PCIJ i REPORT
P75
November-December 2005
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
Special on Pinoy Political Humor
ATE GLOWin
HOT WATER
GUDANI & LANAO’S
DIRTY
SECRETS
IMPERSONATING PRESIDENTS
MICHAEL V’S MANY FACES
WHAT PINOYS FIND FUNNY
TEXT JOKES AS SIGNS OF THE TIMES
THE END
OF PEOPLE
POWER?
C O N T E N T S
Cover: Rene Boy Facunla, one of the bestknown impersonators of President Arroyo,
finds himself in deep water.
Photo by Lilen Uy
Special thanks to Mandy Navasero
PEOPLE POWER
WOMEN AND DISASTER
THE PARADOX OF FREEDOM:
PEOPLE POWER IN THE
INFORMATION AGE
RESILIENCE AMID RUIN
2
David Celdran
When public space migrates to the airwaves and
the news pages, politics risks degenerating into
a spectator sport.
26
Tess Bacalla
Many more women than men died in the Aceh
tsunami. Today the women survivors wrestle
with disaster relief programs that don’t consider
their special needs.
YOUTH VOLUNTEERS
ELECTIONS 2004
LANAO’S DIRTY SECRETS
6
Sheila S. Coronel
What really happened in Lanao del Sur in 2004
that prompted the attempts to silence Brig. Gen.
Gudani?
10 REASONS TO DOUBT THE
2004 ELECTION RESULTS
12
The numbers don’t always add up, and that’s
just one reason why last year’s elections are so
controversial.
THE FUTURE OF ELECTIONS
CAN COMELEC REFORM?
A GIFT OF SELF
30
Young people discover life’s meaning by doing
volunteer work.
SPECIAL ON PINOY POLITICAL HUMOR
IMPERSONATING PRESIDENTS
14
Alecks. P. Pabico
Despite being hounded by controversy, the elections body is resisting change.
LA VIDA DOBLE
REFORM IN THE BARRACKS
MOBILE CLOWNING
THE OFFICERS WHO SAY NO
16
Luz Rimban
Military and police officers believe reforming the
system begins with reforming the individual.
JOURNALIST AT RISK
REPORTING UNDER THE GUN
20
Vinia M. Datinguinoo
Mei Magsino escaped the wrath of the alleged
jueteng lord who is also Batangas governor.
40
Tony Velasquez
Because Philippine politics is so ridiculous, amateur impersonators are having a feast.
42
Sheila S. Coronel
The cellphone has only encouraged the Pinoy
propensity for jokes.
WHERE HAS ALL THE
LAUGHTER GONE?
44
Katrina Stuart Santiago
Websites and blogs have provided an outlet for
political humor, but not all of them are funny.
KICK OUT THE CLOWNS
THE METROPOLIS
BATTLE OF THE BILLBOARDS
32
Elvira Mata
This is a country where there’s always someone spoofing a president—dead or alive—on
TV, during concerts, and from time to time, at
people power marches. Five actors top the list
of the country’s best impersonators.
24
Charlene Dy
They’re big, bold, and not quite beautiful. They
can also be a health and environmental hazard,
but so far, no one is policing billboards.
50
Alan C. Robles
The popular view is that politics is a circus and
politicians are clowns who entertain the public
and make them laugh.
MAILBOX
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
Photos and Illustrations
Malaya provided the photos for pp. 2,
3 (upper right), 4 (top), 5 (top & bottom
right), 8-9, 14, 16 (top), 17, 18, 32 (bottom) & 35. Sid Balatan took the photo on
p.3. Those on p. 4 (bottom) and 15 are
from PCIJ, on p. 5 from Kasaysayan. Bobby Timonera of Mindanews took the Lanao
photos on pp. 6-8 & 10-11. Photos on
pp. 16-17 are courtesy of P/Supt. Cesar
Binag. Vinia Datinguinoo took the photos
on pp. 20 and 22; those on pp. 21 & 23
are courtesy of Mei Magsino-Lubis. Ben
Razon shot the billboards for p.24. Jose
Enrique Soriano took the photos of the
tsunami victims in Aceh (pp. 26-28). The
photo on p. 29 is from Greenpeace and
on p. 30 from the National Youth Commission. Those on pp. 32, 34 (bottom),
36-37 are from Willie Nepomuceno. Lilen
Uy took the Ate Glow photos on pp. 33
& 37. Michael V photos (pp. 34 and 37)
are courtesy of GMA-7. The other photos
are courtesy of Jon Santos (pp. 35-36),
Tessie Tomas (p. 36), and Tony Velasquez
(pp. 40-41). Illustrations on pp. 42-43 &
48 are by Jun Aquino. Graphics on pp.
44-46 courtesy of retzwerx.com.
EDITOR
Sheila S. Coronel
DEPUTY EDITOR
Cecile C.A. Balgos
STAFF
Yvonne T. Chua
Luz Rimban
Vinia M. Datinguinoo
Alecks P. Pabico
Avigail Olarte
OFFICE MANAGER
Fausta Cacdac
BOARD OF EDITORS
Philippine Center for
Investigative Journalism
Sheila S. Coronel
Marites Dañguilan Vitug
Malou Mangahas
Howie G. Severino
David Celdran
Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
BOARD OF ADVISERS
Jose V. Abueva
Jose F. Lacaba
Cecilia Lazaro
Tina Monzon-Palma
Sixto K. Roxas
Jose M. Galang
Published by the Philippine Center for
Investigative Journalism
3/F Criselda II Building
107 Scout de Guia Street
Quezon City 1104
T 4101383 F 929-3571
Email: pcij@pcij.org; imag@pcij.org
The end of people power? Anti-Arroyo
protests have not quite reached
people-power scale, unlike the
movements against Estrada (center)
and Marcos (far right).
THE PARADOX
PEOPLE POWER IN TH
I
DAVID CELDRAN
T WAS the perfect formula
for another uprising. Factors and forces that conspired to oust a previous
president surfaced again
to threaten yet another
one out of power: a familiar pattern of titillating scandal
and media overkill; congressional investigation and official
cover-up; street protests and
digital demonstrations.
The opposition Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo faces today is fiercer and far more determined to
2
oust her than that which forced
Joseph Estrada out of the Palace
in 2001. Led by former President
Cory Aquino and actress Susan
Roces, two of the country’s most
popular widows and compelling political leaders, it is an
opposition that includes one
of the broadest, if not the most
unlikely, spectrum of activists
assembled in recent years.
Media coverage is likewise
unprecedented. Twenty-fourhour news and live broadcasts
have taken every whistleblower’s
account (and private intrigues)
to living rooms and offices everywhere. Anti-Arroyo blogging,
until recently a fringe activity for
political junkies with too much
time on their hands, has now
exploded into the mainstream.
So have ring tones, jokes, and
gossip circulating via text.
Like a virus contaminating
everything from online chat
rooms, office conversations,
news broadcasts, showbiz talk
shows, and text messages, there
is no escaping “Gloriagate.”
The damage to the president,
as independent polling figures
indicate, seems irreversible. If
People Power had a script, then
this would be it.
Pundits predicted it was just
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
going to be a matter of time before Edsa 4 erupted. All that was
left was for people to spill out into
the streets. Many did, but not in
numbers that sent previous presidents packing. In the week that
followed Cory Aquino’s surprise
televised appeal for President
Arroyo to resign, about 30,000
to 40,000 protesters converged
on Makati’s Ayala Avenue—the
best effort so far since the crisis
erupted. Organizers promised
more, but the rallies on the days
leading up to and immediately
after the impeachment complaint
was killed in Congress failed to
meet expectations. Where was
THE END OF INNOCENCE
X OF FREEDOM
HE INFORMATION AGE
People Power, or at least the
kind that showed up in past Edsa
uprisings?
That’s what the opposition,
the administration, and the media, who had already laid out
its coverage plans for a fourth
Edsa, were left asking. There
was and continues to be no
shortage of answers. Organizers within the anti-Arroyo opposition blame it on the lack of
centralized leadership—and on
mutual distrust. With a coalition
as diverse in its representation
as in its alternatives to President
Arroyo, observers predicted that
divisions within the movement
would begin to affect the ability to communicate a coherent
message and project a credible
image to the public.
From the onset, the presence
of personalities affiliated with
Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph
Estrada in the coalition, both of
whom were ousted by previous
Edsa uprisings, created discomfort
among People Power veterans.
Those who had experienced the
various Edsa uprisings, if only
vicariously through news coverage, were just as perplexed—even
outraged—by the odd coalition of
former-enemies-now-bedfellows
in the campaign to oust GMA.
There were attempts to correct
this public-relations confusion by
giving the anti-Arroyo movement
a more prominent middle-class,
or put more accurately, a friendlier “middle-force” character. But
repackaging the coalition proved
difficult. In the age of information,
hardly anything can still be concealed from the public. Whatever
the camera lens cannot expose
is left over for the commentariat
to scrutinize. Few secrets survive
when the media’s attention is on
overdrive.
Previous Edsa revolts may
have shared the same organizational limitations. But the lack of
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
a central command, and a more
defined, and therefore sustainable, organizational structure
was less of a problem then
since the uprisings unfolded so
quickly. Ousting a president,
unlike transforming society, requires less preparation. Organizational unity and ideological
purity are not as critical—unless
when waging protracted warfare. Nevertheless, the failure of
organization remains a popular
explanation for the absence
of People Power in 2005. It is,
however, far from being the only
reason. Neither is it the most
compelling.
3
POLITICS OF SCANDAL
Gauging the public mood is
often very tricky. Get it wrong
and you either underestimate
or overestimate how far people
will go to express their outrage,
if any at all. Surveys do provide
clues to the pulse of people,
but they cannot predict the
often- spontaneous reactions to
unfolding political events. Polls,
if they are to be of any scientific
use, should also be analyzed in
the context of historical data.
The overwhelmingly negative
opinion of the president after
the Senate investigations on illegal gambling, the release of the
“Hello Garci” tapes to the media,
and Arroyo’s public apology,
follows a downward trajectory
in presidential popularity after
the 2004 elections. A look at
postelection surveys already
showed a majority dissatisfied
with the administration, most
even concluding fraud in the
polls. While “Gloriagate” has
pushed the president’s ratings
to historic lows, Arroyo’s slide
cannot be compared with the
dramatic plunge Joseph Estrada
took after the series of scandals
exposed his undeclared wealth.
If Erap’s ratings took a free fall,
Arroyo’s numbers are slipping
from previously low expectations of her leadership and prior
questions about her political
legitimacy.
Not that the public isn’t outraged by the allegations of presidential malfeasance; only that
they may have, after a previous
term marked by investigations
on her husband, already conditioned themselves to expect
more scandals ahead.
No coincidence perhaps that
Arroyo anchored her election
campaign on the less-than-in-
spiring themes of pragmatism
and continuity. Notably, though,
Raul Roco, Eddie Villanueva,
Panfilo Lacson and Fernando
Poe, Jr. promised to bring moral
leadership to Malacañang as a
way to differentiate themselves
from the incumbent.
Presidential allies like to argue
that the oust-Arroyo campaign is
only round two of last year’s elections. That may be a shallow and
self-serving analogy, but a quick
Fear of the unknown might
be keeping People Power locked
safely at home, but so too is fatigue. You hear it all the time
on radio and television call-in
programs: people are tired of
politics. Not too tired to watch
their politicians outdo the soaps
on television, mind you, but too
overwhelmed nonetheless by
the political mudslinging that
threatens to get anyone involved
dirtied in the process.
levels so much that people now
find it hard to make out the crusaders from the carpetbaggers,
the journalists from the spin
doctors, the well-meaning from
the just plain mean.
When the citizens’ trust in
institutions, in leaders, and ultimately in themselves erodes,
a climate of political nihilism
takes over and people begin to
withdraw from civic life and give
up on political action altogether.
Strange bedfellows.
Former rivals get
together on the
streets, from left,
Ping Lacson, Eddie
Villanueva, Cory
Aquino, and Susan
Roces.
look at the warm bodies occupying the street protests shows a
who’s who of political partisans
who campaigned for the president’s opponents. And like last
year’s elections, the administration is once again selling to its
core constituency the continuity
of an Arroyo presidency over the
risky alternative of a transition
government or military-civilian
junta.
In this political free-for-all,
take-no-prisoners brawl, no one
is spared. Not the pious Cory, or
the ever so proper Susan. Not
even the Catholic bishops have
managed to escape the public’s
skepticism. Retired generals,
civil-society leaders, even B-list
actors—everyone is considered
a plotter or a has-been mounting
a comeback. Distrust for public
figures has reached alarming
This is the end of innocence—the
rude awakening to a world the
way politicians see it: a politics
without the illusions of greatness
and heroics. It is shades of grey
all over and murky definitions
of the public good. This is the
moral relativism abhorred by
both idealists and conservatives
everywhere. But after a history
of revolutions with disappointing
results, Filipinos have learned to
adjust and adapt.
REDEFINING PUBLIC
SPACE
Goodbye, Erap! The uprising
against Estrada was inspired
by moral outrage. Today
things are murkier and no
one seems to be taking the
moral high ground.
4
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
Yet this does not seem to be
the most crucial reason why, at
a time when society enjoys unprecedented freedom of speech,
movement, and expression,
there is also a retreat in political
activism. Therein in fact lies the
paradox of freedom.
Protesters occupy city streets
and parks to get their message
across to as many people as
possible. Citizens are forced
to do that when they do not
have equal access to the state’s
information apparatus. Public
THE END OF INNOCENCE
space then is where the battle
for hearts and minds begins and
where like-minded citizens come
together to swap information, affirm their convictions, and challenge official positions—more
so when government control
of information is complete. The
contested space is usually rich
in symbolic meaning, but it may
also just be a convenient location
to converge. Edsa represents
both. And in the 1986 revolt,
The media landscape has
changed dramatically since 1986
and even since 2001. Today
the media have taken their role
as public watchdog to new
extremes. Conscious that their
power to influence political
events—even make and break
presidents—is only as potent as
their ability to generate a vast
share of the audience, the news
media have been treading the
line between crusading journal-
if all political behavior is transformed by and for the camera.
Everyone, from the president to
the street protester, is in on it.
Legislation is out. Congressional
inquiry is in. Proselytizing—out,
agit-prop—definitely in. Political actors learn to master the
medium and use the live press
conference with skill. Mutineers
take questions from the press
and whistleblowers are assigned
publicists to assist them. Had
Spectator sport?
