Clerico-fascism

THE ISMS of the days of disquiet and nights of rage in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s – imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism – would never be complete without their philosophical relative in the campuses of elitist Catholic schools – clerico-fascism.
It was at the Ateneo de Manila University that I was introduced to the buzzword, which I thought – so naively – was crafted specifically with the Jesuits in mind. The numerous DGs (that’s discussion- group, the dialectical mode of education outside the classrooms in that period) under the Ateneo trees and at the cafeteria so focused on Ignatius of Loyola’s order that I forgot the quintessential clerico-fascist in the Philippine experience was not a Jesuit but a Dominican. That is Rizal’s Padre Damaso, remember?
Then – as now – an ardent student of history, I got hooked for sometime on the subject of clerico-fascism which got me into some trouble with my seminary formators. No, my being asked to volunteer to leave San Jose Seminary was not entirely due to that.
Anyways, my curiosity got me to one Don Luigi Sturzo as the originator of the term “clerical-fascism” in the mid ‘20s.
Sturzo, an exiled Italian Roman Catholic priest and Christian Democrat leader, specifically affixed the term to the faction of the Catholic political party Partito Popolare Italiano (Italian People’s Party) who chose to support the then-emerging dictator Benito Mussolini.
It was thereafter appended to any authoritarian regime supported by the clergy or by the Roman Catholic Church itself.
The first prominent exhibit of clerico-fascism was Monsignor Jozef Tiso.
Not your simple Roman Catholic priest but a doctor of theology, Tiso was alternatingly deputy of the Czechoslovak parliament, member of the Czechoslovak government, and finally the president of the Slovak Republic from 1939-1945 under the aegis of the Fuhrer of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler.
Tiso went the way of his patron Hitler after the Soviet Red Army conquered Slovakia in April 1945. Convicted of "internal treason, treason of the Slovak National Uprising and collaboration with Nazism," Tiso was sentenced to death.
He was hanged – in his priestly vestments – in Bratislava on April 18, 1947.
Tiso’s life and death paralleled that of the Dominican Fra Girolamo Savonarola who was installed as head of government of Florence in 1494 at the time of the French intervention.
Savonarola attempted to set a theocratic government but miserably failed. He was hanged and then burned in 1498, four months shot of his 46th birthday.
So why am I writing about this now?
Though not in the stature of Savonarola and Tiso as yet, there is an emergent clerico-fascist in our midst today, in the true meaning of the word.
All pronouncements of adherence to the democratic ideals and profession of liberal aspirations fall face first in the mire of clerico-fascist instincts in Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio.
Dissent is democracy’s very essence. Dissent is Panlilio’s pet peeve. And where dissent is suppressed, there fascism flourishes.
Witness now how he deals with the protest of the very people he himself cited as “heroes who put their very lives on the line” to achieve the miracle that was the tremendous quarry collections.
On their very first day of protest, the quarrymen of Balas were ordered dispersed by Panlilio, even to be bodily carried out of the picketline, if the need arose.
Panlilio not only questioned but even declared as legally “invalid” the declaration of Arnedo Park, where the Balas boys are holding their picket, as a “freedom park” by the sangguniang panlalawigan. There the Governor arrogating unto himself the powers of the judiciary.
Witness too the Governor’s cavalier dismissal of the SP as obstructionist to his programs for Pampanga: from their refusal to grant him a blanket authority to enter into all and any agreements with just about any Tomas, Carding and Asyong, to his “confirmation” of then as now still putative provincial administrator Vivian Dabu, to the hiring of quarry workers without so much as a courtesy of informing the SP, to his demand of supplemental budget sans specifics, ad nauseam.
A clerico-fascist, the Reverend Governor, most looks like it.
Sheer coincidence, it may not really be, that the entity from where I first heard clerico-fascism is the same one now serving as Panlilio’s braintrust – elitist Ateneo de Manila.
Come to think of it too, we Kapampangans did not even have to read Sturzo, Savonarola and Tiso, just to learn what clerico-fascism is. We have long had a word for it, enshrined in our very lore: “Ya na ing ari, ya pa ing pari.” Both king and priest best defines a clerico-fascist. And ain’t that what Panlilio is?

