Perspectives

“It was six men of Hindustan
To learning much inclined
Who went to see the elephant
(though all of them were blind)
That each by observation
might satisfy his mind…”
Their conclusion of how the elephant looked like depended upon where they touched: a wall, for the belly; hand fan, for the ear; tree branch for the trunk; spear for the tusk; rope for the tail; pillar for the leg.
“And so these men of Hindustan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right
And all were in the wrong.”
YOU STILL remember that story shared by both Hindus and Buddhists and was – as we quoted some parts above – the most famous poem of one John Godfrey Saxe, The Blindmen and the Elephant?
It was the first thing that came to mind with the torrents of reactions to the “dialog” last Friday between the Reverend Governor and the sangguniang panlalawigan.
“Prosecutorial,” said one of Senior BM Cris Garbo’s incisive questioning of Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio.
“No, inquisitorial,” corrected another. Though I could not for the life of me imagine Garbo garbed in the ecclesiastical robe of Tomas de Torquemada.
“They ganged up on Among Ed,” cried another focused on the solitary figure of the governor with only two recording clerks by his side, facing the near-full phalanx of the whole SP.
“Abjectly ignorant of administrative processes,” concluded one after the governor said the hiring of Balas personnel was mere exercise of executive prerogative which was blasted by Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao, to wit: “If you yourself will pay their salaries from your own pockets, then we have no problem. But you are seeking to draw from the provincial coffers, then their hiring should have passed through the SP. For the use of even but a single cent from the provincial government funds requires legislation.”
“Plain ignorant of what is going on within his own office,” snapped another as the governor repeatedly denied having received, moreso seen, the invitation from the SP for him to attend the hearing on Ordinance 172 on the rationalization in the sharing of quarry taxes as proposed by the Pampanga Mayors League that was passed as Ordinance 176, which subsequent veto by Panlilio was overrode by the SP.
Panlilio stood his ground of never seeing the invitation despite Guiao’s presentation of the receiving copy duly stamped “received” by the Office of the Governor.
“There he goes again with his doublespeak,” shrieked one as Panlilio denied having mentioned in an interview over CLTV 36 of a “grand conspiracy to remove me from office.” When Garbo insisted that he himself watched and heard the governor did so, Panlilio riposted “what matters is what I am saying now, straight from the horse’s mouth.”
“Panlilio has two different personas? One for television and one for the capitol? So, give him one more and he is one-god-in-three-persons,” silently whispered an ex-seminarian to my ear.
So what was that “dialog” all about? It was what – to the blind men – the elephant was all about.

Dishonest disclosure

WHAT? Only P4.7 million?
Incredulous is the report that contributions to the gubernatorial campaign of Eddie T. Panlilio only amounted to that measly sum – per Comelec records. Okay, the exact amount listed is P4,761,699.90 cash coming from 56 individuals.
Here is one more case where the vaunted honesty and self-proclaimed transparency of Eddie T. Panlilio is put to severe test.
One. It must be recalled that at the time of the campaign, two bank accounts with the Philippine National Bank, Dolores branch were opened in the name of Panlilio: one peso account for local domestic contributions, one dollar account for international contributions.
It would be the height of incredulity to assume that not a single cent was deposited in these accounts. For one, group of former seminarians in the US has been vocal about its substantial contribution to the Panlilio campaign. So, why were they not included in the list of contributors?
It would be supreme stupidity to assume that being named to Panlilio “personally”, the accounts and all their contents were not meant for the gubernatorial campaign. Or were we born only yesterday?
Two. What about the proceeds from the sale of Panlilio campaign materials? No less than then staunch Panlilio supporter Rene Romero boasted before media that their campaign paraphernalia – read: T-shirts, buttons, posters, etc. – were being sold to and lapped up by their supporters.
If the Comelec missed this, then, here’s a call to the Bureau of Internal Revenue or the domestic trade office.
Three. As volunteerism was the operative word of the Panlilio campaign, so it was fueled by freebies. The campaign “Eduarters” that was the bankrupted Patria’s Restaurant was bruited about as a “donation.” So were the services of the campaign staff and their food. Motorcade field marshalls, questioned MOKA “awardee” Marni Castro and John Sambo’s recurrent mantra during the campaign was that supporters brought their own vehicles, bought their own gasoline and food.
So what are those listed expenses of P648,906 for travel, and P647,092 for campaign headquarters expenses all about? Somebody is giving us the lie here.
And that is just the easy part for Panlilio and his campaign people to answer. The more difficult one is how to answer former Congressman Willie Villarama who has raised a howl over the non-listing of his contribution to the Panlilio campaign and those he solicited from his friends, particularly businessmen from Makati?
Villarama’s fears are valid: His friends might think he did not remit to the campaign finances their donations. In the sabungero parlance, this is “Mikasipitan king parada.”
Also, is the reported “substantial donation” of top telecommunications magnate MVP true, or mere part of campaign lore? The donors’ list did not answer.
Then, where were the millions of pesos Mrs. Lolita Hizon said she gave the Panlilio campaign which she claimed in a sangguniang panlalawigan public hearing as she did not lament over despite her falling out with Panlilio? Again, the donors’ list failed to answer.
Instead of making a clean breast of the donations received by Panlilio during the campaign, the Comelec report did not only raise more questions but virtually opened a Pandora’s Box for the Reverend Governor to contain.
Honesty – and transparency – becomes truly a lonely word here.