There is outrage on
the streets, as shown
in this anti-Arroyo
rally, but still, most
people are content
to just watch it all on
television, in contrast
to Edsa 1 (below,
extreme right), when
the multitudes took to
the streets.
more than a million considered
it to be the most effective way
to be heard and counted. Back
then, no broadcast network or
mainstream broadsheet would
have ever given the opposition
to Ferdinand Marcos any space,
and so a frustrated people took
to the streets.
A lot has changed since 1986.
Freedoms like that of the press
were restored, but these were
never absolutely immune from
presidential pressure. The relative
timidity of the news media prior to
and immediately after the Chavit
Singson exposé forced anti-Estrada
sentiments through new media
channels such as SMS and the
Internet. But the limited broadcast
capabilities of these new technologies made reaching a wider public
difficult. The crowds at Edsa provided the link between individual
and society. Just as followers of
deposed President Estrada would
later use their own version of Edsa
to communicate with a wider audience they couldn’t reach through
the TV networks that had largely
ignored them.
ism and mass entertainment.
(It is no accident that both are
immensely popular with the
market.)
The result has been an increasingly hysterical, albeit, massively entertaining politics. Call it
the tabloidization of public life.
When public space migrates to
the airwaves and to the pages of
broadsheets, the nation’s politics
adapts to its new home. It’s as
President Arroyo resigned on
that Friday Cory Aquino and the
“Hyatt 10”called on her to step
down, the Philippines would
have enjoyed the distinction of
launching the first electronic uprising in history. It would have
been dubbed the Presscon Revolution—if only it had succeeded.
Clearly, revolutions that happen
in the hyperreal world of television cannot replace those of real
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
boots on the ground.
The stagecraft and spin-doctoring politicians try so hard to
conceal is laid bare for all to see.
Like wrestling matches we know
to be scripted but cheer on nevertheless, our politics, after years
of sensationalism, is degenerating into little more than a spectator sport. By jeering, or cheering,
people feel that they’re actually
getting involved. Without having
to leave their homes, people can
have the satisfaction of watching
talk-show hosts articulate feelings of disgust and frustration
for them. When you listen in
to radio commentators beat up
politicians on air, you can’t help
but wonder if expressing your
opinion—the least of your civic
responsibilities—may actually
still matter, when those guys
seem to do a better job at it.
But those who predict the
end of People Power are wrong.
Apathy may be a symptom of the
growing disconnection between
citizens and their government,
but indifference is also a form of
protest against politics as usual
in the country. Could it be that
the steady diet of scandals have
numbed the senses and the
ability to express outrage? Or is
People Power merely evolving,
adapting to new forms of public
space—physical and virtual?
Today’s young, the first generation of kids growing up in a
digitally interconnected world
will determine how dissent will
be defined and expressed in the
future, be it through podcasts,
audio-video blogs, or new forms
of social organization. History,
after all, has taught us that people, when pushed hard enough,
will eventually organize, fight
back, and seek to overthrow the
conditions that oppress them. i
5
SHEILA S. CORONEL
(WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING
BY BOOMA C. CRUZ AND
“PROBE”)
T
HE GHOSTS of
the last elections
haunt Lanao del
Sur and they refuse
to rest. They will
not go away. They
flit about, seeking
resolution. So when Brig. Gen.
Francisco Gudani, the commander
of the Marine brigade stationed
in the province during the last
election, testified in the Senate
in September, saying that he had
been mysteriously relieved from
his post two days after the voting,
the ghosts were roused again. Days
after the Senate hearing, Gudani
and one of his officers, Marine Lt.
Col. Alexander Balutan, were sent
to court martial for refusing to heed
their superiors’ orders not to testify.
The ghosts, having been roused,
are now rattling even more noisily
than ever before.
What really happened in
Lanao del Sur in May 2004? What
did the military do there that necessitated the relief of a stubborn
general and later, his frantic superiors’ efforts to ensure he would
not break the silence? What other
dirty secrets lie buried in Lanao?
The answer to these questions
is whispered about on the streets
of Marawi and elsewhere in the
province. There was massive
cheating in the presidential count,
residents and officials there say,
and it involved several groups
of operators, some from Manila,
others homegrown. It happened,
they say, with the complicity of
the military, the Commission on
Elections (Comelec), and even
Malacañang.
President Gloria MacapagalArroyo insists that she won fair
and square. Despite doubts that
had been raised about the conduct of the polls, she says that
survey results and international
election monitors attest to her
victory. She dismisses the accusations of fraud and says her
enemies are resurrecting the
election charges because they
want to unseat her.
In 2004, Arroyo scored one
of her bigger election triumphs
in Lanao del Sur. There, according to the official Comelec count,
she clobbered her closest rival,
actor Fernando Poe Jr. The score:
158,748 vs. 50,107, or a ratio of
6
three votes to one. While Arroyo
did even better in her home
province of Pampanga, and also
in Cebu, where she was an early
favorite, the Lanao del Sur upset
was astonishing because Poe was
wildly popular there, if only because nearly every Maranao had
seen “Magnum .357,” the movie
where the actor, expertly wielding a revolver, played the role of
a fearless Moro policeman.
Questions about the Lanao
results were raised even during the congressional canvass
that preceded the president’s
proclamation. Even then, the
opposition had pointed out
some eye-popping anomalies.
In the town of Poona Bayabao,
for example, Arroyo got all 4,700
votes; all the other presidential
candidates scored zero. Yet
precinct-level election returns
obtained by both the opposition and the local chapter of the
National Citizens’ Movement for
Free Elections (Namfrel) showed
substantial votes for Poe. In October, “The Probe Team” visited
the town and nearly everyone
they talked to there swore they
had voted for FPJ.
Indeed, for the entire province,
both the opposition and Namfrel
count based on precinct returns
showed Poe overtaking Arroyo
by a mile. Yet by the time the
Comelec finished the provincial
canvass, the ratios were reversed
in the president’s favor.
The opposition cried foul but
its protests were drowned out by
the majority during the congressional canvass. The local Namfrel
chapter held press conferences,
saying that its own incomplete
count showed Arroyo’s votes
padded in the final Comelec results by 21,217 votes, while Poe’s
were shaved by 9,174. But this,
too, went unheeded.
After all, everyone is blasé
about cheating in Lanao. The
province’s reputation precedes it.
In 1949, by all accounts a fraudulent election, it was said that “the
birds and the bees” voting in
Lanao enabled Elpidio Quirino
to bag the presidency. During the
Marcos era, the joke was that after
every voting, Ali Dimaporo, the
Maranao strongman who was a
staunch ally of the dictator, would
call up Malacañang and ask his
patron, “Apo, how many more
votes do you need?” Decades
later, not much seemed to have
changed, but that didn’t seem to
bother anyone. And so the issue
LANAO
DIRTY
SECRE
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
O’S
E L E C T I O N S
was more or less laid to rest, or
so most people thought.
And then the “Hello, Garci?”
tapes surfaced. Containing the
wiretapped conversations between President Arroyo and
former Comelec Commissioner
Virgilio Garcillano in May and
June 2004, the recording stirred
things up once more. Among
other things, it showed that
three of the 14 phone calls Arroyo made to the commissioner
concerned the Lanao count. In
one of those phone calls, Garcillano even assured the president
that in Lanao as well as Basilan
“itong ginawa nilang pagpataas
sa inyo, maayos naman ang
paggawa (they did a fine job
of increasing your votes).” This
caused the resurrection of the
ghosts. They had not been laid
to rest, after all.
A LANDSCAPE OF
GHOSTS
Rigged count. The
2004 elections in
Lanao del Sur were
deceptively calm,
with Marines (right
photo) administering
the voting in places
where there were not
enough teachers to
man the polls.
Y
ETS
Lanao’s is a landscape of rugged
hills, lakes, and swamps. It is
crisscrossed by the mighty Agus
and Cotabato Rivers and their
tributaries. More than half of the
province is still forested land and
many of its inhabitants are poor,
living on subsistence fishing and
farming. Many towns still don’t
have electricity or have it only an
hour or so a day. Piped water is
a luxury, so it is in muddy wells
and pools that villagers drink,
bathe, and do their laundry.
Lanao del Sur is very much datu
country—it is a smattering of little fiefdoms ruled by big men.
Warring clans hold sway there,
exacting loyalty and obedience
from their members. This is a
country of ghosts, a land of dark
secrets and unsettled scores.
Everyone says there is no
such thing as an honest election
in Lanao. Local bosses, usually
armed, buy and bully their way to
public office. If this does not suffice, they kill and cheat. Ordinary
voters are too poor or too weak,
or live in villages too far from the
counting, to resist the intimidation
and the fraud. Inevitably, Lanao
elections are marred by violent
incidents involving the killing of
candidates and their supporters
and the switching of ballot boxes.
During the 2001 election count,
the provincial capitol, where the
canvassing was being held, was
hit by mortar fire.
The common belief in Lanao
is that the Comelec officials in the
province, the teachers who man
2 0 0 4
the polls, even the watchers of
rival candidates can be bought;
if not, they can be kidnapped
or threatened. This is why the
operatives of desperate senatorial candidates go to Lanao (as
well as other places in Mindanao) to “buy” votes even days
and weeks after election day. A
network of dagdag-bawas (votepadding and shaving) operators
has existed there for some time,
and they are available for a
price. Some of them approach
the candidates and offer to rig
the count for a fee; sometimes
savvy political operators working
for Manila-based politicians and
parties seek them out, with an
“order” for manufactured votes.
The operators are masters of
their craft: they either fabricate
election returns or certificates of
canvass or else tamper with the
genuine ones. They also pay off
election officials and teachers to
ensure their complicity in the
fraud.
While the results of the local
elections are closely monitored
tions effectively in Lanao del Sur
were the Marines. The 1st Marine
Brigade was stationed in Camp
Keithley, the military camp on
a hill in Marawi, the province’s
lakeshore capital. The Marines
were new to Lanao del Sur, having been assigned there only in
2003. By the time of the elections, they had been stationed
there only about a year and
so had not been dirtied by the
politics of the place. They took
their role seriously, even holding
dialogues and “peace covenants”
among rival political groups.
“This is the first time a Marine
brigade is being assigned in the
Lanao del Sur area,” Brig. Gen.
Gudani said in his Senate testimony
on September 28, “and that’s why
my instruction to everybody was
clear: we need to hold a clean,
honest, peaceful election.”
“We were victims of circumstances,” was all Lt. Col. Balutan,
commander of the 7th Marine
battalion assigned to secure 17
municipalities of Lanao del Sur,
would say when he testified at
by rival candidates and their
supporters, making it more difficult, although by no means
impossible, to mess around
with the count, few people in
Lanao care about the national
count. There are few watchers
left when the national count
is done. While there is a local
Namfrel chapter, it cannot cover
the length and breadth of Lanao.
Besides, being volunteers and
being unarmed in a province
where might is right, they can
be intimidated as well.
Just about the only ones who
had the means to police the elec-
the Senate also on September 28.
“I stood my ground against forces
or pressures from any political
entity… I promised the people
of Lanao a peaceful and credible
election…I told them the armed
forces and the Marines will protect your vote and we will have a
clean and credible election.”
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
FRUSTRATING THE
MARINES
To some extent, the Marines
succeeded. The voting was
relatively uneventful by Lanao
standards, although there were
a few shootouts and attempts to
7
switch ballot boxes. A failure of
elections was declared in several
towns, but not quite as many as
in the past. On the request of
the candidates, who feared violence if the counting were held
in many different places, the
canvass in all but two of Lanao
del Sur’s 39 towns was held in
scenic Marawi, on the northern
shore of Lake Lanao. The actual
voting on May 10 and the first
few days of the canvass were
tightly secured by the Marines,
and it was partly for this reason
that the municipal counts, while
not completely blameless, went
relatively well, even resulting in
the defeat of a handful of wellentrenched local dynasties.
The Marines, however, could
not prevent what now appears
to have been a large-scale manipulation of the presidential
count. Judging from the parallel
counts based on election returns
obtained by Namfrel and the opposition, the presidential votes
seem to have been tampered
with big time, not at the precinct
level but at the municipal and
provincial canvass.
Board, senior military officers in
Mindanao were involved in ensuring that the operators could
do their work and in at least one
instance, instructed soldiers to
take part in the cheating.
SUSPICIOUS MOVES
Tell that to the Marines?
Gudani (above) and
Balutan (right) told the
Senate that the Marines
(below, left) did their
best to ensure an honest
election in Lanao.
Unknown to both Namfrel and
the opposition, or for that matter,
the Marines, several groups taking
orders from the administration
had been assigned to “operate” in
Lanao and other Mindanao provinces. According to interviews
with individuals who were part
of the postelection operations
in Mindanao, these groups were
moving independently of each
other and were apparently not
aware of each other’s movements.
But their instructions were the
8
same: ensure the president wins
by a million votes.
One of the groups was led
by Virgilio Garcillano, the commissioner who was ostensibly assigned to Southern Tagalog. His
role was to get the cooperation
of Comelec field personnel in the
tampering of the count in Lanao
and other places in Mindanao,
apparently with the knowledge
of the president herself, at least
as indicated by the conversations
in the “Hello, Garci” tapes.
Another group involved Nagamura Moner, a Maranao politician
and currently a shari’ah court
judge who is widely seen in
Lanao as a political operator in
the employ of First Gentleman
Jose Miguel ‘Mike’ Arroyo. Two of
Moner’s followers—Abdul Wahab
Batugan and Lomala Macadaub—
told “The Probe Team” that during
the canvassing, they were sent
by Moner to different provinces
in Muslim Mindanao where they
distributed cash to Comelec
personnel “para baliktarin ang
COCs (to reverse what’s in the
certificates of canvass).”
The third group involved the
military, but it is unclear how
far up the chain of command
the conspiracy went. Based on
testimonies so far given at the
Senate and the AFP Fact-Finding
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
A few days before the elections,
there were already signs that
things were going awry.
On May 6, four days before
election day, Garcillano, who was
also the commissioner in charge
of personnel, removed Helen
Flores, the Comelec regional
director for Muslim Mindanao,
from her post and transferred her
to Western Mindanao. The timing
of the reshuffle just days before
the polling was highly unusual.
Even more suspicious, Flores was
replaced by her deputy, Renato
Magbutay, who was known to
be Garcillano’s protégé. Comelec
sources in Manila and Mindanao
say that Flores, while also close
to commissioner, had a reputation
for being hard-headed; “hindi nila
mapasunod (they couldn’t make
her follow their orders).”
