Pleasing personality

“We just say something as if it really makes sense. Like ‘legally drunk,’ leave the guy alone officer, he’s legally drunk.” – George Carlin, Jamming in New York

LET us discuss the recent ordinance our city council unanimously voted on which has sent lawyers reeling in laughter for its vagueness and subjectivity.

Yes, I’m referring to City Ordinance 2018-18 authored by Councilor Edna Dahino.

For those who have been hiding under a rock, it is an ordinance that authorizes social workers and police to accost adults who are with a minor or minors if these adults exude a “reasonable genuine suspicion” that they are trafficking the children they’re accompanying.

Dahino’s “reasonable genuine suspicion” reminds me of other phrases we have been using but haven’t exactly realized that these sound ludicrous, vague, and does not really define anything.

Worse, we haven’t really examined these phrases at all. We just use them to mean something when it does not.

When you define an act, you determine the essential quality, determine the nature of, or show the form or outline of the act.

It’s like when the police recently announced that this Holy Week they will be on “triple alert.” To me, it sounded ludicrous. Alert is a condition of heightened watchfulness and prepared for any eventuality. There are no levels of alertness. If you are not alert, you are lethargic. You cannot be twice as an alert — why will the officers give their personnel five cups of coffee every hour or a dose of amphetamine for them to be “triple alert?”

Then there’s the cliché “with pleasing personality.” You see it every time there is a job opening at any mall, store, private offices. It is usually one of the requirements when you apply for a job. The sexist part of it is that it seems to be applicable only to the female applicants. It makes you think, to whom should they exude this “pleasing personality,” the employers?

If this ridiculous job requirement is to be believed, then how come I barely see any salesgirl with a “pleasing personality.” We shop at Gaisano Mall, and my ex-girlfriend and I only see scowling sales representatives all the time — if they are not scowling, they are sporting that nonchalant-slightly bored-slightly annoyed look.

Going back to Dahino’s ordinance, like, did you know that this ordinance was shelved at least twice? When this ordinance came to my attention, I did not know why the councilors voted to defer it back to the drawing board twice. At least, now we know why.

A little birdie told me that Dahino was on a verge of throwing a fit if her pet ordinance would be deferred for the third time. Well, methinks that should not be the primary reason to approve an ordinance.

Even the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office is in a conundrum on how to implement it, exactly. For the sake of argument, what would they do to the person they hold for exuding a “reasonable genuine suspicion” of being a child trafficker? Will they institute “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which is legalese for torture?

I have observed that people use extra words in phrases to sound important when it is not.

It is not bad to be passionate about fighting criminality, especially this despicable crime of trafficking children. However, when you are crafting laws, you should be precise, logical or at least sensible.

I remember during my Task Force Macajalar days, lawyer Manuel Ravanera gave us, paralegals, a crash course on laws. He said in crafting a law, it should be objective so it will not be open to a deluge of interpretations, and it should be logical and sensible, like, you do not need to craft a law governing gravity because with or without that written law, gravity will still exist.

Why am I so up in arms about this ordinance, you ask?

Well, I’m bald and I sport a full beard. I hit the genetic jackpot of being a “suspicious-looking character.” I worry about stereotyping.

I hope this vague ordinance gets vetoed or at the least sent back to the drawing board again.

Don’t worry, councilor, third or fourth time is a charm.

Free Myles!

“It’s hard to fight for my life when I feel that my life is not a life. It’s existence. Existence is not enough for me.” -Hector Garcia, Jr.

UNLIKE most of the tito and tita of Myles Albasin, who have expressed support on social media platforms, I was not a student activist. I have also not been a member of the College Editors’ Guild of the Philippines or the Anakbayan.

Some of them I have even mocked when I was studying in high school and college at Xavier University. They would form protest pickets in front of the main campus, rallying against increases in tuition and other school fees. My standard reply then was that nobody forced them to enroll at Xavier. They could always enroll in public schools.

That is the reason why I sort of understand those who join the bandwagon of hate speech against her and her family when the closest you have been to a farm or farm animal is at KFC or MacDonald’s. It is easy to join the vilification campaign against the likes of Myles when most of your concerns involve a small circle (read: domestic).

She decided to put to practice what she learned in school. She certainly does not deserve to be bashed online for what she did like nobody bashed you for posting photos of your super expensive meal when most people in the hinterlands haven’t even seen what a burger is.

Most of the hate post on Myles are anchored on why supposedly “wasted” the free education she got from UP. So let’s go back to the point of the supposed free education in public schools and state colleges and universities. I also thought it was. After sending all of my kids to public schools, I have realized it isn’t free at all. The Republic’s budget for education, year in, year out, can attest to that fact.

