, and singles who hope to marry and make it work.

While there are no hard figures on how many marriages break up relative to how many are contracted, alam nating marami-rami ito. Ang dami nating kilala, di ba, na hiwalay, na may iba nang asawa, whether public figures or personal friends or extended family. At wala silang pakialam about church and state laws (lalo na when there’s not much property to fight over). In fact, hindi na nakakagulat pag may nababalitaan tayong bagong hiwalay. Pangkaraniwang happening na kasi.

Para ngang mas nagugulat tayo ngayon, at nai-impress pa, by marriages that endure. Lalo na among generations below 50. At dapat lang. Dahil it’s not a matter of luck but commitment; when a marriage lasts, it’s because the two people involved work hard at it. Di ba’t yan din ang sinabi ni Susan Roces kay Dina Bonnevie?

Marriage takes a certain level of maturity, yun bang hindi puwedeng self-centered o ego-tripping pa ang isa o ang dalawa dahil tiyak na magkakabangaan, magkakaisahan, magkakaapihan.

Ideally, when conflicts arise between man and wife, love moves each one to give in to the other, or at least to meet the other halfway, for the sake not of self or the other but for the sake of the marriage, that is, of a highly valued relationship. Talagang matututo kang magbigay, bumigay, na napakahirap atnapakasakit pag hindi ka sanay. Pero when it’s happening on both sides, little by little it dawns on you na ang ganda, ang sarap, kasi you gain in insight about yourself, about your mate, about love, and about life.

Hiwalayan is the easy way out. From the point of view nga of astrology, it’s only a temporary way out. Usually, yung tinakbuhan mo from a broken marriage or relationship – whether rational, emotional, physical, or even economic in nature – is what you will have to confront again in the second one, and the third, hangga’t hindi mo ito hinaharap at nalalampasan. Karma, ika nga.

Kaya sana may advice column na rin si Susan Roces for marriages in crisis. Sabi nga ni Dina, maybe her marriage wouldn’t have broken up if she had Susan to consult in the midst of it. Sige na naman, Tita Susan. Anyway Helen Vela can do with some competition. Besides, it’s obvious that marriage isn’t her cup of tea.

Public Affairs TV shows: Bagsak sa ratings!

Bongga 23 Jan 89

Ayon kay Ricky Lo, there was a time when Public Forum enjoyed more than20% audience share. But in the latest ratings, less than 3% na lang ang viewership nito. And other public affairs shows are not faring any better.

Sinabi din na for that same period, ang Issues and Answers ni Art Borjal ang nanguna with 5.6%, just behind Probe with 5.7%, followed by another magazine show PEP Talk with 4.3%, Viewpoint 3.7%, Minamahal kong Bayan 2.6%, Public Forum 2.3%, Tell the People 2%, Straight from the Shoulder 1.7%, and Velez This Week 1.1%.

Interesante nga na mas pinapanood ang programa ni Borjal kaysa programa ni Ric (Dong) Puno Jr. nung time na yon. Pero mas naintriga ako sa pagbagsak ng audience share ng lahat ng public affairs shows in recent months. Bakit kaya?

Looking back, totoong there was a time, after EDSA, na mas maraming nagsisipanood than usual ng public affairs shows. Nung panahon kasi ni Marcos, walang nanonood, dahil panay propaganda lang. Uhaw na uhaw tayo noon for information, for talk, for expression, particularly on political events and issues.

Kaya naman nung bumalik ang press and broadcast freedom, hindi tayo magkandaugaga sa panonood, pakikinig, lalo na sa mga TV talk shows, to politicans old and new tungkol sa EDSA, kay Cory, sa revolutionary government, kay Ramos, kay Enrile, kay Gringo,, sa elections, sa coup attempts, sa Marcos return, sa bagong Constitution, sa US bases, sa graft and corruption, sa military, sa NPA, sa mga konggresista’t sendor, sa Cabinet, sa presidential relatives, and similar stuff.

Pero mukhang nagsawa na nga ang public affairs viewers. Ang tanong: ano ang pinagsawaan nila, ang content ng talk, o ang level ng talk, o ang mga hostmismo?

Palagay ko, all of the above.

