Spin aside, Sen. Joker Arroyo never really said that the "complementary agreement" to the Visiting Forces Agreement was a "secret" document.

Being seated beside the telephones at the Senate press center, I distinctly heard him say in the phone-patch interview that it was readily available online.

But it's what some of the newspapers reported, so maybe I should have said the same thing.



 

in the form of our distinguished congressmen.

or, kupal, if you want to be vulgar about it.

"The mayor of Masiu City, Lanao del Sur talks with my dad. Things get heated up. Voices were raised. But never, in my wildest dreams, did I ever imagine that someone would pull out a punch. Apparently not. He attacks my father. His flightmates, maybe 2 or 3 of them, rush to his aid and beat up my father...

My younger brother pleads to the mayor to please stop it. To not hurt my dad. To just stop. His words still ring through my head..."Sorry na po, sorry na po...tama na...tama na po..." With his hands in front of his chest in a praying position. PLEADING. The mayor socks him in the face."-- from here.

What the fuck, Mister Mayor? What kind of fratboy stunt was that? Since when has hitting an old man and a young boy over some stupid golfing incident been on the Mayor's Handbook?

Of course, we haven't heard the Pangandamans side yet. They'll probably deny the incident or claim that the two attacked them first with knives and a posse of twenty street toughs and a school of sharks. 

There are two other times this year that I felt this angry and helpless over some dirty politician(s.)

The first was when Rep. Annie Rosa Susano carted in busloads of schoolchildren for a field trip to the House of Representatives to "protest" against the Reproductive Health Bill, said RH Bill designed to keep people like Susano from carting in schoolchildren from overpopulated schools and using them as a political tool. (Also, maternal deaths, diseases, etc.) 

The other was when Rep. Annie Rosa Susano carted in busloads of urban poor to "protest" against the impeachment. She positioned little schoolgirls along the halls of the House to give away roses and stuff. Her supporters, pais P200 each and a free dinner, left the House grounds as dirty as the inside. Except with actual litter, and not, you know, compromised ideals, forgotten campaign promises and horsetrading.

But that was, you know, par for the course in politics. Beating people up isn't (except during elections.) 

Dust gets everywhere when you ride, the dust of carbon and soot and dead skin cells of Manila roads. After hard riding, and there is really no other kind, you can slough off a five-year-old child's weight in grime in the shower.

It cakes the back of your ears and burrows into your ear canal. Your tear ducts get blocked and form black pearls and when you rub them off, you cry the tears of a million Manila bikers who, in moments of weakness, wished they had a car. 

I wrote a decent (probably) piece Thursday about how Sen. Edgardo Angara cautioned Arroyo allies in the House of Representatives that pushing for charter change before 2010 could be the tipping point that would open the floodgates for massive protests.  I compared the situation to recent disturbances in Thailand and Greece and everything.

I also wrote something about the united front that the Senate of the Philippines has presented against the House unilaterally convening a Constituent Assembly based on one line in the Constitution taken out of context.

Somehow, both were edged out by the deaths of Didith Reyes and Marky Cielo.

I work pretty much fix-on-fail at a job that I'm still trying to get the hang of. Sometimes, you know, I really love what I do. Granted, I'm not very good, but I  can usually keep up.

But times like these make me wonder whether I really have what it takes.

After I came in from a press conference last week, a reporter from another paper told me that the budget reform bill I had been briefed on was just for show, a pre-2010 election gimmick.

Later that night, I learned the view from the other side. It's common knowledge, apparently, that reporters will go anywhere and write anything in exchange for free food (or money, or combination thereof.)

Granted that neither side can actually be anything other than a pot or a kettle on this one,it seems to me that cynicism has become a convenient, even lazy, world view to take when it comes to national issues.

