A voice most ungodly

“TODAY IS a historic moment, if only because for the first time, this was approved at the committee level.”

So declared Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Neri Colmenares of November 20, 2013, the day the Anti-Political Dynasty Bill (APDB) was approved – unanimously – by the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms.

A consolidation of three bills, the approved measure seeks to prohibit relatives up to the second degree of consanguinity to hold or run for both national and local office in "successive, simultaneous, or overlapping terms."

It also provides for the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to decide through lottery who in the clan would be permitted to run in the election in case none of the candidates in the same family refuses to withdraw.

The first attempt to legislate a solution to what has been deemed the scourge of Philippine politics was 18 years ago, a fact all too clear to those who are now ecstatic over the passage of the bill, if only at the committee level.

"The State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service, and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law." So it is enshrined in Article II Section 26 of the 1987 Constitution.

All attempts to just cobble an enabling law, aborted at their very conception, the legislative bodies as much dynastic in their composition as the other layers of government.

So what difference will it make this time?

"Power, both economic and political should not be held by just a few. We need to give a chance to others who are equally capable but do not have the opportunity."  

So spake eloquently Senator JV Ejercito, author of the Senate version of the APDB, his motives readily suspect given his being a dynast himself: son of the deposed, convicted, pardoned President Joseph Estrada, now mayor of Manila, and former actress Guia Gomez, now mayor of San Juan; half-brother to Senator Jinggoy Estrada and uncle to the latter’s daughter, San Juan Councilor Janella Ejercito Estrada; cousin to Laguna Governor ER Ejercito and Quezon Province Board Member Gary Estrada.

Matter-of-factly thus, JV conceded that passing an anti-political dynasty law "may not be an easy legislative task."

"I'd like to make a stand as me because I'm after all the leader of everybody here and I want to be as hands off as possible and not try to push anybody. I'm in favor of it...I'm in favor of it if only because the Constitution says it."

Circuitous locution on the APDB there from House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. constrained as he is with a dynasty of his own:  only daughter Josefina aka Joy is the incumbent vice mayor of Quezon City, nephew Jose Christopher aka Kit is the city’s 6^th district representative.

"I want to put it on record that if there's, let's say, a situation where it's either she or me, I will yield...Let the youth take over.”  

That situation’s long time passing, Sir.

"I believe (APDB) will experience rough sailing but you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. We have already put up a big stone. It already passed in the committee level and I think that is something to be happy about but it's still a long way."

Belmonte dishing out a consuelo de bobo.

Senator Nancy Binay though takes to a different application of the anti-dynasty measure. Rather than family members in elective positions – being there by the sovereign will of the people and divine grace, it is those in appointive positions – merely serving at the pleasure of the powers-that-be, that should be subjected to the anti-dynasty scrutiny.

Binay says: “Dapat mas bantayan natin yung appointing members of one family in key and high positions of government." A not-so-cloaked reference to the Abads in positions of power -- Budget Secretary Butch Abad whose daughter Julia is head of the Presidential Management Staff. Not to mention his wife, Henedina representing the lone district of tiny Batanes but reportedly getting more priority development assistance funds than House Speaker Belmonte. 

No hypocritical civility but in-your-face bluntness becomes Binay when, invoking the supreme law of the land, she argued the APDB "may limit what the Constitution says about who can run.”

Articulating thus: “…if the person is elected then that is already the voice of the people. And what is the constitution about but the voice of the people. So why deprive the people of their voice."

And went a step higher to lay her case before the supreme being: “It may also go against the principle of vox populi, vox Dei.”

The voice of Makati, most precisely, given the premier city’s being a Binay fiefdom since the Marcos ouster, breeding the current Vice President of the Philippines who was many times city mayor, his wife who was once mayor, his son who is current mayor, his other daughter who is representative of the city’s second district and this senator daughter.

Ganyan sila sa Makati, ganyan din sa buong Pilipinas.