Ang content siyempre ay depende sa mga nangyayari sa ating paligid. At hindi masasabing wala nang interesanteng nagaganap – ayan nga’t kapapasok lang ng bagong taon, happening na agad sa Zamboanga, happening na rin between the Executive and the Senate, between the Larger House and Customs, atbp. Hindi rin masasabing ngayon lang yan. Ma-happening din ang second half of ’88 – noon nagsimula ang economic boom kuno, noon na-forge ang latest Military Bases Agreement, noon nahuli’t napatay si Baula (rebel military) at nakatakas sina Kintanar at Jopson (mga komunista), noon pumutok ang cho-chop smuggling ng mga kotse, gayon din si Mighty Miriam, at kung anu-ano’t sinu-sino pa.

Maaaring ibig sabihin ay nasanay na ang viewers sa pagka-ma-happening ng buhay Pinoy, and also maybe a thousand days have shown na wala namang constructive effect ang talk, consequently ay bored na sila, tayo, so what else is new, nasabi na yan, di ba, o ganyan din nung ano, di ba?

And / or the middle class is simply too busy making kayod – this boom kuno has found us all working double-time halos, di ba, or at least more than we ever had to, just to keep up with the high cost of living – there’s just not as much time for idle pursuits (idle daw, o) like watching TV?

Tungkol naman sa level ng talk, na depende sa format at program policy, lamang dito in a way ang magazine shows dahil mas malakas ang visual appeal ng field interviews and scenes, at malaki ang naco-contribute sa impact ng talk. Also, dahil structured ang magazine shows, mas malawak ang naco-cover nila, at mas organized ang information.

Incidentally, nakakagulat na mas mataas ang audience share ng Probe kaysa PEP Talk nung period na yon. With all the publicity that Loren Legarda gets, akala ko hit na hit pa rin ang show niya. Ang naïve, ’no? Which is not to make little of Probe’s progress. But that’s another story.

Pagdating sa klase ng talk at sa pinatutunguhan nito, hindi nagkakalayo ang magazine at talk shows. Nagkakasya na kasi sa kanila ang pag-i-impart ng information. Sabi nga ni Julie Yap Daza sa closing ng huling edition ng Tell the People, sana raw na-enlighten ang mga manonood, enough so they can make up their own minds about the issues discussed. Yan din ang line ni Ric Puno Jr. ng Viewpoint. At ni Cheche Lazaro ng Probe. Di ba raw dapat ay objective?

Meron ding tulad ni Louie Beltran ng Straight from the Shoulder at ni Randy David ng Public Forum na sort of hayag ang disenchantment with the system at, tulad ni Loren Legarda ng PEP Talk na, on occasion betrays a bias for change, which colors the questions they raise and observations they make. Pero kahit sila have fallen into a rut.

The main objective is always just to elaborate on news or issues and opinions that have made it to the front and editorial pages of newspapers. There is never an attempt – except for a while by Professor Perfecto Fernandez and journalist Melinda Quintos de Jesus of Velez This Week’s late and lamented format – to draw conclusions and make known where they stand on issues and why.

The exception may be Professor David who takes the time to summarize and synthesize and to point out what, in his opinion, needs doing or thinking. Pero paulit-ulit na rin. Dapat siguro ay mag-move on na siya to a higher, more constructive, format.

Knowing now what he knows after what must be a hundred hours or so of dialogue on national concerns with Filipinos from all walks of life, maganda kung magfo-focus naman siya on talking solutions, that is, bringing together Pinoys with specific solutions in mind, and working out ways of reconciling differences in opinion for the sake of the Whole.

Which brings us to the hosts themselves. Sabi nga ni Professor Fernandez, ang problema raw with media practitioners ay makikitid ang kaisipan at mararamot ang hangarin, which simply make for boring talk.

I’m sure public affairs talk can be interesting, exciting, and stimulating as well as intelligent, relevant, and moving. But it will take courage and commitment on the part of hosts, producers, and, even, advertisers.

Revolutionary Cheek

Businessday Magazine 20 February 1987

When the revolution that freaked Ferdinand out was raging, what struck and frustrated me most was the inadequacy, the sketchiness, the falseness even, of information being churned out at the time. Things were happening so fast – as though life were on fast-forward mode – it was humanly and technologically impossible for print and broadcast media to cover and report it all.

Daily newspapers rendered nothing but snippets, fragments, slices of the revolution, mostly from and about the rebels and barricaders in and around Camps Crame and Aguinaldo. The few items there were about the Marcoses and Vers were very thin, mostly official press releases, or based on Marcos’s televised press conferences which we’d already seen but told us next to nothing about goings-on behind the scenes. Worse, different reports, sometimes within the same newspaper, would provide different data on the same events. After the revolution the papers were, of course, awash with the affair.There were personality profiles, and the first-person accounts; the social commentaries, political analyses and opinion pieces, all attempting to digest the reality of the people power phenomenon and its national and global implications; materials on the fallen regime and its greed, on the new leadership and its chosen few; and plenty more about a presidential daughter and her showbiz aspirations, on ex-detainees and torture, on Reformists and a snake called Tiffany, among other trivia.