In God's name

“GOD KNOWS how to make punishments also. So our country is what it is now because the head of the Church went against God’s will.”
Thus was quoted the convicted and pardoned former President known more for his moral lapses than his religiosity. He was speaking of Cardinal Sin’s alleged defiance of the order from the Vatican for the Church not to get involved with EDSA 2, which was subsequently carved in our history as a “God-mandated” event.
Déjà vu. I had a piece on “God-given mandates” tucked in my files of columns for the long defunct Angeles Sun. Here it is, dated 7-13 October 1988, for all its (ir)relevance to issues current and controversial.

GOD, NOT patriotism is the last recourse of scoundrels.
Covenants with the Divine or those perceived to be divine have consistently accompanied Man’s laboriously long march from pre-history to contemporary times, perhaps starting with the animistic Neanderthal savage cowering in his cave as he forged a pact with the lord of thunder, the goddess of rain, and the deities among the stars.
From the primeval, God-man covenants soared to the spiritual – the venerated Ark of the Covenant – then branched out to the political mandate from heaven as practiced in the era of China’s dynasties, and apexed on the absolute tyrannical divine right of kings with France’s Louis XIV, the “Sun King” himself, as its quintessence.
The celestial mandates to China’s emperors were by no means absolute and for-life in praxis. Fortuitous events as pestilence and plagues, droughts and floods were seen as omens of heaven’s disapproval of the reign of the emperor thereby prompting him to abdicate his throne, in favor of a heavenly-approved new ruler. Such made the Chinese model of God-given mandates altogether different and definitely more benevolent than the autocratic divine right of European sovereigns.
Vox Dei being vox populi reinforcing, the Marxist-Leninist precept of power to the proletariat and later Mao-Tse-Tunged into power of the people gaining global adherents, the modern rulers’ mandates have shifted from being God-given to being people-granted. God, being out of the Marxist equation. Hence, the people’s democratic republics and people-powered revolutions far numerous than monopolistic Iran’s theocratic political fundamentalism.
The charismatic to-Christ-reborning finds parallel in recent political ralities with a number of leaders claiming God-given mandates once more as the bases for their rule, no matter their constant shaking of the Devil’s hand.
“My mandate came from God,” so claim many a ruler today, conjuring in the mind images of her or him Moses-like, getting the tablets from Yahweh Himself, amid the burning bush.
The reign of the same rulers, however, perpetually betrays either a blasphemous utterance or a reference to another god – notwithstanding his/her claim to be of God as his/her actions are most definitely not God’s.
God is peace. One who rules from a circle of guns therefore is not of God.
God is mercy. One who is harsh to the impoverished is undeniably not God’s.
“No man can serve two masters,” said the Christ, presenting the the contradictory options of God and moolah. It cannot be then of God that many rulers pocket cash.
If not all those who cry “Lord, Lord” could enter the kingdom of heaven, as the Christ admonished, how much more for those frothing mouths that spew vitriol and venom? No, they can never be God’s.
Arguably, our current crop of rulers can be of God in only one thing. As the Christ said “blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” so they become instruments for that divine mission, albeit in purely secular way: By making their people poor.
So many crimes have been committed in God’s name by the most devilish of rulers – the genocide of Middle Easterners at the time of the Crusades; the near annihilation of the Aztecs of Mexico, the Incas of Peru, the Mayas of Central America by the Christian conquistadores; the colonization of the Philippines by the Spanish cross and sword, etecetera.
May our leaders heed their lessons from there, and may we all be restrained from uttering the name of the Lord, our God, in vain.

