DDS to join hands with INC 13 Jan

If I’m reading DDS vloggers right, super-excited sila to join the INC peace rally on Jan 13, that’s next Monday.  Nagkakaisa sila with Iglesia Ni Cristo vs the Lower House impeaching VP Sara, and they’re expecting huge crowds not just in Liwasang Bonifacio but also in plazas and parks across the islands (korek me if I’m wrong), and even abroad, kung saan-saan magmo-mobilize daw ang mga miyembro ng Iglesia at jo-join naman ang mga OFW na marami ay DDS.

If I heard right (ang hirap talaga sa vlogs, walang transcript, sometimes you have to listen twice, thrice, to be sure) parang inaasahan din nila na sasagot ang mga pro-Marcos with rallies of their own, and maybe just maybe maaaring magkagulo (remembering Edsa Tres 2001 when Arroyo declared a state of emergency), which would give daw Marcos reason to declare martial law (that’s what the NSC meetings are about daw), which would galvanize the anti-Marcos factions in the armed forces into defecting (a la Enrile-Ramos-Ram in 1986, asa pa) which would see daw INC & DDS morphing into a people power force that would oust PBBM (who wants to rule forever daw), which would see VP Sara ascending the throne (already).

Buong buo ang movie in their minds. But where are the rest of us in that story? I imagine that we’re with the anti-DDS and anti-BBM vloggers who are pushing for impeachment just because we don’t want another 6 years of a Duterte who’s pro-China, pro-EJKs, and pro-AliceGuos, unless of course Sara can convince us that she will not do a Digong AND that she is not corrupt or has never been involved in any illegal operations.

Samantala, the Lower House of Congress is sitting on the impeachment complaints kasi daw walang katiyakan that 2/3 of the current Senate sitting as Impeachment Court would vote to impeach, or that a verdict would be forthcoming before suspending for the May elections. Better to wait till after elections when, hopefully, winner senators are those who would vote to impeach?

But really, sabi nga ni Ronald Llamas who was PNoy‘s political adviser in the time of CJ Renato Corona‘s impeachment in 2012, when Senate Court hearings started they didn’t have the votes to convict. And yet at the end of it, only three voted to acquit. PBBM only has to do a PNoy, maybe? Unless, of course, the INC-DDS rallies (24 hours long? longer?) prove too persuasive for vote-hungry congressional candidates to ignore. The devil is in the politics.

On risks and opportunities, 2025

It’s good to be optimistic about the new year, to hope it will be better than the year just past, but it behooves us to be realistic as well. Here’s advice from the Business Mirror columnist I follow, a Facebook friend. Read all of it here: https://businessmirror.com.ph/2024/12/30/the-coming-year-of-risk/

THE COMING YEAR OF RISK
John Mangun

… Risk is defined as “a situation involving exposure to danger, harm, or loss”. But it also means “the probability of an event occurring” and “the impact that an event may have”. In 2025 we will witness increased risk in the broadest sense of the word; increased danger, increased probability of that danger occurring, and increased opportunities. This is across the spectrum of geo/local politics and governance and geo/local economics and commerce.

“The risk of the risk happening will bring a great risk when it happens”.

… I had previously written that I see 2025 as going to be a year of hard choices, that is having to make difficult decisions in choosing one of the presented options. Black and white, shades of grey, and “the lesser of two evils” are all around us. However, the hard choice/s that I am speaking of is different from choosing mango instead of banana for breakfast.

In 2025, this is what I see happening. Two paths lie before me: one easier and one requiring more effort. The easy one is smooth and where I usually travel. The other is more outside my comfort zone but with both leading to the same place. I will pick the path that I usually avoided, replacing the potential for “immediate benefit” with long-term gains.

That brings me to my personal strategy for 2025. This should be a year of increased self-sufficiency for all of us.

That is not about raising your own chickens. It is about making your own milk tea. Ordering a milk tea delivered by motorcycle is one choice. Going to your kitchen and making it yourself is another option, a better choice for 2025.

Anticipating and preparing for greater risk also comes back to my basic “survival” strategy: figure out the worst-case scenario and then make plans to survive and thrive in that situation. Even in an urban area, depending on your housing condition, you can have a separate water tank to store a three- or four-day supply. A basic generator is a bargain at less than P5,000 during a prolonged brownout.

… You can make a bucket list of everything that is wrong in the world and the Philippines like one local pundit. Or find opportunities in a risky world and increase your wealth. Your choice.

