Athletes in the provinces

CHEWING the fat with my ex-girlfriend’s uncle over the weekend just gave me a bird’s eye view of how the national government has always treated provincial athletes all these years — from the time of President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos’s Misamis Oriental School of Arts and Trade to President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s University of Science and Technology in Southern Philippines — not much has changed.

Suffice it to say, they’re all full of it with the athletes end up holding a big bag of crap when they fail.

Sometimes, even if they do get the gold for the country, the government may slander your name under the pretext of the war against drugs backed with shoddy intelligence work.

Case in point for this is Olympic weight lifting silver medalist Hidilyn Francisco Diaz. From out of the blue, the Palace included her in their supposed matrix of government destabilizers.

“Please do not link somebody who is busy making sacrifices for everyone, for the Philippines. I am merely doing my best to represent the Philippines in weightlifting,” Diaz posted on her Facebook in May, this year.

The Palace has never issued an apology to Diaz and instead blamed “some media outlets” for getting their haphazard matrix wrong. “There has been a wrong analysis of the diagram by some media outlets,” Palace spokesman Salvador Panel had said in a statement.

Along with Diaz, former volleyball player Gretchen Ho was also enlisted in Malacañang’s “ouster matrix.”

In an interview with media, Ho pointed to a tweet she posted on March 29 as the likely reason why she was included in the matrix.

“But how can you reason with paid trolls and egg heads? It’s warfare online, and we’re getting caught in between. Be smart and discerning, folks. Don’t let the internet fool you,” Ho posted on Twitter.

Ho said a troll commented on her post and it turned out that it was a DDS troll (Read: Duterte Die-hard Supporter).

 “Siyempre ’yung mga DDS, nagalit sa akin kasi akala nila… they misunderstood it, they put in on Facebook, took it out of context saying that I was calling all the Duterte supporters egg heads,” a Rappler report quoted Ho as saying.

As I have always said, social media, like any other medium or platform for public discourse, is garbage in and garbage out. If the content is king then context is queen. Articulating your point on Twitter will always be a challenge since the platform only allows you 280 characters for every post. If you are not creative in your posts then you will just be contributing to the overall dumbing down of an already comprehension-challenged generation.

How do you expect these athletes to be mentally prepared if the government and non-government trolls keep on taunting them on social media platforms? In the case of Diaz, she isn’t only looking to dominate the powerlifting event in the Southeast Asian Games. As early as when she was tagged as an alleged government destabilizer, she has set her sights to the Olympic Games in Tokyo next year.

That’s why I don’t understand this administration’s minions supposed rally cry to “just support our athletes” when they themselves troll these promising sports icons.

After all, has been said and done, do you think these athletes will remain in the collective consciousness of the country? Apart from the very few, the likes of Lydia de Vega and Efren “Bata” Reyes, there are many national athletes in the provinces who are struggling to make ends meet after giving pride to the Republic some odd years ago. Pfft.

Walking Fiona

IT took me a while to walk our Fiona around the neighborhood again. A fortnight ago, we had an unfortunate incident with a confused alley tomcat as we were about to climb back our stairs after the walk. I will not go into the details of what happened exactly, except that our new bitch is an American Pitbull Terrier.

I remember throwing up at the sight of blood and gore. I am not ashamed to admit that I was shocked at Fiona’s ferocity. However, now that I have had time to process that incident, I have learned a lot of things about Fiona in particular and dogs in general. Yes, through our nightly walks around the neighborhood.

My ex-girlfriend reminded me that Fiona did wag her tail and was kind of offering the mangled tomcat to me. But I was too engrossed at the sight and smell of blood that I hardly saw what Fiona was trying to do. She was trying to please me, as her new daddy. It was supposed to be a gift!

I’m familiar with dogs, mind you. Emilio used to have 14 dogs at one time in our Gusa residence before. All of them were stray mutts and mongrels but we loved them just the same. They somehow gravitated to our house and papa was kind enough to give them a home. I remember we would have dog poop scattered all over our lawn. But I was busy with school that I never had time to play with any of them except for one, Duffy. He was the biggest among the mongrels.

Fast forward to owning a dog, I had doubts if we were prepared to have a full-sized dog around our small house. For one, we don’t have a lawn to speak of. We are right smack dab in the middle of the city. But after seeing Fiona for the first time, I was so heartbroken at her condition that we accepted her and vowed we’d love and nurse her back to health.

Her body was ridden with really big ticks. I guess, big ticks because she’s a big dog. Worse, Fiona was so thin that you could see the outline of her spine and ribs.

Before when she was all bony and thin, Fiona was withdrawn and looked like she’s bored out of her wits. Now, that she has grown considerably faster than before, she is surprisingly bubbly. She is extremely kind to our Chewie.

Our first dog at the house, Chewie, is a mixed breed of Pomeranian and Shih Tzu. Understandably, she was annoyed, to say the least, at the sight of a new dog and a bitch, like her, at that.

At first, we were afraid that Fiona would mistake Chewie to a cat and devour her. But that fear gave way to laughter when we officially introduced Fiona to Chewie. Manang Rhona Canoy taught us before how to introduce a new dog to the family. She said you let the old dog smell the butt of the new dog.