Gudani, in his Senate testimony, said that he was surprised
to find that just a few days before May 10, Ray Sumalipao, the
provincial elections officer for
Lanao del Sur, was changing the
assignment of election inspectors
and the clustering centers of the
voting precincts. Sumalipao, the
general said, was taking orders
from Garcillano. The two elections officials were known to be
particularly close. Sumalipao was
in fact the election supervisor for
Lanao del Norte but was moved
to Lanao del Sur in February
2004, shortly after Garcillano’s
appointment as commissioner.
Sumalipao denies taking instructions from Garcillano during
the elections. He also says that
contrary to Gudani’s testimony,
he didn’t move election personnel prior to the voting. “The
clustering was approved by the
commission way before the elections,” he says. “It was Gudani
who wanted to change the clustering, but the Comelec approved
the recommendation of the election officers. He’s lying.”
A lawyer employed by the
Comelec since 1961 and assigned
to Mindanao for most of his 40
years at the commission, the
amiable Garcillano was a familiar
figure among the Comelec field
personnel on the island. In fact,
all the Comelec employees there
E L E C T I O N S
called him “Tatay,” or “Dad.”
Having risen up the ranks and
cultivated friendships with election bureaucrats, he was known
for being approachable and also
for taking care of his people.
Garcilliano was particularly
familiar with Lanao del Sur,
having served as the provincial
election supervisor there from
1970 to 1971 and having been
assigned to supervise either the
registration or the election there
several times in the 1990s. So
close were the Lanao Comelec
officials to Garcillano that in
February 2004, they all signed
a manifesto supporting his appointment as commissioner.
Garcillano was in Manila
during the election and the
counting. But he sent his trusted
nephew, Michaelangelo Zuce, to
monitor the operations for him.
Zuce, who was then employed in
the office of Jose Ma. Rufino, the
presidential adviser on political
affairs, has since testified in the
Senate and implicated his uncle
in a conspiracy to rig the polls
that included payoffs made to
compliant Comelec officials and
personnel.
In an interview with “The
Probe Team” in October, Zuce
revealed that he was in Mindanao
even before election day, keeping
an eye on what was happening
there. Lanao del Sur, he said,
became a cause of concern. “I
was talking frequently to the provincial election supervisor there,”
he said in Tagalog. “He told me
they could not move because the
security was strict. The Marines
were very strict.”
Zuce said that he reported the
matter to his uncle. Garcillano
apparently complained about the
strict Marines to military authorities,
having received reports not just
from Zuce but other informants.
The leaked tape containing the
commissioner’s wiretapped conversations reveals that in a phone
conversation with the president
in the evening of May 28, 2004,
Garcillano said he had to ask Brig.
Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., then
deputy chief of staff for operations,
and then Southern Command chief
Lt. Gen. Roy Kyamko to get Gudani
out of Lanao.
GUDANI’S SUMMONS
On May 12, 2004, Gudani was
summoned to Manila by higher
headquarters. He left Marawi
the same day, reported to both
Navy Flag Officer-in-Command
Adm. Ernesto de Leon and the
Marine Commandant Gen. Emmanuel Teodosio, and was told
to take a break—“play golf, go
to Boracay.”
Gudani, in his Senate testimony, said this was to him an
“incomprehensible and illogical
order” since his presence in
Lanao was crucial. The canvassing was then taking place in
several buildings in and around
the provincial capitol in Marawi.
Gudani had two battalions—
about 200 men—to secure the
counting, and he was worried
that these were not enough.
What Gudani did not know
was that on the same day that he
left Marawi, Zuce drove into town.
Capt. Marlon Mendoza, who was
2 0 0 4
nies having seen Zuce during
the canvass. “I know Zuce,” he
says. “I met him at Garcillano’s
office and he was introduced
as the commissioner’s nephew,
but I never saw him in Marawi
or Lanao during the canvassing.”
The security at the canvass center, he says, was very strict and
it would not have been possible
for Zuce and other unauthorized
people to get in.
Meanwhile, on May 12, Col.
Gomiendo Pirino, an Army officer previously assigned to the
Southcom headquarters in Zamboanga City, took over Gudani’s
command. This was resented by
the Marines because Pirino was a
colonel assuming a general’s post,
and he wasn’t even a Marine.
volvement of the military in election fraud, Balutan recounted
how his fellow Marines defied
orders to cheat.
Sources in the Board say
that Balutan, in his testimony,
recounted the attempt to coopt members of the 11th Marine
battalion into the conspiracy of
fraud. About half of the battalion,
then stationed at the Southcom
headquarters in Zamboanga
City, was sent to Marawi a week
before the elections to help
administer the voting. There,
they underwent training by the
Comelec, so they could act as
election inspectors as there were
not enough teachers to man all
the precincts in Lanao.
Instead, said Balutan, the
Balutan, a decorated combat
officer, bristled. “My brigade
commander was relieved…for
no apparent reason,” he told the
Senate, “maybe for doing his
job well, for being apolitical.” In
contrast, he said, Pirino told him
to “support the administration.”
When asked by the senators what
this meant, Balutan replied that
he understood it to mean that he
should “slacken security.”
The Marines were strict, said
Balutan, preventing the entry
into the canvass centers of those
who were not authorized to
be there. They also held their
ground. In his testimony before
the AFP Fact-Finding Board set
up to investigate the alleged in-
whole battalion was being instructed to cheat. Pirino and
another Army officer, he said, instructed the battalion commander,
Col. Remigio Valdez, how to rig
the count. Valdez, who is now
in schooling in the United States,
resisted, Balutan said, but it was
possible that he was bypassed.
Since 2005, Pirino has been
the commander of the Armed
Forces Reserve Command headquartered in Pagadian. Contacted
by telephone, he refused to answer questions. “I will only talk
at the proper forum and proper
time,” he said. “Any unnecessary
comment I’ll make will only sensationalize the issue.”
With Pirino in command in
Commander in chief. President
Arroyo won by a landslide in
Lanao del Sur, but questions
about the integrity of the voting
there has tainted her victory.
detailed to the Comelec as Garcillano’s security but was assigned
to secure the commissioner’s
nephew instead, was with Zuce
on May 12. In an affidavit he submitted to the Senate last August,
Mendoza said that on that day, he
saw Zuce approach Sumalipao in
one of the canvassing centers “and
I personally saw a large amount of
cash in an envelope being given
to the said Comelec director.”
Mendoza alleged that he and
Zuce returned to the canvass
center the next day, May 13, and
this was when he heard Zuce
telling Sumalipao “that he is doing something for the success of
GMA in the election.”
But Sumalipao angrily de-
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
9
Guarding the
ballot. Marine
secures the voting
in Lanao del Sur.
Camp Keithley, there was a
noticeable decline in the security of the canvass centers, says
Lanao del Sur Namfrel chair
Abdullah Dalidig. “The Namfrel
people were no longer allowed
in, because of Comelec’s order,”
he remembers. “Most of the
watchers were also unable to
get in, and even if they got in,
‘di na nakasalita (they were not
allowed to talk).”
Dalidig says Pirino, who
is also Maranao, is his distant
relative. Sometime during the
canvassing, when the Namfrel
chair threatened to complain
and to expose what he knew,
the colonel visited him at his
office. Recounts Dalidig: “He
told me, ‘Huwag mo ituloy ang
pagbubulgar. Tulungan mo ‘ko
(don’t speak out anymore, just
help me) because GMA is going
to promote me to general.’ He
said he was asked to watch me
10
because according to Garci, Namfrel of Lanao is a problem.”
THE “TAPAL-TAPAL”
OPERATIONS
As the security slackened, the
operators were able to do their
work. Zuce said one of his tasks
was to check on the count. Long
before the elections, he said,
his uncle had already laid the
groundwork. As early as 2002,
Garcillano had already been
meeting with key Comelec personnel in Mindanao to ensure
they would do everything to
make the president win. In those
meetings, which Zuce helped
organize, envelopes of cash were
given out to the Comelec bureaucrats in attendance, he said.
Zuce’s role in the counting
phase of the election was to
check on whether the Comelec
people were doing what they
had agreed to do. He estimated
that Garcillano’s group was
given a budget of P9 million
to P12 million for this phase
of their operations, although
they had asked for more than
P30 million. The money, Zuce
learned from his uncle, came
from Pampanga jueteng lord
Rodolfo ‘Bong’ Pineda. Some of
it already reached the Comelec
people days before the voting,
he said, but more payoffs were
made during the count.
President Arroyo, who Zuce
said hosted meetings for Mindanao-based Comelec personnel
in her Quezon City home prior
to the 2004 election campaign,
has scoffed at the latter’s allegations, saying that it was
“black propaganda” concocted
by “those who are in need of
money and whose testimonies
are for sale.”
But Zuce, who is in hiding, insists on the veracity of
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
his story. He says that during
the counting, he went around
the different canvass centers to
check how the president was
doing. He would then report
to his uncle on the progress of
the count. If Arroyo was lagging in a provincial canvass, he
would ask the Comelec officials
there, “Bakit ganu’n ang nangyari, akala ko kontrol natin…
baka puwedeng gawan natin
na paraan na magtapal tayo,
madagdagan natin ng ganito
kalaki. (How did that happen?
I thought we had everything
under control…Maybe we can
do something to remedy the
situation, we can add this much
more votes).”
He said he left it to the Comelec people to decide how they
would rig the count. “Sila na
nakakaalam no’n, kung anong
diskarte doon sa provincial
canvassing (They’re the ones
who know what do, they had
to make the calculations and
work these out in the provincial
canvassing).” But, he added,
when Poe’s lead was too big, as
in Misamis Oriental, the operators there risked discovery if they
padded and shaved the votes too
much. To compensate for the
Misamis Oriental upset, he said,
they had to pad even more the
Arroyo votes in Lanao del Sur
and Maguindanao. Comelec
figures show that it was in these
two provinces that the president
posted her biggest winning margins in the whole of Mindanao.
Zuce’s story is partly corroborated by the testimony of Capt.
Mendoza, who said he accompanied the commissioner’s nephew
to various canvass centers in
Lanao and Cotabato from May
12 to 18. There, he said, he saw
Zuce speaking with provincial
Comelec officials, following up
election results with them, and
giving them cash.
Partial corroboration is also
provided by the phone call the
president made to Garcillano
on May 29, where she is heard
asking the commissioner if she
would still get a one-million-vote
lead. The commissioner said so
far her lead was 980,000 “pero
mag-compensate po sa Lanao
‘yan (but we will compensate in
Lanao),” as he was still expecting
the poll results from seven more
towns in Lanao del Sur.
When he said that, Garcillano
was either being prescient or he
had already worked things out
E L E C T I O N S
on the ground. By the time that
phone call was made, the initial
results of the Lanao del Sur canvass had already been sent to
Manila four days before. But in
seven Lanao towns, the counting had been delayed, either
because special elections needed
to be called or allegedly because
the canvassers were deliberately
prolonging the count because of
“special operations.” The results
of the special elections, which
were held on May 22 and June 5,
were particularly suspicious. In
Madalum, for example, Arroyo
led Poe by 30 votes to one. The
winning ratios in the special elections were far more scandalous
than those in the earlier Lanao
results: 4.5 votes for Arroyo for
every one of FPJ’s, even as the
overall provincial ratio was only
three votes to one. In all, the
president got 30,447 votes in
the special elections—enough
to get her the one-million-vote
lead. Poe, on the other hand got
only 6,805.
But Sumalipao, the Lanao del
Sur election officer, is adamant.
There was no way cheating
could have taken place there,
he says. “There were 50 lawyers
there during the canvassing, 20
from the opposition,” he says.
“They were watching every time
I opened a COC. How can I add
or subtract votes? I am willing to
be killed if they find even just
one vote added to GMA or one
vote taken from FPJ.”
Namfrel’s Dalidig, who has
been watching Lanao elections
since 1992, is equally firm. He
says that 2004 was the worst
case of dagdag-bawas he has
ever seen. The opposition could
not prevent it, he says, because
they didn’t have enough people
to guard the count. “This is the
worst, the dirtiest election.”
governorship in 1998 but lost.
In 2004, he founded the Lanao
Unity Movement for Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo. Mike Arroyo was even there during the
induction of its officers in April
that year. Moner told “The Probe
Team” he aligned himself with
the Arroyos through the intercession of his brother-in-law, who
was an assistant of Alfonso Cusi,
a close friend of the First Gentleman and then general manager
of the Philippine Ports Authority.
He said his group volunteered to
campaign for President Arroyo
and to help her win in Muslim
Mindanao.
Abdul Wahab Batugan, a
former Comelec election officer
and Moner’s business partner in
a consultancy firm, recounted
that the judge had “assigned”
him to Lanao del Sur during
the counting. He recalled that
on May 13, 2004, he and Moner
went to Marawi to talk to election officers there about how to
make the president win. “We
talked to them para baliktarin
yung COCs (to reverse the certificates of canvass),” he says.
They also brought cash with
them, money that they said was
given to Moner by Cusi and the
First Gentleman. For the Lanao
del Sur operations, says Batugan,
they distributed about P1 million
in cash to elections personnel.
“Yung iba, pagbigay namin ng
pera, kami na nag-fill up…Kami
na ang nagsulat ng numero
2 0 0 4
sa COC (In some cases, after
giving the money, we filled up
the forms ourselves, we wrote
out the numbers in the COCs),”
he said.
Batugan admitted that it was
in Marawi where they manufactured several COCs. “I remember
the one in Wao,” he said in Tagalog. “I think it was 7,000 votes
for FPJ and 3,000 plus for GMA.
Tapos binaligtad. Nabaligtad.
Ganu’n ang nangyari. (It was
reversed. It got reversed. That’s
what happened.)”
The paper trail proves
Batugan right. The precinctlevel election returns collected
by Namfrel show that Poe got
7,647 votes in Wao, while Mrs.
Arroyo got only 3,816. But the
ratio was indeed reversed in the
certificate of canvass, where the
president’s votes mysteriously
doubled to 7,614, while Poe’s
were reduced to only 4,967.
The reason Batugan and his
friends are talking now is that
they feel betrayed. They said
they took part in several dagdagbawas operations, not just in
Lanao del Sur but also in other
places in Muslim Mindanao.
But more than a year after
the elections, they had not
yet been given the rewards
they were promised. In fact, in
September 2004, two members
of the Lanao Unity Movement
wrote Pampanga Rep. Juan
Miguel ‘Mikey’ Arroyo, saying
that during the canvassing, they
had gone to Jolo “to facilitate
and ensure that all votes be
for PGMA in consideration for
an amount of money given to
each BEI (board of election
inspectors) and local election
officer.”