Ordering Oca

EASY AS one plus one equals two.
What? I asked Don Mariano C., a contractor who I occasionally chance upon at Starbucks in SM City Pampanga.
The reason why Governor Panlilio denied having endorsed Mayor Oca for governor in a recall election or in 2010.
You talked to the Governor?
No. I did not have to talk to him to know.
So how did you know?
From you. With this. He shoved to my face yesterday’s Punto! with the headline Gov asserts rights over Arnedo Park, orders Oca to stop issuing permits below the kicker Mayor’s support of Panlilio doubted and bylined Bong Z. Lacson.
What about it?
Can’t you get what you yourself wrote? The Governor felt Mayor Oca is not supporting him as much as he said he did. So why should the Governor now endorse him? Tit for tat, you know.
No, I don’t. I deal with facts not impressions when I write news stories. And the Governor is a priest for Christ’s sake. And priests never demand unconditional support, as they never hit back at those who oppose them.
Being a suspended priest and now a politician, he has become all too human. See the heavy disappointment in the tone of his letter.
I read from the news article: “For more than a year in office now, I have considered you and your city as my friend. You have in the past expressed your support to my administration. For this, I am deeply grateful and appreciative…However, recent events confound me on the extent of the said expression of support…”
To the Governor, Mayor Oca’s issuance of permits to the dismissed Balas Boys to rally and denounce him gives the lie to all that profession of support. The truth of the action gives the lie to the words.
So, Panlilio is embittered?
So embittered that you can practically taste the bile in his letter. Here, sense the sarcasm in this portion.
I read again: “The Macario Arnedo Park is within the capitol compound and is owned by the provincial government of Pampanga. The capitol compound might be located within your city but administration and governance over it is lodged within the provincial government.”
There is even some insult thrown in Mayor Oca’s way when the Governor dealt with the question of legality on the declaration of Arnedo Park as “freedom park” by the sangguniang panlalawigan, writing: “Granting arguendo that its declaration as freedom park is legally tenable, a permit is not necessary for people to hold a rally or express their grievances…” Of course the insult is not lost to you having put in your article “the non-lawyer Panlilio told the human rights lawyer Rodriguez.
That is an expression of a fact. No colors there on my part.
The Governor is practically telling Mayor Oca to keep off his turf, not to meddle in his realm. And therefore, he was – as you quoted – “asserting that permits should not be issued by your (Rodriguez’s) office to any applicant who wish (sic) to make use of the Macario Arnedo Park for whatever purpose they intend to utilize it.” Do you realize the ramification of this assertion?
Yeah, it gives one more confirmation to the emergent clerico-fascism in Pampanga I tackled here a few days back. So, Panlilio will now unleash the local police on the protesting Balas Boys to drive them out of Arnedo Park?
You don’t remember what you wrote? Don’t you read your own story? It is not the police that will deal with the Balas Boys. It will be Mayor Oca. The Governor has ordered him so. Here: “The rallyists are very noisy and their streamers are libelous and defamatory. Their sound system should be toned down and their defamatory and libelous streamers should be put down by your office being the one who allowed them to do so…I expect your prompt response to this simple request.” That is an order. As though given by a superior to a lowly subordinate. Which from the looks of it was really the intention, the letter being more of a memorandum in tone and in form. See, how the Governor addressed Mayor Oca – as plain “you” sans the niceties and diplomatese as “your goodself” in courteous correspondence.
In sum, Panlilio is hurting, feeling he’s been spurned by Mayor Oca so he strikes back?
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, remember?
Dummy, Panlilio is no woman, how can you say that?
So who do you think wrote his letter? Who is behind all that the he does? Who is that one the Governor can’t be without?
Now, that’s not as easy as one plus one equals two. It’s more complicated, as in… aaa… six times nine plus five plus ten equals malice. And that would mean libelous and defamatory, Panlilio said – not so rightly though – about those Balas streamers. Spare me, I don’t want to be ordered “put down” like those streamers at Arnedo Park.
And with his caramel macchiato, Don Mariano C. raised a toast to his Among Eddie.