Whenever Chewie would “visit” Fiona’s corner in the house, she would scratch Fiona’s face even though the latter would try to lick her profusely. We can’t stand it. It always makes us laugh that a big dog is being bullied by a much smaller dog. Maybe this is because Chewie took a stronghold at the house first. I guess, for dogs, size doesn’t matter in identifying who the alpha dog is in a household.

Fiona has also displayed one adorable behavior when I walk her through the neighborhood. As you may have surmised, Consolacion has a butt-load of stray dogs. There are too many dogs that my son has called the “kangaroos” (Read: kagiron nga mga iro).

 These mutts would growl and bark as Fiona and I walk by. What amazes me is Fiona’s composure through all of these. Sometimes, she would stop and glare at barking dogs which almost always silences them up. Sometimes, she wouldn’t even care to look at the direction of some barking dogs. By the way, all of them would always scamper away from Fiona, given the glare or not.

But when we go back to the house to retire for the day, Chewie, the in-house bitch of the household would be there to challenge her. Willingly, Fiona obliges her.

She is still on the leash right now but given the improvement of her social skills, we are seriously considering her to be free to roam the house. Of course, we’ll have to assess the structural integrity of the post-WWII house we are living in.

We can learn a lot from dogs. If I may paraphrase George Carlin’s lines: “They are decent people. When was the last time you heard of a (sire) hit his (bitch) after coming home? You haven’t because (dogs) are decent people.”

I used to think I understood the idiomatic expression — “dog eat dog.” This idiom is used to refer to a situation of fierce competition in which people are willing to harm each other to succeed. It is much like the popular, albeit misused idiom nowadays, “crab mentality.”

Now, after having two distinctly different dogs in the house, I say that idiom is a slur against dogs around the world. We seem to be attributing the dark side of human behavior to animals as if they willingly do the same. Pfft.

Clipped wings

THE President has fired Vice President Ma. Leonor Robredo as co-chair of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs only 18 days after appointing her, while his self-appointed deadline of three to six months of ridding the drug menace in the country has been due some three years ago.

Malacañang spokesman Salvador Panelo has been quoted as saying that Vice President Robredo has been fired for allegedly using the war on drugs for politicking.

Well, let us review what the vice president did in those 18 days. However, it is going to be a shortlist considering the number of days she co-chaired Icad.

The vice president demanded transparency and access to documents and intelligence reports. To this, Icad appeared rattled. The President’s minions at the anti-drug body kept spouting suspicious statements like she didn’t have the right to have that list or that she should just focus on improving the advocacy and rehabilitation clusters of the committee.

She also recommended that the committee switch to a health-based approach rather than killing drug suspects left and right.

Butch Olano, section director of Nobel-laureate Amnesty International Philippines, hit the nail squarely in the head when posited that Robredo was booted out because in the 18 days she held the office of Icad co-chair it was getting clearer that she was taking the job seriously.

She demanded real reforms to the anti-drug campaign of this administration.

“Every week, more cracks appear in the Duterte administration’s murderous campaign against poor people. In only a few weeks, Vice President Robredo was able to confront the government with the staggering scale of its crimes. That is why she was sacked,” Olano said in a statement Sunday evening.

Now, more than ever, it is clear that Robredo’s appointment was a mere publicity stunt and a bluff since the war drug has captured the attention of international human rights bodies, including the United Nations.

Methinks, they didn’t count on Robredo to call their bluff. That’s the reason why this administration has been hell-bent in denying her access to information surrounding the bloody anti-drug campaign of the President. The President had clipped the wings he gave her.

So, I ask you now, my dear readers, how could she possibly perform the tasks as co-chair? Who do you think is serious in stamping out the drug menace in our country? Pfft.

Czar lang

WHY are the supposed anti-illegal drugs advocates so afraid of what the Veep could accomplish as the newly appointed co-chair of this administration’s war on drugs?

I honestly ask this question to myself. Since President Rodrigo Duterte appointed Vice President Ma. Leonor Robredo to share the helm of the campaign against illegal drugs, all of the former’s minions and trolls have nothing but sarcastic and downright insulting comments directed at the latter.

On Sunday, National Police officer-in-charge Lt. Gen. Archie Gamboa added to the long list of “mansplainers” of the Palace.

ABS-CBN News quoted Gamboa as saying that Robredo “should focus on improving the advocacy and rehabilitation clusters of her committee, and leave the campaign’s law enforcement side to relevant agencies such as the PNP and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.”

Has he read Robredo’s appointment papers? Does he know his place in the chain of command as far as the war on drugs is concerned? Being the co-chair of the entire campaign means that Robredo is right there beside the President at the very top rung of the ladder. If her appointment is to be graphed, her name would have a broken line right beside the President. In that graph, Gamboa is nowhere even near the top. He is an enforcer and should know his place.

Gamboa, sir, please leave the thinking and policy-making to people who are mandated to do just that. It’s not like you have done a bang-up job in enforcing the law.

Last week, the head of the anti-narcotics agency said Robredo may have been “misinformed” when she said China is the top source of narcotics in the Philippines. The guy seemed to forget that he said the very same thing last year. He said China is the top source of shabu circulating in the country.