Company union

THE SCABS have become the company union.
That was the condescending comment of a friend on the organizations comprising the so-called Kapampangan Coalition Inc.
How’s that I asked him, as we sipped coffee at SM Clark’s Extremely Espresso.
Short, if not selective, is your memory. He ribbed me.
How’s that?
So, what are the organizations under the KCI?
Kapampangan Marangal Inc., Abak na Balen, Pampanga Association of Non-Governmental Organizations, Pampanga Anti-Illegal Gambling Council…
Okay, he cut me. What is the common denominator of those organizations?
They are all NGOs. They make up the local civil society.
Yeah? You totally missed their most obvious common ground, dummy. They are the very core of Panlilio’s die-hardest supporters!
Oh yeah, so how’s that?
See how forgetful you have become. And you’ve been harping on the same thing in your column for sometime.
What?
Who were the chorus boys, the myrmidons – to use your own high-fartin’ word – that sang Kapampangan ku as an accompaniment to Panlilio’s signing the document that vetoed Ordinance 176?
Kapampangan Marangal Inc., Abak na Balen, Pampanga Association of Non-Governmental Organizations, Pampanga Anti-Illegal Gambling Council…
Okay. Now, who threatened to unleash the wrath of the people, if not that of God Herself, upon the sangguniang panlalawigan and the Pampanga Mayors League through a people’s initiative to repudiate Ordinance 176?
Why, the same Kapampangan Marangal Inc., Abak na Balen, Pampanga Association of Non-Government Organizations, Pampanga Anti-Illegal Gambling Council…
You still don’t get it?
No.
Okay, listen to this former labor organizer. Yeng Guiao and the sanggunian, along with the mayors virtually declared a strike against Panlilio by virtue of Ordinance 176. Your Kapampangan Marangal, et al tried to break that strike with the threat of a people’s initiative via signature campaign. So how do you call strike breakers?
Scabs.
Right. Now, you yourself have asked whatever happened to the signature campaign. Obviously, Kapampangan Marangal, et al could not muster even just a decent number of signers. So, they have to change tactics.
And that tactic is to try to get the strikers into the company fold through a prayer rally for peace and unity?
A different take on the maxim misery breeding company there. You are not a dummy, after all. So were Guiao, the sanggunian and the mayors who saw through this ploy. Why should they join the very persons who were calling for their damnation?
But the KCI is supposed to be a non-partisan watchdog of good governance, transparency, etcetera…
Precisely, Panlilio’s own company union.
Teka, teka, how about the highly-respected Father Resty Lumanlan?
Have you forgotten the Kapampangan saying? "Nukarin ya maglayunan ing pari nune king kaparehu nang pari?"
So how about the Advocacy for the Development of Central Luzon?
What about ADCL? Whose is the face of ADCL?
Businessman Rene Romero, president of the Pampanga Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
So, where was Romero at the time of the campaign and after Panlilio’s take-over of the capitol, dummy?
I would have enjoyed my coffee elsewhere with a dummy like me.

