Resist state terrorism

“No one can terrorize a nation unless we are all his accomplices.” – Edward R. Murrow

I REFUSE to aid and abet this administration’s state terrorism. I have resisted the state-sponsored terrorism of past presidents of this Republic and I am not about to change that on account of the misleading chatter on social media platforms.

Yes, just as what past populist despots have done, Digong Dada has owned the new platforms of expression — thanks to enterprising online people.

State terrorism has been defined as “a form of terrorism which sometimes occurs when governments implement neoliberal policies lacking widespread support.” I dare say it’s lacking widespread support because far more Filipinos are not online. This administration’s noise on social media platforms is fake. We have uncovered them time and again since Day 1 of this administration.

The Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights, more popularly — or in this administration’s perspective infamously — known as Karapatan, aptly puts in its second issue of its monitor of Duterte’s first year in office.

“Duterte has become a public relations expert – spitting out arguments that drug users are less than human, strutting with public displays of apathy regarding national and international pressures, manipulating old verbal assault and threats against progressive organizations and human rights advocates who raise concern over the rights issues in the country.”

This administration can yarn every possible spin-off it could muster online but the fact remains that only 14 of every 35 Filipinos are wired online. This seemingly overwhelming “support” rhetoric on social media does not include the marginalized sectors, the sectors that have undoubtedly catapulted Digong Dada to the presidency.

I do not blame them. It is tempting, though. But I will not. These people have every right to hope for a better Philippines when Digong Dada promised it to them albeit in a brusque and curt manner. They have been manipulated and f***ed up (pardon my French) by the ruling system for so long that when Digong Dada came about, they were all too willing to pledge their allegiance to the seemingly no-nonsense talking politics.

However, his lies started unraveling from the very first day of his presidency. I don’t have to enumerate it here since it would take up most of the space for this column. I do call on readers to witness the state’s affairs with more critical lenses. Unrequited suggestion: Read up on this administration besides Facebook posts, Instagram memes and Twitter feeds.

The last thing you’d want is to be sucked into this administration’s hate rhetoric. And this hate rhetoric worsened with every engagement the president had since Day 1.

Yesterday, Digong Dada gave his second State of the Nation Address. I couldn’t wait for it since our Constitution specifically stipulates this to be done starting at 1 pm and I have to submit this column by 8 am yesterday, at the latest.

I have a soft spot for satires, as you may have noticed in my past columns. That’s why I was glad when I read Professional Heckler’s parody of Digong Dada’s Sona because to be honest about it, I did not expect the President to say something new. It would have been on his war on drugs, f**k human rights defenders, f**k the European Union, etc ad nauseum. It would have been like a “folk” song — folk this and folk that.

As I have mentioned in my past columns, satire is an effective tool in exposing the untruths issue by issue and politico by politico. However, the writer should focus their satirical lens to particular policies or individuals for this to be effective because if you satirize the whole political structure, then it will give the impression that all policies are the same. This would enforce further the status quo. In this case, the state terrorist wins.

A sample of Professional Heckler’s satirical take on the President’s Sona yesterday: “Nang ako ay maging pangulo, nangako akong magbibigay ng trabaho sa ating mga kababayan. Hindi naman sa pagmamayabang, tinupad ko ang pangakong ’yan. Ngayong hapon, kasama natin dito sa Batasan ang tatlo sa pinakamasisipag kong appointees. Hindi lang sila sa office nagtatrabaho kundi pati sa mga rally laban kay Robredo. Palakpakan po natin sina Mocha Uson, Kat de Castro at Arnell Ignacio.” (Applause.)

Digong Dada’s latest verbal stunt was when he said he is willing to go to war against the communist insurgency. Adding that he has the might of the Armed Forces behind him and the Maoists only have the indigenes on their side. He said he is willing to fight this war up to the last standing communist.

Wait. How many days, nay months, did it take him to quell a singular clan in Marawi City again? How is this administration addressing the end of contractualization? What is the position of this administration on the West Philippine Sea?