A matter of vox Makatii, vox dei there to me. As the voice of the people Binay referred to may well be the voice – not of God – but of their gods. Their god of goons, their lord of numbers, their lord of celluloid illusion, at one time their glorious goddess of the tapes, and of currency, the almighty epal.
Hear then this caveat all the way out of the 8^th century from the English scholar and theologian Alcuin: “And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”
Yeah, most fitting to the Philippine praxis of democrazy.  

Epiphany

“GOODNESS IS self-edifying; ethical living satisfies the conscience; virtue is, as proverbially advertised, its own reward, and don’t look to God for a bonus.”

Thus, the language maven William Safire iterates a moral doctrine in his work subtitled The Book of Job in Today’s Politics.

“Prayer has a value in itself. That’s the flip side of the negative, don’t-look-for-a-material-payoff lesson. The truly religious person, in Joban theology, not only worships God with no payoff in mind but is uplifted by that unselfish love.”

So I rearranged the order of Safire’s paragraph to transition to the point whence this discussion takes off.

PAYOFF TIME. Emphatically tolled across the globe by the devastation wrought by Super Typhoon Yolanda. Notwithstanding the aforesaid Joban precept.   

“We will never forget what the Philippines did for us in 2011.” So was quoted Kenzo Iwakami, the team leader of the Japanese medical mission to Leyte. In reference to the Filipino nation’s contribution to relief efforts at the time Japan was ground zero of the destructive earthquake and tsunami that killed over 15,000 people.

Seconded Dr. Joji Tomioka, sub-leader and medical coordinator for JICA’s medical team for disaster relief: “This time, we have to help you. Because two years ago, you helped us. So this time, this is our turn.”

In what could be its largest military overseas aid deployment to date, Japan has dispatched two warships carrying some 1,000 troops, along with 10 planes and six helicopters to join relief efforts in the Visayas. It has likewise pledged $10 million in aid.

Purely personal payback it was to Kenji Hirakawa who donated 200,000 yen (P87,000) to the relief efforts “for all the troubles my father may have caused to

the Filipino people.”

“My father lies sleeping in a mountain somewhere in Luzon,” Hirakawa said in the letter he sent to the Philippine Embassy in Tokyo, qualifying his old man was a member of the Japanese Imperial Army that occupied the Philippines in World War II and never made it back home.

A tug at the heartstrings was that Japanese pre-schooler who went to the Philippine embassy to donate his piggy bank savings.

PAY IT FORWARD.  In 1939, some 1,200 Jews “who otherwise would have almost certainly died in the Holocaust” were given sanctuary in the Philippines.

“The people of the Philippines will have in the future every reason to be glad that when the time of need came, their country was willing to extend a welcome hand.” President Manuel L. Quezon’s word at the time proved prescient, if not prophetic, today.

“A particularly heroic piece of history (that) should be recalled by the global Jewish community, which owes a debt to the island nation.” Wrote Alan H. Gill,  CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, in JTA, the Global Jewish News Source.

And the Jewish nation did. Setting a field hospital right at ground zero within seven hours of the arrival of the Israel Defense Force, its 125 member delegation of medical doctors, nurses, technicians, lab workers treating as much as 300 patients a day. And members of its Homefront Command coordinating logistics comprising over 100 tons of equipment and supplies.  

Aside from treating injuries and ailments, 12 babies have been delivered, the first of whom was named “Israel” in gratitude to the volunteers. Enough to move one to tears.

Writes Gill further: “These efforts now come full circle, especially for one member of our team arriving in the Philippines later this week, Danny Pins. In addition to being one of our development and employment experts, Pins’ mother and grandparents were among the German Jews who fled to the Philippines to seek safe haven in 1938. His posting, in many ways a homecoming despite previous trips to the country, is highly symbolic.”