Sin City

FORGIVE me for my skepticism over the yet-another-police-oplan to rid Angeles City of prostitution. From the late ‘70s when I started column writing for the local papers, that has been a recurring refrain, making me look at these police actions from the perspective of an unknown 18th century writer as “hypocritical impotence, to make spasmodic raids upon their (the prostitutes’) habitation.”
Here’s a piece in my Golpe de Sulat column in the Sun-Star Clark issue of January 27, 1997. Yeah, almost 11 years to the day yet as real today.

THAT ANGELES City is the main course in the international sex menu is no shocking matter anymore. It has always been. It shall always be.
So, one Big Apple Oriental Tours in New York advertised “12-night stay in the Philippines for any American male and select your companion upon arrival in Angeles City for $2,195.”
So the ad even had a built-in warranty: the pimp to check the morning after if the client had a good night, if the girl “performed satisfactorily.” So? So.
I remember sometime in the ‘80s, a tour operator in one village in the Australian Outback advertised in a pamphlet “Come to Angeles City. The girls are cheap. 100 pesos only.”
I remember too reading in one local Outback shit of a sheet an article saying, “Filipino men are willing to sell their daughters, sisters, wives and mothers for a few dollars.”
So we have long become not only menial to the world but its whore as well. So?
When Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim cleaned Malate and cleansed Ermita of the flesh traders and sex enslavers, there was wide applause in Angeles. Not in oneness with the mayor’s righteous outrage. But for the opportunity the banishment shall offer Angeles.
True enough, Angeles welcomed them all – the white devils from Down Under and from everywhere – with open hearts, hugging arms and scissoring legs, to fill the void left by the departed Gringos on Fields Avenue, First Street, and BJ Alley.
So the sex institution that is the Area in Barangay Sta. Teresita continues to operate with impunity. Why not, one papasan there claims immunity, nay, untouchability, courtesy of close kinship with the head honcho of the city.
How and why “rescued girls,” already accompanied by cops, were still pelted with stones when they went back to the Area to retrieve what little is left of their worldly possession bespeak of the grossest moral turpitude there is in this city.
Still wonder why Task Force Magdalena, created by the Honorable Edgardo Pamintuan to check the city’s unbridled, open and blatant display of sexuality and depravity, was dishonorably disbanded only a few months after its birth?
Despite its pretensions to high commerce and rising industry, Angeles City shall always have a service-based economy, founded principally on the overwhelming supply of sexuality.
Look at its present. GROs in karaokes. Stripteasers and go-go dancers in clubs and lounges. Table-girls even in barbeque plazas. Masahistas. The girls of the casas. Pick-up ladies from the settlements. Caddy girls for evening holes-in-one. The Area.
Study its past. The banana and hot dog cutters of Red Baron. The dog-and-girl act of what is now Exotic 2000. The beer-for-BJ of Studio 1 or something. The shower scenes in just about every other club. The girls near Amagi. The Area.
So what do we expect of a city primarily built to satisfy the loins of a conquering imperialist army?
Life is sex. Sex is life. So it was with Sodom. So it was with Gomorrah. So it is with Angeles.
SO, AS IT was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