More importantly, when will he really jet ski and plant a flag on Scarborough Shoal?

Opinion writing 101

“Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough,” Karl Marx (1818-1883).

IT TOOK years of coaxing and goading from people I have come to respect and revere for me to even start considering to write opinion pieces. To put it bluntly, I find punditry hilas.

I find it even ironic that I have been pursuing a journalism career since I've always been more inclined to poetry and literature when I started out writing ― unlike my father.

Yes, before Emilio dragged me into this shit storm of a career, I was perfectly comfortable thinking up of quatrains and couplets for my Petrarchan or Shakespearean sonnets. I was more interested in devising twists and turns in the plot of a short story.

I blame Emilio for all of these.

Anyway, I'm here now ― working for a daily newspaper with the widest circulation in northern Mindanao. But, it took me grueling years in the trenches (read: beat reporter) before I started writing opinion pieces.

Five years ago, I remember one of my mentors, Carolyn Arguillas, asked me to write an opinion column for Mindanews. I replied with an anticlimactic no. I said I was too young to be writing what my thoughts are on current events.

To even think about writing something that bares my soul on any given subject out in the open still gives me goosebumps.

I felt that my body of work wasn't enough to build my credibility as a pundit.

When I did, finally, decided to write my column, My Wit's End, I read a butt-load of opinion pieces first. I found that punditry, although subjective in nature, must be based on real events. This is only logical because how could you arrive at a sound hypothesis if it is based on imaginary events.

Opinion and fiction or creative writing are two distinct approaches to writing, I was taught. But unlike creative writing, in column writing, your characters are already there. You do not create the characters to fit your narrative. You do not base your accusations on events that didn't happen.

One thing I found to be true to most opinion pieces, the common denominator, if you will, is that this articles are and should be based on facts and documented events.

Opinion writing, to me, is the distillation of current events that affect society and so you offer your humble analyses of these events for your readers to come up with intelligent and informed decisions. You do not write opinion articles based on the figment of your imagination.

Column writing can also serve as a call to action. It serves as the embodiment of journalism's role in society as a check and balance. It is the practical application of the fourth estate’s “watchdog” role.

I think this is where the concept of “conflict of interest” comes in. You have to be detached to the subject you’re writing about to be able to give an honest opinion.

Now if you write a column to attack a public entity based on the imagined wrongs this entity did to further line your own pocket, then that. my friend is not punditry. It is just nothing short of a shakedown ― a con and the purveyor of this, a hack job. It is nothing but a receipt of a tigbas.

It is correct when you say that a wrongdoing can never be contained, much like air or smoke. But an imagined wrongdoing cannot get off the ground either.

I am not the least threatened by this supposed age of post-truth and fake news (read: imagined events).

You see, pundits who base their opinion on a fake news or imagined sources is not really a fake pundit. It only shows the author’s gullibility and stupidity.

This kind of people will eventually self-destruct but like the fool that the economist Karl Marx described at the start of this article, they will always jockey for the position of having the last say in the matter.

Until then, we will just have to contend with these maladjusted paid hacks and take their writings the way it should be ― as works of fiction, ergo for entertainment purposes and nothing more.

Unabashed bigotry

“Bigotry is boring when we add modifiers.” – Gregory House, MD [Hugh Laurie].

THIS is what I love about the current administration — its consistency on being inconsistent especially when it comes to the Bangsamoro people.

That is why I wasn’t particularly surprised when the “Muslim ID” brouhaha hit the fan, so to speak. However, I cannot blame Muslims about how they reacted. This administration’s Muslim ID is dissonant to hizzoner’s pronouncements in the past.

Didn’t this administration vow to correct the historical injustices done to the Moros? Didn’t this President lambast a US President because of a massacre some hundred years ago? Digression: With the Duterte administration, the President and administration are interchangeable because he micromanages.