“Today, in the wake of one of the worst storms in history, with perhaps more than 10,000 dead and hundreds of thousands homeless, we are fully committed to fulfilling President Quezon’s prophecy and returning the favor to the Filipino people. Not just because we are Jews, the heirs to this nation’s life-saving actions, but because we firmly believe in mutual responsibility and the idea that each individual life is valuable beyond measure.” Beyond mere payback, there rises international solidarity, indeed, One Humanity, most manifest in the Filipino value of kapwa.  

SOLIDARITY AND FAITH. The greatest means to survive, and ultimately triumph over a disaster.

This, the people of Pampanga have shown to the world, rising over the devastation, death, desolation and despair wrought by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, and the lahar rampages that buried whole communities in the aftermath.

“The desire among Kapampangans to help is spurred by our own Pinatubo experience.” So articulated San Fernando Auxiliary Bishop Pablo Virgilio David at the launch last Saturday  of the “Pampanga for Visayas/Palawan” mission which calls on the Kapampangan faithful for donations, the archdiocese’s 94 parishes serving as drop-off centers.

A number of business groups, socio-civic organizations and committed non-governmental of organizations throughout Pampanga are likewise engaged in raising funds and relief goods for the victims of Yolanda.

The Kapampangan community, quoted the Inquirer of the good Among Ambo, is “extra generous because of our awareness that we have to look back and to give back.”

Awareness evolving to sanctifying grace.

Thus Ignatius of Loyola: “…to give and not to count the cost, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to seek for reward, save that of knowing that we do Your will.”

Hence Francis of Assisi: “…where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy…For it is in giving that we receive.”

Enough to restore one’s trust in the innate goodness of man, to renew one’s faith in his God.

The ravages of Yolanda are an epiphany for the all the world to witness, to experience, to believe.   

God in the ruins

LORD, WE are in great need.

Like infants we cry to you, do not abandon us in our distress. We kneel in disbelief! How could you, Lord, have allowed this to happen to us, who call on your holy name? Have you abandoned us, Lord? Are you punishing us for our sins against you?

We have been crying for days and our eyes have run dry. But, our grief is still very deep, our wounds keep bleeding and our hearts are confused and anxious. Our tears are not enough to wash away our sadness. Tama na po! Hindi na po namin kaya! (Enough, Lord! We cannot bear this anymore!)

Lord, we believe in You and trust in You…Winds have brought us havoc leaving many orphans, but we will stand from the rubbles, and change this nightmare into a new day of new hopes and new dreams and new visions…

Intense with Joban angst is the supplication of Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Soc Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.

Unlike Job’s lamentation though, no accusatory finger was pointed at his God, much less any bill of indictment for schadenfreude served Him.

The prelate’s prayer closed with an affirmation of belief and investment of trust in the Almighty. A leap of faith, it was, stirred by the psalmist hymns of the “trueness” of God to his people, thus:

“The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.” (Psalm 34:17)

“The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth.” (Psalm 145:18)

All too providentially given testimony to by Pope Francis himself only last Saturday during Mass at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, from www.news.va thus: “The Lord listens. His ‘all-powerful word from heaven’s royal throne bounded, a fierce warrior’. That’s what the Lord is like when He defends His people: He is a fierce warrior, He saves His people.”
Continued the Pope: “This is the strength of God, but what is our strength? Ours is the strength of the widow [referencing the parable where she insistently petitioned a dishonest judge for justice] to knock at the heart of God, to knock, to lament our many problems, many pains, to ask the Lord to free us from these pains, from these sins, from these problems. Our strength is prayer. And the prayer of a humble person is the weakness of God. The Lord is weak only in this one sense: He is weak before the prayers of His people.”
God’s “weakness” before His people’s “strength” very well makes the fountainhead of miracles.  

And lo and behold, as manna from heaven rained down on His chosen people in the desert, from all over the world came an outpouring of support to His people in this devastated piece of Earth.

Right is Lord Tennyson: More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.

Most assuredly then, God is not in ruins in this miserable, miserable land. Rather, God is right in the ruins here. Omnipresent. Omniscient. Omnipotent.

God most manifest in the constancy of the Filipino’s Faith, infusing in him the fortitude to survive, indeed, to triumph over, the vagaries of Fate.