The letter also said that they
had not been given much money
for their efforts but they did the
work because of the promise of
government jobs. “But somehow,”
the letter observed ruefully, “their
dangerous role in PGMA victory as
far as the two provinces of Lanao
and Sulu are concerned” had not
been duly rewarded.
The letter was ignored.
Meanwhile, the ghosts of the
2004 elections haunt Lanao del
Sur, and they refuse to rest. i
With additional research by
Avigail Olarte .
PARALLEL
OPERATIONS
The extent of the vote-padding
and shaving was probably due
to the fact that more than one
group was at work. Even as Garcillano and Zuce were performing their tasks, another group of
operators, this one linked to the
First Gentleman, was also operating in Lanao. The point man
for this parallel operation was
supposedly Moner, the shar’iah
court judge who had become
friendly with Mike Arroyo.
Moner is a Maranao politician
who ran for the Lanao del Sur
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
11
10 REASONS TO DOUBT THE
YVONNE T. CHUA AND
AVIGAIL OLARTE
T
HE DEVIL is in
the numbers.
In the run-up to
the 2004 elections,
surveys predicted a
neck-and-neck race
between President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and
leading opposition candidate
Fernando Poe Jr. When the official canvassing closed, Arroyo
got 40 percent of the votes, beating Poe by 3.5 percentage points.
The legitimacy of Arroyo’s
election has since come under
1
question following the disclosure of the wiretapped
conversations between her and
former elections commissioner
Virgilio Garcillano suggesting
her knowledge and possible
involvement in electoral fraud,
including vote padding, and its
cover-up. But there are other
indicators that all was not well
in last year’s elections. Election
officials, experts, and observers point to numerous statistical improbabilities. Here is a
list of at least 10 that indicate
some people were naughty
and not at all nice during the
2004 polls:
1. Unusual jump in number of registered voters: The country’s population increases by
roughly 2.3 percent each year. This means about five percent between 2002 and 2004.
Yet, the Commission on Elections listed 43.5 million registered voters in the 2004
elections, or a 15-percent jump over the 2002 figure. The Comelec has justified the
unusual trend, saying there appeared to be a “heightened awareness/enthusiasm of
voters to exercise suffrage.”
Election Year
1998
Registered
voters
2001
2002
Increase (%)
2004
34,117,056 36,350,561 37,724,463 43,536,028
2
19982001
20012002
20022004
6.5
3.8
15.4
2. Number of registered voters exceeds Comelec projections: In the provinces
of Pampanga, Cebu, Iloilo, and Bohol, which delivered the largest chunks of
the president’s winning margin over Poe, the number of registered voters in
the end far exceeded the number of voters that Comelec expected to register.
Province
Pampanga
Cebu
Iloilo
Bohol
Projected Registered
Voters
944,092
1,299,612
787,580
556,579
Registered
Voters*
1,080,751
1,780,708
923,262
619,139
Increase (%)
14
37
17
11
*Per provincial certificate of canvass
3
4
5
4. Number of actual voters exceeds number of
registered voters
Municipality
Sumisip, Basilan
Panguntaran, Sulu
Registered
Voters
Actual
Voters
22,669
11,080
23,745
11,468
5. Too popular outside bailiwick: For every
Kapampangan who voted for Poe, 7.5 voted for
Arroyo. For every Cebuano who voted for Poe, 7.8
voted for Arroyo. Historically, says Philippine Daily
Inquirer columnist Conrado de Quiros, “(not) one
of the past presidents has shown himself to be as
popular, if not more so, in a province other than
his own.” He cited as examples the late strongman
Ferdinand Marcos who was strongest in the Ilocos
and Arroyo’s own father, the late Diosdado Macapagal, who showed himself strongest in Pampanga.
Province
Pampanga
Cebu
Arroyo
642,712
965,630
Poe
84,720
123,099
3. Votes cast for all presidential candidates exceed actual voters.
Province
Basilan
Nueva Vizcaya
Samar
Aurora
Isabela
Albay
Sultan Kudarat
North Cotabato
Lanao del Norte
12
Registered
Voters
Actual Voters
Votes for
President
Official
Voter
Turnout
Voter Turnout
(President)
Difference (%
Points)
117,190
154,958
284,485
77,669
607,209
541,865
313,701
513,291
432,698
106,334
117,999
228,075
61,475
465,181
458,207
226,522
387,666
307,790
136,297
150,371
278,045
73,194
515,974
479,714
236,768
404,268
314,577
91%
76%
80%
79%
77%
85%
72%
76%
71%
116%
97%
98%
94%
85%
89%
75%
79%
73%
26
21
18
15
8
4
3
3
2
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
2 0 0 4
E L E C T I O N S
E 2004 ELECTION RESULTS
6
6. Zero vote for highly popular candidate: A 1966 Supreme Court
ruling says a zero vote is statistically improbable. But the highly
popular Poe failed to garner a single vote in a lot of places, including
Sto. Tomas town in his home province of Pangasinan and in several
Maguindanao municipalities where rival Arroyo’s total votes equaled
the number of actual voters (another statistical improbability). Comelec Chair Benjamin Abalos Sr. has argued that while a zero vote may
be highly improbable, it is still possible, and cited several factors like
“Church influence, patriarchal dominance, guns, and gold” that could
make it so. Asked about zero votes in last year’s elections, Garcillano told newsmen, “If there is a zero, that is possible because they
could buy the watcher of the opposite side.”
Municipality
7
7. Votes for presidential candidate exceed votes for No. 1 senatorial candidate: Voters almost always write down names for senatorial and local posts on their ballots, but not necessarily make a
selection for president. Also, voters can choose only one presidential candidate but can pick a dozen senatorial candidates at
most. This makes it extremely rare for a presidential candidate to
obtain more votes than the leading senatorial candidate. In Bohol,
however, Arroyo garnered more votes than the leading senatorial
candidate, including former Bohol representative Ernesto Herrera and Manuel Roxas III (who eventually topped the senatorial
race), in 30 of 48 municipalities (60 percent). Ditto for Pampanga,
bailiwick of both the president and Sen. Lito Lapid. Even in his
hometown, Lapid had fewer votes than Arroyo. Similar patterns
were detected in Iloilo, Siquijor, and Leyte provinces.
Actual Voters
Arroyo
Poe
Sto. Tomas, Pangasinan
Registered
Voters
6,737
5,668
5,470
0
Ampatuan, Maguindanao
9,616
9,321
9,321
0
Municipality
Arroyo
Top Senate Bet
Difference
Datu Piang, Maguindanao
17,688
17,250
17,250
0
Anda
Antequera
Carmen
Catigbian
Ubay
5,022
5,070
12,420
7,177
16,850
Roxas – 3,632
Herrera – 3,701
Roxas – 9,166
Roxas – 5,141
Roxas – 14,155
1,390
1,369
3,254
2,036
2,695
8
8. Presidential candidate more popular than local candidate: In the
South district of Cebu City, Arroyo turned out to be more popular than
the local candidate, Rep. Antonio Cuenco.
Candidate
Arroyo
Cuenco
9
Votes
Actual Voters
% of Votes
Obtained
117,435
88,556
169,923
169,923
69%
52%
BOHOL
PAMPANGA
Municipality
Arroyo
Top Senate Bet
Floridablanca
Guagua
Lubao
Porac
31,399
38,205
45,085
30,119
Lapid
Lapid
Lapid
Lapid
-
Difference
28,448
34,246
39,617
28,513
2,951
3,959
5,468
1,606
9. Unusually high winning ratio: Popularity-wise, Arroyo did not hold a candle to Poe. But in areas where she posted her biggest winning
margins like Cebu, Arroyo led Poe by as much as 22 to one. By comparison, Poe’s lead over Arroyo was at most five times in places
where he got his biggest winning margins. Election officials recall that Joseph Estrada, the runaway winner in the 1998 elections, led his
closest opponent, Jose de Venecia, by five to one. Arroyo’s running mate, the extremely popular Noli de Castro, led Loren Legarda by only
two to eight times in areas like Pampanga, Cebu, Iloilo, Bohol, Bukidnon, and Southern Leyte.
ARROYO VS POE IN CEBU
Municipality
Arroyo
Poe
Arroyo:Poe
De Castro
Legarda
Catmon
Alacsia
Bogo
10,270
8,629
27,134
459
406
1,523
22:1
21:1
18:1
8,714
7,902
15,593
1,520
714
8,502
De Castro:
Legarda
6:1
11:1
2:1
POE VS ARROYO IN LAGUNA
Poe
Municipality
5,742
6,589
10,065
Mabitac
Magdalena
Pagsanjan
Arroyo
Poe:
Arroyo
1,186
1,420
1,978
5:1
5:1
5:1
10
10. Padding and shaving: New-media pioneer Roberto Verzola believes Arroyo did not win by 1.1 million votes. Using the Namfrel tally
(based on elections returns) and the official count of Congress (based on Certificates of Canvass), he calculated Arroyo could have won by
156,000 votes at most, or Poe by 84,000 votes. He said the Namfrel tally is “probably closer to the truth” because it is harder to tamper
with 216,000-plus election returns than with 180 COCs. Congress said Arroyo posted a 3.5-percent margin over Poe, while the Namfrel tally
placed this at 2.6 percent. The biggest discrepancies between the Namfrel and congressional counts were in Basilan, Sultan Kudarat, Lanao
del Norte, Tawi-Tawi, Lanao del Sur, and Maguindanao.
Region
ARMM
C. Mindanao
CAR
Congress
Arroyo
Poe
%
%
61.9
30.6
32.2
39.2
39.5
26.1
Namfrel
Arroyo
Poe
%
%
38.8
58
24
44.5
38
28.6
Congress
Discrepancy
%
50.5
13.5
4.1
Namfrel
Region
Arroyo
Poe
Sulu*
Basilan**
Tawi-Tawi***
78,429
79,702
33,634
60,807
48,685
49,803
Arroyo
23,896
12,162
15,925
Poe
45,740
43,821
58,292
*100% Namfrel coverage **<70% Namfrel coverage ***<90% Namfrel coverage
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
13
Impervious to
change. Despite all
the controversies
that have hounded
Comelec, the poll
body is resisting
reform.
CAN COMELEC
REFORM?
A
ALECKS P. PABICO
NYONE STILL
wondering why
Pinoys are voting with their feet
and heading for
abroad in droves
only has to look
at the “Hello, Garci” scandal that
exposed an alleged plot to rig
the 2004 elections in President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s favor.
For those who still need convincing that this country’s electoral system is a mess, as Exhibit
B we have the Commission on
Elections (Comelec), which has
so far been largely mum on the
scandal that has even prompted
one of its former officials to go
missing. And that’s on top of a
series of questionable acts of
commission and omission it has
been doing for years.
This is why even before
President Arroyo thought of
calling up then Commissioner
Virgilio Garcillano at the height
of the canvassing of votes last
year, civil-society organizations
were already pushing hard for
far-reaching electoral reforms.
14
They wanted to start with the
Comelec, but its leaders just
wouldn’t budge—and one year
and one regime-shaking scandal
later, they still aren’t moving.
That means any change in the
system is also at a standstill. Says
an exasperated Akbayan partylist Rep. Etta Rosales: “(When)
you speak of electoral reforms,
the Comelec will have to be integral to the reform effort since
one of the first things you have
to reform is Comelec itself.”
Still, it’s not as if other branches of government shouldn’t get
off their duffs, too. A conservative Congress, for example, is
definitely in the way of electoral
reforms. Many initiatives require
legislation and constitutional
amendments. For instance,
several of the recommendations
made by the Consortium for
Election and Political Process
Strengthening (CEPPS) mission
that monitored the 2004 elections
require a drastic overhaul of the
Comelec’s legal and constitutional framework. These include:
• making the Comelec a
purely administrative entity;
• doing away with the con-
gressional canvass of presidential and vice-presidential votes,
since the counting and tabulation is the responsibility of the
election administration;
• removing from the Comelec
its quasi-judicial function of
deciding on electoral protests,
a function which can be taken
up by special electoral tribunals; and
• restructuring the composition of the House and Senate
electoral tribunals so as not
to expose the process to bias,
real or perceived.
Since its reconstitution in
1987, however, Congress has
consistently sat on vital political
and electoral reforms that could
have at the very least arrested
the degeneration of a system
of government that Arroyo and
House Speaker Jose de Venecia
now rue about and conveniently
want replaced.
THWARTED IN
CONGRESS
For example, a reform-minded
legislature should have long
passed the anti-dynasty bill,
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
which was introduced as early
as the Eighth Congress, to fully
enable the constitutional provision that bans political dynasties.
Such a law has not been enacted
since many Congress members
come from long lines of political
families who refuse to legislate
themselves out of public office.
Also still pending in the
legislature is what political
and electoral reform advocates
consider as the most essential
piece of legislation, the Political
Party Reform Act, which was
introduced in 2003 in the 12th
Congress. The law seeks to provide the needed impetus for the
development of parties based
on platforms and programs,
rather than on individuals and
influence. Among its salient
provisions are:
• regulating the conduct of
political parties, including the
selection of leaders by party
congress;
• minimum funding by the
state to duly registered national parties;
• regulating campaign financing and spending, including
restricting individual campaign contributions;
• banning “turncoatism” or the
rampant practice of switching
political affiliation that weakens party structures, confuses
voters, and undermines the
concept of a viable opposition (An anti-turncoatism bill
was first filed in the Eighth
Congress.)
For a bill certified as urgent
by the Legislative Executive
Development Advisory Council
(LEDAC), only one hearing has
so far been conducted by the
Senate committee chaired by
Sen. Richard Gordon, while it
still has to be calendared by the
House committee chaired by
Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr.
And while another important
law, the Party List System Act,
was passed in 1995, it was a
compromised piece of legislation. No less than the Supreme
Court pointed out its basic flaws:
the prohibitive existing threshold
of two percent leaving congressional seats vacant, and its lack
of any clearly defined eligibility
criteria. Since being introduced
in August 2004, amendments to
the law, which include clarifying
eligibility requirements, lowering
the threshold to 1.8 percent, and
increasing the maximum number
REFORMING
of seats per party from three to
six, have reached the committee
level only this May.
Rosales says she was
surprised that the party-list
representation was not part
of the draft of constitutional
change proposals in the House.
“They say it’s because we are
introducing amendments to
the Party List Law already,”
she says. “That’s true, but the
amendments that we are doing are with the law, not with
the constitutional provision.
There are really efforts to gloss
over or give lesser priority to
reforms. They would rather
have the status quo, rather than
democratize.”