On June 2, 2025, the cycle trend goes into a yearlong uptrend forecasting increased volatility and “risk”. I guarantee that the next 18 months are going to see increased risk. What you do with that risk is your choice. Happy New Year, my friend.

DDS vloggers are no “mosquito press”

DDS opinionators are peddling the notion that their social media vloggers (video bloggers) are today’s mosquito press, and even more powerful than the original because of the much wider reach of the internet’s platforms for disseminating info and opinions. The message to DDS vloggers and followers being, let’s not stop, we’re on the right track, people are watching and liking and sharing our posts, let’s engage and organize and hold rallies, and if we keep it up, we can oust the son just like we did the father.

But Joe Burgos’s mosquito press of martial law times that, after Ninoy’s assassination, was boosted and  amplified by Eggie Apostol’s and other anti-Marcos publications, was also purely anti-Marcos, totally focused on the struggle to end the dictatorship. And that’s what made it a powerful force in support of the widow Cory’s campaign to unseat Marcos.

Contrarily, the social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, and YouTube — where anti-Marcos DDS vloggers proliferate, abound, too, with vloggers of different persuasions and politics, i.e., pro-Marcos anti-DDS as well as anti-Marcos and anti-DDS vloggers, many of whom are pro-Leni pro-Risa pro-Bam pro-Kiko pro-Leila, even pro- and anti-Tulfos.

Sa madaling salita, social media is a marketplace of ideas, even, a megamall of tsismis, everybody welcome, kanya-kanyang agenda, walang isang adbokasya o mensahe na bumebenta sa nakararami, except perhaps freedom of expression, and fake news.

Besides, in Feb 1986 the mosquito press was just a part of the Cory-led multi-sectoral opposition immersed in a 10-day Marcos crony boycott that saw banks running and the economy reeling. And VP Sara is certainly nothing like Cory.

Bring back our heroes, never mind the presidents

When I saw facsimiles of the new bank notes celebrating our flora and fauna instead of our heroes and other historical figures, my first thought was, oh no, there goes Ninoy… which led to… susunod na kaya ang NAIA? Alam naman natin how hard they have tried to paint Ninoy as the bad guy and Marcos as the good guy in that historical drama of the mid-sixties to early eighties, and that there has long been a Marcos-loyalist call to change NAIA back to MIA, with “M” up for grabs, dahil di naman daw bayani si Ninoy samantalang you-know-who is now buried in LNMB.

My next thoughts were: whose idea was it kaya to remove images of our heroes. Bangko Sentral’s?  PBBM’s?  Maybe the prez wanted sana to put OG Ferdinand Marcos on the 500-peso bill to replace Ninoy & Cory but didn’t dare, so tinanggal na lang lahat ng heroes and other historical figures from all the bills?

A little history. Back in 1985 the then Central Bank’s New Design Series 1985-2019  featured Marcos on the 500-peso bill.  But it was an iffy time for the dictatorship — the Sandiganbayan mock trial was in the process of acquitting Fabian Ver and 25 others in the military conspiracy to assassinate Ninoy, there were calls for his resignation in the parliament of the streets, and Reagan was urging him to hold elections and prove that he still had the people’s mandate. I imagine that Marcos decided not to release the bill until after the snap election of 1986, which he expected to win, but he was ousted instead some two weeks after.  In 1987 the Central Bank issued instead a 500-peso bill with Ninoy Aquino’s image; this was replaced in 2010 with Ninoy & Cory.

Bangko Sentral officials are quick to assure the public that the old bills with our heroes and other historical figures will continue to circulate but, I imagine, not for much longer, unless the prez comes to his senses and the next polymers bring them back.  Calling attention to our rare and precious flora and fauna is good, but it’s not as if government itself really cares about them, di ba, considering the continuing denudation of what forests we have left to make way for mining and quarrying and solar farms and windmills and malls and golf courses?

In this fractured nation of ours, where we don’t even speak the same language, the one thing we share is the peso as currency and our heroes as exemplars of the best in the Filipino.

Never mind the presidents, really, because none of them truly measure up (hindi nag-iisa si Makoy) but bring back Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Apolinario Mabini, Jose Abad Santos, Vicente Lim, Josefa Llanes Escoda, Ninoy & Cory, on our peso bills, and let them be joined by Rajah Buayan Silongan, Gabriela Silang, Macli-ing Dulag, Eman Lacaba, Ed Jopson, and many more heroic Filipinos who deserve to be immortalized.

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UP Department of History statement on the Php1,000 Bill Controversy https://kssp.upd.edu.ph/

Museum for Moro heroes https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/

ATOM laments BSP replacing heroes with wildlife on PH bills https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/