Standing firm

PROUDMOMENT was Monday’s (Sept. 22) show of force atop the makeshift entablado at the capitol grounds among divergent groups finding common cause in Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio, in his ouster from office that is.
The passion of that moment was captured on film, err, digital camera, by intrepid Tonette Orejas of the Inquirer and merited the banner photo of this paper yesterday.
There, amid a sea of clenched fists, Rosve Henson and Bert Lozano of the recall-pushing Kapanalig at Kambilan ning Memalen Pampanga Inc. (Kambilan); Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao and the sangguniang panlalawigan; Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo; once Panlilio-advocate Rene Romero of the Advocacy for the Development of Central Luzon; erstwhile Panlilio-supporter former Bulacan Congressman Willy Villarama; and the protesting quarrymen of the Biyaya a Luluguran at Sisikapan (Balas), were releasing white balloons stamped with both “resign” and “recall” as tough in hopes that their messages will reach God in his heavens. Not the god who appointed Atty. Vivian Dabu at the capitol, we assume.
Ah the divergent courses of resign, recall and reform finding final confluence on the Balas stage. Unity at last achieved. So was the general sentiment expressed at the Arnedo Park on Monday.
With the day’s Punto!, boldly did I postulate that the movement to unseat Panlilio has become all the more irresistible. This before my coffee confreres at McDonald’s Dolores Junction after a morning jog yesterday.
In contrast, the immovable two at the capitol – that’s Panlilio and Dabu, dummy – with their entourage of a dozen hangers-on and another handful of supporters, mostly curious children, as shown in that Kasaup rally in San Luis last week looked more tottering than firm.
It’s not only the picture of Monday’s rally that propped my contention. The banner headline too that over 100,000 signatures – Henson said during the rally about 125,000 – have been gathered and “validated” made a strong argument for the intensity of the oust-Panlilio movement.
One knows which side will give in once an irresistible force meets a not-too-immovable object. Law of physics there.
My enthusiasm though was contained, as though iced water was poured on my steaming brew, when a friend who looked like Ashley Manabat butted in.
“What unity among the oust-Panlilio forces are you talking about?” Asked he, showing me the day’s Central Luzon Daily with a photo of the Governor seated with Board Members Ric Yabut and Edna David.
It was at the launching of the Pampanga Inter-Agency Council for Migrants’ Concern (PIAMCO) at the SP session hall also last Monday.
What do you mean, retorted I.
“There may be some dents in your armor of unity here. Even after signing the recall petition, it appears that some board members are not just too willing to cut and cut cleanly from the Governor.”
But that is an inter-agency council and the SP are necessarily members.
No, Joaquin’s look-alike did not call me bobo but showed me a press release from the Office of the Governor on the PIAMCO having as members a multitude of NGOs, regional and provincial offices, even the Pampanga Mayors League, but not the SP.
So what were the two board members doing there? Serving as props to Panlilio?
I readily admit, and submit, that the loyalty of the whole SP to the cause of recall they have all signed has remained suspect for some people.
This came to the fore at last week’s news of Board Member Tars Halili being rejected by the Provincial Board Members League of the Philippines (PBMLP) in his bid to enlist the group’s support in the recall of Panlilio.
Halili’s move was seen as a “disservice” to the movement that had earlier denounced “outsiders” Isabela Gov. Grace Padaca, Naga City Mayor Jesse Robredo , San Leonardo, Nueva Ecija Mayor Sonia Lorenzo and Ateneo de Manila’s Harvey Keh for “interfering in purely Kapampangan concerns” after siding with Panlilio.
Someof our espresso buddies even tagged Halili as “Panlilio’s stool pigeon” for his PBMLP blooper.
Yeah, I had to agree. The board members should make a definitive stand where they inked their name. No fence sitters here.