With another mid-term elections scheduled in 2007, the
election modernization and
automation law also has to be
amended. Points out Gus Lagman, technology chief of the
National Citizens’ Movement
for Free Elections (Namfrel):
“There’s a real sense of urgency
since in 18 months, we’ll have
another round of elections. RA
8436 requires a lot of amendments. The bidding process
will take at least six months.
And that does not include voter
education.”
But Lagman is pessimistic
about anything substantial being
done with the present crop of
election commissioners. “We tried
talking to them,” he says. “It’s useless. Iba ang frame of mind.”
ELECTIONS
of everybody. Moreover, as a
constitutional body, the Comelec is less accountable to the
other branches of government
and the public, as the commissioners can be removed only
through an impeachment process. Unfortunately, impeaching
the commissioners is not an
inviting prospect at this time,
especially after what happened
to the impeachment complaints
against Arroyo.
Rosales, who was among the
first 41 House members who endorsed the amended complaint
against Arroyo, says, “It was a
very negative experience. After
that, nobody will stand up in
Congress to try to impeach an
impeachable official.”
Some also see a problem
with the resignation call since
the appointing authority remains
the same official alleged to have
benefited from electoral fraud. In
July, Arroyo appointed Romeo
Brawner, the former Court of
Appeals presiding justice, to
replace Garcillano. Word has
and Rufino Javier—are also
up for retirement. Casiple says
that especially at this juncture
when the Comelec badly needs
to modernize, premium should
be on appointees that do not
only have the integrity but are
relatively young, IT-proficient,
and preferably possessed with
managerial skills.
At 70, Justice Brawner, while
a man of integrity, is deficient in
such requirements, says Casiple.
“He also has no background in
electoral processes,” adds IPER’s
head. “While he may be learned
in the law, I don’t know if he can
run an election without going
through a learning curve.”
Some commissioners in fact
are pinning much of their reform
hopes on a more tech-savvy
Comelec. The soon-to-be-retired Sadain, for one, says, “We
had very bright prospects in
implementing electoral reforms,
especially with computerization
that we had wanted to be implemented last year.” But somehow
the commission bungled that,
it that she will be reappointing
Manuel Barcelona Jr. to the other
vacant post—unpalatable news
to reformists, as Barcelona was a
member of a pro-Arroyo organization that had contributed to
the president’s campaign.
“The problem with the
whole appointment process is
that the president is the sole
appointing power,” says Ramon
Casiple, executive director of
the Institute for Political and
Electoral Reform (IPER). “It’s not
like in the judiciary where you
have the Judicial and Bar Council. Whatever name we give to
Malacañang, those whom you’ve
never heard of are the ones who
are appointed.”
What makes the appointment issue even more pressing is that by next year, two
commissioners—Mehol Sadain
too, in the process losing P2.3
billion of taxpayers’ money.
A FLAWED APPOINTMENT PROCESS
Ah, yes, the Comelec and its
commissioners. As early as
June, electoral-reform advocates have been demanding
the courtesy resignations of
all the commissioners. At the
minimum, the call has been to
get rid of those who have been
guilty of violating their responsibilities and oaths of office.
But former Comelec chairman
Christian Monsod even goes as
far as suggesting current chief
Benjamin Abalos Sr. should
be shown the door through
the most expedient means
possible, including through
impeachment, because “a reform program is at great risk
of not being achieved while
he’s there.”
Since Day One, though,
Abalos has resisted calls for
him to step down, arguing that
the fault of one is not the fault
NEED FOR SOCIAL
SOLUTION
For IT pioneer Roberto Verzola,
the issue is not so much technical as it is social. Hence, the
electoral reform campaign battlecry must be first and foremost
to punish the election cheats.
“Cheating in elections is a social
problem,” he argues. “So this
needs a social solution, not just
technical. Of course, there are
technical problems in the election process like the slow count,
transmission of results, and there
are technical solutions for that.”
But until the election cheats are
punished, Verzola insists, even
a computerized system will not
ensure clean and orderly polls.
Firm believers in the bu-
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
reaucracy like Monsod, however, want to give reforms a chance
even on a piecemeal basis.
Monsod likes to hark back to the
1992 elections when the Comelec had a net approval rating of
+64, a testament he says that it is
possible to reform even the most
damaged of institutions.
Besides, those pushing for
changes acknowledge that there
are many honest people within
the poll body who want to do
right. “We have to think of ways
by which we can bring back
courage,” says former education
undersecretary Chito Gascon.
“That’s what we lack now, the
courage of the people who
know the facts. The enemies
are throwing the book, rule of
law, due process as mechanisms
to prevent us from uncovering
the truth.”
Comelec officials like Ferdinand Rafanan, election director
for the National Capital Region,
are already doing their share to
clean up the process. On its own
initiative, the NCR regional office
has placed special emphasis on
voter education. Begun just this
July, the modest efforts, with
no funding or material support
of any kind from the national
office, have so far been able to
reach senior high school and
college students in nine Metro
Manila schools.
Though targeted at students,
Comelec-NCR’s voters’ education program is also intended to
deliver the message to Comelec
personnel about the proper conduct of elections, the nature of
their work, and what tasks are
required of them. NCR personnel
are thus being reintroduced to
their profession, getting training
on how to satisfy voters’ needs,
use computers and modernize
work processes, and eliminate
graft and corruption in the issuance of certified copies of
documents.
Yet while these are laudable
efforts and have their place
in the pursuit of political and
electoral reforms, the magnitude of the problem is such that
reform advocates have their
eyes set more on long-term,
structural changes. As Byron
Bocar, Rosales’s chief-of-staff,
puts it, “Elections are held only
once every three years. But bad
governance arising from a bad
electoral system occurs day to
day. We’re witness to its fatal
results.” i
15
Fighting corruption. The military
and the police are considered
among the most corrupt state
agencies, but there are reformers
within, including members of the
Christian Officers Reform the
Police Service (CORPS) below.
OFFICERS
WHO SAY NO
H
LUZ RIMBAN
IS JOB title
was impressive
enough: aide de
camp and executive assistant to
the interior and
local government secretary. It was, however, a deskbound posting that
consisted mostly of shuffling
documents needing his boss’s
signature. That was a decade
ago, and Cesar Binag was then
a young police captain fresh
from a stint with the elite Special
Action Force (SAF) that battled
coup plotters and insurgents. To
Binag, who was trained in the
Philipppine Military Academy
(PMA), his new assignment was
boring. Or at least that’s how it
seemed at first.
One day a friend invited him
for dinner. Binag quickly accepted, perhaps thinking it was
16
going to be a nice break from
the drudgery of his job. Instead,
his friend served up a temptation, a situation Binag would
find himself in repeatedly.
When his friend turned up,
he had in tow a foreign businessman with an eye on a
P250-million contract the department was bidding out. The
businessman’s proposition was
simple: Binag would provide a
copy of a document detailing the
contract’s specifications, thereby
giving the foreigner an edge in
the bidding war. In exchange,
Binag would get 1.5 percent of
the contract budget, or P3.75
million. Half that amount was
his for the taking right there and
then, if he accepted.
“Politely I said to them, ‘I
cannot do that,’” recounts Binag,
now in his late 30s. “So I called
the waiter, paid my bill, and
then left.”
Not everyone would have
reacted the same way Binag
did. Indeed, others would
have grabbed this chance of a
lifetime. After all, the public
sees the police force as a corrupt organization and a policeman as an officer making easy
money extorting a few hundred
pesos from motorists on the
streets. How could a policeman
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
resist a bribe that was almost
P4 million?
Binag isn’t exactly a rebel
or a maverick but it seems the
country’s armed services do
have their share of officers who
know how to just say no. For a
time, this had been hard for the
public even to imagine, espe-
REFORM IN THE BARRACKS
of the Military Christian Fellowship (MCF), a loose grouping of
Christians in the AFP. With that,
he allowed civilians a peek at
another way in which idealists in
armed services have managed to
hold up against the entrenched
corruption within and pressures
from politicians without.
Gudani earned praise from
some civilians who thought
he did the right thing. That he
placed himself in peril, defying
a presidential order against military officers appearing before
congressional inquiries only
added an aura of heroism to his
Senate appearance.
Gudani has said he simply did
not get the Malacañang order in
time. Be that as it may, he would
not have been the first idealist in
the military faced with a moral
dilemma. In the past, soldiers
who felt strongly against an order
or questionable practices had
quit or gone AWOL. Others have
tried to stage coups or mutinies.
Because the structure does not
provide support for those who
want to remain upright and honest, in the end those who prevail
are the men and women with
strong moral fiber. For many,
this fortitude to withstand temptation comes largely from a very
deep sense of patriotism. For
others, such love of country is
enhanced by the moral conviction provided by the teachings
of their elders or coming from
their respective faiths.
cially after the media exposé on
Gen. Carlos Garcia, the former
armed forces comptroller who
has landed in jail for amassing
wealth beyond the imagination
even of a military man. But since
Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani appeared before the Senate Committee on National Defense to
expose political maneuverings
in the fraud-ridden 2004 elections, the public has become
reacquainted with the idea that
there could be more than a few
good men in organizations as
tainted with corruption as the
Philippine National Police (PNP)
and the Armed Forces of the
Philippines (AFP).
“I am here as assistant superintendent of the PMA where we
teach the cadets the honor code,
that a cadet does not cheat, does
not steal, does not lie nor tolerate these things,” Gudani said at
the Senate in September. The
general also made it a point to
identify himself as the president
HONOR AND LOYALTY
Officers who graduated from the
PMA are supposed to be guided
by the honor code to help them
remain on the right path. But
then they also swear by an oath
of loyalty authored by the 19thcentury U.S. publisher and writer
Elbert Hubbard. It says: “If you
work for a man, in heaven’s
name work for him. Speak well
of him and stand by the institution he represents. Remember
an ounce of loyalty is worth
a pound of cleverness. If you
growl, condemn and eternally
find fault, resign your position.
And when you are outside,
damn to your hearts’ content.
But for as long as you are part of
the institution, do not condemn
it. If you do, the first high wind
that comes along will blow you
away, and you will probably
never know why.”
The oath is a pledge of submission used all over the world
in various organizations, such
as the U.S. Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), and by superiors and bosses to enforce what
some people say is blind loyalty.
Explicit in the oath is a promise
not to blow the whistle on an
organization to which one belongs. It seems to clash with the
PMA honor code, which tacitly
urges officers to speak out when
they witness wrongdoing.
There is a lot wrong in the
PNP, as there is with the AFP
and the rest of the government.
Aside from graft and corruption,
there is also what Binag calls
“bata-bata” system or higher ups
playing favorites among their
subordinates. There are the
dilemmas over jueteng, the illegal numbers game from which
it is said police officers enrich
themselves by offering protection from the law.
Binag, now a superintendent
and chief of the PNP’s resource
reform unit, is a born-again
Christian. When he talks about
“conversion,” though, he means
not the welcoming of a newcomer to his faith, but the practice of
transferring or realigning funds
intended for other purposes
that in the process often end up
in the pockets of corrupt officers. Conversion was one of the
main problems exposed by the
group of discontented junior
AFP officers who laid siege to
the Oakwood Hotel in Makati
in July 2003.
“Here, if you partake of free
lunch, I believe you’re part of the
system because strictly the budget has no room for a free lunch,”
Binag points out. ”Somewhere
along the way, one item was
converted into another item and
that’s why it became lunch.”
Army Lt. Col. Amadeo Azul
feels the same way about conversion in the Armed Forces.
Many years ago, as a young
lieutenant, he had rebuked his
“goodhearted” commandant for
converting an item in the budget
into a P1,000 Christmas bonus
for the staff. He was told, “ I
wish everyone were like you but
I’m only doing this to boost the
morale.” Unlike the rest of the
staff, Azul wound up with no
bonus; he was also left worrying that while such gestures are
well meant, they could also be
openings for serious transgressions later on.
Azul, also a born-again Christian, says he is not cut out to
be a whistleblower or to wash
the AFP’s dirty linen in public.
“The Bible says if your brother
commits a mistake, go to him,
rebuke him. If he does not listen,
bring another…tell it to the whole
church,” he said. That frame of
mind has led him away from
antagonistic confrontations with
wrongdoers, and even the military practice of humiliating subordinates in public. Over time,
he said, he has learned to choose
whom to criticize and how, quoting another biblical passage:
“Rebuke a wise man and he will
be wiser. Rebuke a wicked man
and he will hate you.”
The dilemmas can be tormenting for soldiers striving to
live upright lives, like Azul. That
is why when Azul was contacted
for this story he declined to
Marching to a different rhythm.
Police Supt. Cesar Binag
(above) has turned down bribes
and believes that it is possible
to make the police a more
accountable institution.
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
17
REFORM IN THE BARRACKS
be interviewed at first. Azul
was once the secretary of the
MCF. Azul is also a member of
PMA Class of 1983, which also
produced Lt. Col. Alexander
Balutan, the Marine officer who
testified with Gudani at the Senate. Azul taught physics at the
Academy and was at one point
battalion commander of the
Army’s 64th Infantry Batallion
in Samar. He is currently posted
at J5, the plans office of the AFP
General Headquarters in Camp
Aguinaldo.
Azul agreed to talk to PCIJ
only outside his office and on
a Sunday at a church where he
attends service. It is a gleaming
glass-and-steel structure that
looks like the headquarters
of a conglomerate. Its pastors
look like yuppies. In these surroundings and out of his uniform, Azul himself looked like
a young businessman taking
a hard-earned respite. And he
talked more as a Christian than
as a soldier.
“The hard part is the battle
within,” said Azul. The challenges, he said, range from resisting
the martial culture that automatically insists on applying hardline
solutions to social problems, and
vices that machos in the military
are known for, such as womanizing and drinking.
Speaking one’s mind, even
in the name of the teachings
of the Gospel, can have grave
repercussions in the military.
An officer can get relieved of
his post or court-martialed as
in Gudani’s case, or he can be
totally ignored, bypassed, or
misunderstood.
Azul talked of looking at
things now from a different
perspective. Where before he
would turn bitter over reprisals
from higher-ups for what his
Christian faith made him do,
he now would rather act as a
bridge between two seemingly
incompatible paradigms.
A BALANCING ACT
In truth, being a spiritual person
on the one hand and being soldiers and policemen on the other
can sometimes mean walking a
perilous tightrope. But both Azul
and Binag seem to have found a
comfortable balance. Both deny
being purists, but talk of reforming long-entrenched flaws in
their organizations bit by bit, and
mostly by infecting their respective “spheres of influence.”
