Carnal knowledge

HE HAS known woman after all.
Who? What? I asked my seminary elder Don Luisito, finally catching up with him at Starbucks SM Pampanga after so many months in hiding. From me, that is.
Your compadre, who else. Admitting, albeit indirectly, having known woman in the biblical sense.
You mean dispensation-seeking suspended-priest, Comelec-recounted-out Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio had acknowledged having carnal knowledge with women, his priestly vow of celibacy notwithstanding?
Spare me of your corny modifiers, but for Panlilio what other politico will interest the public with disclosure of his peccadilloes?
Panlilio’s peccadilloes. Nice alliterative title there. But if as you said he admitted to having known women, that’s no petty indiscretion. Panlilio is a priest, for Christ’s sake. A priest having carnal knowledge of women makes a peccata mundi. Necessitating the most contrite plea of miserere nobis to the Lamb of God Himself. Anyways, how and when did he pull these skeletons out of the closet?
A mouthful of Latin there, but I am not impressed. So you did not watch Boy Abunda’s Bottomline?
I heard of his calling the media in Pampanga as mostly PR men. Which so incensed Ashley Manabat as to dare him to name names, to put up or shut up.
Uncharacteristically myopic of you to miss the juicier, okay more salacious, part of the interview.
Which was?
Abunda asking him if he has any child by any woman, and Panlilio answering he did not know.
That’s it and he already admitted he had had relations with women other than pastoral or pursuant to his ecclesiastical duties?
Tonto! That’s all there is to it. The admission is clear as day there. If he did not have any carnal knowledge with any woman he could not possibly have had any child by any woman. That he was not sure if he had is proof positive that he did engage in the marital act.
Okay, you did enlighten stupid me.
Then, in a subsequent interview with John Susi over dwRW, a repeat of the Abunda question merited a different but complementary response from Panlilio. He said he was (and is) no angel but a mortal man who can also fall to worldly temptation. There is that affirmation, if there’s any you still need to prove he has broken his vow of priestly celibacy.
Careful there, Don Luisito. For all your seminary training reaching to San Carlos, you may be treading on unknown territory.
What?
Your take on the vow of priestly celibacy. Here, consider these passages from the book Priest-Politicians that Among Oscar V. Cruz sent me:
Clerics are obliged to observe perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, and are therefore bound to celibacy…(Canon 277, par. 1, CIC)…
Annotations…The first and foremost obligation of a cleric is continence, with celibacy as but its logical consequence. That is why celibacy, or the state of being single, is a big hypocrisy when a cleric is anything but continent…
A cleric can profess and claim his observance of celibacy while having women here and there, and even siring children every now and then. Needless to say, this is contrary to both the substance and the spirit of the law. The substance, rationale and spirit of the Law of Celibacy is the mandate of continence. Continence there specifically meaning “self-restraint, especially refraining from sexual intercourse.”
Whatever, the bottomline is that Panlilio has broken all his consecrated vows – first his obligation to reverence and obedience to his superior with his rejection of the call of his archbishop, Apu Ceto, for him not to run for governor in 2007; and now his distinctive obligation to observe continence in the celibate state of priestly life, as can be deduced from his Abunda and Susi interviews.
So whither goeth Panlilio from here?
A fast-track of the dispensation process, and he should drop the honorific and reverential Among before his name. That’s so hypocritical, as Among Oscar has long been saying.