Of course, we also have to mention senator cum presidential nanny Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go, who went so far as suggesting that Robredo does not have the heart to kill drug lords. He said Robredo could just whisper the names of the drug lords to him so he can do the killing. That is so rich coming from a man who has done absolutely nothing in abating the still burgeoning illegal drug trade in the country.

Also, is the nanny admitting that the killings have been state-sponsored all these years? He has said these things like he has done it before. Could he please name the names of drug lords that this administration has ordered to be liquidated? The International Crimes Court could surely use that piece of information.

He said the President’s war on drugs is successful, pointing to the 82 percent approval rating of the people as shown in the September 2019 survey of the Social Weather Station.

Approval ratings are propaganda tools and should not be equated as actual performance ratings. The presidential nanny would do well to note that in that very same survey, 95 percent of the respondents felt that it was more “important” for the drug suspects to be caught and not killed.

 I will not mention that closet queen in Batasan Hills. His-her-its inane asides against Robredo does not warrant a response of any kind.

It has been three years since this bloody campaign started and where has it gotten us? So, why not give Robredo a chance. Like what the P10-million network of trolls of this administration always says on social media platforms, “tumulong na lang kayo.” Czar ninyong tanan uip! Pfft

Inclusive relief, please

OUR family, having been survivors of a devastating calamity, has seen both the best and the worst in people after a seemingly hopeless aftermath.

We saw neighbors, who have lost almost everything to the great deluge in 2011, still managed to distribute to the neighborhood whatever they had left. I remember a neighbor who gave away his bread and rice cake (puto) instead of selling them as he normally did before the flood. Some neighbors opened their doors to people whose houses were swept away by the rampaging floodwaters.

However, there is also a dark side to the altruistic nature of man after a calamity — greed. Yes, we all needed relief aid at that time still others were not content with what was given to them voluntarily.

We saw neighbors looting a UN relief truck on its way to the relief distribution center in Consolacion Elementary School. They couldn’t wait in line and so they hijacked the relief truck while in transit. We saw people hoarding relief goods and then opening up instant sari-sari stores months after “Sendong.”

The Sendong experience both humbled and opened my eyes to certain realities. No matter how many times you tell people not to panic, they will. No matter how many times you tell people to fall in line for the relief goods, some of them will not.

That’s why I understand the government’s drive to organize relief distributions. It ensures that all survivors get their share of the donations. This is to avoid pandemonium in relief distribution centers or in the calamity-stricken areas.

Our barangay chairman then, the late Cesar Pagapulaan Sr., ordered that all donations be centralized in our barangay hall for proper distribution. He is, after all, the village chief and would know who needed the donations most.

I understood that order. However, despite that order, he did not physically deter anyone from giving directly to the survivors. I guess he understood that some people are wary of how the government distributes relief goods (e.g politically motivated lists).

Although he didn’t make one except for the official list of our barangay’s residents, he knew somewhere above his station some people are riding the relief operations with their own political agenda in mind.

This is the reason why I was perplexed with the latest order of the martial law administrator issued on All Souls’ Day in the aftermath of the series of earthquakes that rocked North Cotabato, Davao del Sur, and other neighboring towns.

“The (checkpoints) shall control and screen the ingress and egress of the people in the evacuation center that only legitimate and authorized relief workers are granted access to evacuation centers and receive relief goods and supplies for distributions for the evacuees,” reads part of Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana.

Apparently, according to Lorenzana, there is such a thing as illegitimate and unauthorized relief operations after calamities occur in the country. If so, the martial law administrator didn’t elaborate on why this is so.

First, people will help people. You don’t need a license or authorization to help people. That puto vendor who distributed his wares free of charge after Sendong didn’t have to go to the city hall to ask for permission to do so.

I can’t believe the audacity of this administration to refuse getting “upstaged” by private citizens who want to help. Relief is a relief. It should not have any political color — be it yellow, red, green, brown, or blue.

Lorenzana goes on to say that Cotabato province has welcomed the putting up of checkpoints, or should I say relief clearinghouses, to “avoid duplication or concentrations of the distribution of relief goods.”

As documented by reporters on the ground, most of the quake survivors have resorted to begging for relief along the national highway. So, I don’t understand the duplication Lorenzana is trying to avoid when most of the survivors have not received relief goods yet.

Everybody’s help is needed, sir. A “legitimate” and “authorized” relief operations sound so exclusive. The quake survivors need inclusive relief right now. Now is not the time to be insecure about the people’s capacity to help.

Also, the last time I checked calamities, whether under the preparedness aspect or relief operations, are under the purview of the Department of Interior and Local Government and the Department of Social Welfare and Development, respectively. So, why the order, Mr. Defense Secretary? Pfft.

Bring in the ‘Hokage’ cops

AS the “ninja cops” issue hounds the entire Philippine National Police, a journo-friend’s talk show based in Manila carried an interesting subject yesterday.

In Melo Acuña’s Tapatan sa Aristocrat carried the talking point: “After a series of controversies, we’d like to find out appropriate measures to improve the general public’s perception of the Philippine National Police.”

Among the confirmed discussants invited were the former Interior Secretary Rafael Alunan III, Board of Criminology Professional Regulatory Board chair lawyer Ramil Gabao, Caloocan City Anti-Drug Abuse Council head Atty. Sikini Labastilla, and PNP Deputy Chief for Public Information Col. Eric Noble.