Walking away

WAS I surprised to find in print – in esteemed colleague Ram Mercado’s First Person column in Sun-Star Pampanga on Monday – my not-so-abrupt departure from the grand alumni homecoming at the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary last December 29.
“Just last week while the Gov was delivering a political homily before the former seminarians…activist journalist Bong Lacson whose idol is Che Guevara, walked out in the midst of the Governor’s address. It was a Tom and Jerry caper, live, with the naughty Jerry creating rain on Tom’s parade.”
Leave it to the erudite Ram to come out with a witty rendition of a plain by-the-by okay-there’s-nothing-for-me-here-so-I’m-going-home.
No, I could not be the ratty Jerry that rained on Gov Tom’s parade.
With the incident seeing print, I feel obliged to say my piece.
I did not walk out in the midst of Governor Eddie T. Panlilio’s speech. Along with a number of others, both ex-seminarians and priests, I left as he was about to start his speech. There were a greater number who left as soon as they saw the governor arrived at the hall where the reunion was being held. Over one third left, Don Robert David, who stayed, told me the day after. For whatever reason, I don’t know.
The governor and I had our usual fraternal embrace when he passed by me on his way to the table where the ex-seminarians now running Balas were seated.
So, why did I leave? I felt nabastos. Not so much by the governor’s presence but by his making a speech at the reunion.
I am not a stickler for protocol but I know and respect the bounds of courtesy. I do not have anything against the governor being there at the reunion, even if he is not an alumnus of MGCS. I have everything against the governor being allowed to and making a speech – political at that – before the assembly which main purpose was to reminisce, to relive if only for a day, the fond memories of life in the seminary and recommit ourselves to our youthful ideals to serve God and his people.
I don’t know whoever invited the governor. There was nothing ever said about any invitation to the governor in all those meetings of the executive committee of which I was a member. And of all the members, I alone, had the perfect attendance in all those meetings that started with only eight of us at a restaurant in Nepo Mart last October 12. So, there could not have been any way I missed even the slightest indication of the governor being invited to the occasion.
The program of activities, from its conceptualization to its finalization did not have the governor making a speech.
Scheduled to talk were the Most Rev. Pablo David, auxiliary bishop, on the role of the laity, particularly ex-seminarians in the Church; Raul Alejandrino, president of Miriam College and a representative of the Balas group as reactors to Bishop Ambo’s talk.
Yes, I made my objection to allowing anyone from Balas talk during the reunion. But I was outvoted by the other committee members and I accepted their decision. Only with the proviso that if they talked politics, I would ask for my time to talk too. Fair is fair. Nothing political there, I was assured. Everything fraternal and spiritual.
So the thoroughly political animal me had to be left home, in favor of the wide-eyed innocent altar boy that came to MGCS in the morning of December 29.
It was all fun reminiscing with our “big boys” and our “small boys” as well as those way ahead of us in the Guagua and Apalit campuses, and those who came long after us in San Fernando.
Truly, the re-bonding of brothers until the governor made his speech.
If those behind the move to insert the governor in the program only leveled with us in the committee, we could have happily accommodated them. No joke. I could have even volunteered to introduce the governor. As our Man of the Year. Just as I wrote in our first issue this year.

Whatever

WE TAKE the words of our officials seriously. We take our officials to mean what they say. So, we now ask them whatever happened to their pronouncements. At random now:
To Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio: Whatever happened to the wad of P500,000 you so gloriously waved before the news cameras and again presented at the Senate probe on the so-called Malacanang payola?
Still in the care of your putative provincial administrator? If it is against your conscience to put that money to use even for some good things, why not just freeze it in some glass case and exhibit it at the lobby of the capitol as a testament to your honesty.
Speaking of conscience naturally leads us to Madame Lolita Hizon of Conscience, Inc. though she’s not a public official, she is very influential and thus worth our space.
So Madame, what have we so far drawn out of the archdiocese on the sacerdotal status of Eddie T. Panlilio? Whatever happened to your inquiry on the provision of Canon Law pertaining to clergymen joining politics?
To Board Member Cris Garbo: Whatever happened to your vow to sponsor a resolution nullifying the 2007 Most Outstanding Kapampangan Awards and depriving the “winners” from inclusion in the roster of MOKA awardees? Ditto the winners in the 2007 Mutya ning Kapampangan?
Still to Doctor Garbo: Whatever happened to your threat to file a case with the Ombudsman against the Balas boys for the “pamagbareta” in the quarry operations?
Ah, Garbo is still in the US? Why, is he joining the New Hampshire primaries to go Barack Obama?
To Panlilio again, or anyone of substance at the Office of the Governor, except those job-order and casual employees: Whatever happened to the P136 million from the 20 percent development fund programmed for implementation in 2007?
One Engineer Andy Henson was quoted in the capitol press release last November 28 as having “stressed that the implementation of the infrastructure projects is just on time.”
Has anything been implemented? Or have the P136 million been reverted to the general fund? Panlilio, you owe your constituents an explanation. There is an abject failure of governance here.
To Panlilio yet again: Whatever happened to the case you filed with the Ombudsman against Bacolor Mayor Buddy Dungca after he refused to apologize to you for desilting the Gugu Creek? Or is that just bully’s bluff?
To Panlilio’s chorus line of Abak na Balen, Kapampangan Marangal Inc., Pampanga Association of Non-Government Organizations: Whatever happened to your threat of unleashing people power upon Yeng Guiao, the sangguniang panlalawigan and the Pampanga Mayors League via a signature drive to start an initiative against Ordinance 176? So, were there no signers except your miserable numbers? Puro lang ba pautot ito?
And last but not least, to Panlilio and his civil society again: Whatever happened to the anti-jueteng campaign you so promised to pursue tooth and nail during the gubernatorial campaign, and again at your 100th day in office when you promised the press something big would happen in December on this campaign? It is now January, Sir and it is all silence on the jueteng front.
In all these promises of a bang fulfilled in whimpers, there is an applicable Latin saying I learned from Horace’s Ars Poetica in the seminary: “Parturiunt montes, nascitur ridiculus mus. “
I presume the Reverend Governor went through Latin himself, so he would know the meaning, and more importantly, the implication of the phrase. If not – and to the non-Latined mass of you out there – the witticism translates to “The mountains are in labor, a ridiculous mouse is born.”
A mouse for men? Whatever.