Still, let it be granted: For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t, no proof is possible.

Credo.  I believe.

A god in ruins

“I DO not mean to be… God must have been somewhere else or he forgot that there is a planet called Earth.”

In near tears, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte uttered, overwhelmed by the death and destruction he came upon in Tacloban.

Coming upon the images of the dead bodies littering the streets of the devastated city, of the father carrying his dead daughter, of the wife finding her dead husband and one daughter and still searching for her other three, of the mother cradling her lifeless child in a makeshift hospital, of countless other scenes of anguish and despair, I did not do a Duterte. Terrified as I am of casting even but the minutest iota of doubt over the omnipresence and the omniscience of God.

What instantly came to mind was the Book of Job, tailor-made for Supertyphoon Yolanda’s impact, thus: “When a sudden flood brings death, he mocks the plight of the innocent. The land is given to the power of the wicked…” (Job 9:23-24).

(Find juxtaposition there of the tragedy of Leyte and Samar and the plunder of priority development assistance fund (PDAF) and the pillage of Benigno Aquino’s disbursement acceleration program (BA-DAP). Indeed, the biblical times are visited upon us.)

Job’s lamentation amounts to nothing less than a direct, if angry, indictment of God for His mindless indifference, indeed, even for some sadistic glee.

Absolute apathy of the Almighty, thus: “I call for thy help, but thou dost not answer; I stand up to plead, but thou sittest aloof…” (Job 30:20)

Where Duterte expressed fearful doubts, preceded by a more fearful apology, Job accused God of un-being His very being. In matters of the divine attribution of justice, mercy and compassion, at the least.

Infuse some religious conceit there and the question gets propounded:   

So how can God – in all his mercy, justice and compassion – allow such hellish suffering to this the only Christian nation in Asia?

One. He did not. The people invited the disaster upon themselves for their sins. 

Two. The devil did it, in the service of God. In some sort of Joban experiment to test the sufferers’ fidelity to Him.

We look up the Book and find it was the Satan that challenged God to a wager that the blamelessness and uprightness of Job were due to the blessings he had received from God. Thus, taking these away, the Satan said, would lead the man of Uz to “curse you to your face.”  (Job1:11)

Back to the present. The greater, okay, worse suffering in these disasters always impacted upon those with the least, if any, material blessings. It is always the poor that gets the worst beating.

So what need still to try them who, in effect, have been in continuous and arduous tests all their miserable lives?

All too ungodly of anyone named God.

So when the poor and the innocent die by the thousands, even as the wicked get possession of the Earth, with God letting it all happen – on a bet, or by plain indifference – of what use is worship, to what end is morality and ethics, of what good is faith?

The very easy answer: Leap from faith.

God was not – as Duterte supposed – somewhere else. Neither did he forget planet Earth.

God, simply, was not.

God did not – as Job accused – mock the plight of the innocent. Neither did he give the land to the power of the wicked.

As God was not, so he did not. So he could not.          

It was not only Tacloban, the rest of Leyte and the other spots in the Visayas that Yolanda devastated. A god also lies in ruins there. 

What hath Haiyan wrought

A KICK in the gut.

Howling, no, make that screaming – at ear-shattering pitch – winds. Blinding sheets of rain. Surging, rampaging water – the sea claiming land way beyond the shore.

Devastation. Ships pushed way too inland. Buildings flattened to the ground. Houses reduced to broken matchsticks. Communities wiped out. Streets littered as much with debris as with the dead. Utter devastation.

A TUG At the heart.

A father carrying his lifeless child in his arms. The pained anguish of a mother weeping over her dead daughter lying on the pew of a church in ruins.  A son pulling his father out of a jumble of fallen trees, blown off roofs, upturned cars. A husband cooking what he has foraged from the detritus, the blanket shrouded remains of his wife and daughter by his side. A mother cradling her dead baby swaddled in rags. And Death has not stopped its reaping.    