Social media platforms have made it easier for people to encapsulate their lives, ergo, the ease in objectifying people. On social media, it is easy to forget that the people who have been subjected to vilification campaigns like you also have mothers, fathers, relatives, and friends.

As I see it, Myles just had a wider lens on Philippine society. She can’t help it that she has been trained how to think and not what to think. Her concerns are not only defined within the confines of her immediate family. Wouldn’t you want your child to be as unselfish as Myles? I would.

I may not understand Myle’s decision to immerse herself in the lives of the marginalized farmers in Negros Oriental but it is hers. I respect that and she and her family, most certainly, does not deserve to be vilified on social media.

‘Rebolusyon sa inyong baga’

“There is no natural, spontaneous process to prevent destabilizing, inegalitarian forces from prevailing permanently.” – Thomas Piketty, The New Yorker

THIS administration and its minions have been bandying about lately the word “revolution” and its adjective form “revolutionary” like it is some kind of magic wand which will waive away all the horrific transgressions it is committing to the very people who brought them to power.

Please permit me a slight digression before I continue. I’d like to give a shout out to Fr. Brennan, SJ (apologies because for the life of me I can’t remember his first name) for teaching us basic Latin in high school. He taught us that if we learn Latin we could virtually be walking dictionaries.

Now back to the point I was making.

The Middle English word “revolution” is derived from the Latin revolutio which means a turnaround. Merriam Webster defines it as “a fundamental change in political power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time when the population rises up in revolt against the current authorities.”

Dictionary.com defines revolution as “an overthrow or repudiation and the thorough replacement of an established government or political system by the people governed.”

In sociology, revolution is “a radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure, especially one made suddenly and often accompanied by violence.”

So, there. From the definitions alone, you can pretty much see how unnerving it is to hear people in power spouting such platitude. In the definitions, it is clear that the overthrowing variable is the population or the people governed or the ruled class.

What do this administration’s minions expect? Like, do they honestly believe Digong Dada will overthrow his own bloody rule? especially now that he has tasted intoxicating power, which possibly is only equaled by the dose of Fentanyl he has been taking?

This may come as a shock to you but what actually happened in Edsa 31 years ago was nowhere near a revolution. At best, it was a revolt of the middle class. Look where it has led the Filipino people too. It has dumbed down the collective understanding of what a revolution actually is.

It has been pointed out to me by a kuya-kumpare, no less, that a revolution isn’t necessarily a violent event. Methinks this kind of thinking is revisionist in nature — strongman Marcos’ “green revolution” comes to mind.

But if we revisited the true meaning of the word, how can an overthrow or replacement of an established system be anything peaceful or benign?

You have to realize that the system being replaced or overthrown has people (read: human beings) behind it. Do you honestly believe these people will just up and leave because they will be replaced by another paradigm?

Do you honestly believe that the P6.4 billion worth of shabu that breezed through the Bureau of Customs — thanks to the Davao Group — will end and will not happen again once this administration’s version of “revolutionary government” comes to power?

These people have been making a butt-load of money out of this sweet arrangement they have right now. Do you think they will just give this largesse for an altruistic goal of “uniting” the Filipino people?

Revolutions are always ugly, violent, and messy — always. The national democratic revolution that has been raging for the past four decades is a testament to that.

This administration threatening that it will establish a “revolutionary government” is like it says it respects human rights, due process, and rule of law. It is simply not true to what it is doing to our nation.

You cannot push a “threat” of a revolutionary government when most Filipinos have been living it for decades.

You see, revolutions are not threats. It is a lifestyle and the ruled class is living it.

The ruling class, to put it bluntly, is neither in the position nor have the moral ascendancy to call for a revolutionary government. The ruled class is the proper variable in the equation to complete a revolution, Einstein!

Jeez! Did all these “smart and brightest” flunk world history?

Egay responds to irate driver

RECEIVING feedback has always been, to me, the thing that makes writing worthwhile. It completes the writing. Writing, after all, is communication, and feedback completes that cycle.

For those who have been following “My Wit’s End” — yes, I’m talking to all 137 of you — I lent my space to articulate the rants of an irate driver-friend on the traffic situation in and around the city.

To refresh your memory, my irate driver-friend divided his rants into three parts: traffic lights, traffic enforcers, and their mobility.

It has since reached the ears, err eyes, of Cagayan de Oro traffic czar lawyer Edgardo “Egay” Uy. He PM-ed me about two hours after that day’s issue hit the streets. He has graciously answered my irate driver-friend’s rants, point-by-point.

So, to end this cycle, I have decided to once again lend my space to Uy’s reply in full and as is. Although, I highly doubt that we’ve heard the last of this particular subject matter [smirks].

Nota bene for those who have been hiding under a rock: RTA is Roads and Traffic Administration, and CCTV stands for closed-circuit television.

Please, do read on.