18
Today Azul says he has a
chance to effect some change
by helping formulate planning
and budgeting policies in the
AFP. Budgets used to be drawn
up by office-bound people who
had no idea of the needs out in
the field where conditions are
fluid. The practice used to be
that budgets were drawn up just
to access the fund and didn’t reflect the realities in the field. As
a result, money was set aside for
uses not suited to war zones and
had to be converted later into
purchases of what the men in
the trenches did need—that is,
if abusive commanders weren’t
pocketing the funds.
The present AFP is trying to
implement a budgeting system
that Azul described as “rationalizing resource allocation and
studies in institutions such as the
University of the Philippines, the
Asian Institute of Management, or
even schools overseas, where they
were exposed to better and more
effective ways of doing things.
Binag, who has run the range
of police duties from being
police station commander to
heading the PNP’s Traffic Management Group, likewise talks
about having ordered time-andmotion studies to identify bottlenecks in the PNP units where
he has been posted. He says
leadership trainings are passing
on effective management styles
to potential young leaders in
PNP offices where reforms are
most needed. CORPS also has
a mentoring program called
“My Brother’s Keeper” and the
“Bless Our Cops” campaign that
Azul, though, said things are
looking up in Camp Aguinaldo,
adding that reforms were being
instituted even before the Oakwood mutiny broke out, and even
despite such cases as that of Gen.
Garcia, himself a PMA alumnus.
“The military is far, far better off now than it was in 1983
when I was a 2nd lieutenant,” he
said. In those days, there were
no limits to drinking, and parties
for officers even had Girard-Peter models in attendance. Today
there are mechanisms to air grievances, among them the campaign
“Text Mo Si Commander” where
soldiers inform higher-ups of
their problem. Higher ups are
also listening to junior officers a
lot more, a far cry from 20 years
ago when “lieutenants were seen
and not heard.” Top-down, bot-
Shooting for the moon?
Reformers believe it is
possible to bring back honor
and integrity to the military
and the police.
ensuring it goes to the right uses”
and a mechanism where planning and budgeting are “properly linked.” If it works well,
conversion would be radically
minimized, unless one happened
to be really corrupt.
If Azul talks like a manager,
it is also because he has had
postgraduate management training, as did Binag and his friends
in their Christian group called
CORPS, an acronym for Christian
Officers Reform the Police Service. Binag’s friends in CORPS
have become his refuge and
“accountability” group where
they check on each other’s
spiritual, moral, and professional
difficulties
It helps that officers like Azul
and Binag took up management
invites the public to support
policemen.
RESTORING HOPE,
IMPLEMENTING
REFORMS
But a major obstacle has been
the attitude of despair the public
and even some PNP members
have toward reform. Binag’s
only request to classmates, civic
leaders, and fellow policemen
is, “Don’t lose hope.” Because
reforms are grounded on the
hope and the desire that things
will change, Binag says, the first
step is to restore hope.
“Hope is not a method,” he
says. “We’ve got to do something
to operationalize hope. But it’s
hard to say how if you don’t
have hope.”
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
tom-up monitoring and reporting
makes the organization more
cohesive and a coup d’etat less
probable, Azul said.
Binag, too, doesn’t think a
revolt is in the offing. But that’s
because he earned his spurs
defending the government.
After all, in the SAF, which he
had joined right after graduating
from the PMA in 1987, he and
his co-recruits were almost immediately fighting off coups that
rocked the Aquino administration during its early years.
Being in the frontlines defending the government comes
naturally to men like Binag.
What comes naturally to other
members of the PNP and the
AFP, however, may not necessarily be the same. i
REPORTING
UNDER
THE GUN
Fearing for her life.
Journalist Mei MagsinoLubis is on the run,
fleeing threats from the
most powerful man in
her province.
M
VINIA DATINGUINOO
ELINDA ‘MEI’
Magsino-Lubis yearns for
many things:
her flower and
herb garden,
the sound of
her husband’s voice, the kingfisher
and maya birds that used to wake
her up in the morning. All these
she used to enjoy in her five-hectare mahogany farm on top of a
hill, in the city of Batangas, around
84 km. south of Manila.
Even now her farm beckons
to her like the smell of freshly
brewed barako coffee. “It was
paradise,” she says, “and it was
my home.”
But the farm—and husband—
will have to wait, because Magsino-Lubis wants to live. She is
convinced that had she not fled
from Batangas one night last July
she would now be dead.
20
Magsino-Lubis is a correspondent of the Philippine Daily
Inquirer for the Southern Luzon
region and has been reporting
on alleged irregularities in the
Batangas provincial capitol. She
believes her life is now in danger
because her stories have angered
the provincial governor, whom
she has linked to questionable
projects, among other things.
The governor is Armando
C. Sanchez. In Senate hearings
probing jueteng, he was alleged
to be one of the biggest operators of the illegal numbers game
in the country. He also faces a
graft case filed in the Office of
the Ombudsman by his vice
governor. Recently, the influential Roman Catholic Church
leadership in Batangas openly
declared its lack of confidence in
the governor. (See sidebar) Yet,
while he has the demeanor of a
street toughie, Sanchez does not
have a reputation for resorting to
violence when dealing with his
perceived enemies—at least not
among the general public.
But that is getting way ahead
of Magsino-Lubis’s story.
PHONED WARNING
At around 10 in the evening of
July 7 this year, Magsino-Lubis
received a phone call from one of
her police sources. She was told
two prisoners from the provincial
jail had just been released, with
specific orders to kill her. She
would have to leave Batangas
immediately, her source said.
That same night, MagsinoLubis said goodbye to her family
and left the farm, her home for
only nine months, and Batangas,
where she has lived for all her
30 years. “Doon ako tinubuan
ng sungay (That’s where I grew
horns),” Magsino-Lubis says of
her province. “But I did not
have a choice (other than to
leave).” In her backpack, she
tucked five tops, three pairs of
jeans, six pairs of underwear,
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
four pairs of socks, documents,
photographs, notepads, pens,
and about P22,000 in cash. In
her bones ran a cold, steady
stream of fear.
Not too long ago, Magsino-Lubis had felt relatively safe, since,
she says, her employer was not
some small, obscure community
paper, but the country’s biggest
daily. “Ang yabang ko noon (I
was so confident then),” she says.
Now she realizes she is—and has
always been—as vulnerable as
all the other journalists who had
been hunted down and killed in
some remote town.
At least one international
media watchdog has described
the Philippines as “the most
murderous of all” when it comes
to media deaths, beating even
those countries where drug lords
reign or civil strife rages. Since
1986, 54 Filipino journalists have
been killed in the line of duty.
Most of them were broadcasters
working outside Metro Manila,
JOURNALIST AT RISK
and at the time of their deaths
reporting or commenting on irregularities in their local governments. Of these cases, only two
have resulted in the convictions
of the assassins, according to
the Center for Media Freedom
and Responsibility (CMFR). No
mastermind has ever been found
and prosecuted.
It is probably no comfort to
Magsino-Lubis that elsewhere in
the world, journalists who are
killed often do not die while
covering armed conflicts or some
similar assignment. Instead, says
the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ), which studied more
than five years of journalists’
death records from 2000, a huge
majority are murdered in retaliation for their work.
In Batangas itself, journalist
Arnel Manalo was killed just last
year, on August 5, when two
men on a motorcycle ambushed
him while he was on his way
home on his jeep. He was shot
twice, the bullets hitting the left
side of the face and his neck.
Manalo was a correspondent
for the radio station DZRH and
wrote a column for the local
newspapers Dyaryo Veritas and
Southern Tagalog. He did not
mince words in his columns, at
one point calling the governor
“berdugo ng kapitolyo (tyrant
of the capitol)” a month before
he was killed, and also saying
there was an “atmosphere of
fear” among capitol employees
in a follow-up piece.
But Manalo was a member
of the As-is barangay council as
well, which was why the CMFR,
in its report about his death, did
not rule out political rivals as
among the masterminds for his
killing. Manalo’s family filed a
case against someone said to be
the triggerman; the case is still
at the prosecutor’s office. The
primary witness was another
journalist, who testified that he
heard the alleged triggerman
planning the killing with the
barangay captain, about whom
Manalo had also written in the
last two weeks of July 2004. The
family did not file a case against
the barangay captain.
MURDERED
OMBUDSMAN
Magsino-Lubis, however, only
has to think of Guillermo Gamo
to feel particularly vulnerable.
They had agreed to have a meeting on May 31. Gamo, who was
the Batangas provincial ombudsman, had promised to talk to her
and give her documents related
to what he said were anomalous
deals involving provincial officials. But the day before they
were supposed to meet, Gamo
was killed on his way to work.
According to the police, two gunmen ambushed his vehicle as it
took a turn at a junction in barangay Balagtas in the capital. The
gunmen fired at least 16 shots,
then entered the ombudsman’s
vehicle and took his briefcase
before speeding off on a motorcycle. “That briefcase was for
me,” says Magsino-Lubis.
In the days immediately following Gamo’s death, her sources among the capitol’s employees
avoided her phone calls and
stopped answering her text messages. She tried to visit Gamo’s
office, but she could not even
get close as employees, from a
distance, shooed her away. “They
were so scared,” Magsino-Lubis
says, adding that she could hardly
blame them. She herself does not
pretend she isn’t afraid. “Tell me,”
she says, “how you’d feel if you
know you’re next.”
Just a few months before
Gamo’s death, Magsino-Lubis
had been in pure wedded bliss.
She and her husband, a businessman, were married only in
October last year. She had taken
a couple of months off before
going back to work and discovered she had a flair for farming.
She even began experimenting
with organic methods, and took
pride in the variety of herbs and
flowers she was able to grow.
But she remained foremost a
journalist, and she was soon
back dispatching stories about
agriculture, the environment,
crime, and other subjects.
Her plan was, to her mind,
very simple: farm in the mornings, do journalism in the afternoons, and come home in the
evenings, to her husband and
Mochtar, the boy they planned
on having as soon as possible,
a son they would name after the
famous Indonesian journalist. “It
was all going to be good and
easy,” Magsino-Lubis says of the
life she and her husband were
preparing for. But those plans
have had to be put on hold.
SLAPPED WITH A
LAWSUIT
On July 5, Governor Sanchez
filed an oral defamation case
against Magsino-Lubis, a case the
prosecutor elevated promptly
to the Batangas Regional Trial
Court. Sanchez accused her of
being disrespectful to him during an interview at the capitol
the day before. The mayors’
league also adopted a resolution
declaring her persona non grata
for the same reasons cited in the
governor’s claim.
Magsino-Lubis, however,
says it was in fact the governor
who had verbally abused her
while she was trying to ask him
about a computerization project
the capitol would be undertaking. A few minutes into the interview, she says, she had already
realized that Sanchez was very
agitated. She was still taking
notes when the cuss words began to rain on her head. “I lost
count how many times he cursed
me,” she says.
Sanchez filed the oral defamation case on the same day her
report about the computerization
project came out in the Inquirer.
The article, which Magsino-Lubis
co-wrote with another reporter, discussed the P350-million
project that will fully computerize
Batangas’s real-property taxation
system. The report raised questions about the conduct of the
bidding process, and offered
the theory—based on corporate
and other documents—that the
governor himself was the owner
of the company that clinched
connection, but public interest
in the issue and the personalities
involved was particularly high
while the congressional inquiry
was going on. It was not surprising then, she says, that Sanchez
had become increasingly edgy
about reports on him and his
work at the capitol.
Still, Magsino-Lubis did not
expect that the governor would
file a case against her, or that
the case would be brought immediately to court without any
preliminary investigation. She
was not even given a chance to
file a counter-affidavit. Two days
later, she received that dire call
from one of her sources, who
also informed her that she was
to be finished off when she appeared before the court to post
bail. “The case was meant to
make me surface at a particular
time and place so they could kill
me,” says Magsino-Lubis.
Her editors at the Inquirer
have since provided her with
legal assistance, and lawyers
have filed for her a motion to
dismiss Sanchez’s suit.
PARANOIA AND
DISTRUST
As far as she can tell, the threat to
her life is not the subject of any
official police investigation. The
governor himself, in a written reply
to PCIJ’s queries, implies there is
no reason for her to be on the run,
since there is no one after her. A
Controversial governor. Armand
Sanchez (second from left) has been
linked to jueteng by his political
opponents and by the Batangas clergy.
the contract. Sanchez has since
denied this.
In hindsight, Magsino-Lubis
notes that her fateful interview
with the governor took place
while Senate witnesses were
pointing to Sanchez as among
those who should be summoned
to the hearings to explain their
supposed involvement in jueteng
operations. Magsino-Lubis herself had repeatedly reported on
the governor’s alleged jueteng
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
few of her colleagues in Batangas
and Manila are also unsympathetic,
although that seems more because
Magsino-Lubis tends to come off as
blowhard and rather self-righteous
to some people. But Magsino-Lubis says that a day after she fled
Batangas, she received another
call from another source, who told
her exactly what the first caller had
said. She recalls telling her second
informant, “If I had waited for your
call, I’d be dead by now.”
21
She says she had no time to
go to the local police to report
the threat and have it put on the
blotter. Besides, she says, she
did not trust the Batangas police
at the time. She has, however,
managed to submit a letter about
her situation to Task Force Gamo,
which was formed to investigate
the ombudsman’s death, as well
as to Philippine National Police
Director General Arturo Lomibao.
She has been told by Task Force
Gamo, however, that it lacks
funds to include her case in its
investigation.
Months later, Magsino-Lubis
has yet to get used to life on the
run. Home for a week could be a
posh condominium unit owned
by a godparent. For the next, a
studio leased by a friend, and
the next, a musty room in a
youth hostel. She had practically
mapped out the rest of her life
with her husband, and now she
cannot make plans beyond a
few days. She says the paranoia
she is forced to have is torture,
although the greatest casualty so
far has been her ability to trust
people. There was one time she
was enjoying a garden show
with one of her “foster mothers”
when a woman recognized her
and asked, “‘Di ba ikaw si Mei
Magsino, taga-Inquirer (Aren’t
you Mei Magsino, from the Inquirer)?” The very same day she
left to find another temporary
sanctuary.
Another time she had engaged the security guard of the
condominium where she was
staying in a friendly chat. The
guard mentioned a “governor”
who was frequenting the building to visit a friend. Magsino-Lu-
bis pressed the guard for more
details, and was told it was a
“Governor Sanchez.” MagsinoLubis ran all the way to the unit
she was occupying, grabbed
her things, and was soon on
the street looking for another
place to stay.
Who is Armando Sanchez?
