Politics amidst the massacre

The Maguindanao massacre has left us all in shock, anger and frustration over the political system in our country. This is an early wake up call for all of us to be more vigilant as the May 2010 elections come near.

The entire nation challenged the presidency to do something about the possible involvement of her biggest ally down South - the Ampatuans. The government was dared to make arrests among the possibly involved members of the clan. There was also the clamor to expel the Ampatuans out of the Lakas-Kampi-CMD, the administration party.

Yesterday, Gibo Teodoro met up with his teammates in Lakas and the party has finally decided to indeed expel the three - Andal Sr., Andal Jr., and Zaldy. To me this is not only an act of personal outrage. It is more of an act of being decisive at the fastest time possible considering the circumstances of the case. Gibo decided that he and his partymates expel the Ampatuans for failure to uphold party principles and objectives. To me this is the wisest thing for him to do. Thumbs up for Mr. Teodoro.

The President vowed to get to the bottom of this incident and to let justice prevail. Politics is only secondary now because the journalists, lawyers, innocent passers-by and relatives deserve to get all the justice in the world. Indeed no stones are to be left unturned. No one is untouchable in the eyes of the law.

The recent news of Andal Jr.'s arrest is another big step. Hopefully in the coming days, all the 100 gunmen be apprehended as well.

Hacienda Luisita nanaman

Kahapon ang anebersaryo ng Hacienda Luisita Massacre. Ngayon naman ang pagpupulong ng mga Cojuangco sa Tarlac kung ano ang kanilang gagawin sa naturang isyu ng mga magsasaka sa lupain sa hacienda.

Nais ng mga magsasaka na mapasakanila ang parte ng lupa na kanilang sinasaka na siyang naaayon sa Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program na mismong si Corazon Aquino ang nagpatupad. Subalit pilit nila Noynoy i-apela sa Korte Suprema ang desisyon ng Department of Agrarian Reform na nagpapawalang bisa sa Stock Distribution Option ng management ng hacienda.

Ayun sa nasabing Stock Distribution Option na iyon, ang Hacienda Luisita ay hindi kabilang sa mga lupain na isasa-ilalim sa CARP. Sa SDO na iyan, ang mga manggagawa ng asukal ay naging stock holders at pang-arawang manggawa na tumatanggap ng P9.50 bawat araw subalit wala namang parte sa benta.

Gibo at Edu

Finally, may ka-tandem na si Gibo! Walang iba kundi si Mr. Edu Manzano. Yes, si Edu na host ng Game Ka Na Ba? Si Edu na ex ni Vilma Santos. Si Edu na tatay ni Luis Manzano.

Matapos ang matagal na paghahanap at pamimili sa mga nasa Lakas-Kampi-CMD ay napagdesisyunan ng partido na i-anunsyo na si Edu Manzano nga ang Vice Presidential bet ng administrasyon. Matatandaan na ang unang napili ay si Sec. Ronaldo Puno ng DILG. Subalit kamakailan lang ay inanunsyo rin nito na hindi na niya itutuloy ang pagkandidato.

Si Edu Manzano ay kagalang-galang na personalidad. Naiiba siya sa karamihan ng nasa showbiz industry dahil makikitaan siya ng mahuhusay na kapasidad ng isang public servant. Ito ay isang hindi pangkarinawang katangian sa ating mga artista.

Goodluck na lang sa lahat ng mga tatakbo.

Gibo ratings finally up

In what is likely to be called the biggest development for Gibo since the announcement of his being the administration party's standard bearer, his ratings have improved and his rank significantly went up in the survey results from the Issues and Advocacy Center (The Center), in its last quarterly Pulso ng Bayan survey from Oct. 19 to 26.

Sec. Gilbert Teodoro shifted to Lakas-Kampi-CMD some months ago. That decision caused him to become the party's standard-bearer, setting aside Bayani Fernando. Gibo, a cousin of Noynoy Aquino, has placed 5th in the aforementioned poll recently conducted. That is a significant indicator that people are beginning to notice him, people are looking at a better Cojuangco.

Well, this great achievement should continue until the polls. Kudos!

EO 289: Oil prize freeze

Under Executive Order 839, oil industry players are directed to retain the level of the retail price of petroleum products prevailing on October 15, 2009 or one week after the last landfall of typhoon Pepeng.

However, notwithstanding the implementation of this EO, oil companies still insist that they will incur too much losses when this EO continues and is not lifted as soon as possible.

The target of this executive order is to help the consumers who are end-users of petroleum products to be unburdened by high prices of commodities which is usually the consequence of the high price of petroleum.

The oil price freeze has again caused these capitalist oil companies from saying stories of possible shortage of supply of fuel in the coming days. These oil giants warned that if the oil price freeze is not lifted, there might be a possibility that the firms will not import oil products from the refineries outside the Philippines. Neither would they sell at a loss.

Nonetheless, with this existing fear of shortage the government will do its best to avoid this scenario without giving up on the whims of these capitalist oil players. It is said that there is a scheduled meeting tomorrow on the part of the members of the executive department to find a solution on this impending crisis.

Noynoy and Luisita

Yesterday I read Patricia Evangelista's column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Her article yesterday was interesting as she gave her insights about Noynoy Aquino's decision to run for President vis-a-vis the indecision of the Aquino family to give up their ownership over Hacienda Luisita to its tenants-farmers despite the existence of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

Here's the article.

