Change

“Change is the only constant in life.” — Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

LAST week was a particularly tiring week, I must say. We were bombarded with a wide array of crap by this administration.

There was the vetoing of the legislation that would have ended labor contractualization for good. Remember that ending “endo” is one of his core campaign promises which subsequently delivered the President the votes that catapulted him to power.

It supposedly signed it as a priority bill, only to veto the bill when it came for it to sign it into law. It reasoned that it only wanted to maintain the status quo between the interests of employers and their workers — what a cop-out.

This decision left the bill’s principal author, Sen. Joel Villanueva, and Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri flabbergasted.

“Unfortunately, profit wins again with the veto of the SOT bill,” an ABS-CBN news report quoted Villanueva as saying.

For his part, in the same report, Zubiri said he could not make sense of the decision of the President to veto a bill which it declared as urgent.

“They came into 2016 with very high hopes that the practice would be prohibited. Now, we are back to square one,” Zubiri sighed.

I am one with Zubiri in telling the President and its Cabinet to get their s*** together.

In what appeared to many of us as an attempt to diffuse the situation, the President unilaterally ordered the termination of all of Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office’s gaming franchises and licenses across the country.

It announced the “midnight order” literally in the wee hours of Friday last week. It said the nationwide shutdown order is in light of the rampant alleged corruption in PCSO. So, what’s next? Is it going to shut down the Bureau of Customs and other departments that it had a “whiff” of corruption?

Of course, the administration had to do the shutdown in the most public way possible. Its police force, like the trained bomb-sniffing K9 unit, scrambled across the country physically shutting down Small Town Lottery outlets.

Less than 24 hours from when the President ordered through a video posted on Presidential Communications and Operations Office’s, get this, Facebook page, the National Police implemented the order on Saturday morning. This, without the order in print. They just showed the legitimate STL operators the video and padlocked their outlets.

It can always say that they don’t need the written order since we are already technologically advanced now. The video is enough.

However, if it is so tech-savvy, didn’t they know that they can just as easily shut down the entire operation by unplugging the national server in Manila for Lotto, Keno, and other PCSO-granted games?

Without tickets bearing the bettors’ number combinations on legitimate PCSO paper, would you still place a bet? The answer is a common sense, no.

They didn’t have to pose like bumbling idiots for the cameras showing they physically padlocked the outlets.

As if that act isn’t bad enough, in the same week 13 people were killed in five days in Negros Oriental. That is, at least, two killings per day. Let that sink in for a while.

In an Inquirer report on Sunday, the province’s police conveniently claimed that the assailants involved in the killings “identified themselves as members of the New People’s Army.”

Now, that is just pure hogwash. How did these Maoist partisans “identify” themselves? Did they leave their business cards at the scenes of the crime?

We are not in 1983 when the government can just blame the communist rebels without the other party issuing a timely response via the internet.

In a statement over the weekend, the Communist Party of the Philippines denied that their fighting units were involved in the killings.

The same Inquirer report stated that the militant groups have expected the spate of violence in their province as a prelude to the declaration of martial law in the Visayas and ultimately to silence political dissenters and government critics. What is more effective in silencing dissent that killing the dissenter, right? Wrong.

In a democratic society, dissent is the highest form of patriotism. To be silent in the midst of injustice is not patriotism. It is idolatry. It is blind obedience.

Even the newly installed chief of police of Valencia City in Bukidnon, Lt. Col. Surki Sereñas, agreed with me.

“Precisely! When I went to China and recently in Vietnam, I said if CPP becomes the ruling party in the Philippines, si Cong B. Corrales una mawad-an trabaho. Dili na pwede ang Cong Rant, hahaha,” Sereñas commented on my Facebook thread.

Since its campaign, this administration has been bandying the slogan of change. It was much like former US President Barrack Obama’s slogan — change and hope.

It sounded good. We were all hopeful that a no-nonsense change is going to happen in our benighted country. But the thing is, change is going to happen whether you promise it in a campaign sortie or not. Whether this will be a change for the good or the worse, is an entirely different matter.

Matter changes according to its inherent contradicting characteristics and how long these contradictions are contained. Although these opposing characteristics are united in a singular matter, the contradictions within and without the same singular matter will give the impetus for it to change into an entirely different matter.