Invitation to resignation

SACCHARINE AS it looks, that’s no billboard for the latest telenovela of Kapamilya’s Jericho Rosales and Carmen Soo, nor of Dingdong Dantes and Marian Rivera of Kapuso.
Capture it did though the drama – and the comedy too – continuously unraveling at the capitol. That is that billboard pictured in this issue’s front page.
There is the fully made-over – photoshopped? – radiant-as-a-bride Atty. Vivian Dabu, the putative provincial administrator, consorted by the beaming, well-groomed Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio.
The lay-out was so contrived – with the fonts used and the juxtaposed photos – as to conjure a wedding invitation. Yes, there is even that very unsubtle give-away : “An invitation” to the “People of Pampanga.” Not to an assignation, nuptial at that, but to a resignation – Dabu’s and Panlilio’s.
“Kay Panlilio ang sarap. Sa Balas Boys ang hirap. (Panlilio’s pleasure is the Balas Boys’ hardship).” Malicious me sees a double entendre there with Dabu as common object. Of desire and derision? Only those Balas Boys, and their Among, would most certainly know.
The touch of salaciousness though was not lost to many who saw the billboard, not the least of whom was Senior Board Member Cris Garbo who quipped at the start of Monday’s sangguniang panlalawigan nth committee hearing on the plaints of the Balas Boys, “O ikit yu no deng bayung kasal? (Have you seen the newly-weds?)”
The Dabu-Panlilio billboard is only the centerpiece in a slew of new streamers festooned around the Arnedo Park fronting the capitol.
“Gov. Panlilio, e yo pu pagkanulu reng Kapampangan keng metung a babae. Konsensya pu. (Gov. Panlilio, do not betray the Kapampangan for a woman. Heed your conscience).” Some semblance of respect still there, with the message very appealing in tone.
“Gob. Panlilio, walang palabra de honor (Gov. Panlilio has no word of honor).” A complete turn-about there, tantamount to saying the Honorable Governor is shameless. Ain’t a man’s word his very honor, as that cliché holds? Or as the Tagalogs say “Sa taong may hiya, salita’y panunumpa.”
“Reng Balas Boys sinawa no kang Gobernador uling eya tutupad keng pisabi. (The Balas Boys are fed up with the Governor as he does not honor whatever has been agreed upon.)” That is yet another screamer of a streamer on Panlilio’s questioned integrity or lack of it.
Then, there is the all-too direct “Panlilio resign” in a multiplicity of streamers.
There appears to be all love for Panlilio lost among the Balas Boys and their “true” supporters in the civil society. Or at least they who financed those streamers. That the honorific term of endearment Among has totally disappeared in their streamers and posters is manifest of this.
So the Balas Boys who attended the SP hearing wore white T-shirts emblazoned with “Among Resign” in bloody red. So they were quick to clarify that they would soon discard the shirts in favor of the more direct “Panlilio Resign” still at the stenciling shop.
So what has the Reverend Governor to say to all these?
From a press release of the Office of the Governor comes this:
“Their slogans are disrespectful and provocative,” Gov. Panlilio lamented. “A mockery of the governor and the provincial administrator is uncalled for. Let us work on a win-win resolution to this crisis through a level-headed exchange of opinions, not through character assassination,” the provincial chief executive challenged.”
Right on the view of raising the heady exchange to a level of mature, if not intelligent, appreciation of issues. But still harping on a situation that is “win-win”?
So, after all those dialogues with the Balas Boys and civil society intercessions, where has the Governor been all along?

Playing God

HEATHENS HAVE no place in the House of God.
Demonized for simply trying to exercise their constitutional right to recall an elected official they have found so much wanting in competence and ability to serve, Kapampangans that made the Kambilan – Kapanalig at Kambilan ning Memalen Pampanga, Inc – have not only been deprived of any democratic space in the sacred pages of the Philippine Daily Inquirer but burned, no, scorched thoroughly, there.
“Nakakahiya” (Shameful!) called its September 3 editorial of the recall movement. “Walanghiya” (Shameless!) it damned the local politicians -- virtually every elected official in Pampanga save the governor – it said were behind what it chose to believe as an insidious conspiracy to oust Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio from office, a plot made in hell itself to snatch away the Holy Grail of good governance from the Reverend, nay, the Sainted Governor and take the province back on the road to perdition.
September 5, the very apotheosis of Panlilio find actualization in its editorial cartoon of the Immaculate Governor garbed as a crusader with the shield of good governance and the sword of integrity, fearless in the very den of the evils hounding his realm: the Kambilan, personal greed and political interests.
Yeah, a shaft of light from above shining on the vitiligo-cleansed face of the cartooned Panlilio tilted upwards, eyes to the words “I won’t leave you alone” complete the heavenly representation.
Really moving. But wait, there is a slim line, indicative whence the beatific words came, pointed to the address of the business and editorial offices of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. There, God manifests itself. A slip there, less Freudian than profane.
Scream bias now, Kambilan. Shout unfair now, Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo and your ilk in the Pampanga Mayors League. Cry persecution, Bong and Lilia Pineda. Bawl partiality, Yeng Guiao and your sangguniang panlalawigan. Howl prejudice, ye protesting Balas quarrymen.
For you, there could only be wailing and gnashing of teeth. That is the lot of unbelievers.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer is hallowed ground exclusive only to the true and the good. The rest of us sinners are incinerated there.
In the image and likeness of the Philippine Daily Inquirer was Panlilio created. In its own image and likeness it created him.
In its own image and likeness it created them – Grace Padaca of Isabela, Jesse Rodredo of Naga City, Sonia Lorenzo of San Leonardo, Nueva Ecija.
Blasphemer condemned to the fires of hell is he who shall rise against these creatures of good governance, of transparency, of integrity, of everything that is true, beautiful and godly.
This is the gospel of the Philippine Daily Inquisitor. Viva, Tomas de Torquemada! The tormentor lives on!