My knee-jerk reaction to my friend’s invitation to his talk show, which is also streamed live via Facebook, was to tell him that there is nothing wrong with the general public’s perception of our country’s finest. The rotten tomatoes, so to speak, have been eating the whole organization from the inside out is doing that spectacularly, I must say.

Let us define what perception is. In the field of psychology, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. In Biology, perception is the mental interpretation of physical sensations produced by stimuli from the outside world.

In short, perception is a phenomenon borne out of the principle that the community, in general, is a social construct built on mutual trust and respect. Public perception, then, can be viewed as the gap that divides the absolute truth-based facts and a virtual version of it molded by popular opinion, mainstream media reportage, and by how you drum up your reputation. The last part, in press relations lingo, is called “re-branding.”

There are five main stages in forming public perception.

Stimulation. As the first stage, this is a delicate one because you have to focus on what is happening that you want people to catch attention to. Stimulation can happen via the humans’ five senses. However, in this age of social media platforms, it entails stimulating the visual and auditory senses of the people.

Organization. The human brain organizes sensory perception with events by familiar packets of events. By connecting familiar packets of past general public experiences help the person understand what is happening in his “outside world.” This is the way to disseminate large quantities of information in the fastest way possible.

Interpretation. When the key packets of information of experience are recognized, people apply their own biases to it through self-assessment or what is called simply as interpretation. By relating past common experiences, belief systems, and moral values, people could then decide what the event is and how to react accordingly, in a manner that they think they came up with by themselves.

Memory. For perception to take root, these organized familiar packets of events must be committed to memory, preferably the long-term memory. Humans use these prefabricated associations with their internal belief systems and experiences, along with the biases (read: personal evaluations) formed within them, to recall this planted perception at will.

Recall. By retrieving the planted perception much later will automatically bring about the most important details of it. Gaps in the recall of a particular planted perception are usually filled in by “planter” of the perception to rethink the situation again. Incessant recall also improves the supposed accuracy of this stage.

In its latest Perils of Perception survey, Ipsos MORI highlighted “how wrong the general public across 40 countries and districts are about key global issues and features of the population in their country.”

Among the key patterns Ipsos MORI found out were:

• All countries think their population is less happy than they actually say they are.

• Nearly all countries think wealth is more evenly distributed than it actually is.

Methinks, that to be able to pull this off, the national police should do more than “improving” the general public’s perception of them. It should seriously seek out and root out the decades-long corrupt practices, without fear or favor.

On the one hand, Filipinos have been witnesses to the rampant killing of the poor. On the other hand, Filipinos also witnessed how these public servants, who deemed the poor need not undergo a due process, cry justice and due process like they alone are entitled to it. After all, they are the state’s coercive instrument.

For the sake of argument, let’s use the organization’s number of those killed under this administration’s war on drugs. How can you sweep under the rug the 2,000 killings through improving the general public’s perception of your organization?

Don’t get me wrong. I know many police officers that I respect and I know personally that they want a substantial change within their ranks. These people who committed the most productive years of their lives to serve and protect.

So, what I’m suggesting is that for the PNP to hurdle this “ninja cops” issue and assuage the growing fear of people in its own police force is to bring in the “Hokage” police officers. Police officers who have upstanding credibility and command respect from their rank and file.

No laughing matter

“I hope my death makes more cents than my life.” – Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), Joker, 2019

I HAVE finally watched what is fast becoming the highest-grossing movie of the year — Joker. First things first, I have to issue an apology to my writer-friends. I gave them grief over what appeared to me as “over-analyzing” the movie. I gave the comments even before I watched the movie. I admit I was obviously wrong. I am sorry.

The movie itself is more of a socio-political commentary than an origin story of a fictional villain. Joaquin Phoenix made Arthur Fleck a readily available character. The Joker character is so relatable that you don’t even have to analyze it. You just watch the unfolding events in the character’s life in the movie and you’ll almost automatically understand where he is coming from.

Even the campaign promise of Gotham City mayoral candidate Thomas Wayne — yes, the daddy of Batman — that he will be the man of the masses resounds loudly to our present predicament. Tell me if you cannot relate to a candidate who said he will eradicate poverty and helplessness but in the same breath called the masses a bunch of jokers. We have got a lot of that in the last three years.

At least, that’s what my family and I got after watching the movie over the weekend. A thing I highly doubt the other moviegoers grasped as they were laughing at the wrong critical plot points of the story.

I will not go into dissecting the movie from top to bottom. Let me just share a critical plot point in the movie that struck me the most. Still, a spoiler alert is in order.

Gotham City had cut the budget of the social welfare department. This meant that the mental health services program which Fleck depended on for his medication was shut down.

The social worker succinctly explained to Fleck — “They don’t give a s*** about people like you. They don’t give a s*** about people like me either.”

Cutting the budgets of departments that render basic public social and medical services will always redound to disastrous effects on people who the people in power have sworn to serve.

It is so much like this administration cutting the Human Resource for Health Deployment Program budget from P8.5 billion to P2.45 billion in 2020.

Sen. Ralph Recto has warned that the budget cut will mean the unprecedented and biggest “endo” incident in government. The budget cut will mean 7,107 public health nurses will lose their jobs next year.