In short, when you burn a paper it becomes ash — carbon. Pfft.

Fuego

WHY is this administration so afraid of the latest resolution of the United Nations Human Rights Council? Didn’t this same administration tell its citizens that if they haven’t done anything wrong, they shouldn’t be afraid of martial law?

This is exactly the same banana. If this administration, which has even taken a roadshow in Europe, is so proud of its stellar human rights record, then it should not be afraid of a review and accounting of its judicial processes to ensure human rights of its citizens.

Shouldn’t this resolution be the best platform where this administration can school the international community on what “best practice” is in protecting human rights?

As the loggers of yore used to say: “Let the chips fall where it may.”

However, the reaction of this administration, from the President down to its sycophants in barong, is very telling. Their statements on the UN council’s resolution betray their bravado, from threatening to walk out of the council itself to cutting diplomatic ties with Iceland, the state that sponsored the resolution.

Are they afraid of what the world will uncover? Are they afraid they will lose credibility on the world stage?

Take for instance the “militarization” of the Department of Education.

The recent suspension of 55 Salugpongan schools in Davao del Norte by Deped-11 on the recommendations and supposed findings of Gen. Hermogenes Esperon that these schools are training students to hold firearms, tells us how the military directly influences civilian government bodies.

Education is a basic right. When Deped-11 shut down the tribal schools, it betrayed its mandate. It pushes me to ask: Who runs the education department, anyway? While we’re at it, also ask how many generals have this administration placed in the supposed civilian governmental department?

Last week, a group of supposed lumad dealers, este leaders, were at the Philippine Consulate in California to sell their own version of the struggle of the indigenous peoples in Southern Philippines.

The delegation was led by a certain Joel Unad.

In a statement, the Pasaka Confederation of Lumad Organizations said Unad is an Obo-Manobo who claims a Certificate for Ancestral Domain Title awarded by the government in Marilog and Calinan Districts in Davao City.

“Yet, for over a decade he has traveled with the Eastern Mindanao Command across other Lumad tribes in Mindanao to entice Lumad leaders to file ancestral domain claims and to recruit them into joining paramilitary Lumad groups in the guise of self-defense,” Pasaka’s statement reads in part.

Why would they go all the way to the States when this administration has been hell-bent on showing it doesn’t care what the international community thinks of it?

Conflict management theory tells us that things will be worse before they get better. This is because the contradiction of opposing forces will have to peak before a new paradigm sets in — and then another cycle of contradiction begins. It is a continuous process only differentiated by the spiraling developments borne from each of the conflict resolutions.

So, I suggest we buckle up and do our share in achieving a new paradigm where human rights are respected and the rule of law properly implemented. Let’s fire it up, so to speak. Whether you’re a visual artist, a writer, a musician, a thespian, or a simple ordinary citizen. We have nothing to lose and all to gain. Fuego!

At wit’s end

I AM tired of being wary. I am tired of my “new reality” in light of this incessant red tagging. For context to people who don’t realize what it is to be red-tagged, it is being in a virtual hit list but not knowing who will assassinate you. Everyone is a suspect — from the innocuous-looking guy selling candy or ice drop on the streets to the notorious duo riding a motorcycle.

Fortunately, I have had training from the International News Safety Institute. We were trained at the Army’s 4th Infantry Division here. We were the first batch that used “live fire” during the training. We were trained how to react in different scenarios — from abduction to being tailed or to counter surveillance.

No less than an agent of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces taught us tips on counterintelligence. He taught us how to “burn” those who are tailing us. I have since shared my training with my family. Looking back, sharing the things I learned from the safety training would prove useful now.

So, when my family and I were tagged in February this year, I gathered them for a huddle to refresh them of the things I shared to them years ago.

Since the first red tagging incident, my “new reality” consisted of me flinching whenever a “motorcycle riding in tandem” whiz by me. Walking the streets or inside the malls, I would maximize every reflective surface to be able to see who has been following me or what people behind me are doing. If there is one particular person who I think has been following me, I would automatically do the “jackrabbit walk” to steer the person off my trail.