All air, no force

“BEFORE GMA STEPS DOWN IN JUNE
PAF to get four ‘Tom Cruise’ planes”
THE headline of a front page story in our Monday issue instantly conjured the F-14 Tomcats of Cruise’s Top Gun screeching, soaring, somersaulting across the Philippine skies.
While aged by state-of-the-art standards set by its intended replacement, the F/A18EF Super Hornet, the advanced F-22 Raptor, or even by the now-retired Gulf War mainstay, the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter, the F-14 Tomcat can stand its ground, er, rule its airspace, against any comers in this part of the globe.
Thus the sense of patriotic pride, if not jingoistic ebullience, drawn from our very core by that headline. Only to go pffft with a reading of the story: The Philippine Air Force (PAF) will have four aircraft similar to that owned by Hollywood star Tom Cruise before Pres. Arroyo’s term ends this June.
Aerotech Industries Philippines, Inc. (Aerotech) firm authorized by the Italian aircraft manufacturer Alenia Aermaccchi (Alenia) is rushing the completion of four out of 18 SF-260 training aircraft at its assembly plant here…
…“It’s the kind of aircraft owned by Tom Cruise, said Aerotech chief operating officer Teresa Parian.
Tom Cruise, yeah right. What’s good for him is good for the Philippine Air Force. If this SF-260 training aircraft is the best we can afford, Allah help us.
A quick click in the internet showed that on December 12, 2002 an SF-260 crashed in a factory in Sto. Tomas, Batangas killing its two pilots and a factory worker while injuring several others.
Incidentally, the same Alenia Aermacchi is the maker of the S-211trainer jet that has been dubbed – along with just about every PAF aircraft – as “widowmaker.”
Again, the web yielded at least two fatal incidents involving S-211s: On January 14, 2002 in Cabanatuan City where two pilots and four civilians were killed in a crash and 20 houses razed, and in November 2007 over Kalayaan Islands when an S-211 went missing along with its two pilots.
The rash of aircraft crashes early this year – an OV-10 Bronco in Tarlac in February killing its two pilots, and a Nomad in Cotabato City in January resulting to the death of eight soldiers, including a general, and a civilian on the ground – has added yet another sobriquet to PAF planes – “flying coffins.”
The Nomads would appear as the flying coffins destined for PAF’s two-star generals: Maj. Gen. Mario Butch Lacson, commander of the Air Force's 3rd Air Division, in the Cotabato crash; and Maj. Gen. Santiago Madrid Jr. in the July 2, 2000 crash off Cagayancillo Island in Palawan.
Yet another Nomad crash – into the sea off Zamboanga – left all 13 people on board surviving though.
All these crashes notwithstanding, the PAF has constantly appealed to media to refrain from branding with morbid labels its aged aircraft.
“Ako ay nagre-request sa ating kasamahan na siguro, kung pwede, ma-delete ang branding na widowmaker at saka flying coffin sapagkat ito ay nakakaapekto sa morale ng ating air crew (I am requesting our friends in the media that, if possible, delete the branding of our planes as widowmakers and flying coffins because it affects the morale of our air crew).” So appealed PAF spokesman Lt. Col. Gerardo Zamudio after the OV-10 crash in Tarlac.
All these crashes notwithstanding, the PAF has been insistent that all its aircraft are well-maintained.
“Kung ano ang bigay sa atin ng gobyerno, papangalagaan natin ito para ma-perform ang ating mission. (Whatever the government provides us, we do our best to maintain them just so we can perform our mission.)” So Zamudio averred.
Yeah, and dying in crashes has apparently become the principal mission for the PAF flyers.
So PAF will get all 18 new, er, refurbished, SF-206 trainer planes possibly by the end of the year. Big deal. Both Malaysia and Taiwan have F-16 Fighting Falcons in their arsenals, Indonesia produces its own fighter planes.
So what was it that Senator Dick Gordon said about the PAF? All air, no force.
Yeah, right.

(Un)tenable tenacity

Zona Libre/Bong Z. Lacson

(Un)tenable tenacity

NEITHER TELENOVELA nor reality show ala Donald Trump’s The Apprentice can approximate the current corporate drama at the boardroom and the work premises of the Clark International Airport Corp. with Kuwait and Egypt at the sidelines.
Yeah, the movie in my mind that can easily relate to l’affaire CIAC is Wall Street which won an Oscar Best Actor for Michael Douglas in his performance as the supremely amoral corporate magnate Gordon Gecko.
“Greed is good” – more than his corporate philosophy, that was Gecko’s article of faith.
So CIAC board chairman Nestor Mangio – renowned architect, developer of uppity Lakeshore, and papal awardee – is being put to task for what has been dubbed as his “untenable but obstinate tenacity” in pushing for the Kuwaiti firm Al Mal to handle the terminal(s) project at the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport.
A move described as a virtual sell-out not only of the whole of Clark’s civil aviation complex but of the national patrimony, if not the national sovereignty.
Disclosed CIAC executive vice president Alexander Cauguiran: “The plan was to bid out only the construction of a Terminal 2 at the DMIA. Al Mal wanted to take over the existing Terminal 1 apart from constructing a second and third terminals and control over 1,500 hectares of the 2,500-hectare civil aviation complex.”
On top of that, Cauguiran said Al Mal demanded that no premiere airport be operated within 150-kilometer radius of the DMIA for 45 years, extendable for another 25 years.
“This would deprive other provinces the same chance to host a premiere airport that we fought for before DMIA was developed,” so noted Cauguiran, referring to the advocacy for the development of the Clark Airport espoused by his group Move Clark Now and the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement of Pert Cruz.
Anyone with any rudiment in home economics would see the hand of Gordon Gecko in the Al Mal proposal.
Hence, it was junked in December 2008. It was later revived after the CIAC failed in its initial bidding for the project. Aside from Al Mal, the other pending proposals for the construction of a second passenger terminal are a Malaysian consortium with partners from the United States and the Middle East, and a South Korean consortium with local partners.
Despite Mangio saying in December 2009 that the CIAC board has found the Al Mal proposal “acceptable,” the same junked it in its meeting at Club Filipino on Feb. 16, “for being grossly disadvantageous to the government.”
The Office of Government Corporate Counsel has also been cited as finding certain provisions in the Al Mal proposal as “patently illegal.”
Why then is Mangio seemingly going overboard in his espousal of Al Mal?
“Personally, I am quite convinced that Al Mal is the best contractor for the development of the DMIA…We have been looking for a contractor for the past two years and all, except Al Mal, failed in financial capability.” So was Mangio quoted as telling this paper’s Ding Cervantes in an interview, “pointing out that M.A. Kharafi and Sons, Al Mal’s mother company, has been listed by Fortune Magazine as among the world’s richest.”
Au contraire, cried Max Sangil, former CIAC director and current director of the Bases Conversion Development Authority.
Sangil goes on record that he was the most vocal in the CIAC board in his objection to the Al Mal proposal, “for sheer common sense if not for government and country.”
To Sangil, it was Mangio’s insistence on Al Mal that the construction of Terminal 2 was delayed: “The timetable was disrupted.”
“The opportunities lost with that total focusing on Al Mal are immense to say the least. Terminal 2 would have been a legacy project of the President not only for the people of Pampanga but of Central and Northern Luzon.” So Sangil lamented.
“If he has any remaining delicadeza in his bones, Mangio should quit pronto,” Sangil said, especially given the fact that the President herself has ordered the junking of the Kuwaiti proposal.
With cost-benefit ratio in his mindset, Sangil pointed to the “drain in economic resources the CIAC suffered in evaluating and negotiating with Al Mal.”
“Easily several millions of government money were spent in the many travels of Mangio and the CIAC directors and staff to Kuwait,” Sangil revealed. “What with business class tickets, $300 per day allowances, and other perks.”
“At every special board meeting on the Al Mal proposal, the directors also earned P9,000 each,” he added.
Now, now, truly interesting to see the Commission on Audit report on all these comings and goings, dinings and flying, at CIAC where the Al Mal proposal is concerned.
But Mangio could not be denied a counterpunch on Sangil.
He made his own revelation that Sangil has been blaming him for his removal as member of the CIAC board last December.
“I had no control over rules and regulations. There is a prescription against one person being member of both the boards of CIAC and BCDA. Later I found out the President had signed the appointment of Raffy Angeles as his replacement in the CIAC board,” Mangio explained in Cervantes’ story here Wednesday.
And then a jaw-dropping uppercut: Mangio said that Sangil had worked for his appointment to the BCDA board since directorship in such board is not co-terminus with the term of President Arroyo.
So will Sangil just allow himself to be Mangio’s punching bag?
Watch out for more episodes of this CIAC reality show.