For clarification, this issue is dear to me. You see, my late mom served as a public nurse for the most part of her life. To me, this is an outrage.

This budget of the health department next year will only cover 3,854 nurses of the currently deployed 17,293 nurses this year. All 202 public dentists and 597 medical technologists of the health department will also lose their jobs next year.

All in all, Recto warned, at least 10,921 public health personnel employed under the Human Resource for Health Deployment Program will be jobless next year. This means a job attrition rate of four in 10 or a 40 percent casualty rate, Recto added.

To be able to appreciate the breadth and width of the effect this massive retrenchment of public health personnel to the country, we need to know the ideal ratio of nurse to a patient in the Philippines.

According to the Department of Health, the ideal nurse to patient ratio is one nurse for every 12 patients. The sad part is that this is hardly true to many public hospitals in the country. Now, that ratio will exacerbate the already bare public health services of the government.

The reality is that for every 25 to 35 patients, there are only two nurses on duty to serve them. So with simple arithmetic, 7,107 nurses who stand to be fired mean at least 177, 675 patients will be deprived of public health services next year.

So, I ask you this then, what good will the “malasakit centers” be if most of your “boots on the ground” have been booted out of public health service? The clerks employed in this additional bureaucracy will not chart the health status of the patients. Nurses do that. Pfft.

Defying Digong

FOR once, I fully agree with the President’s order to clear all public roads of illegal structures. It is, after all, for the good of the many. The President issued the directive during his State of the Nation this year.

Subsequently, the interior department issued Memorandum Circular 2019-121 in consonance to the President’s order. Based on this circular, local chief executives, from the barangay to the provincial levels, are enjoined to “exercise their powers essential to reclaim public roads which are being used for private ends and in the process, rid them of illegal structures and constructions.”

I do get that. It is not the usual verbal orders of the President that we have heard in the past three years. Now, we have an actual order put on black and white. What I don’t get is capitol’s contention.

It is public knowledge to motorists to avoid the capitol compound during rush hours. Why? It is because of the food stalls and the pay parking spaces that take up at least one lane of the roads surrounding the compound. It has become a virtual traffic bottleneck right smack dab in the middle of the city.

How did these to and fro between the city and capitol begin? Let’s dissect.

It started when Antonio Resma, spokesman of the city’s composite team tasked to carry out the department circular, said, “Pareho man kami [local government] nga gimando-an sa Presidente to reclaim the roads. So, ang ako lang unta niini nga sila na lang unta sa kapitolyo ang mo-demolish kon duna may mga illegal structure sa mga dalan o sidewalk diha sa provincial capitol.”

I understood this statement to be an extension of courtesy to the capitol. It’s like, please clean up your backyard so that we don’t have to. The statement acknowledges the fact that the governor is the foremost entity to carry out the President’s order.

However, the capitol, for some inexplicable reason, took this pronouncement as a threat. Through its information officer Florito Dugaduga, the capitol declared that it will protect its properties and facilities.

“Hugot ang baruganan ni Gobernador Bambi Emano nga iyang panalipdan ang mga kabtangan ug propedad nga gipanag ya sa mga katawhan sa lalawigan sa Misamis Oriental. Kini taliwala sa hulga sa mga opisyal sa syudad… nga ilang sudlon ang capitol compound aron gub-on ang mga ilegal nga struktura nga nakababag sa trapiko ug ipatuman ang Presidential Proclamation – Memorandum Circular 121-2019,” this paper quoted a capitol statement released by Dugaduga.

Right off the bat, the capitol responded to what it understood as a threat from city hall. Maybe the capitol spokesman was not listening to Resma properly. Resma did not categorically say that they will enter the compound and start demolishing the illegal structures. What Resma did was to enjoin the provincial government to clear the roads of the compound. If the latter cannot do its part in implementing the President’s order, then city hall will have no other resort but to do it for the capitol.

Remember that the city hosts the provincial compound. Ergo, all the traffic congestion it causes contributes to the traffic situation in the city.

Another thing, the fact that the capitol predicated its statement that the structures inside the capitol compound are illegal, boggles my mind. Is the capitol then saying that it will protect and defend all the illegal structures in its compound?

The capitol even upped the ante by saying: “Dili man na common road nga agianan gyud sa mga sakyanan. Kana nga mga dalan para ra man na agian sa mga empleyado sa kapitolyo.”

Curiously, I wasn’t able to see that category under the Department of Public Works and Highways’ classification of public roads. The DPWH classifies public roads as national primary, national secondary, national tertiary. provincial roads, municipal and city roads, barangay roads, expressways, and bypasses.

Under the provincial roads category, the public works further define this as local roads:

a. Connect cities and municipalities without traversing national roads

b. Connect national roads to barangays through rural areas

c. Connect to major provincial government infrastructure

On Sunday, I saw first-hand how difficult it was for an ambulance to snake its way through the food stalls to get to the Northern Mindanao Medical Center. I talked with one of its guards. He said the food stalls have been operating virtually 24/7. The operation is divided into two “shifts” of 12 hours daily.