But doing this every single day since February is tiring and has taken a toll on my nerves. It angers me that I am constantly afraid when I walk the streets of a city where I was born, grew up, got married, had children, and will most probably die in.

It is disappointing that I do not feel safe anymore in a city I have called home during the last four decades of my life. I am a tax-paying constituent of the city, for crying out loud.

I am disappointed at people who swore to look after my welfare and safety. It does not even help that I’m a director of the oldest press club in the country since it is so busy with some personal problems. Until only over the weekend, city hall has been deafeningly silent on the red tagging of its constituents.

Last Friday night, another local journalist was red-tagged online along with a Davao-based columnist who was abducted at the Laguindingan Airport late last month. A meme red tagging National Union of Journalists in the Philippines’ chapter president here, Pamela Jay Orias, and Margarita Valles was posted on a Facebook group “Quiet No More PH.”

However this time, colleagues were fast in condemning the incident. Taking it a step further, my editor-in-chief, who is also an NUJP long-time member, did a digital forensic work on “Quiet No More.” He traced the post to a military unit that is tasked, ironically, to do “civil relations” work.

He posted his findings on his wall. Although the findings were circumstantial, apparently, it was enough to push the military agents to take down their red tagging meme by Saturday evening.

Erstwhile Alagar spokesman Surki Sereñas reacted to my post of a screen-captured photo of the red tagging meme that was not “available” anymore, that although it was taken down, the damage has been done. I replied that while it is true that they have already damaged the reputation of the Pam and Manang Ging, we still have the consolation that now we know the people behind the online red tagging. It is a unit of the Army based in Davao City.

On Saturday, members of NUJP’s directorate held an audience with Mayor Oscar Moreno and Vice Mayor Raineir Joaquin Uy to discuss our concerns on the red tagging of local media workers.

I was told that Moreno said he would look into the matter. He also asked for “proof” of the red-tagging incidents in the city. Why would he ask for proof — doesn’t he read the newspaper or listen to the radio? Where has he been living all these years? From his house, does he go to work passing through a portal that leads directly to his office?

To be fair, I know the mayor has a lot on his plate right now. But I don’t believe he lacks resources and logistics to address these life-threatening incidents because aside from being the mayor of the city, he sits as chairman of the Regional Peace and Order Council of Northern Mindanao.

He can just easily get to the bottom of this. Say, easier than what my editor-in-chief did in digging into who is behind the incessant red tagging in the city.

The mayor also chided local reporters for not doing anything when he was a subject of a smear campaign that started months before –and even after — the mid-term polls. Now, this is dumb. Unlike him, we did not run for public office. Being a veteran politician, he should know that smear campaign during election season comes with the territory.

Our task as members of the fourth estate is to advance the right of the people to know the current events of government — for them to reach informed decisions. It is hardly a task that merits red tagging.

Anyway, I find solace in kindred spirits who continue to inspire their colleagues by being with them in times of state repression.

I admit that I am scared out of my wits — I’m on my wit’s end here. But apart from being scared, I will still not be cowed into silence. I will continue with my task to inform the people as accurate as I can.

#EndImpunityPH

OVER the weekend, I was preparing a column with a sarcastic take on Sen. Ronaldo Bato dela Rosa’s “s**t happens” comment on the death of three-year-old Kateleen Myca Ulpina.

However, I received a far more important statement from the Philippine UPR Watch, which I thought trumps anything that I planned to write.

Therefore, I have decided to cede my column space for their statement. Please do read on:

The resolution tabled by Iceland and supported by many States at the current 41st session of the United Nations Human Rights Council to comprehensively and methodically address the horrendous extrajudicial killings and the plethora of rights violations in the Philippines is a highly significant international initiative.

It is a big step in stride with other parallel measures and contemporaneous efforts that merits the full support of an intergovernmental body that is mandated to ensure the promotion, protection, and respect for human rights at the global level. Despite desperate efforts of the Duterte administration to package its violations as worthy of praise and emulation, the evolution of the firm resolution emphasized the futility of attempts to evade accountability on the human rights violations committed by State actors and the international community’s acknowledgment of the grave human rights situation in the Philippines. We likewise appreciate all other current diplomatic initiatives that express concern on the dire situation in the Philippines.