Jesus in yellow
Patricia Evangelista
http://archive.inquirer.net/view.php?db=1&story_id=234874

THE GRASS IS YELLOW OUTSIDE THE GATES OF HACIENDA Luisita. Jesus walked here once.

His father watched him die, almost five years to this day. Nov. 16 was when close to 15,000 tenants gathered to protest their treatment under the Cojuanco-owned Hacienda Luisita. Dispersal units charged with a thousand soldiers in full battle gear. The Northern Command numbered over five hundred. Stones and shouts, water cannons, tanks that barreled into gates. It was three in the afternoon. The sun burned yellow. The father heard it first: rifle cracks, a barrage of bullets punching through bodies. Jesus died that day, one of seven reported union deaths. They tell me there are more whose names were never reported.

They called it a massacre. Sen. Benigno Aquino III called it propaganda.

On that day, Federico Laza and other farmhands loaded the 38-year-old Jesus into a tricycle. The father wept and Jesus bled. It was too late when they brought him to the hospital. The police claimed they found powder burns on Jesus’ hands, proof he, too, had a gun. The autopsy said otherwise.

Today, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III runs for president of the country his father died for.

I believed in him, not very long ago. I believed in him in spite of a long-ago interview on Hacienda Luisita, on his first run as senator. As it happened, I was standing by Federico Laza, looking at a death certificate, while Noynoy claimed the dead were Manila radicals shipped to Tarlac for the purpose of terrorizing the hacienda. He said the farmers were content, and that all I knew were left-wing lies. The Cojuangcos still own Luisita, even if on paper they are meant to share profit with the same starving farmers who are worse off now than before they were made to sign land meant for them into stock market shares.

And still I was glad Noynoy was running, believed his mistakes, and his mother’s, were a result of their class and could change in the lead-up to 2010. I believed he could bring together a scattered field of candidates, pare down the fight between administration and opposition. I believed that the myth of the Aquinos behind him would be enough to convince his rivals to throw their support behind one candidate, and allow him to prove he was not just a paper doll hero, a crudely-cut outline of his parents. I was afraid he might lose. Now I am afraid he may win. I wish I still believed in him, because without him there’s very little left in the rogue’s gallery of would-be leaders.

For months he has been leading headlines. The Aquino son, soaring on the wings of heroes. His rivals have not stepped back; the field is still open. A fever sweeps through the media, crowning Noynoy, the man who has yet to say anything that is not an echo of the old revolution. Remember my father. Remember my mother. Vote for me, and you vote for them. And that is all. It has been months since he became suddenly the nation’s moral choice, and there is little resembling platform, policy or position. Miracle, they call him. This is the revolution, say his supporters. This is Edsa. So he may not be as intelligent. So he may not be as articulate. So he may not have proven himself. And because we are faced with the usual array of the corrupt and the devout, we wait, we believe. And we are rewarded, in all its cinematic splendor, by a music video.

The scene is a forest, in the dark of the night. Yellow shirts and soft yellow light, Regine Velasquez by a fire in the woods, singing of togetherness and unity and a farewell to fear. There is the small child, offering a bamboo torch to the senator. There is talk show host Boy Abunda, standing on a boat manned by a young boy. There is Kris Aquino, Noynoy’s sister, who is rumored to have been wining and dining A-list celebrities to support her brother. It is national unity via television ratings: the top stars of the warring networks linked by yellow. ABS-CBN’s darlings of prime time television are lit beautifully in the flickering firelight, holding their bamboo torches, hair bouncing as they walk, smiling soulfully into the distance. The camera lets GMA7’s number one love team Dingdong Dantes and Marian Rivera look lovingly at each other as they walk on, a smiling Sharon Cuneta raises a lantern, Ogie Alcasid marches with torch. There is the odd farmer and soldier, but it’s clear who the stars are. And so the full shot, a great phalanx of torch-bearing, yellow-clad men and women marching to battle, the celebrities at the front lines. Through it all, Noynoy smiles at children, at people, at the camera, smiles blankly, and you can almost hear him count in his head the seconds before he has to turn to the lens. In the end, he leaps awkwardly up to a mound of soil, surrounded by his beautiful constituency, and a sun explodes behind him in shattering brilliance.

In a nation where government responsibility has shifted to the media, and calls for aid are directed to newsroom desks instead of the hotlines of the National Disaster Coordinating Council, this sort of move isn’t particularly surprising. A united GMA7 and ABS-CBN may seem like the best of metaphors for a united nation, but it says very much about the sort of man Noynoy Aquino is. Flanked by stars, surrounded by celebrities, content to ride on the waving banner stamped with his parents’ faces. There is no message, other than that personality is king. There are no voices, not even his. His defenders say it’s not the time for campaign—and yet that video rolls on and on in prime time television. You are not alone, they say, but who stands with you? Anne Curtis? Ate Shawie? Marielle Rodriguez? Just recently, Noynoy promised to give up his share of Hacienda Luisita, and yet denies knowing of eviction notices to farmers even while the case sits in the Supreme Court. Laza continues to march in rallies, five years after a bullet ripped a good man away. Nothing has changed, the same songs, the same names, the same injustices.

They say the miracles are colored yellow now—the yellow of thick lengths of ribbon, the triumphant swags of bright flag, the inside edge of a flame on a bamboo torch held up to a camera lens, the same yellow of grass outside the gates of Hacienda Luisita, where a man named Jesus once walked with his father.