Hungry, thirsty, homeless, hopeless victims driven to desperate means looting what is left of anything.

A BLAST in the head.

“Buhay ka pa naman, di ba? (You’re still alive, aren’t you?).” Snapped the visibly irate President at a Tacloban businessman reporting he was shot at by a looter.

Thereafter, walking out of his own briefing, miffed over supposedly exaggerated data of death and destruction and unpreparedness on the ground.

The President – true to character – outsourcing blame: “Yung Tacloban, hesitant lang ako. Para bang hindi ganun ka prepared (Tacloban seemed unprepared) … compared to other areas…” Buffering this with what he said was the “low casualty count” in the latter. And warned the former will “have to explain” the number of casualties in their areas: “Any casualty is an issue with me.”

Yeah? Has it ever occurred to this BS Aquino III that the storm surge that accounted for most of the casualties in Tacloban spared his personally considered “well-prepared” areas?

Then, there is the President, on primetime TV: “The delivery of food, water, and medicines to the most heavily affected areas is at the head of our priorities. We have tasked barangays to deliver and distribute these vital needs; 24,000 family food packs were already distributed in Tacloban yesterday; and these efforts are centralized in the eight largest barangays there.”

That was Monday, the third day since the disaster. On the fifth day, Wednesday, CNN Anchor Anderson Cooper reported from “miserable, miserable…” Tacloban: “You would expect perhaps to see a feeding center that had been set up 5 days after the storm. We haven’t seen that, certainly not in this area. Some food is being brought to people here at the airport, some water being distributed but these are very, very difficult conditions for the people here on the ground and it’s not clear how much longer it can continue like this. Something’s got to give."

Making a veritable, if verifiable, liar in BS Aquino III thus: “Certainly, US military personnel are here on the ground. There’s a group of marines here, they’ve set up operation. They’ve checked out the airport. That is underway and that cannot come soon enough. But as for who exactly is in charge of the Philippine side of this operation, that is not really clear. I’m just surprised. I expected on this day 5, I thought I’ve maybe gotten here very late, that things would be well in hand. It does not seem like that."

Spake Cooper of the odiously obvious: “When I was in Japan, right after the tsunami there two years ago, within a day or two, you had Japanese defense forces going out, carving up cities into grids and going out on foot looking for people, walking through the wreckage. We have not seen that here in any kind of large-scale operation.”

THE BLOOD boils.

That this – Cooper’s well-grounded observations – could obtain even as international aid – in men, material, money – is surging into the Philippines, is less  an indictment than a damnation of the kind of leadership this country has.

TIME TO pray then.

Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord.

Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord.

Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Bratty

INTERAKSYON, THE news portal of TV5 reported:

MANILA - President Benigno Aquino III on Sunday morning walked out of his own briefing in Tacloban City after being egged on by local businessmen to declare martial law in light of the looting in the city. 

According to a radio report by dzBB, the President was also miffed by Undersecretary Eduardo del Rosario of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) over the latter's supposedly exaggerated figures and unpreparedness.

Del Rosario was making his presentation as one local businessman was requesting to address the President.

The local businessman said he and his fellow businessmen were being "slaughtered" by lawless elements in an orgy of looting and arson.

The President lost his temper and stormed out of the meeting to cool off at the nearby Tacloban City police station, where he met with policemen. Ten minutes later, he returned to the briefing. 

This is no way for the President to deal with the worst disaster to ever hit his country. Grow up, boy!

(Editorial, Punto! Central Luzon, Nov. 13, 2013)

Twin to tragedies

DOES IT run in the family?

Disasters. Calamities. Tragedies. However one calls them that cause widespread death and devastation, unimaginable pain, untold sorrow, unmitigated grief. Invariably inflicted upon the Filipino nation with an Aquino administration.