Not everything is politics, patronage or spin, but those "in the know" love to reduce everything to these simple terms, if only to show that they are in the know. Except, of course, when you tell yourself that you already know everything that there is to know about something, that's a bit like ignorance, isn't it?
--

"Aside from the impeccably-coiffed Dr. Jose Rizal, is there anything more iconic of the Philippines than the jeepney, the undisputed ‘King of the Road?’

After all, what full-blooded, sun-kissed Filipino hasn't been on at least one jeepney ride? What child grew up without the reality of being able to ride for free on the condition that one sits on his mother's lap? Who hasn't learned how to pass the fare from one hand to another’s until it ultimately reaches the driver's outstretched hand?

How many of us have prayed the rosary, quietly reciting the litany of prayers at a ridiculously fast clip, onboard a jeepney lit by multi-colored spotlights and bouncing to a barrage of radio ballads from homemade boom boxes under your seat?"

--The Once and Future King, Jonathan de Santos for GP Magazine, May 2008

Who knew?

Photo by Cricket Soong, probably.

1. That part when in the Bolante hearings when lawyers sent by Department of Agriculture Secretary handed a note to one of the regional directors telling him to tell the truth. (One of the lawyers was from Ateneo, and said that he wanted to show that there still are lawyers who serve the truth.) My idealism meter shot through the roof.

       1.1 When I realized that it could just be an elaborate showbiz ploy. Ateneans have a fine sense of social responsibility, but also a flair for dramatics. (cf. Dulaang Sibol; the impeachment trial of Apples Jalandoni in 2001)

       1.2 Realizing that I am so starved for someone to look up to that I often take what senators say at face value, although I do not necessarily report the same at face value. 

2. The junking of the impeachment complaint against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo with brute force.

     2.1 Hearing Valby tell me that she got teary-eyed when the representatives og the House minority stood up to vote for the sufficiency in susbstance of the complaint.  It's nice being with someone who cares enough to cry when things like this happen.

           2.1.1 Having her officemate, a veteran of legislative work, tell her that she would run out of tears (and idealism) eventually. And Valby told her that she didn't plan to lose her idealism anytime  soon. 

      2.2 Seeing Rep. Matias Defensor (3rd Dist, QC) joke that if any pay-offs happened in exchange for killing the complaint, he'd have received his cut. He meant to say that since he didn't receive any payment, nobody else was paid off. But his statement did not reassure me at all, or anyone, really. Also, he has bad teeth.

3. Hearing my scooter slip on the pavement and, against the odds, hit our water meter, causing the headlight assembly to implode. I still hear it in my head sometimes.

I am downloading HBO's Rome under the dubious justification of research into the Senate: what it is, what it does. Ranks right up there with watching All The President's Men as journalism training. 

--

Singkit has been sluggish of late, like riding with a flat tire. Except that the tires are not flat, and I have recently replaced my defective rear tire.  Basic (and possibly incorrect) scientific method indicates that the new tire is to blame. Possibly something to do with ratios and surface areas and other voodoo things I do not understand. The upside is that riding feels more confident at (relatively) high speed. Until I know what the problem is, ignorance is bilis.

With the lines between the new majority and minority blocs already pretty much in place, one is tempted to ask: so the fuck what?

Majority and minority only really have meaning in terms of bloc votes, it assumes (Wikipedia assures me) that a party,group or coalition of parties are guided by some ideology or agenda. Parties do come into it, I suppose.

Senator Panfilo Lacson has already said that their new majority is too dynamic and independent to ever really unite on an issue as huge as say, charter change. Newly-elected Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri said that the new majority is united by "service to the country," which, as ideologies go,is par for the course and does not really tell us much.

Both blocs, such as they are, are composed of a mix of both opposition and administration senators, and the only real common denominator is being for or against Villar. 

It's interesting to note that Senator Lito Lapid joined the minority bloc. Not because it actually could mean anything. It's just interesting.
--
In oother (non) news, Multiply seems to hate me. I've been getting screens that prompt me to type in random words and letters so the system will know that I am human and not some Paolo Banila spider-robot. Today, I got this one:

Yep.