Governor Oca

"I THINK Mayor Rodriguez is my candidate for governor if ever I may be recalled by my political detractors or comes 2010 national elections."
So was Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio quoted in the September 4 issue of Sun Star Pampanga. Yes, dummies, I read that paper, Central Luzon Daily too, and all the other weeklies, Banner and Businessweek especially, that I can get my hands on. “I am considering to return to the church or to run for higher government position so that I can help Mang Oca (Rodriguez) in running for governor." The Governor furthered in the news report. “The priest-turned-politician said he has chosen Rodriguez as his candidate because the mayor is "matured in politics" and knows how to govern like how he governs his constituents in this capital city.”
All quotes here are verbatim, shortcomings in syntax and all. Panlilio’s endorsement of City of San Fernando Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez for governor was received with more amusement than seriousness, given the dire straits the Reverend Governor is presently in.
“A kiss of death for Oca,” somebody who looked like businessman Rene Romero told me over coffee at Old Manila in Robinsons Starmills yesterday. To which I did not quite agree.
On the contrary, I said, with the Panlilio open endorsement – whether he went back to his previous calling or sought a higher political position – Mang Oca will be a landslide winner for governor in the solid constituencies of the Among.
“And where are these solid constituencies, aber?” Rene’s look-alike sneered.
Why, in Isabela of Grace Padaca, Naga City of Jesse Robredo, San Leonardo, Nueva Ecija of Sonia Lorenzo, not to mention Ateneo de Manila of Harvey Keh. Mang Oca would take all those areas by storm.
Canned corn. Am I?
More seriously now, it does not take Panlilio to make Mang Oca best bet for governor where true, working, accomplishing good governance and responsible citizenship are concerned.
“Matured in politics,” Mang Oca truly is: four-term congressman, impeachment trial prosecutor, provincial administrator, but most importantly, his character having been forged in the crucible of martial law.
Mang Oca’s being heralded third runner-up in the World City Mayor search only a few years back is no mean feat, made even more dramatic by his besting the mayors of San Francisco, California and Atlanta, Georgia in the US of A; Vienna, Austria; Munich, Germany; and Melbourne, Australia.
With Mang Oca at the helm of the city, how many awards have come San Fernando’s way, from being most competitive city to most investor-friendly city, to Gawad Galing Pook honors from just about every institution of note be it the academe, business and industry, the government?
Greatest testament to Mang Oca’s actualization of good governance and responsible citizenship is the now-nearing institutionalization of the City of San Fernando in the Public Governance System Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C. A singular honor here as much for Mang Oca as for all the Fernandinos, the City of San Fernando being the first local government not only in the Philippines but in the whole of Asia to be bestowed that award.
The field of good governance makes the endorser Panlilio a mite to the endorsee Mang Oca. The irony cannot be missed there.
Now, were Panlilio as committed, as dedicated, as resolute as Mang Oca in putting his heart and mind to where his mouth is, then he need not go into silly theatrics to dramatize his sorry governorship. And end, most fittingly, in comic relief.
Riding a colorum tricyle followed by two back-up service vehicles filled with bodyguards. Can anything be sillier?