Some yielded heretofore unpublished information about the four days, but, again, these were fragmented and had to be carefully sifted from what were often rather emotional renditions of events. Like the news reports during the revolt, these tended to neglect journalistic details like when, where, who, why, how, etc.

What I was looking for – some chronological retelling of the four days, blow-by-blow and event-by-event, as the revolution unfolded not just in the Enrile-Ramos camps and the people’s barricades but also in Malacañang Palace, the White House, the US Embassy, Clark Air Base, the Archbishop’s Palace, the contemplative nuns’ convents, and wherever else something was happening – I didn’t find.

Both local and foreign weekly magazines tried, but their accounts were only slightly more enlightening and some were just as uninformed or misinformed as accounts published earlier.

By this time I was deep into note-taking, combing throughevery newspaper and magazine that came my way, sifting, lifting historical from hysterical data, with an eye towards pieceing these into a chronology that would reflect the multi-events unfolding parallel-ly / synchronously on different fronts throughout the four days. A tedious task. Newswriters tended not to indicate what time, clock-wise, things happened or were observed to happen. It isn’t clear, for instance, what time Cardinal Sin made his first call to the public over Radio Veritas. I didn’t know where to place it – before Butz Aquino’s first call or after. Around nine o’clock, said several accounts. After Butz’s call, said another. Butz called after ten, said one. The Cardinal called late in the night, said yet another.

I was constantly rearrranging and refining my sequence of events. Especially as I began taking in new data from the snap books. I’d find that I had placed one event too early, another too late; or mistaken three Marcos presscons for one – thanks to a reporter who didn’t bother to specify so, just summarized / lumped together pronouncements from three consecutive presscons into a report on the latest from Marcos.

Not that the snap books were that much more particular about times and spaces. Only books do have more pages, and so contain more details. But the rush to cater to a captive world market saw writers, editors, publishers rehasing for the books the same angles already extensively covered by dailies and weeklies. There was no time to backtrack and double-check, to confirm what what was generally assumed, much less to unearth something new. The race was on.

People Power by Patricio R. Mamot was the first substantial effort to hit the stands (a month or so after the revolution). In seven chapters – The People Power Phenomenon, Prayer Power, Enrile and Ramos, The Reform AFP Movement, The Media Blitz, Cebu Calling, and Malacañang – Mamot recounts the events of the four days through a stream of quotes from both published and unpublished reports. Inevitably, the chronologies overlap. Too, Mamot’s narrative reeks of the euphoria and ecstasy that overwhelmed print media in the wake of Marcos’s departure. Mushy going.

Quijano de Manila’s Quarter of the Tiger Moon is much breezier reading,naturally. Taking the February event a day at a time, Nick Joaquin renders “a panoramic view that shifts from palace to street corner, and from ministry office to barricade,” daring, as he goes, to synthesize the whole with the nooning tiger moon.

People Power edited by Monina Allarey-Mercado, is a compilation of first-person accounts, again, still, by participants partial to Cory and the Reformists. There is a loose chronology, arranged by the day if not strictly by the time of day. Eyewitnesses wax euphoric, rhapsodize, on the EDSA miracle. State of the heart. Praise the Lord.

And then came Breakaway, Cecilio T. Arillo’s inside story. It recounts the events of the four days from the point of view of the military camps and installations and fronts and in the Malacañang complex. A new angle. With close-ups of loyalists-turned-rebels (though still at arm’s length of the Marcoses and Vers). And with a different version of a certain sequence of events. Fascinating, if grating, reading. But then Arillo is not the storyteller De Manila is.

In October, Veritas Extras I and II hit the streets a week apart. “Coup!” by Alfred McCoy, Marian Wilkinson, and Gwen Robinson confirmed Breakaway’s scenarios (differences in time data notwithstanding) though focused on the Reformist plot, American intervention, and how Marcos “actually ordered his tanks to fire.” Sensational rather than thorough. But like Breakaway, a mine of military info. Rounded my chronology considerably. Enough to say enough. To only skim through other books, just to make certain I hadn’t missed a rare perspective.