What is it in these food stalls in the capitol compound that would push the governor to defy the President’s order? There is even a makeshift motorela terminal beside the row of food stalls in front of the regional hospital. These motorelas ply the city streets and do not go as far as Opol. My point being is that the terminal is operating in the city under what Dugaduga called as a road only for capitol employees. Are these motorelas owned by employees of the capitol?

Whatever the capitol’s answer to these queries, it is clear that the coming days will surely be interesting, to say the least.

Oh, I almost forgot. Didn’t the governor declare that he may run for city mayor come 2022? If he does get that seat, will he issue the same pronouncements Resma did?

It’s like what we say in chess parlance: It is neither a stalemate nor a draw. It is checkmate, Sir. Pfft.

Hail to the chief!

“And when the band plays ‘Hail to the chief.’ Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord.”  — Fortunate Son, Creedence Clearwater Revival

FUNNY how the sparkling new Armed Forces chief of staff has just admitted to red-tagging us journos because of our bias to the truth and actual reality. It is nice to know that he is folding like a cheap suit without actually needing to. However, the thought that he has trained its cross-hairs towards us is disconcerting.

Late last week, CNN-Philippines quoted newly appointed Armed Forces chief of staff Lt. Gen. Noel Clement advised journalists to avoid showing their “biases” towards the armed communist insurgents.

He was quoted as saying that journalists who have the tendency to “favor” the enemy than the state forces will most likely get red-tagged.

“Red tagging is a very strong word to be used actually kung sasabihin mo na may article kang isulat then automatic ire-red tag ka na agad,” CNN-Philippines quoted Clement as saying.

Please don’t get me wrong. This is not something new to us. The state forces have been red-tagging journalists, rights defenders, and even sitting lawmakers. The secretary of defense himself has said something to that effect. Earlier, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana challenged the Makabayan lawmakers, a minority bloc at the Lower House, to condemn the communist movement so that the red-tagging will stop.

However, as a red-tagged journalist, how can I denounce something I have never been a part of?

As journalists, our role in society is quite well-defined. We are the fourth estate — our mandate is to inform the citizens of the republic for the latter to arrive at intelligent and well-informed decisions. This means that we cannot just take only your side of the story, hook, line, and sinker. Doing so will negate that mandate.

We are not stenographers of events. As journalists, we present the facts whether or not we like or agree with those facts. Objective reporting is meant to portray issues and events in a neutral and unbiased manner, regardless of the writer’s opinion or personal beliefs.

Freedom of the press cannot operate on a culture of fear, Sir.

How can we practice our profession when you have blurred the distinction between an unarmed civilian — which you have sworn to protect, by the way — and an armed guerrilla? Pfft.

Fabilioh!

“Fabilioh! Halikinu.” — Ateneo traditional cheer

I AM an Atenean although I would rather call myself a “Xavierian” for emphasis. These insecure sphincters hate that. What with all the “branding” this certain university president wants and all.

But for all intents and purpose, I am an Atenean at heart. I bet even the national hero Jose Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda yelled that same cheer above when he attended the Jesuit-run school in Manila.

Look, I understand where these people are coming from. Heck, as I’ve said, I have spent most of my formative years in Xavier-Ateneo — that’s what they want to call it now, not Xavier University, as it should. Pabalik, yes. Fabilioh, no.

Here’s the skinny, in its July 17 statement, the Cebu Landmasters Inc. received a “notice of interest” from Xavier University for “the development of the latter’s Manresa, a 63.5-hectare property. The Jesuits in Cagayan de Oro wants to build the “campus of the future.”

One, it is their property. Two, it is their property.

By the way, a cursory check on Google about the impending sale of the Xavier University-Corrales campus will show you how it is supported by a number of groups. Many of my “Spartan” batch mates support it, too. Mind you, we were not mere “transferees.” Most of us in Batch ’91 started our Jesuit education since Kinder 1.

However, when you include a troll in your advocacy to oppose the sale, you can be sure your campaign will fail. Its very presence reeks of bovine excrement and political ambition. Believe me, because I have been at the worst end of this thing’s social media drive in the midterm polls.

I mean, the thing is the very textbook definition of a pathological liar.

Saying that this piece of excrement is an Atenean and that it has every right to express its thoughts on the matter at hand is naive at best. Women and men for others can, certainly, do better than this. It has already announced its ambition for the mayoral seat only months since its spectacular loss in the midterm polls.

Saying that this advocacy transcends political lines is way worse. I have been told that the organizers have been able to enroll a few politicos in their cause. But why was it the only one given the podium to speak last week? Its foul mouth will spell the failure of this advocacy. Even its own batch mates know why it is riding the opposition of the XU sale — to earn political brownie points. It will create more enemies than allies to the cause.

I know my agaw Antonio Montalvan II does not support this sale as is evident in his series of columns, but I know he will agree that he would not want to trek this campaign with the main architect of the deluge of fake news online since 2016.

So, good luck with who you go to bed with on this journey, my beloved Atenistas. Have a field day in getting alums to support the cause with this sorry excuse of an Atenean at your side. Pfft.

The blues

DEPRESSION is this generation’s silent killer. It does not also help that until now, there is still a stigma attached to any mental illness. The reason why most people who suffer from depression opt to keep it to themselves or worse, be in denial.

Major depressive disorder, as psychiatrists call it, is a common but nevertheless serious and lethal mental illness. It affects your ability to function at school and at home.