At the time of the now-sainted Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino:

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Central and Northern Luzon wreaking full havoc in Baguio City and Cabanatuan City on July 16, 1990, killing 1,621 people.
Less than a year later, in June 1991, Mount Pinatubo astride the tri-boundaries of Zambales, Pampanga and Tarlac erupted – killing some 800 people – in what was internationally recorded as the “second largest volcanic cataclysm of the 20^th century” topped only by the 1912 eruption in some God-forsaken spot in the Alaskan Peninsula.

In the wake of the eruptions came the lahar rampages that buried whole communities and added to the death toll.

And then, there were the super typhoons: 

Sisang (international name: Nina) in November 1987, hitting the Bicol region with  240 kph winds and causing 979 deaths.

Ruping (Mike) in November 1990, its 220 kph winds causing a swath of destruction in Central Philippines, killing 748.

Uring (Thelma) unleashing flash floods in Ormoc, Leyte in November 1991, killing more than 5,100.
And the maritime disasters: MV Doña Paz colliding with the MT Vector off Marinduque on December 20, 1987 resulting to 4,341 deaths in what has been recorded as “the worst peacetime sea disaster in the 20^th century.”-- 

MV Doña Marilyn – sister ship of MV Doña Paz – sinking at the height of Typhoon Unsang on October 24, 1988 resulting to 77 fatalities.  

Man-made disasters – in massacres – abounded too:

Mendiola, right at the very gates of Malacanang, in January 1987 with 13 demonstrating farmers dead.

Lupao, Nueva Ecija in February 1987 with 17 killed.

Digos, Davao del Sur in November 1989 with 39 killed, including women and children.

Not to mention Paranaque, June 1991, with three members of the Vizconde family as victims.

Now, onto the son – President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III:

A 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Bohol and Cebu just last October, grounding to dust heritage churches, toppling down buildings, creating sinkholes that swallowed houses, killing over a 100 persons. 

Last week, Supertyphoon Yolanda just about obliterated from the map Tacloban City and the rest of Leyte and flattened a host of other areas in the Visayas with some 10,000 people feared dead.

Not even a year ago – December 3, 2012 – Typhoon Pablo (Bopha) smashed into Central and Northern Mindanao killing some 1,900.
And the year previous to that – December 16, 2011 – Typhoon Sendong (Washi) struck the northern part of Mindanao killing at least 1,080 people. 

And the maritime disaster:

MV St. Thomas Aquinas collided with the cargo ship MV Sulpicio Express Siete off Cebu on August 16. 2013, leaving 114 people dead. 

Massacre? How about the “Hostage Crisis Massacre” of eight Hong Kong tourists at the Luneta on August 20, 2010?

Or the ambush-mutilation of seven Marine troopers in Sulu in July 2011?
Yeah, we remember BS Aquino III raging:  “Mark my words: To those of you who perpetrated this atrocity, know that you are now No. 1 on my radar. It might take some time, but make no mistake about it: you will be brought to justice to answer for your crimes.” And that was the least time we heard of it.

Luckless coincidences, some hold these tragic parallels between the presidencies of the mother and her son.

Castigo! So cry others, visiting some past sins of the clan upon their foremost members. The wages of some family’s sin impacting upon the whole nation? What sense of retribution is that?

No debate on this though: The much worse tragedy inflicted upon the Filipino people by the Cojuangco-Aquino clan is some superstorm named Kris.

That is one never-ending disaster, calamity, tragedy.

Dear God, what grievous sin have we Filipinos committed to merit this punishment?  

No tourist trap

BUILD AND they will come.

Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams  is the movie in the mind of “tourists and local stakeholders” in the City of San Fernando reported recently by Sun-Star Pampanga as “one in saying that this capital city needs to encourage the building of bigger and better hotels…if it is serious in its tourism and development program.”

“Hotels would surely increase economic revenues of the city and spur employment and business opportunities in the area…good hotel facilities are a come on for big events and for tourist wanting to explore the capital city and nearby towns.” So was one realtor quoted as saying.

“The city government should provide incentives to businessmen and encourage big investments on leisure facilities…a hotel facility is a proof that the tourism industry in an area is a sunshine industry with potentials for development.” So was one “frequent traveller” quoted too.