Otherwise it made sense to dare declare the above-reviewed publications representative of literature issued February 1986 through February 1987. Then to dare say that my chronology tells a more complete story than any other. And finally to conclude that the whole story has yet to be told.

Where goes the revolution?

This one I wrote very soon after the four day revolt, but it was rejected by the Manila Chronicle, I figured because the editor was still in euphoria-heights, but could be also because I ended with Halley’s Comet ;-)

Early March 1986. I’m still reeling from the revolution. A mind-boggling soul-stirring manifestation of the higher powers of a praying people.

Radio Veritas was the medium of the revolution. And right now we could all do with more of the kind of broadcasting – people-oriented, bilingual with a highly Tagalog bias, intelligent, consistent, Christian, and caring – that RV gave us those 17 days from the 7th to the 23rd of February.

It was a relief when, on the 24th, TV Channel 4’s first free broadcast was launched by, among others, RV’s Orly Punzalan and Fr. Efren Dato. It felt right. I thought Veritas was back and, hallelujah, on TV, too. What a break. What magical days!

But unpredictable, full of twists and turns. As it turns out, the liberated TV station does not have the facilities and field equipment required for on-the-spot news reporting. Only a lot of telephones through which flood in, naturally, calls from the people with all sorts of questions, suggestions, reactions, messages, appeals, donations, updates and the like, a la Radio Veritas. Alas, Orly et al have long been taken over by other volunteer anchorpeople, mostly amateurs, mostly TV and movie and recording pop stars, na magagaling lang kumita pero wala namang alam, mostly waxing euphoric about people power, apparently impelled by a great need to display, assert, their participation and triumph (yes, Behn, opportunists all), when not trying (very hard) to answer / respond to gut questions from the public – e.g., how does one handle / sublimate ill feelings toward sipsips and balimbings? if this is the people’s television, why are the people having such a hard time getting in, getting heard, getting answers to their questions? – and failing miserably.

Where’s the Church? Whereare the nuns and priests and lay apostles? Why have they stopped talking to / communicating with the people? Have they been stopped? By whom? Can it be that so soon the Church has resumed a non-partisan stance? Back to the traditional separation of Church and State?

But what about the revolution that’s still going on in the minds and hearts of Christian Filipinos, affecting his interpersonal relationships, affirming some values but overturning others? It’s a second phase that’s begging for guidance, for guidelines, temporal and spiritual. Perhaps the Church can be persuaded to resume its revolutionary posture, demand a chunk of TV time, for the good of the Whole? Or have we learned nothing (!) from the Radio Veritas experience.

Whose idea was it anyway to call in commercial performers to man the mics? Why not the masscom specialists and their professors, why not the political scientists, the community elders, the people experts, particularly the Tagalog-speaking ones? Anong katutturan ng salita kung iilan ang nakakaunawa? Paano naman ang karamihan? Sadyang sawing-palad na lamang?

For the new TV 4, this rebirth should not be just a matter of straightening out the station’s ownership and getting on with production and programming. The people’s television can become more than just another propaganda machine, can set new / higher standards for Pinoy television arts, long rendered mediocre by a profit-oriented anti-people system. A microcosm of the macrocosm. (The part is also a Whole, and reflects the patterns of larger Wholes.)

Of course it is no coincidence that the upheaval is occurring just when Halley’s Comet is a-visiting. Yes, HC is still around, just dropped out of sight in January when its orbit took it behind the sun (from earth’s point of view). It’ll be back within sight of telescopes soon, within the next two weeks, and will remain in sight as it gets closest to earth sometime in April. Which augurs many more twists and turns, ready or not.

As it hurtles through our solar system in pursuit of a 76-year orbit, Halley’s Comet is wreaking cosmic havoc, disturbing celestial patterns, invading and altering force fields, including that of planet earth’s (surely we are experiencing a peak in the frequency of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, unexplained collisions and explosions such as the Challenger, and extreme highs and lows in temperatures) and her creatures’ physiology, chemistry, life energies, and (in the case of humans) psyches.

Individually and collectively, we are being compelled to make changes, to break out of patterns, to strike out on new roads toward a more humane social order. Let’s not waste these precious moments. Let’s make the most of this heaven-sent point / parentheses in time and space that has so far proven pregnant with potential. Let’s get our act together as a people. Differences are reconcile-able on a collective level of thought, where the good of the Whole has primacy over the good of the few.

Verily, the Age of Aquarius is here. Seeds sown now will bear revolutionary fruit. Said Carl Jung, “Whatever is born or done this moment of time, has the qualities of this moment of time.”