The 'balacat' heritage

IN THE Kapampangan language, the prefix ma- means “full of” or “teeming with.” Thus a number of towns were presumably named for what was common to the place: Masantol, for the many "santol" trees; Macabebe, for the "cabibi" or shellfish; Magalang, for its very respectful citizens.
While I long assumed that Mexico was named after that other Spanish colony on the other side of the Pacific with which Islas Filipinas had the galleon trade because the timber for those ships came from here, I was told that the name actually evolved from the old Masiko. That name conjures two visions though: the town once teemed with chico trees – "siko" to the elderly Kapampangans, or the flagrant use of the elbow – "siko" too in the local language – as representative symbol for the way disputes were settled among the "barakos" and "pusakals" in the town.
Then there is Mabalacat. What the heck is "balacat" after which the town was named? With the longevity of the mayor there and the number of his kin in public office, someone who looked like the witty Perry Pangan once said the municipality would have been more appropriately named Mamorales. And he was only half joking.
So "balakat" is a tree. It is to Engineer Rox Pena of Recyclers Foundation Inc. (RFI) and the 2004 Most Outstanding Kapampangan Awardee in the field of environmental protection that we owe our knowledge of this fact. And more.
With the scientific name Zizyphus talanai (Blanco) Merr., the tree that once made a lush forest in the place – thus, Mabalacat – was most valued commercially for its large, long and straight trunk which, Rox said, reached up to a diameter of one meter and a height of 30 meters.
Balakat timber was used for general construction, as in house posts as well as for the masts of ships; furniture and sash, tool handles, turnery, household utensils, baseball bats, among a host of other goods. The branches were also used as sticks in the Filipino martial arts arnis.
With such expansive, and presumably lucrative, commercial use, coupled with the need for land for cultivation and habitation by the early settlers, the depletion of the forest of balakat trees came not long after, said Rox.
Thus it came to pass that succeeding generations of the townspeople forgot all about their heritage tree. Why, even the name they affixed unto themselves – Mabalaquenos – altogether dropped the slightest reference to their town’s origin. The town’s name is not Mabalac, so why must its people be called Mabalaquenos? Should it not be Mabalacatenos? Got to consult my seminary brother Robby Tantingco of the Center of Kapampangan Studies on this.
So, where can we find a balacat tree in Mabalacat, I asked Rox.
There is one in front of the Our Lady of Grace Parish Church, he said. But it would not be long before the town will be lush with the balakat trees again, Rox promised.
Already a memorandum of agreement has been signed among the municipality of Mabalacat, represented by Mayor Boking Morales; the DENR, with Director Regidor de Leon; and RFI, with Rox to save and propagate the vanishing species through the Balakat Greening Project.
An inventory of the remaining trees have been undertaken along with seed sourcing and propagation. For his part Mayor Boking is set to establish a municipal balakat forest park and will urge the sangguniang bayan to pass a municipal ordinance declaring the balakat the municipal tree.
Yes, it would not be long for Mabalacat to regain its core essence.