“Hotel investments are also a come on for other support investments. Businesses like restaurants and specialty shops, tourism attractions and local small entrepreneurs are the direct beneficiaries in the operation of big hotels.” So agreed the realtor.

Build hotels in the capital city and it shall be awash in tourists. Simple as that.

Simple thinking, that is.

Given the simple example of Days Inn – at three stars, the highest rated hotel in the city at its time – morphing to a starless Paskuhan Village Inn, onto inoccupancy, closure and oblivion. All in a matter of a few short years. ROI utterly unrealized.

Simply, it is not the hotels per se that pull the tourists in. Unless they’re as majestic as the uber luxurious Burj al Arab, as spectacular as the Atlantis in the Bahamas, or as iconic as the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. These are an attraction unto themselves.     

What is there to see? Invariably, that is the first question a visitor asks of a place. Moving on to a consideration of the satiation of the other senses: What is there to taste, to hear, to smell, to revel in. Where to sleep but of lesser consideration, as a matter of course. You don’t go to a place just to experience sleeping there and, hopefully, see it in your dreams.

So, what is there to see in the City of San Fernando?

The Giant Lantern Festival around Christmastime and the actual crucifixion rites on Good Friday. The third major event, the Tugak Festival in October, gone the way of the Teatro Fernandino and the Magsilbi Tamu Banda 919 – scrapped by the new administration at city hall. All patently seasonal.

On any day, what can the City of San Fernando offer the tourist?

See the Heritage District with its belle époque mansions closed to the public?  

Savor Kapampangan culinary delights that can be had in any mekeni specialty restaurant just about everywhere now?

The next, and even more significant, question: What is in the City of San Fernando that can make a visitor stay?

Sadly, nothing. Bounded by time, both Giant Lantern Festival and Good Friday rites are at most six-hour events. The tourists rushing back home or elsewhere after getting that ghee-whizz feel, the selfie or the I-was-there snapshot.

So unlike the Ati-Atihan of Kalibo with Boracay as both pre- and post-destination; the Sinulog in Cebu with a lot of extra packages, from the beaches to the hills, to Mactan and even Bohol; the Panagbenga with the rest of Baguio, La Trinidad, and Benguet, to cite but three examples. Three-day stays there making the visitor feel shortchanged. And wanting to stay some more, if not to come back soon.

"People coming into (sic) Pampanga would rather stay inside Clark or Angeles City even though the rest of the province have historical, eco and leisure attractions just because of the reason (sic) that the capital city lacks good hotels." Right there is Sun-Star Pampanga’s frequent traveller, but for the wrong reason.

The lack of hotels is not what makes people prefer Clark or Angeles City over San Fernando. 

As much for the accident of geography as for the dearth of attractions, the City of San Fernando is more transit point than tourist destination.

The cities of San Fernando and Angeles virtually share equal distance with the rest of Pampanga. So after going through the circuit of old churches – Pampanga’s foremost attractions now, specially Betis’ Santiago Apostol and Minalin’s Sta. Monica, both national cultural treasures – and the festivals – Candaba’s Ibon-Ebon, Sto. Tomas’ Sabuaga, Sasmuan’s Kuraldal, Sta. Rita’s Duman, Lubao’s Sampaguita, Minalin’s Aguman Sanduk – the visitor invariably retires to Clark or Angeles City – springboard as they are to possible extended sojourns to the Mt. Pinatubo crater lake, Puning Hot Springs, onto Subic and the beaches of Zambales or up north to Baguio and the Ilocos.

It simply is: There is more to see, taste, hear, feel, do in Clark and in Angeles than in San Fernando. That’s what makes the hotels multiply there. Not the other way around.

And then the night time entertainment makes a big difference too.

Build and they will come. It all depends on what you’re building.

And again, even the greater challenge: Make them stay longer.

The City of San Fernando better shift its sights elsewhere.        