Everything this administration does can and should be attributed all the way to the top of the bureaucracy because he is the boss. He made it clear in all of his long-winded speeches, albeit with a repetitive topic (read: obosen).

This administration is also systematic, too. Before the Muslim ID brouhaha, it clipped the executive powers of some seven governors and 132 mayors here in Mindanao. The reason, this administration said, is because they have been “engaging in acts inimical to national security or which negate the effectiveness of the peace and order campaign of the government; and providing material support to criminal elements.”

Even the most rabid supporters of this administration were included. Well, there being Muslims helped a lot in their inclusion in the list.

The multi-awarded mayor of Upi, Ramon Piang Sr. made it to the list. Cotabato Mayor Frances Cynthia Sayadi made it to the list, too. Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu and the 28 mayors under him have also been listed by the National Police Commission.

Haven’t these people showed enough support to the administration’s war on drugs? I’ve been reading these same names in the reports of our correspondents in their areas. I can distinctly remember Sayadi locking down Cotabato City when the Marawi crisis began and Mangudadatu’s all-out support to Masa Masid.

I can point out the inconsistencies and how bigoted this Muslim ID brouhaha is but I cannot narrate it funnier than what Armm Executive Secretary Laisa Masuhud Alamia posted on her Facebook wall over the weekend.

“And now some people in Luzon think I need a Muslim ID. I suppose they’re requiring this because we, Muslim Filipinos, don’t look Muslim enough as we are. I don’t look Muslim enough in person nor in these IDs, even when I’m wearing the hijab. So just to be sure, to be really 100% sure, they need me to present a Muslim ID to ensure that I’m really, truly a Muslim,” Alamia’s post reads in part.

I agree with her that the Muslim ID is “hilarious, if not tragically sad.”

Alamia started her post by saying “I need a bigger wallet.”

So here’s my equally “hilarious” suggestion to this administration. Since we have IDs for pretty much every single government service agency, I suggest these IDs be collated into one bar code for each citizen and then tattoo that bar code to the nape or forehead.

Better yet, RF tag the entire citizenry. That would really put the Philippines in the limelight. Sieg Heil!

Lawless

“Our people have seen what a mob can do in the hands of a tyrant who knows no law but his own. Lest we forget, the first person that Marcos executed was a drug pusher. But did he stop there?” –Atty. Jose Manuel “Chel” I. Diokno, national chairman, Free Legal Assistance Group; trustee, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

A COLLEAGUE posted a “crowd sourcing” question on his Facebook asking for one word to describe Digong Dada’s one year as president of the Republic.

I answered, “Unstable.” It should have been “lawless.” If there is a word to define this administration it is lawless.

Lawless in the sense that it holds the distinction of throwing due process out the window. It doesn’t adhere to what the Supreme Court says. It even mocks the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations.

It employs secret jails. It kills suspects, albeit with a veneer of legality, with impunity.

Although it has vowed to launch “change” in the country, the five pillars in the criminal justice system — just like before — is still pretty much only available to the rich and powerful.

The five pillars must work in concert with each other with checks and balances between them in order to best serve the public. Criticism of the Filipino legal system often centers around issues of disconnect. The five pillars represent many different facets of the legal system and society.

These are:

1.) law enforcement, including the Philippines the National Police and National Bureau of Investigation;

2.) prosecution, including the National Prosecution Service and judge advocate services;

3.) the courts,  including all levels from regional to the Supreme Court;

4.) corrections, including the prison, parole, and probation systems;

5.) community, including local governments and the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

Case in point are drug users who have voluntarily surrendered to authorities under Masa Masid but were gunned down days later, anyway. These incidents are all too familiar to most of us.

The other branch of government, by the way, is too wimped out after this administration made an example of one of its members who is currently languishing in jail.

Until this administration learns to respect the rule of law, social justice, and the fundamental rights of its citizens again, we will remain waist-deep in bovine excrement. Well, at least for the next five years. That is if we are still alive, by then.