The realness of this issue hit close to our home when a cousin of my ex-girlfriend took her own life at the age of 18. It left all of us in shock. We just couldn’t believe she could do that because she seemed bubbly and outwardly happy.

Depression is different from sadness and grief. The sadness felt during the grieving process comes in waves and are accompanied with positive memories of that special person who passed away or a loved one you broke up with. While, when you are having major depression, you lose interest, pleasure with most things for at least 15 days.

Depression can hit anyone, even people who seem to be living in a relatively comfortable status. According to the American Psychiatric Association, there are several factors that trigger depression in people.

• Biochemistry: Differences in certain chemicals in the brain may contribute to symptoms of depression.

• Genes: Major depressive disorder can run in families. If a sibling has depression, the other has a 70 percent chance of having the illness sometime in life.

• Personality: People who are easily overwhelmed by stress, or who are generally pessimistic, or have low self-esteem are most likely to experience depression.

• Environmental: Continuous exposure to violence, neglect, abuse, or poverty can also make people more vulnerable to depression.

With grief, a person’s self-esteem is pretty much intact. Depression, however, feelings of worthlessness and self-hate are common. This is the reason why many depressed people, when left untreated or unaddressed, almost always lead to suicides. Grief and depression may overlap but they are two different and identifying between the two can help people seek support and treatment.

According to the Department of Health studies, the suicidal rate in the country is 2.9 per 100,000 people. In the Philippines, males are more prone to suicide than their female counterparts at a ratio of 550 females against 2,008 males. Here in the city, there have been seven suicides involving young people in March alone. Although we enjoy the lowest suicide rate among Southeast Asian countries, it still remains a serious problem, especially among young people.

Earlier this month, we commemorated the World Suicide Prevention Day. The health department has launched the “Hopeline Project.” Since it is a phone-based counseling service, it aims to remove the stigma from mental health issues.

For landline calls, you can reach (02) 804-HOPE (4673), for cellphone calls you can reach 0917-558-HOPE (4673), and you can also dial 2919, it is a toll-free number, for all Globe and TM subscribers.

If you’re suffering from depression, know that there are people that can help you. Please do not be embarrassed to admit you have depression. The sooner you embrace that reality, the sooner you can get help and treatment.

Empathy

EMPATHY is an evolutionary necessity. It is the principle of self-preservation in practice. It is self-preservation in practice because it enables us to understand and share the feelings of others.

It is an ability that enables us to place ourselves in someone else’s perspective and understand where they are coming from. It is different from sympathy. Sympathy is a shared feeling, usually of compassion, for another human being. Empathy is being able to feel what that other person feels. It is to be in somebody’s shoes, so to speak.

When we are enabled to understand what another person is going through, then we could respond appropriately. That is why empathy is important for our very survival as a species.

However, it is saddening to see this human imperative continuously eroding from our collective psyche — as the Filipino people. Reading the threads on news articles posted on social media, it would seem that these people haven’t gotten over the hate rhetoric at the height of the 2016 campaign.

At least, then the hateful rhetoric was limited to political intramurals. But now, the hateful threads in Facebook appear to just injure other people’s feelings just for the heck of it. It seems that spreading hate is as regular as opening a can of sardines. As I have warned in my column a couple of years back, apathy is the most unfortunate by-product of impunity.

But I would like to proffer that empathy can trump apathy if we are to survive this post-truth era that we are all in now. How else can we survive this era if we continue down this path of hateful rhetoric?

Just over the weekend, I read the thread under a news post on Facebook about a teenager taking his own life because he was accused of touching a breast of a woman and he was afraid of the death penalty.

The responses would make you feel weak in the knees. Responses ranged from he got it coming, he was an idiot for taking his life because there’s no death penalty, and then we have the most common retort in this Catholic-dominated country — he will surely go to hell.

Hate has become the go-to, default if you will, response nowadays that it has given me a complex of sorts.

The human imperative to survive and flourish may be understood as selfish. As Dr. Richard Dawkins referred to it as the “selfish gene.”

In his book The Leap, Louise Erdrich wrote that whether survival requires selfishness or not is situational. We could debate, for or against, the idea that self-preservation requires selfishness. But that selfishness trait is not of the individual but of the species. By getting the grips of what this “selfish gene” is supposed to do to our own individual psyches, we can alter what it is supposed to do to serve us as a species.

As Dawkins wrote in his book, The Selfish Gene: “Let us try to teach generosity and altruism because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.”

Why don’t we give empathy a try? Haven’t you had enough of the free-flowing hate rhetoric that has been going around? If we are to survive as a people, in this increasingly toxic environment, we must find our way back and assert our humanity.

Red-tagged redux

WHILE I understand that part of the winning the hearts and minds of the people is the “unmasking” of supposed enemies of the state, red-tagging members of mainstream media are counter-productive. It doesn’t serve the agenda of the whole length of the political spectrum. It only antagonizes the fourth estate against state and non-state actors.

Red-tagging members of the media blur the distinctive line between civilians and combatants in the conduct of the ongoing war between government and rebel forces.

I denounce being even remotely considered as an active combatant. Again, I am an unarmed civilian. I write news and op-ed pieces. That’s what I do. Before I came to be a journalist, I used to work with non-government organizations. My work there did not involve any rifles, too. It required only words and conversations.