Priestly politics

“APUNG PANLILIO is the problem. I watched you on Infomax 8.”
The most revered Msgr. Guido Aliwalas, the oldest priest in Pampanga at years past 90, greeted me as I knelt by his wheelchair to kiss his hand.
He was the first among the clergy to come to Max’s Restaurant last Monday for a meeting with the Kapanalig at Kambilan ning Memalen Pampanga Inc. (Kambilan) on the recall movement against Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio, his fellow priest, albeit suspended of his priestly faculties.
Colleague Ding Cervantes of the Philippine Star asked Apung Guido if he would sign the recall petition.
The answer was quick and drop-dead sharp: “Obat ati ku keti? (Why am I here?)
The prelate who had celebrated the diamond jubilee of his ordination some years back invoked his constitutional right to remove an elected official found wanting in competence to lead, and serve, his constituents.
One after the other, the parish priests came: Fathers Rolando Lopez of Apalit, Rudy de Guzman of Dolores, San Fernando and Simeon Pabustan, Jr. of Del Carmen, Floridablanca, all my seniors at the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary; Fr. Eric de Guzman of Manibaug, Porac, three years my junior also at MGCS; Fr. Miles Lacanlale of Minalin, already a deacon in my first and last year at San Jose Seminary; a close friend from his Porac days, Fr. Joel Tubig now of Pulung Masle, Guagua; and acquaintances Fathers Rustom Tanglao of Anao, Mexico; Lyndon Valenton of San Jose, Floridablanca; Mar Miranda of the Bulaon Resettlement, City of San Fernando; Bong Gopez formerly assigned in San Isidro, Guagua; Donatillo Ocampo; Alfred David of Baliti, City of San Fernando; Gabriel Torres of the Madapdap Resettlement, Mabalacat; and Jay Salvador.
There was Fr. Bogs Moraleja of the Chancery too.
Then there was Msgr. Jun Mercado of Lourdes, Angeles City dubbed the “General” for his closeness with and influence on the police and the military. All 16 of them make up one half of the group called Prayer Warriors.
No, they did not meet with the Kambilan to wage war against their own kind in the Reverend Governor.
This, even as Fr. Bogs admitted that their group had vigorously opposed Panlilio's entry into politics when he decided to run for governor in violation of Canon Law.
Echoing an earlier statement of former San Fernando, now Dagupan-Lingayen Archbishop Oscar Cruz, the Prayer Warriors challenged Panlilio to choose between being governor and being a priest.
“I have always spoken against priests running as politicians and he (Panlilio) knows that very well. He has to either give up his priesthood and so become a poor politician or give up his political role and become a full priest.” So was Cruz quoted in Panlilio’s favorite newspaper.
Fr. Bogs cited a parallel case in that of former Bishop Fernando Lugo who stepped down as bishop to assume the presidency of Paraguay last Aug.15.
After initial refusal to recognize Lugo’s resignation, the Vatican eventually laicized him, that is stripped him of his ecclesiastical vows and declared him a layman.
That aside, Fr. Bogs said they welcome the recall move. And “some, but not all, would sign the recall petition.” Not only among the 16 present but other priests as well, Fr. Joel whispered to me, “but privately, of course.”
News of the priests meeting with Kambilan has most definitely created ripples in the hierarchy.
Tuesday evening on CLTV 36’s Balitaan, San Fernando Auxiliary Bishop Pablo Virgilio David said the 16 Prayer Warriors should be reminded of the separation of Church and State, that which stands to be violated by their involvement in the politics of the recall process.
Perhaps anticipating a quick retort of Panlilio’s own involvement in politics, Bishop Ambo clarified that the governor was suspended for that very reason.
So was that a veiled threat? That those priests who would participate in the recall process stand to get suspended too?
A layman who watched the newscast with me cried double standard at Bishop Ambo’s pronouncements: “He is lowering the boom on the Prayer Warriors for their intended participation in a political exercise, yet he closes his eyes to priests who have politicized the very Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by allowing Panlilio use of the pulpit for his harangues against the sangguniang panlalawigan and the Pampanga mayors.”
Stirrings of some schism there, I tell you.