B
ATANGAS GOVERNOR
Armando Sanchez
says journalist Mei
Magsino-Lubis is
“lying through her
teeth when she says she is in
hiding.” He also says “the only
time there were PNP personnel
looking for her” was when she
was still the subject of an arrest
operation covered by “a valid arrest warrant” regarding the oral
defamation case he had filed
against the Inquirer correspondent. After she posted bail, the
governor says in a written reply
to questions sent to him by the
PCIJ, “the operation to arrest
her was stopped.”
“We completely deny the
canard that two prisoners from
the Batangas Provincial Jail were
deliberately let loose to kill Mei
Magsino-Lubis,” he adds. “(We)
challenge any and everyone
to conduct unannounced head
counts of the prisoners in the
Provincial Jail.”
Such a head count would
have meant a lot during the
time of Magsino-Lubis’s own
“escape.” But now it would be
futile, if citizens’ crime watchgroups are to be believed. Ellen
Gran of the Crusade Against
Violence, for instance, says prisoners who are let out of jail to
commit crimes at the instigation
of powerful people are usually
let in again after the deed is
done or the plot is uncovered.
This gives the criminals the
22
perfect alibi because it appears
they had been in prison all the
time.
Governor Sanchez of course
would probably rather that
people count not the prisoners
in the provincial jail, but his
accomplishments as a public
official, especially as mayor of
Sto. Tomas town. This includes
a three-story town hall that was
built, according to official statements, with P22 million of his
own personal
funds. His stint
as mayor also
produced a
28-bed hospital
and garnered the
municipality the
top prize in a nationwide search
for the cleanest
and greenest
town in 2002. It
also led to the
computerization
of Sto. Tomas’s
real property tax
collection system, which, says
Sanchez, resulted in a 300percent increase in collection
and enabled the municipality to
make the huge leap from being
fifth-class to first-class. He had
wanted this computerization program to be replicated throughout
the whole of Batangas, but his
attempt to do so has somehow
dragged him into controversy.
Then again, there are other
controversies that Sanchez has
found himself in, foremost of
which involves the nagging allegation that he is a jueteng lord.
Journalists from the region have
long referred to the alleged links
of Sanchez to the illegal game.
When he won the gubernatorial seat last year, among the
first questions the local media
there asked was on Sanchez’s
supposed jueteng connections. He and his supporters
have repeatedly denied this. In
the local paper
Batangan, one of
his key campaign
personnel and
present provincial
administrator,
Ronnie Geron,
was quoted as
saying, “Arman is
not into jueteng.”
Geron, however,
said that his boss
was a partner in
an “online sports
betting” venture,
although he also
said Sanchez would soon divest
himself of his interests in that
business.
In his reply to the PCIJ’s queries, Sanchez himself says, “We
reiterate that we do not know
anything about jueteng.” But
he also says, “We have been
very consistent in our stand for
its legalization, from the time
I became mayor, during the
two terms that I served in Sto.
Tomas and up to the time I was
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
But even as she runs, she
has not stopped doing her job.
She has been able to file a few
stories since leaving Batangas,
doing research, speaking to
sources by phone or meeting
up with them. Once she has all
her materials ready, she finds an
elected Governor. Now that it
has stopped, we are hoping that
the issue would be laid to rest.”
For sure, Sanchez, who,
based on his own assets statement, is worth at least P90 million, does not comport himself
like a lord—not even a jueteng
lord. This is even though he was,
by many accounts, already rich
by the time he entered politics
and became mayor of Sto.
Tomas in 1998. Educated as a
mechanical engineer, Sanchez
worked in Saudi Arabia in the
1980s before coming back and
reportedly starting several businesses, among them construction firms, a travel agency, and
a security agency. But in the
conjugal 2004 statement of assets and liabilities he filed with
his wife Edna, at present the
Sto. Tomas mayor, no business
interests appear.
Although wealthy, the portly
governor prefers comfort to
class. Those who know him well
say that even while at work at
the capitol, he likes to wear a
kamiseta (sleeveless undershirt), a pair of loose shorts,
and flipflops. Like many of his
provincemates, he also tends to
talk loudly, as if always gearing
for a fight.
Which is just as well. The
national dailies say that in fact
Sanchez is in a “brawl” with
his own vice governor, who will
not let go of the jueteng issue,
aside from other things. In the
prefatory statement in the graft
case he filed before the Ombudsman in early September,
Vice Governor Richard ‘Ricky’
JOURNALIST AT RISK
Internet café where she writes
her pieces and then submits
them by email. She says she has
not been back in Batangas since
she left the province, contrary to
claims by the governor that she
has even been seen windowshopping there.
Magsino-Lubis says she is
tired, of course. She wants to
be able to use her own name
again whenever she checks into
an inn, a hotel, a hostel. She
longs to be able to walk the
streets without having to wear a
baseball cap. When she sits in a
café, she wants to enjoy her cup
of barako without having to keep
looking at the door every time
someone comes in.
For now, however, it has to
be this way if she wants to be
able to go back alive to Batangas
and her husband. After all, the
Recto even says that Sanchez is
“widely known” to be a jueteng
lord not just in Batangas, “but
nationwide.” According to Recto,
Sto. Tomas has been known
as the “center of (Sanchez’s)
jueteng operations for the last
20 years.”
Earlier this year, Sanchez’s
name had also surfaced in lists
of government officials with alleged jueteng links. Drawn up by
the Department of Justice and
the People’s Crusade Against
Jueteng, these lists were partly
why Sanchez was summoned
last June to the Senate hearings
on jueteng. But Sanchez told
the Senate that he would be in
Japan on a business trip at the
time and could not make it. He
was not summoned again.
Recto’s case against
Sanchez, however, is not really
about jueteng. Rather, it alleges
that the governor “and his 15
co-conspirators” are carrying out
a P350-million real property tax
computerization project under
anomalous circumstances, rigging the bid and awarding the
deal to a “dummy” corporation,
the Automated Data Processing Technologies Inc. (ADPT),
purportedly owned by Sanchez
himself.
The governor dismisses
Recto’s findings of irregularities, saying they are “at best a
flawed opinion.” Sanchez says
all of capitol’s projects, including the computerization, have
gone through all the procedures
laid out in the law. He also says,
“(The) final step mandated by
the New Procurement Law is the
subject of her investigations is no
longer the college dean who told
her—the editor-in-chief of the
school paper—that she would
not be allowed to graduate unless she donated a karaoke to the
dean’s office. This time around,
whether or not she is right about
who wants her dead, there is
no doubt that she is up against
a far more powerful figure. But
Magsino-Lubis says, “Politicians
can only stay so long in office.
I’ll be a journalist forever.”
A JUETENG PAST
It’s actually rather ironic that
she came to writing exposés
on jueteng, since her maternal
grandfather was one of the game’s
operators. She has vivid childhood
memories of policemen knocking on their door at two in the
morning to “collect.” She recalls,
“My lolo would give P5,000. The
police would leave with a goat in
tow as well.”
Her mother was an avid
jueteng player, too, placing
bets every morning. But that
was then. Now Magsino-Lubis’s
mother no longer plays the
game, concentrating instead on
running the family restaurant
and pig farm. Magsino-Lubis
says her parents and four siblings are among her sources of
courage. She says, “My family
has three words for me: ‘Kaya
mo ‘yan (You can do it)’.”
She is also reassured that her
case is being watched closely
by local organizations such as
the CMFR and the Philippine
Press Institute, as well as international groups like the CPJ
and the International Freedom
of Expression Exchange. She
is hoping, she says, that letting
more people know about the
threats against her will lessen the
chances of her being hurt.
In addition, Magsino-Lubis is
able to count on the support of the
Church. Lipa Archbishop Ramon
Arguelles had offered her refuge
months ago, suggesting she go to
the Canossa convent in Lipa. But
Magsino-Lubis, while grateful for
the gesture, did not want to be
cloistered. “I wouldn’t be able to
work there,” she says. The mere
thought of being unable to practice her profession is a nightmare
for her, since she says she has tons
and tons to write about.
And write she will, although
she wishes that soon she will
be able to do so back home in
Batangas, in her farm, with her
husband and the birds that greet
them every morning. i
that he was merely running after
the governor’s seat, Recto told
the magazine, “I’ve been through
that.” He stressed, “If my allegations happen to be true,
whatever my motivations are,
please forgive me.” Later that
month, when the suspension order for the governor that he was
expecting did not come, Recto
called for a press conference in
Manila and repeated the claims
he makes in his graft case. Lipa
Archbishop Ramon Arguelles sat
beside the vice governor and
was later described by newspapers as having rebuked Sanchez
for “graft and corruption, the
atmosphere of fear, and the
spread of vice” in the province.
Sanchez has since told
PCIJ that “if given a chance to
meet and converse with (the
Archbishop), I am certain that
he would completely change his
preconceived apprehensions
about me.”
Sanchez does have his own
set of admirers, among them
Batangan’s Sonny Atienza, who in
a 2004 column praised the new
governor for his “definite goals
and objectives,” including a plan
to rid the province of drug abuse.
Atienza also cited Sanchez’s successful move to rid the bureaucracy of “nonperforming assets”
and have capitol personnel
practice strict observance of office hours. And, wrote Atienza, in
just a matter of one or two days,
Sanchez was even able to clear
the roads leading to the capitol of
parked jeepneys that had robbed
other motorists and pedestrians
of needed space.
The governor, however,
seems to have had a harder
time fending off all sorts of
allegations, such as cheating in
the 2004 elections. In response
to a protest lodged by losing
candidate Rosario Apacible,
who placed second in a field of
seven, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) began a recount
of the gubernatorial votes from
some 2,000 precincts across
the province. Apacible alleges
that Sanchez’s winning margin
of some 60,000 votes was
merely the result of fraud, including the use of dagdag-bawas
(vote-padding and –shaving).
As of this writing, the Comelec has completed a recount of
just some 600 precincts. The
recount was suspended at the
end of September after Comelec
personnel discovered around
90 empty ballot boxes from the
municipality of Padre Garcia.
– Vinia Datinguinoo
Trouble in the capitol. Gov.
Sanchez (front row, third from left)
presides over the launching of his
political coalition just outside the
Batangas provincial capitol.
review process now being done
by the (Commission on Audit).”
In earlier denials of wrongdoing published in local newspapers, capitol officials defending
the contract said that all documents pertaining to the contract
were immediately turned over to
COA after the first payment was
made. Sanchez now says, “We
are asking everybody to simmer
down a little bit and just wait for
(COA’s) findings.”
But Recto retorts that the
documents given to COA had
already been sanitized. “I think
they pulled out the papers after
Mei’s story and redid the whole
thing,” Recto says, referring to
Magsino-Lubis’s Inquirer report
that questioned how ADPT could
have won the contract when the
company had not even been
born yet at the time that the payment for it was obligated.
Asked by Newsbreak in September about public perception
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
23
BATTLE OF THE
BILLBOARDS
T
CHARLENE DY
HEY’RE BIG and
bold, but Metro
Manila’s billboards
aren’t exactly beautiful, at least not to
everyone. These
days one billboard
has caught the city’s attention,
and few have had nice words for
it just yet. One irate motorist even
called up a radio station to ask,
“Can I do anything about the fact
that when you’re going south on
Edsa on the Guadalupe Bridge,
there’s a big moving screen, and
it’s glaring, even distracting, and
might cause traffic accidents?”
The radio host’s reply: “Well, I
think it’s owned by the city of
Makati.”
It turns out the electronic
billboard in question is only a
“joint venture” between the city
of Makati and Dream Advertising, which owns it. Dream
Advertising, with the help of
Korean partners, brought LED
(light emitting diode) technology recently to Manila. Since the
billboard was put up this year, it
has attracted controversy along
24
with ad placements. Motorists
have griped about its brightness,
billboard suppliers complain
that it blocks the advertisements
behind it, environmentalists dislike that its foundation was built
on a former public park. It also
turns out that it went up after
Makati’s local government had
already issued a memorandum
prohibiting any billboard permits
to be granted until a new set of
ordinances—the Makati City Billboard Masterplan—takes effect.
Makati City Building Inspector
Ruel Almazan says the plans for
the billboard had been submitted
before the memorandum was issued, which was why it was able
to clinch a permit. He also says
the billboard had been a donation
to the city. Engineer Annabelle
Maniego, meanwhile, says that
there had been a special resolution granted for the LED, adding
that the display is “supposed to be
for Makati City programs.”
On the same day that she
says this, however, among the
billboard’s 10- or 15- second
spots is a commercial of a golden chicken patty plopping onto
a lettuce-topped bun. It’s an ad
for KFC, which doesn’t seem to
have anything to do with Makati
City programs. To Dream executives, there is no question that
the billboard is commercial, but
its association with Makati City
has caused a great deal of confusion, both for commuters and, it
seems, for city officials.
In any case, the questions surrounding the electronic billboard
make it an ideal poster child—or
problem child—for the ongoing
billboard debate, which is admittedly getting to be more one-sided
as each day passes: just about everyone has something bad to say
about them. Just about everyone,
however, also believes there’s
profit to be made (and being
made) in those giant signs.
Not that there’s anything bad
about commerce per se. People
like environmentalist Odette
Alcantara, however, say that
the resulting mushrooming of
billboards is an ethical issue, in
part because they mar the natural city skyline. Alcantara is the
convener of the Anti-Billboard
Coalition or ABC, a group of
about 30 motorists, journalists,
lawyers, greenies, and other
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
concerned citizens. “I want to
make it clear,” she announces.
“I’m not against billboards. I’m
against billboards in the wrong
place. I’m anti-space abuse.” For
Alcantara, the billboard boom
infringes on public space: the
open air, the landscape, things
she feels belong to everyone,
not just outdoor-media suppliers and advertising agencies.
She also says, “They are traffic
hazards. They supplant the road
signs!” There are also issues
regarding aesthetics, offensive
content, and structural safety.
These can be difficult to
quantify. No studies have been
conducted that show whether
traffic accidents are caused by
billboards, for instance, and offensiveness is subjective. While
one viewer may see a billboard of
a bare-chested hunk in low-riding denims as lascivious, another
might consider it the highlight of
her—or his—daily commute.
In 2003, the Outdoor Advertising Association of the Philippines
(OAAP) also commissioned a
study that showed only three
percent of media viewers in Metro
Manila had totally “negative” responses to billboards. Alcantara,
however, says numbers are irrelevant. “You don’t win (the debate)
with statistics,” she says. “I want it
discussed on a moral high ground.
This is essentially a moral issue,
an abuse of power.”