I am not, have never been, and never will be a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines’ New People’s Army.

About a fortnight ago, I found myself, and colleague Froilan Gallardo listed again as being part of the armed insurrection to topple down the government. Like the other red-tagging incidents since February this year, the word ridiculous does not even begin to describe the contents of one red-tagging flyer.

However, the cowardly people behind this new spate of red-tagging incidents have upped their ridiculousness. It maliciously and falsely linked me to an alleged rape and murder case supposedly docketed under criminal case 2006-2802 before the “Surigao Regional Trial Court Branch 01-1.” This was the reason, the flyer alleged, why I supposedly joined the New People’s Army. The group, “Black Mamba Mat-NMR Press Club Chapter,” placed a bounty for my death at P1 million.

Even though the allegations contained in the flyer against me were really ridiculous, I still feel the need to debunk these. As I have experienced in the February red-tagging of my family, social media trolls of a certain local political group used this for their own political ends.

Here goes, first, I was in Cagayan de Oro during the entire year of 2006. Second, there is no such thing as a “Surigao RTC Branch 01-1.” Regional Trial Courts are not numbered like that.

Having said that, I would like to thank my family for supporting me during this ridiculous but just as scary year in my journalistic career. I would like to thank friends in the Armed Forces and National Police for their assurances to investigate this latest attack on my person. I was just told over the weekend that they are already tracking two “persons of interest.”

I would also like to thank friends who did what they can, according to their capacities, to denounce my red-tagging, albeit without fanfare. I also extend our gratitude to the support of local and international media community, be it private or public institutions. You, who have issued statements and wrote news articles about this red-tagging, thank you.

However, as I have said before in February, I will not let this cowardly act gag me into silence. I will continue — as what my father taught me before — to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I will continue to tell the story of the downtrodden, the marginalized, and voiceless people of this Republic.

Shape up or ship out

UNWITTINGLY, the shiny new senator drove the student leader’s point on why reviving the mandatory Reserve Officers’ Training Corps is not a good thing at what has become one of the most “memed” Senate hearings now.

Sen. Ronald dela Rosa threw a hissy fit — with pointing fingers, flaring nostrils, and all — at National Union of Students of the Philippines chairman Raoul Manuel at the hearing of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, Arts and Culture last week.

As one dear friend pointed out: “If he had another brain, it would be lonely.”

Manuel, who was invited as a resource speaker on the ROTC bill, pointed out that asserting human rights is made more difficult having lawmakers who are willing to give heinous crime offenders like a convicted rapist and murderer Antonio Sanchez a “second chance.”

“Siguro if mahirapan tayo na mai-uphold yung ganito rights awareness, magkakatalo na lang kung among the ranks of our public officials ay hindi po nana-agree doon lalo na if we have a senator who will say na okay lang na makalaya at may second chance yung isang rapist na mayor habang yung mahihirap ay madaling tokhangin na lamang,” Manuel said.

Instead of debunking Manuel’s claim, Bato suddenly flared up and harangued an invited guest at the Senate hearing. This, even as he red-tagged Manuel and NUSP on live television.

“I take offense on what you said na yung ROTC is a misrepresentation of nationalism. Anong tingin mo samin? Ganun ka lang mag-judge sa ’min? Jinu-judge mo kami na ganun? Are you sure you are the true representation of the Filipino students? Iilan lang yang makakaliwa dyan sa estudyante. Mas marami dyan gusto mag-ROTC, I must tell you frankly,” Bato, nose flaring and finger pointing, yelled.

How can a senator with a supposed doctorate degree, to boot, be so moronic? Manuel was talking about human rights and how these can easily be abused under mandatory military training.

“We would not witness an onion-skinned Bato dela Rosa today without the collective rage of the Filipino people over the current state of our nation. The challenge now is to come together to create meaningful change!” Manuel said on his Facebook page.

However, I was not surprised by Bato’s hissy fit. He has been around people who bark back “Sir, yes, sir” for the longest time that when confronted with a critical thinking student leader, he mistakes him as a product of “brainwashing.”

Bato and his ilk, even his overlord, have been carpet-bombing red herrings whenever they are made to account for the extrajudicial killings, repression, and violation of human rights in the country.

Merriam Webster defines a red herring as something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences toward a false conclusion.

My understanding of Manuel’s point is that the former mayor of Calauan and the policemen who abducted Eileen Sarmenta and Allan Gomez might have undergone ROTC during their college days. That reviving it is not such a good idea, especially now that this administration is increasingly getting more tyrannical in each year it has been in power.

If Bato doesn’t see something wrong with the proverbial rule in the military of “obey first before complaining,” then his view on rights to expression and dissent is as skewed as can be.

Besides, mandatory ROTC does not teach students patriotism. It teaches them jingoism, chauvinism, and xenophobia. Also, I do not find consistency here. Our generals have been harping against New People’s Army recruiting “child soldiers.” How is mandatory ROTC in Senior High being any different? Is the administration saying that prepping 17-year-old students for war is not wrong because it is state-sanctioned?

So, here is my unrequited advice to the senator with what ROTC taught me: Shape up or ship out, you lousy cadet, gardemet!