Panlilio does Palito corny

SO DID Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio go home – to wherever he calls home – yesterday the way he went to his office at the capitol, via passenger jeepney?
I asked one Marifa Mercado of the provincial information office over the phone – number 961-0917.
“I don’t know, Sir, as I did not see him leave. I have to ask.”
So, is he commuting again by public transport to the capitol today?
“He has a meeting in Quezon City, Sir.”
So did he take the bus?
“No, Sir, he rode a private vehicle, a Toyota Revo, he has long been using before he became governor.”
I assume he paid for his own gasoline, there.
“Yes, Sir.”
Thank you, Ma’am.
Minutes after that call, came this text message from phone number +639108001555 – “Umuwi po si Gov Panlilio kahapon sa capitol halos 10pm na. Ginamit po niya ang kanyang personal na sasakyang toyota revo dhil wala ng jeep na namamasada. Salamat po”
So gentlemen and ladies, what was all that public commuting Panlilio did on September 1 all about? He took a passenger jeepney from the University of the Assumption to the San Fernando city proper, transferred to another jeepney to the capitol, then took a tricycle to a function at King’s Royale Hotel.
“The governor’s office has run out of budget. We don’t have funds for gasoline and even meals,” Panlilio’s putative provincial administrator Atty. Vivian Dabu was quoted as saying.
So without funds for gasoline, Panlilio had to take public transport. So without funds for meals too, Panlilio would now stop eating? That is to follow Dabu’s (un)reasoning.
You’re governor and you’d run out of funds, all you had to do was ask.
So, the sangguniang panlalawigan did not approve your proposed supplemental budget that would have covered your expenses.
So, go to the SP and defend your proposed budget. You just don’t give them the figures without any justification and expect to give it to you, pronto. Unlike in running a parish, there’s such a thing as line budgeting and some processes to follow in government.
Still finding it hard to crack the SP nut?
Listen to ex-Bulacan Congressman Willy Villarama, once Panlilio’s strategist: “I suggest he call up his friends – Governors Amor Deloso of Zambales, Jonjon Mendoza of Bulacan, Tet Garcia of Bataan, Oyie Umali of Nueva Ecija. They will be very happy to teach this ‘man of the year’ how to produce money for his gasoline needs.”
That would have been normal routine. But how do you milk media mileage out of routinary procedures?
The thing is Panlilio had to produce a grand morality play out of his current plight at the capitol, a high drama along the recurring theme of good-versus-evil that pushed him to the governorship. Where before the demons were his rivals, the Pinedas and Lapid, now the devil takes the form of the SP.
So, with local and national media informed way ahead of time, Panlilio took the jeepney to the capitol and the tricycle to a function.
That is sheer propaganda intended to draw public sympathy to Panlilio, especially as the recall movement against him is gaining steam; “snowballing,” says main proponent Rosve Henson, with the avalanche of signatures triggered by the Pampanga’s Tocino Queen, Madame Lolita Hizon, who singlehandedly brought in more than 500 signatures in under four hours.
Panlilio’s high drama of September 1 though turns to comic relief at close watch.
So Panlilio rode the jeepney. But his bodyguards followed in a back-up vehicle, albeit seeming unobtrusively. So said a long-time callboy, err, caller, at the Assumption-Plaza route. The boss sweating it out in a public transport, the bodyguards in air-con privacy. Insipidly funny, worthy of a second rate Palito comedy movie.
Take a look too at the photo of the tricycle from where alighted Panlilio. You don’t see anything wrong there? Get your eyes checked.
The trike had neither a body number nor a plate number. That makes it a colorum vehicle. Paging the Land Transportation Office. The Governor, unwittingly perhaps, is supporting, err, patronizing this patently illegal mode of transportation. Legitimate TODAs (that’s tricycle operators and drivers associations, dummy) of Pampanga, unite and complain!
So will Panlilio continue taking public transport until such time the SP gave him his operational funds?
Yes. But only when the media are watching.

Going overdrive

THE LORD sayeth in Matthew 11:28: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
“Lording over the capitol’s affairs” – as those leaflets distributed around by the protesting quarrymen of Balas claim – is Atty. Vivian Dabu, putative provincial administrator and – take a long, deep breath now – acting provincial legal officer, chair of Balas, chair of the bids and awards committee, acting chief of the general services office, in-charge of the provincial engineer’s office, acting chief of staff of the Office of the Governor, etcetera, etcetera.
So apparently overly centralized are the powers at the capitol in Dabu that Senior Board member Cris Garbo was moved to declare that Eddie T. Panlilio is the de facto administrator to Dabu’s de facto governorship.
Friday last week though, at the celebration of the first Aldo Ning Amanung Sisuan (Day of the Kapampangan Language), Panlilio acted very gubernatorial when he proclaimed that he was relieving Dabu of the Balas and BAC chairmanships to “unburden” her of the heavy demands that her multifarious positions carried, and at the same time “hopefully create a win-win situation” on the contentious issue of the protesting Balas boys.
No need to repeat here for the umpteenth time that the Balas boys are clamoring for Dabu’s head, vowing that nothing short of her ouster would put an end to their protest action, now into its fifth week.
“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” So it is written in Job 1:21.
So Panlilio has given Dabu the chairmanship of Balas and the bids and awards committee; so Panlilio has taken them away. So he be praised?
Sorry for Panlilio. His momentous proclamation of Dabu’s relief was met not with any rejoicing but with jaded skepticism.
"It has not really changed anything or will it ever change anything." Scoffed the Balas boys, sneering at Panlilio’s hoped-for “win-win situation” as plain wishful thinking “as long as Dabu sticks to her post as provincial administrator."
“A consuelo de bobo ,” a former Balas supervisor said of Panlilio’s relief of Dabu. “Panlilio is taking us for idiots who can’t see the motives (behind) and meanings of his pronouncements.”
Could I be hearing these things from one of the most loyal of Panlilio’s myrmidons? I asked the Balas ex-supervisor I chanced upon at McDonald’s, Dolores Junction, a stone’s throw away from the office of the Central Luzon Daily .
“Your opinions on the Balas issue, always punctuated with a “bobo,” have really made us a source of ridicule and given us a real bad rep (That stands for reputation, dummy). Especially myself, what with study and learning in my very name. But we are far from stupid, contrary to your prejudgment of us.”
It’s not Dabu, bo…
“Yes, it’s Panlilio. But it’s got to start somewhere. And Dabu is the most visible symptom of dysfunction in the Panlilio administration.”
So, where will it go from here?
“Panlilio is still taking us for fools. After purportedly sacking Dabu from Balas, he announced that he is still open for negotiations with us. He even made us look like we were being belligerent when he said that he and Bro. Ric Miranda waited for us at his office until 10:30 last Thursday morning and we did not show up.” So why did you snub that meeting?
“The fact is we informed Bro. Ric earlier of our decision to forego with the meeting. It is useless to meet with Panlilio as we will only be entrapped anew in that vicious cycle of talking and discussing without really coming to terms or agreeing on anything.”
I heard there is a dialogue Panlilio is setting this coming week with his buddies Harvey Keh and (Isabela) Gov. Grace Padaca of Kaya Natin! and the civil society groups with the Balas situation at the very top of the agenda . So are you attending?
“These non-Kapampangans no matter how well-intentioned they are have no right dipping their fingers in our cause since they have little or no knowledge at all of what we are fighting for."
Now, you are mouthing the lines of the Recall Panlilio petitioners, notably Rosve Henson and Madame Lolita Hizon. So are you shifting from your “reform” gear to get to the higher drive of recall?
“All it takes is a step on the clutch of issues, to follow your analogy, and go really overdrive.”
Touche.