“Yes, brew, I read your column.  Allow me to clarify the concerns raised by your irate driver-friend.

“1. The traffic lights. The entire project [traffic light and CCTV systems] was not yet turned over to the city by the contractor. The CCTV component is already 99.99% complete while the traffic lights component is still about 70% done.

“Mayor Moreno created a task force to oversee the completion of the project.  The chairmanship changed hands recently and I now head it. We are conducting weekly meetings with the project contractor, needless to state, to closely monitor their progress.

“Our team has required some corrections in the traffic lights that were already installed, e.g., cabling method, safety triggers, etc. These are among the reasons there are flashing traffic lights. These are being worked out by the contractor in coordination with our team.

“We have given the contractor until the end of the year to fully turn over the project to the City.  Failing in this, legal action will have to be resorted to by the City.

“2. On Traffic Aides. Yes, the RTA trains them before they are fielded. We have strengthened the RTA education team and have come up with training modules both for new hires and the tenured ones. And training is continuing.

“Traffic aides are supposed to wear their issued vests for visibility especially at night. If there are those who fail to wear the vests, we would be happy to receive detailed reports so the RTA supervisors could immediately do corrective actions.

“We are currently re-organizing the RTA to address managerial requirements. One of the focus areas are (sic) traffic aides on the road because the RTA needs to closely supervise them, especially that the enforcement group comprises about 75% of its workforce.

“3. On mobility. The RTA has added motorcycles to the Motorcycle Enforcement Unit of the RTA to partly address mobility concerns. The RTA is also beefing up its fleet but we cannot do it at one stroke given some limitations. As a part of this, the RTA will also strengthen its ability to maintain its fleet to ensure the availability of roadworthy vehicles.

“Thank you for the observations. We welcome feedback from the public so we can continue to improve the RTA and the service it renders.”

Rants of an irate driver

I HAVE only been a motorist for a short time in the early ’90s. But as a long time commuter, I commiserate with them as far as the traffic situation in the city is concerned. So, when an irate long-time driver complains, I listen intently as I have never shunned from a learning opportunity.

His rant on the traffic situation in the city is three-part, so please bear with me.

The first part of his rant is of traffic lights. Like him, I would also want to know the schedule when the Road and Traffic Administration switches these on. Is there an actual schedule or are these just defective? If defective, then when will city hall allot a budget for the repair?

There is this traffic light at the junction in Cogon. Like the irate driver, I have observed this particular traffic light because my boss and I pass by this junction when going to the newsroom most of the time. The damned thing is off most of the time with only the yellow light blinking like crazy.

Suffice it to say that the traffic lights in the city are on as random as your average Christmas lights.

The second part of his rant is on traffic aides. Where does traffic czar Egay Uy hire these people from? Does the RTA train these people before deploying them in the streets?

I only ask these questions because even if I’m not driving, I find their gestures confusing. You cannot tell if they’re signaling you to stop or to go. Yes, it is that confusing. There has even been a time when they direct traffic while standing on the side of the road and not at the center of the junction.

There is the issue of their visibility at night time. No, it’s not that they are not working, as in no visibility in the streets. I’m talking about their visibility to drivers at night. They don’t have reflectorized (if that’s a legit word) uniforms.

The irate driver I was talking to last week said he cannot see the traffic aide much less the gesture the aide was doing with his hands at night. Another driver-friend I know nearly bumped the poor traffic aide and it doesn’t help that their uniforms are dark, either.

The third part of his rant is the mobility of these traffic aides. He told me he once watched a traffic aide run (yes, on foot) from the badminton place in Gusa to the junction in Galaxy to apprehend an erring driver who eluded him.

My friend suggests that every team of traffic aides should have a patrol car so they could pursue erring drivers if these do not stop on their command.

I remember watching a friend traffic aide manning the junction on Velez. He flagged down an erring taxi driver but instead of stopping, the taxi driver sped off. My friend was helpless and just gave out a sigh of frustration.

So there you have it, the irate driver’s rant on traffic in the city. I felt compelled to write his rants in my column because he has been complaining out the traffic situation in the city for the longest time.

I hope, the traffic czar reads this.

Let’s kill the cats

WHILE my friend and I were shooting the breeze last Friday, I noticed our ceiling was already quite decrepit. One of the ceiling boards looked like it sagged in the middle part and was ready to fall anytime.

My friend, who repaired our stairway before, explained that the ceiling joists where the ceiling board was nailed to are already rotten. Whenever the cats walk across our ceiling, the nails could not hold the weight, and that’s why one of the ceiling boards is sagging in the middle, he added.

Before I continue, I should let you know that Crow’s Nest is really old. It was built during the “liberation” of the Philippines from the clutches of the Empire of Japan. It’s almost entirely made out of wood. Even the foundations are made of Narra unlike the houses of today which are made of concrete.