Under the banner of the Philippine UPR Watch, human rights defenders from Karapatan,  National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, National Council of Churches of the Philippines, and Iglesia Filipina Independiente conducted intense lobby and advocacy activities on the human rights situation in the Philippines during the current session of the Council in Geneva.

The Philippine NGO delegation met and conversed with several State Missions, some UN Special Procedures and various international human rights organisations to provide direct testimonies and documentation on the killings and attacks against human rights defenders, church workers and lawyers, on the atrocious climate of impunity with the implementation of the Philippine government’s  bloody and cruel “drug war” and counterinsurgency program, the use of draconian policies and measures including martial law in Mindanao, and the failure of domestic institutions and mechanisms to provide real succor and effective redress for victims of human rights violations.

The NGO delegation also addressed the misleading theatrics and gross disinformation rants of apologists of the Philippine government in Geneva, which are riding in tandem with the orchestrated propaganda blitz in the country and junket roadshows in the US and Europe. Measured against reality and hard facts, such as PR stunts, however, are empty rhetorics and desperate efforts to evade accountability.

We invite the international community of nations and peoples to see through all these charivaris by nervous officials.

Spin #1: The Philippine government refutes the data and reports on the number of victims of extrajudicial killings in the drug war by citing statistics of the Philippine National Police which are “merely” 6,000 deaths. This is not a numbers game to be wagered over human lives. The numerous cases and consistent reports have indicated that what appears to be a  “shoot first, justify later” tendency of the Philippine National Police has resulted to the mad slaughter of poor Filipinos deprived of their right to basic due process. It bespeaks of the cold callousness that has possessed our authorities when a newly-elected senator, who was among the primary implementers of the bloody “drug war,” has derided and trivialized the recent killing of 3-year-old Myca Ulpina, with his “shit happens” comment most insensitive.

Spin #2: The Philippine government misleads the international community in saying that majority of Filipinos approve Duterte’s drug war, citing a 2018 survey and the results of the midterm elections. Lost in translation is another recent survey result released in March 2019, where 78% or 4 out of 5 Filipinos have expressed worry and fear that they would be the next victims of extrajudicial killings. Also brushed aside are the various outstanding questions and complaints concerning fraud, machination, and violence during the recent elections and which unfortunately still prey on many of our people.

Spin #3: Filipino diplomats and officials have senselessly berated Iceland and other States supporting the proposed resolution as “colonizers,” once again invoking the country’s sovereignty, in a hypocritical attempt to evade its commitments to international human rights conventions and declarations. Indeed, the “sovereignty” card has been repeatedly misused by the Philippine government to duck accountability, while it has allowed repeated violations on the country’s patrimony and territorial integrity by foreign governments, at the expense of the rights of Filipinos.

Spin #4: Philippine authorities have repeatedly maligned civil society organizations and human rights defenders as “terrorists” and “traitors to their country,” in a vicious attempt to sow misinformation on the facts and issues on the ground and to get back at critics and political dissenters. Contrary to the vilification fetish and smear campaign of the Philippine government, Filipino human rights defenders have been killed, arrested on trumped up charges, maligned, threatened and harassed due to their work of exposing the State’s gross violation and abdication of its sworn duty to uphold the rights of its citizens. Aren’t the real traitors those in power who subvert international human rights instruments and the Philippine Constitution to justify their repeated and relentless violation of people’s rights?

Spin #5: Master fake news purveyors of the government have been boasting about a working and vibrant justice system in the Philippines, citing it as among the main reasons why international scrutiny or investigation is not needed. They touted the number of police personnel facing complaints, the conviction of Gen. Jovito Palparan and the revival of the task force on extrajudicial killings as dubious evidence. What is glaring are the following facts: one, that government officials have magnified rare minute cracks on impunity and showcased them but remained mum on the number of police personnel or soldiers convicted for committing extrajudicial killings; two, the conviction of Palparan has been widely attributed to the grim determination of the relatives of the disappeared female students, witnesses, lawyers, human rights defenders, and the international community, and not due to the Duterte administration’s efforts; and three, the task force on EJKs created by virtue of Administrative Order No. 35 has turned out to be a government body that has failed in exacting accountability for crimes perpetrated by State actors. 