Lapid con Panlilio

COMPARISONS are always odious. But they could not be helped. Especially with people of polar dissimilarities, as in the case of two governors at the extreme ends of the moral pole.
LITO LAPID rode his white horse to his 1995 gubernatorial inauguration symbolic of the hopes of the Kapampangan to be delivered from the lahar rampages of Mount Pinatubo and the flood of corruption that inundated the very interventions engineered to mitigate the effects of the devastation.
A knight in shining armor was the Bida ng Masa in the eyes of his constituency – no doubt induced by his movie persona, and hyped to the max from the campaign platform to the capitol.
There was the incorruptible Lapid raising indignation at the brazen attempt of the subsequently pipit-ized Don to buy him out of the election with P50 million.
“Oo nga’t ako’y dukha, subali’t hindi mabibili ang aking kaluluwa; hindi maisasanla ang aking paninindigang ipaglaban ang hanay ng naghihirap na masang Kapampangan.” So Lapid did a Leon Guerrero to the ecstatic delight of his people. I should know, I was there.
There was the intrepid Lapid, precariously hanging from a helicopter ladder, plucking out an elderly from a coconut tree he sought refuge in at the height of lahar flows. It happened in Lapid’s chop-chop, bang-bang movies, why could it not happen in real life? All it took was a little coaching of a geriatric gone back to his pre-pubescent fantasies. I should know, I was there.
There was Lapid bravely casting all caution and reason to the fates, plunging into lahar to get to a wheelchair-bound old woman abandoned on a tin rooftop about to be swallowed by the raging mud. I should know, I was there.
So, why was I there? Dummy, from the pre-planning of his 1995 campaign up to two days after his re-election in 1998, I was Lapid’s principal spinmeister.
So where did all these adulation of Lapid and his acts deliver the Kapampangan? To the waiting lap of his son. And the rest, as everyone knows, is quarry history.
AMONG ED defrocked himself of his habito, donned a white shirt as a symbol of the purity of his intention to provide the Kapampangan with the moral alternative to patronage politics powered by corruption and illegal gambling.
A living saint was Panlilio projected by his civil society to the eyes of the electorate: the image induced by his priestly persona, and hyped to the max from the campaign platform to the capitol.
Why, even Panlilio’s vitiligo – that’s his skin condition, dummy – assumed, nay, presumed the nature of stigmata a la Padre Pio’s borne of his closeness to God. Furthering his image of being the Chosen One to lead Pampanga out of moral decay.
Thus, the appropriation of the song Kapampangan Ku by the Panlilio campaign for itself, with extra forte on that line“…sese na ku ning Guinu.”
“Buhay ko man ay handa kong ialay sa pagtubos sa mga Kapampangan mula sa corruption, mula sa imoralidad, mula sa kahirapan.”
Thus declared Panlilio of his readiness for martyrdom, to the ecstatic delight of his faithful oblivious of the brazen fact that the priest-candidate already surrounded by a contingent of soldiers in full combat gear was yet clad in a blue bulletproof vest which thickness – so said an acolyte – “was not simply Kevlar but of material that can withstand most high caliber guns.”
There was Panlilio braving the sangguniang panlalawigan to save his beloved attorneys from non-confirmation, running the gauntlet of the mayors to insist on the purity of his cause.
So where has this adulation of Panlilio so far delivered the Kapampangan?
To the million-a-day collection from quarry. But the rest is not yet history.
So there is the money from quarry. So what has been delivered to the people from that money?
Lapid may have sinned against God and the people by what he (perceivably) did with the collection from quarry.
Panlilio may be sinning against God and the people by what he has not done with the collection from quarry.
Or have you forgotten, sin comes two ways: by commission, and by omission. Lapid and Panlilio, a Janus – after whom January is named – they indeed make.