Twilight time

ABAC NA. It’s already daytime. The cry of victory of Angeles City Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan in elections past.

SISILIM NA. It’s twilight time. The jolt of reality to Mabalacat City Mayor Marino “Boking” Morales in the barangay polls just past.

Forever – six consecutive terms – all of 18 years – broken only by suspension, and still eyeing more to come with the cityhood  – now shows some cracking, even for the mighty Boking. That is the general perception.

Premier Barangay Dau – without which Mabalacat will most certainly revert to a sitio – Boking’s very bailiwick overwhelmingly denied his son and namesake Marino “Atlas” Morales, Jr. a third and last term as barangay chairman.

And how! Even with the vaunted Iglesia ni Cristo vote, Atlas lost by 1,693 votes to Dr. Oscar Aurelio, former three-term councilor and also-ran in the provincial board derby last May.

No mistaking there, some pundit post-mortemized: The junior’s miserable defeat is a repudiation of the senior. As much for the former’s perceived incompetence as for the latter’s overstaying power.

And witticized: “Not so much for what Boking stands for as for what he is overstaying for.”

 Yeah, so much “for” that there could only be an “anti” to it all. Sorry, could not resist it.   

Indeed, claimed the Sitio Panday Pira resident philosopher – at no other time has Barangay Dau seen so many inaugurated projects, regaled with the mayor’s presence, and inundated with cash than in the campaign for the barangay elections.

Unidirectional, he hastened to add, given Doc Aurelio’s “unexplained poverty” and publicly acknowledged parsimony.        

Still, Morales lost.

So, it’s the end of the dynasty Boking is a-building?

As one swallow does not a summer make, so one loss does not a dynasty end. And there’s Boking daughter Marjorie Morales-Sambo – MMS for her campaign moniker – winning the village chair of Duquit, tasting victory at last in her third try for an elective post.

One Morales out, another Morales in. And the cycle continues?

More than Boking’s other children – city councilor Dwight and SK head Migz – it is MMS that is seen to hasten not only twilight but midnight for the House of Boking.  

Remember, MMS is the prodigal daughter that not only ran against, but utterly dishonoured, her father in the hustings in 2010: publicly washing – without  rinsing, our wag said – the family dirty linen, throwing everything and everything filthy at her father, the kitchen sink, the toilet bowl, and the septic tank included.

Aye, how the tablet of the Fourth Commandment was blasted and grounded to dust in that election campaign.

Emotive rather than intelligent – not to mention very religious – voters that we are, it was the abused, accursed, and aggrieved father that was reposited with the ballots of sympathy that buried the pretensions of the daughter.

Buried, but not in oblivion. As proved in the 2013 local elections, with the loss of MMS for the vice mayoralty post. Notwithstanding her having kissed and made up with her father.        

It is interesting to note too that the 2013 mayoralty race was too close for comfort to Boking, having won by “only” over 2,000 votes against a perceived palooka who had a namesake as rival to confuse the voters, and with the solid INC vote that is said to number well over 5,000 in the city.

MMS’s election weakened, rather than strengthened or even just positively affirmed, the solidity of the House of Boking. With the stamp of prodigality impacted in her, MMS is already being viewed as some sort of a woodworm gnawing at the foundations that shall ultimately result to that house’s collapse.

On the other hand, those unconvinced that the 2010’s daughter-versus-father confrontation was not a moro-moro got their positive affirmation in MMS’s recent victory. Yeah, yet another instance of the Morales monopoly of city politics. Yet another fodder for the fire of animosity being whipped up in the web against the family.               

Whichever, not too good for Boking.

So it’s twilight time then?

Yes, the Morales fandom says, the vampirish Breaking Dawn in their mind, with all its sense of eternity.

Yes, our pundit says, thinking more of the House of Boking breaking down, with all feelings of enmity. 

Me?

I’d rather leave it to Jun Magbalot and Deng Pangilinan, BM Cris Garbo and Vice Mayor Christian Halili.