Spin #6: The Philippine government tries to hoodwink the international community when it invokes adherence to international human rights instruments and cites its purported cooperation with UN human rights mechanisms, doing so cynically with tirades of vitriol and verbal insults against UN special procedures, high commissioners and prosecutors of the International Criminal Court and its repeated rejection of any international investigation or inquiry on reported human rights violations. The government has also barely responded substantially to most, if not all communications by special procedures and has made a mockery of the UN Universal Periodic Review process by abusing it as a platform to deodorize its deceptive claims on respecting human rights.

We know it will get worse before it gets better. And we are bracing for panicky reprisals. But we will stand our ground and will continue to stand in the way to stop the impunity. We ask the international community of nations and peoples: stand by us before it is way too late as it is already much too much.

‘Fight for love’

JULY is the birth-month of Mindanao Gold Star Daily. Thirty years ago yesterday, the very first copy of GSD circulated in the city and gave Cagayan de Oro City its very first daily newspaper that defied the one-year test.

Frankly, I really didn’t know the more intimate details of the paper’s history until my return to it on June 27, 2015, and served as its associate editor. Years before that, I used to be a staff reporter of another daily newspaper in the city. That didn’t pan out well because that paper had a penchant for delayed salaries and payments of my social remunerations.

So, I decided to be a freelance news correspondent.

Like all fledgling news correspondents, I was struggling to make ends meet. But as a freelance news writer, I could sell my stories to any news media organization, be it domestic or international.

Herbie Gomez, this paper’s editorial jefe, offered me to submit stories to GSD since I’m not officially connected with the other paper anymore. He had only one request, though, that I submit my story first to GSD before I submit it to other media outfits I was writing for. Well, at least three hours of lead time from other outfits. The day I started contributing stories to GSD was the day my journalistic career turned serious.

Before, with the other paper, I had 50 percent of my story is the paper’s banner story. It was not because I was an enterprising or “Boombastic” writer. It was because there were only two of us as staff reporters in the other daily. Being one of many correspondents across the island, in GSD, you had to battle it out to byline the banner story.

Don’t worry, it was a friendly competition. Each correspondent had to out-scoop each other. The end result was we had the most comprehensive banner story on any given subject because at least two correspondents worked on the same story. The story would have covered all the bases, so to speak.

Also, if I was struggling to make ends meet before, now I can make ends meet on time, albeit still struggling. But I was paying my bills on time, this time. This is because in all my years working with GSD, it has always made it a point to pay its people on time, a thing that I, unfortunately, could not say for the other outfits I wrote for before, be it domestic or international.

It was when I worked as a correspondent for GSD that I learned how to view news events more critically. I wasn’t going to slack off and submit a haphazard article and be relegated to the inside pages. I concentrated more on the whys and hows. In other words, I was more invested in the context rather than the political intramurals on the surface of an event. I shied away from the “he said, she said” or more popularly known locally as “sabong” journalism.

It was because of this internal competition in GSD that I dare say I improved my writing. At least, it caught the attention of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, for one. I owe a lot to GSD to my journalistic career.

So, after a four-year stint with PCIJ, it was only proper to return to the paper that gave me my break into serious journalism. Not “new,” but just serious journalism. The decision was fairly simple to make. I wanted to apply all the learning I acquired from PCIJ to THE paper that gave me the opportunity to have opportunities opened to me.

It was at this time that I got to know GSD a little more. I did not know of it in a classroom sort of discussion, mind you. I learned about the paper’s history through informal chats with president emeritus Ernesto Chu.

He would tell us about the days when he drove across the island to personally establish the paper’s bureaus. Yes, you read it right. Imagine, establishing your paper’s presence in at least 20 cities and 24 provinces. He was on the road most of the time. And does he rest on his laurels? No. Now, he wants to establish a strong presence on the internet superhighway. And we will be right there beside him in that undertaking.

When you get to know what the paper has gone through to get where it is at right now, you simply feel pride and love. I am proud and grateful to be with Gold Star Daily.

This paper is a product of love and perseverance. Marketing executive Amor Barlisan suddenly blurted in the middle of the newsroom years ago: “Fight for love!” It has since become the paper’s unofficial motto.

Here’s to 30 years more. “Fight for love!”