Lost in time

Veritably, our government is lost in time. Either the military has resorted to its primitive roots, or Raul Gonzales has really lost his head (which is, in reality, far from impossible). To say that communists are behind attempts to topple the government is to ask innocently that oh my golly, Rizal is dead?

In the first place, why are there peace talks behind the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP)? Why are our troops commissioned to do patrols in our sparsely populated countryside? Isn't it because of the decades-old communist insurgency, which has always threatened to encircle the capital region and topple the regime in Manila?

To issue press releases like this is to pre-emptively suppress the constitutional right of citizens to free assembly and freedom of expression. And I thought the military vowed to protect the constitution, as declared in their humongous billboards along the white walls of Camp Aguinaldo along EDSA?

How silly of me to believe anything the military says.

On January 22, farmers will be commemorating the massacre of their kin on Chino Roces Bridge on Mendiola. Our honorable secretary found it convenient to declare that this memorial, this remembering of kin senselessly murdered for crying out loud, is an event that destabilizers will take advantage of.

Of course, mister honorable secretary. I'm no lawyer but I'm no fool. The farmers will be out there, protesting on the streets, risking their lives, their farms and their families, to hurl invectives at the government for always reneging on its promises to improve the agricultural sector.

And the people you call destabilizers, mister honorable secretary, are people who keep on helping and protecting the people you have forgotten -- the farmers, the fisherfolk, the urban poor, the out-of-school youth, the displaced, the women and the children -- compared to your government's mercenary armed forces who pillage the countryside and maul the urban landscape in the guise of protecting the Constitution.

Defacing The Truth

Although I really do believe that the National Press Club (NPC) is one historical institution, it is with difficulty to say that they can have an ounce of my respect.

The recent hullabaloo with the mural they had commissioned is only symptomatic of what the NPC really is, or what composes the NPC today.

And to call lowly artists as "ingrates," as described in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, reeks of arrogance.

What else can be said about what they did, defacing a work of art? Collectors of paintings pay millions of dollars for an artwork, but for the love of art, never did any of them (as much as I know of) vandalized the artwork they bought. Have you seen a Van Gogh painting with the name of its owner written on it?

Only one thing is clear, outrageously clear, disgustingly clear, frustratingly clear -- they were trying to please the heck of a human who had unveiled that monster of a censored mural.