My friend offered two options to remedy my ceiling problem.

One, I could replace the whole ceiling construction with new wood for the rotten ceiling joists and replace the ceiling boards which are only 1/4” thick, with the sturdier 2” marine plywood.

Now, my friend said this will surely cost a lot. The materials and manpower, he added, could cost me at least P20 thousand. My friend also said there’s the time frame of the repairs to consider — his modest estimation was that it could take three weeks to replace the whole thing.

The problem is that I can’t spare that much money, I told my friend, plus I can’t expose my children to hazards of falling debris for three weeks.

He said there is another way. It is way cheaper and a helluva lot faster.

“You could just kill off all the cats,” my friend said with a sarcastic grin.

There was an awkward silence because we both realized we were solving my ceiling problem the way Digong Dada would with the drug problem and insurgency in the country.

If you still don’t get it, the ceiling problem is our country’s corrupted institutions, and the cats, well, it’s us, the Filipinos he swore to protect and love.

Macabre joke

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good (people) do nothing.”  – Edmund Burke, Irish statesman [1729-1797].

THE quote above aside, I would like to start this week’s My Wit’s End with a macabre joke — the Department of Education. A joke because, as fellow columnist Rhona Canoy wrote last Saturday, it has been behaving far from what education should be — open to new ideas and dialogue.

I say “macabre” because its most recent actions, or the lack of it, could lead to macabre consequences on the Lumad schools in Mindanao — not that these haven’t been happening already.

Before Digong Dada’s appalling announcement to bomb Lumad schools, “DeafEd” (if I may borrow, manang Rhona’s term of endearment for it) said it could not “find” any record of permits or accreditation of any of the Lumad schools in question, in an interview on national radio. Bolstering the President’s claim that these schools have been teaching subversive ideologies to tribal communities and therefore should be bombed to smithereens. Palace people maintained that they asked Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis-Briones about the schools’ status before Digong Dada’s second State of the Nation’s Address.

Before that also, it took Briones weeks to finally speak on the subject. She hasn’t even replied to the inquiries of journo-friend Inday Espina-Varona. The DeafEd was so silent on the subject that I ranted about it on Facebook.

I posted “DepEd Sec. Briones is awfully quiet on the president’s threat to bomb Lumad schools. Wazzup?”

This came as a shock to me because I have known Briones before she took the department’s helm. I was still with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism when she was at the forefront of advocating against the lower house’s pork barrel allocation, the national budget of the then President Benigno Simeon Aquino and his administration’s infamous Disbursement Acceleration Program.

The silence was appalling because I knew her to be a bright person of conscience. I knew that through the many fora, rallies, and speaking engagements of Briones on her advocacy for good and sound governance.

Last Sunday, I had a very interesting and illuminating interview with DepEd union’s national president Domingo Alidon. Alidon told me the department has been decentralized specifically on the matter of issuing permits and accreditation to private schools, or in this case alternative learning institutions. He agreed that it is possible that DepEd national had no records of any of the Lumad schools in question but that these could all be cleared from the level of the regional director from the region that hosts the school in question.

Now, why did Briones categorically say they don’t have records of the schools being accredited when she could have easily told Palace people to check with the regional directors of her department. Better yet, she could have asked her regional directors for the information before blabbing to the Palace.

I said illuminating conversation because Alidon gave me an insider’s view to Briones’s seeming aversion to dialogue. He told me that their union has been seeking an audience with her for weeks now but she has never responded to any of the union’s requests.

Briones has been black-walling the union, an act that constitutes as a serious infraction to the department’s collective negotiation agreement with the union.

Alidon said they wanted to know why the department employs five undersecretaries when Republic Act 9155 (Governance of Basic Education Act of 2001) and Civil Code clearly stipulate that the department could only hire four undersecretaries, at the most.

He added that the law also stipulates of all undersecretaries and assistant secretaries, at least one should have a Ceso (Career Executive Service Officer) eligibility. One of the assistant secretaries has already complied with this stipulation. However, not one of the five undersecretaries has Ceso eligibility.

Having one extra undersecretary may sound trivial to you, my dear readers, but this clearly isn’t so. Having one extra undersecretary means additional budgetary allocation. As Alidon puts it, if the department continues to employ this extra undersecretary, the taxpayers will be paying for the salaries of that undersecretary, his staff, and operational expenses which are not included in the department’s budget allocation under the General Appropriations Act. Ergo, illegal.

Lastly, Alidon told me they would meet within the week and may resort to filing formal complaints against Briones before the Office of the President and the Office of the Ombudsman.

Let’s see if Briones will be open to “dialogue” by then. Still, until then, the DeafEd will remain a macabre joke of the present administration.