Of ponkans, apples and ratiles

BONGBONG MARCOS it was that started it: fruits in the current of events political, that is.
At the Café Mesa in Clark Friday last week for a meet-the-local-press, the son of the Great Ferdinand was breezing through whatever issues thrown his way when the winning chances of his standard bearer in Pampanga was raised, premised on the administration’s purported stranglehold of the local government executives.
“So have you heard of the ponkan story of Senator Villar?” inquired Bongbong. Nobody had any inkling of the story. So everybody wanted to hear it.
“The ponkan fruit starts green but turns orange when ripe and ready for the picking. That’s the whole story.” Bongbong said, his smile that of the tangerine Cheshire cat that just devoured the yellow canary. The metaphor of colors and creatures there mine, and intended for some conclusive effect.
So was Bongbong saying there are Pampanga mayors who may be, at this early, already playing footsie, if not sleeping, with the enemy?
More than feelers, Bongbong said, had been sent by an undetermined number to Villar. But of course, they could not as yet be named.
“In due time, they will come out,” Bongbong promised.
Okay now, who might Bongbong be referring to?
Lime yellow is the color of City of San Fernando Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez, being committed to Senator Aquino.
Angeles City Mayor Blueboy Nepomuceno already sports Villar orange.
It cannot be Mabalacat Mayor Boking Morales, being all shades of green and his daughter already entrenched in the Villar camp, courtesy of her husband’s dogged rabidity to the Bondoc camp, the bastion of the Nacionalista Party in Pampanga.
No way for Candaba’s Jerry Pelayo, having the distinction as the first Pampanga mayor to endorse Gibo Teodoro soon as his name was whispered as presidential material. Besides, what’s his name Gulapa has long enslaved himself to the Bondoc cause to spite Pelayo.
I am not telling but I know at least two Pampanga mayors who have had some up close and personal relationships with Villar. I am not also saying that they are among those Bongbong implied.
Time will tell if the mayors’ green today will turn orange before election day.
Saturday last week, the ponkan story was raised by Ashley Manabat at the breakfast table of 3rd District Rep. Dong Gonzales, the Lakas-CMD-Kampi campaign chair for Central Luzon.
“It’s the apple, not the ponkan that is the favorite not only in Pampanga but in the whole of Region 3, specifically, the green apple that is ripe, ready and refreshingly succulent in its greenness. Unlike the ponkan, no matter how orange in color, the green apple has no taste of any sourness.” So went Cong Dong’s own take of the fruity story.
Ironic though that the fruits served by Cong Dong’s kitchen cabinet were yellow bananas and la mallorca – that is yellow not red – watermelons.
Still, neither colors nor fruits mattered to the omnivore Macky Pangan of Central Luzon Daily who kept on munching whatever was served, gastronomically or intellectually.
It was the PR maven Jun Sula of Sun-Star Pampanga that gave us some indigestion, in them political sense.
“Forget ponkan and apples. It is the lowly ratiles that best embodies political shading. The fruit starts green, turns yellow, then orange, and finally red in its full ripeness,” the man called Zoolander declared.
Red? I never suspected Jun S. as blood donor to the Red Cross, not even as a Subic volunteer.