GMA does a TJ

THE PRESS is “critical to maintaining our strong democracy.”
So hailed President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of the role of media in her speech at the centennial celebration of the Philippines Free Press magazine Wednesday last week.
Quick and short was the President’s encomium to media. Quicker and longer was her opprobrium to them.
Said she: “In the words of Joseph Pulitzer: ‘A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce a people as base as itself. These are words of great precautionary value to those who seek shelter under the freedoms advanced by …Pulitzer and Locsin, but disdain the concurrent responsibilities on their part to be disinterested and public spirited.
“Freedom in the hands of those who want the freedom without the responsibility degenerates into a callous license to aspire to little more than gossipy headlines and inflated circulation numbers, no matter what cost must be paid in the debasement of public discourse.”
A searing indictment of media, the President slammed there. It was as though GMA placed the media on top of a pedestal only to kick its base to topple and break them to pieces.
The President’s latest take at media finds parallel with that of American President Thomas Jefferson’s.
No higher plaudits have ever been given the press than those of Jefferson’s.
Consider these passages in his Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1799: “To the press alone, checquered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.”
And, the primacy of the press over government itself in his letter to Colonel Edward Carrington dated January 16, 1787: “…and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.”
What place can be loftier for the press to be raised to than that which Jefferson set for it?
What place can be more abysmal for the press to be damned in than that which the same Jefferson set for it a few years later?
The towering intellect among US Presidents lamented to John Norvell on June 11, 1807: “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle…Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into four chapters, heading the 1st Truths, 2nd Probabilities, 3rd Possibilities, 4th Lies. The first chapter would be very short.”
And his searing damnation of the press, in a letter to Thomas Seymour and other citizens of Hartford, Connecticut dated February 11, 1807: “The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them: inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehood and errors.”
What caused the plunge of the press in Jefferson’s estimation? The scandalmongering James Callender.
Dubbed “The Scoundrel,” Callender was employed by then Secretary of State Jefferson in his running conflict against Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Callender it was that exposed the affair of Hamilton with the married Mary Reynolds.
When Jefferson became president, Callender wanted the postal office as a sinecure for his services. Failing to get it, he turned on his former employer with scathing newspaper articles and pamphlets foremost of which was on the Jefferson fathering a child by the slavewoman Sally Hemings.
Then, as now, salacious scandals sell. And presidents – still remember JFK’s Marilyn Monroe caper and Bill Clinton’s Lewinsky affair? – do not have any immunity from exposure there. Thus, the periodic presidential thrashing of media.
In the case of our own GMA, well, what can I say? Scandals – from “Hello Garci” to the NBN-ZTE – exposed one after the other. But absolutely nothing bawdry there. Still, the pain caused on the President is worth some presidential digs at the press. That which media have to take as par for the course of give and…well, take.