The poor die poor.

Mang Pandoy is now dead.

The foremost symbol of poverty remained a symbol of poverty to the very end. He is so poor his family cannot even have him buried.

All those unkept promises. All those short-term support. All those tokens. All for naught.

He had started poor, and he had died poor. Was it his choice -- to die of tuberculosis, to have an indefinite interment?

This is how the government (and in extension, our politicians) treat our poor -- as pawns in their indefinite struggle to be at the top of the heap.

How magnanimous.

Inhumane

Our government's failure to integrate our unique Pinoy psyche in development programs is one reason why our country's progress remains, as a whole, stunted. Trapped in a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society, coupled with a very pervasive system of client-patron relationships, our country will never be an industrialized country.

Just consider our society's food security. We rely on our neighboring countries to supply us with our basic staple, rice. Consider, too, how our government treats sidewalk vendors, jeepney and bus drivers, and the lowly commuters.

I find it inhumane for a government to have its citizens walk almost a kilometer to get a bus ride along Edsa, what with all the pollution, and the weather we're exposed to (the heat of day during summer, or the blazing rains during the monsoons).

This government must adapt its traffic management policies to the Filipino psyche, instead of the doing the other way around. For as long as I can remember, this government has relied on Western methods to educate its citizens, enforce economic policies, and plot development goals.

The only thing that remains Asiatic in our society are the political structures we derived from the archaic and clannish datu system, which exists to this day in Mindanao, and in its highly evolved form, in Congress.

This government has forgotten obviously forgotten for whom it works for.

Step Down, GMA.

Reclaim EDSA

February 25, 1986 is no special day. February 25, 1986 is an historical day. I shall never forget a day when hundreds of thousands of my countrymen converged along Epifanio delos Santos Avenue (or Highway 54 to the ancient ones) in a rare display of nationalism -- a virtue I have always viewed as lacking in us.

At that historical intersection of EDSA and Ortigas Avenue now stands a figure of religion. And under its wings a platoon of battle-ready soldiers always stands guard. An obvious desecration of hallowed ground, where prayers, tears, and sweat mixed with the heady air of nationalism.

We, as a people, have allowed bastards to step on our hallowed grounds, on the very spot where our race as one country found expression.

We are a masochistic race. We revel on our despair, on our woes. We want progress, but we are cowards, afraid of sacrifice for our own kin, afraid of confronting the bastards who corrupt our society.

What else can be said about a people who allow themselves to be trampled upon, to be spit upon, to be treated like animals?

We pay for the salaries of policemen who regularly violate our rights for peaceful assembly and free speech. We pay for the very bullets of soldier-assassins that maim and kill activists, priests, and journalists. We pay for the the special no. 8 license plates of our so-called honorable representatives, for their bullet-proof cars, for their arrogant security detail and for the luxuries of their wives, mistresses, and spoiled kids.

And of course, the very cash that flows from the bloodied hands of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to her minions comes from our pockets lined with fear and abuse.

All of these, we fight with prayers, we fight with protest rallies, we fight with text brigades.

Let us heed Engr. Jun Lozada's call for truth to overpower all the profanities of the present regime. Truth shall set us free, truth shall power us to resolve this maddening crisis.

GLORIA RESIGN!

Hard fall for JDV

We should not blame Representative Joe de Venecia for spilling the beans at the very last moment. The former Speaker is not known for his vindictiveness, and certainly, the only time I remember him shouting in the chambers of Congress was last night, as I sat there seeing someone facing the gallows.

By his own reckoning, by his own interpretation, by his own acts anyway, we can define that JDV is a classic politician -- an intelligent man who manipulated and used power to make everybody happy and ingratiate himself to his audience, but in the end, it was still the happiness, the satisfaction of the majority that mattered (of course, including the politician's own happiness).

Many are asking, "Why only now, JDV?"

JDV is, I say again, a politician of the classic mold, of the Political Science 101 sort. He naively believed that GMA could right the wrongs she and her allies were making. He naively believed that his colleagues would see the light someday, would steer Congress to the right path, and he, as Speaker of the House, would lead them, not as dictator, but one among peers -- primus inter pares.

We have seen dictators in other Southeast Asian countries make tiger economies of their dictatorships, but the Philippines have always suffered from greedy intellectuals like Ferdinand Marcos and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. We can surely blame JDV for naively hoping that Macapagal-Arroyo will take care of him out of gratitude; however, as her regime clearly manifests, Macapagal-Arroyo is no politician who uses power to make everybody happy.

She is the great dragon lady, the firestarter, the mother of all cowards -- just look at what she did when she married a scion of one of the country's oldest, richest, and nastiest landlords; just look at her alter egos as Cabinet secretaries, most of whom are former generals (makes me wonder whether GMA had harbored wishes to enter the Philippine Military Academy as a cadet... she wouldn't make it, anyway, considering her height); just look at her having three close relatives in Congress, two of them her own sons; just look at her lying straight-faced, saying "I'll never run for President," and "I'm sorry."

If there's any consolation to JDV's wails last night as he was being stabbed by his honorable "friends" by the ides of February, it is his grand act of standing by his son. In the first place, he could have told his son long ago to shut up, to go to Europe and keep a low-profile as ZTE constructed the NBN and Abalos enjoyed his millions.

There is so much to do for this country, JDV, aside from making circuitous routes to avoid assassins. Finish what you had begun, this battle of yours and of the people.