MONEY MACHINES
Again, for the cynical, all these
can really be boiled down to that
simple fact of life: money. Or as
media consultant Lloyd Tronco
puts it, the current billboard explosion has roots in changes in market
demographics, improved technology, and competitive prices.
Tronco points out that billboards can connect easily with
target markets because “more
people are mobile nowadays,”
referring to the increasing
number of commuters and
more time spent outside of the
house. There has also been the
advent of digital printing, which
has allowed billboards to be
printed cheaply and quickly
on tarpaulin, a resilient, element-friendly material. Lately,
billboards have been getting
pocket-friendly are as well. According to Carlo Llave, OAAP
chairman and president of media
supplier Fourth Dimension, they
fetched P200 per square-foot
in 1989, when they were first
T H E
introduced in the country. The
peso was still something like 26
to the U.S. dollar then. Today,
tarpaulin billboards cost only
P14 per square foot.
In contrast, “rates are skyrocketing” for other media
(radio, TV, print) advertising,
says Joel Callao, president of
outdoor-media supplier MediaPool. For instance, a 3,000square-foot billboard on a major
route like Edsa would cost about
P200,000 per month. A full-color,
full-page ad in a major daily
newspaper would cost approximately P250,000 on a weekday,
and P300,000 on weekends. A
30-second primetime slot on a
major local channel, meanwhile,
would run about P180,000.
Advertisers aren’t the only
ones who profit from billboards’
affordable rates. Obviously so
do media suppliers, who are
the actual billboard builders and
maintainers; numerous landowners also benefit from renting
out their property.
So money is really being made,
lots of it in fact, although trying
to keep track of just how much
the outdoor-advertising industry
is raking in can be thorny, since
there is no system for measuring
the budgets and revenues of those
connected with it. But Callao
suggests that if one assumes that
the leading firms, such as United
Neon, Carranz, and his own MediaPool, gross some P5 million
each per month, the collective
yearly revenues for the industry’s
top ten earners could reach P600
million a year. There are about 60
other smaller billboard suppliers
within the OAAP, many of whom
earn approximately P2 million a
month, and countless other media suppliers that aren’t affiliated
with the association. Add all the
numbers, and the total take of the
industry could be more than P2
billion a year.
WIN-WIN IN MAKATI?
If only money were everything.
In the case of the electronic billboard, where a single ad account
can mean revenues of as much as
P445,000 a month, the company
that constructed and maintains it
says it has an everybody-wins arrangement with the city government. “It’s an information drive
with the city of Makati,” says
Dream Advertising managing
director Tim Orbos. “We provide
the infrastructure, operation,
and expenses. We get the right
M E T R O P O L I S
to advertise and in return, we
provide free advertisement for
them.” That includes having the
city’s website address printed
underneath the billboard.
Orbos says Makati’s information materials “are still raw,” but
that eventually, 30 percent of
the billboard’s content will be
set aside for the city’s announcements. The rest would be purely
commercial. Already, Dream has
snagged an exclusive contract
with broadcast big boy GMA-7,
which is why the electronic billboard has lately been flashing ads
for the network’s Koreanovela
“Sassy Girl,” along with those for
other shows. Orbos also hastens
to add that the commercial spots
may include “socially relevant
messages” from the likes of the
United Nations, which will enjoy
discounted rates.
The electronic billboard operates from six a.m. to midnight.
Its viewing screen measures
11.5 x 7 meters or 866.5 sq. ft,
although its total size is about
12.5 x 8.5 meters or 1,143.5 sq.
ft. That makes it the largest fullcolor LED billboard in the Philippines, although there have been
bigger traditional billboards.
Recently its brightness has been
toned down in response to motorists’ complaints. But neither
Dream Advertising nor Makati
City looks willing to reduce
its size or relocate it, as other
billboard suppliers are hoping
would happen, since its strategic
placement, has obscured the
billboards behind it. That prime
location, however, allow it to be
viewed by “4.5 million eyeballs”
a day, and that excludes the eyeballs of MRT commuters.
QUESTIONS ABOUT
SAFETY
At least no one is hyperventilating yet about it being possibly
unsafe, structurally speaking. In
pre-tarpaulin days, when billboards were made out of painted
galvanized sheets pieced together
on wooden and metal frames,
people harped about the tendency of such signs to topple over
during an earthquake, or for a
particularly nasty typhoon to tear
the sheets off their frames and
have them flying about, ready to
scalp some hapless passerby.
The tarpaulin billboard was
supposed to be relatively free
of similar worries. But then in
mid-September, the edge of one
such sign, located somewhere
between the MRT Cubao and
Kamuning stations, ripped and
went unfixed by the media supplier Big Board, in violation of
building code regulations. Three
days after, strong winds tore the
tarpaulin completely free from
its frame and then carried it far
enough to get snagged on the
power cable of an oncoming
train. As it dragged on the line,
it caught fire, disrupting MRT
operations for eight hours, or
the equivalent of P4 million in
lost revenues. Fortunately, no
one was hurt, but there were a
lot of frayed nerves among MRT
officials and commuters alike.
For legislators, structural safety is the most crucial billboard
issue. Most billboard legislation
is based on the National Building Code, whose guidelines are
vague at best. In drafting Bill 1714
or the Billboard Blight Act, Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago
tried to address this shortcoming
as well as the fact that, at present,
local governments rely too heavily on the outdoor-advertising
industry to self-regulate.
Defensor-Santiago’s bill offers
specifications on distance from
roadways, intersections, and traffic lights, number of billboards
allowed within a given area,
and restrictions on size (such
as, “No billboard shall exceed
300 square feet in total surface
display area”), with the intent of
maintaining safety. The bill also
seeks to be applied to all streets,
not just national roads, meaning
it would supersede the authority
of both the Department of Public
Works and Highways (DPWH)
and local governments. “What
we’re doing here,” says Camille
Sevilla, legislative staff officer
for Defensor-Santiago, “is giving
national standard that will make
it mandatory for local public
officials to follow. We’re setting
standards for safety, structure.”
Media consultant Tronco
says some regulations the senator is asking for are “excessive”
and “not feasible,” for example,
billboard sizes that are too
small, which might result more
accidents due to motorists’ inability to read the print. The
OAAP’s position paper on the
bill is somewhat more diplomatic. While it takes issue with
Santiago’s characterization of the
billboard industry as a “blight,”
it agreed with many of the proposal’s criticisms about current
billboard legislation, adding that
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
there was much “confusion as
to which government agency”
implements which laws.
ILLICIT “MAGIC”
Still, even MediaPool’s Callao
says that the industry needs to be
more rigorous in self-regulation.
“Because of high consumerism in
the Philippines,” he says, “we (the
ad industry) tend to neglect our
social responsibilities as long as it
will favor ‘my brand’…We have to
regulate ourselves, we have to not
respond to competition. Some of
our members, even if they know
it’s illegal, they will still go for it
(erecting billboards).”
This is largely why, say other
industry insiders who decline to
be identified, a common practice
nowadays is to post smaller
billboards on street lamps and
pedestrian overpasses, even
though section 2001 of the National Building Code prohibits
outdoor advertisement on “street
furniture” on any national roads.
The insiders add that personnel
and officials of national government agencies and local governments often benefit financially
from such legal indiscretions, to
the tune of several hundred million pesos a year. (One DPWH
architect refers to such arrangements as “hocus-pocus.”)
Back at the Makati City Hall,
a rummage through billboard
records with Almazan, who is
responsible for checking billboards for permits and is authorized to demolish those without
proper paperwork, yields these
statistics: of 149 billboards, 69
have permits, 72 do not, and
eight await verification. It’s clear
laws are being ignored; since
February 2004, Almazan has
demolished 59 billboards.
In the meantime, Dream
Advertising is dreaming up more
electronic billboards for Metro
Manila. Orbos says the benefits of having such billboards
include “real-time” value, since
the displays can easily be altered
to accommodate, say, urgent
public announcements. He says
his company is planning more
joint ventures with other local
governments. So far, five have
shown interest. i
Charlene Dy has worked in Hong
Kong, New York, Massachusetts,
and most recently in Shanghai,
where she was a columnist, restaurant critic, and magazine
editor.
25
W O M E N
B
&
TESS BACALLA
ANDA ACEH,
Indonesia
RAHMI IS about
14,
but
has
already lost the
world she knew.
One can see it
in her sad, soulful eyes, and in
her inability to smile. And the
reason is evident just by surveying
what surrounds her here in this
northwestern Sumatran city. Nearly
a year after the powerful Dec. 26
earthquake struck and triggered
tsunamis in several parts of Asia,
this once bustling coastal city
remains desolate. In many areas,
piles of rubble are the only proof
that there were once houses and
buildings there while in others,
muddy boats scattered willy-nilly
far from the shore show just how
strong the waves that swept into
Banda Aceh were. There are also
places where the stench of death
still hangs in the air, even as a few
men sort through the debris.
Save for a younger brother,
Rahmi is all that is left of her
family. She doesn’t know it yet,
but Aceh’s female population
in particular has been just as
decimated. In fact, the tsunami
didn’t just flatten this provincial
capital and almost erased it
from the map. It also altered the
demographics of a place that
was already a man’s world to
begin with, and may have paved
the way for a hard future for
Rahmi, a life that will be more
difficult than what her mother or
grandmother had experienced.
The total death toll from the
tsunamis that swamped coastal
communities in Indonesia, Sri
Lanka, Burma, Thailand, India, and
seven other countries was 220,000.
Based on the Indonesia National
Disaster Coordinating Board or
NDCB, more than half of those
deaths were from Aceh. Excluded
in these figures, however, are the
missing, which may be far more
than the fatalities.
In many areas, including
Aceh, most of the missing or
dead are women. In five villages
in Aceh’s Lampu’uk subdistrict,
the women’s group Flower
Aceh says only 40 of the 750
survivors from a population of
5,500 are women. Other local
nongovernmental organizations
and international aid groups have
found similar statistics in other
tsunami-affected communities in
26
D I S A S T E R
the province. The international
relief group Oxfam says that in
four villages in Aceh Besar district,
male survivors outnumber the
females by a ratio of three to
one. In four villages in North
Aceh, the female death toll made
up 70 percent of the fatalities. In
Kuala Cangkoy, 80 percent of
the dead were female.
Not
surprisingly,
men
outnumber the women in the
camps and barracks set up for
“internally displaced people”
or IDPs. International and local
NGOs, as well as U.N. agencies,
worry that if what is happening in
these camps and barracks is any
indication, the Acehnese women
and girls who survived the deadly
waves should brace themselves
for what can lie ahead.
HEAVIER BURDENS,
HEIGHTENED RISKS
OF ABUSE
As in other Asian societies, women
are the traditional caregivers in
Aceh, and perform the household
chores. They still perform such
tasks in the camps, but these days
their burden has become heavier
because of the sheer number
of men and children they are
expected to serve and look after.
Before the tsunami, each Acehnese
household could probably count
on more than a pair of female
hands to do the chores. Today
not only is that no longer true,
women and girls are expected
to help men who are not their
relatives, if only because Acehnese
males are “embarrassed to be seen
doing housework,” says Tesmiati
Emsa, who heads a women’s
NGO based here. Another relief
worker says some widowers left
with children to look after simply
could not cope with the idea of
becoming caregivers even to their
own offspring that they readily
gave these up to an orphanage.
Meanwhile,
NGOs
and
international aid agencies say
many of the women have been
subjected to sexual harassment
and abuse, while some have
found themselves becoming
victims of physical violence
wielded by bored or frustrated
men. Erwin Setiawan of Flower
Aceh says men are lashing out
partly because of the stressful
conditions in the barracks where
there is a lack of privacy and
where they are unable to practice
their usual means of livelihood.
But he offers no explanation why
women, who are enduring the
same conditions, are not reacting
in the same way and instead are
made to bear the brunt of the
men’s pent-up emotions.
In fact, life in the camps and
the barracks is even more stressful
for the women because, say
several observers, their needs were
not taken into consideration in
designing these temporary shelters.
For instance, there are no separate
toilets for men and women. Many
of the toilets have no roofs or are
made from just plastic sheets or
sacks, through which peepholes
could easily be cut.
“I heard a lot of cases of men
peeping while women were taking
a bath in their temporary shelters,”
says MB Wijaksana, editor in
chief of Journal Perempuan, a
Jakarta-based women’s magazine.
He says he tried to check with
the police if they were aware of
these cases, which he describes as
forms of sexual harassment, and
found that the authorities had
somehow managed to escape
hearing about them.
Personal supplies such as
underwear and sanitary napkins
have also apparently been
excluded from the list of basic
needs provided in the shelters.
The lack of supply of long-sleeved
shirts and headscarves—essential
to Acehnese women, who are
predominantly Muslim like the
majority of Indonesians—has
remained unchecked. In a press
statement, the U.N. Population
Fund (UNFPA) observed that in
the face of such unmet needs,
“women and girls become reluctant
to carry out public activities and
even access basic needs and
humanitarian assistance.”
As if they didn’t have enough
problems, the women in the
shelters have also had to put
up with the lack of clean water,
which means they are usually
forced to fetch some elsewhere
and lug it back to their quarters.
But according to UNFPA
information officer in Indonesia
Maria Hulupi, some barracks are
in areas that make it dangerous
for women to venture outside.
As it is, the crowded, maledominated environment has
meant that women and girls
have had to put up with being
constantly teased and stared at.
RES
AM
FORCED MARRIAGES
The setup of many of the shelters—with related men and women staying in the same tent or room
together—has even lent itself to a
Surviving the tsunami. Most of
the victims of the tidal wave that
killed tens of thousands in the
Indonesian province of Aceh last
December were women.
SILIENCE
MID RUIN
W O M E N
trend many of the female refugees
do not welcome at all: forced
marriages. Samsidar, who heads
a subcommittee of the National
Commission on Violence against
Women, says young women are
being pressured to marry males
staying in the same tents or barracks. Such marriages have become “an informal rule,” she says.
Journalist Wijaksana, for his part,
says that the pressure to marry is
greater on young single women
because he says that in Aceh, virgins are preferred to widows, who
tend to be looked down upon.
“For men the loss of wife
seems a simple thing,” he adds.
Besides, says Wijaksana, the
shari’ah law forbids women from
remarrying within three months
of the deaths of their spouses.
Men can remarry any time. Nana
of the Humanist Institute for
Cooperation with Developing
Countries (Hivos) cites the case
of a man in Malaboh on the
Sumatran coast who married his
sister-in-law only a week after
his wife disappeared as a result
of the tsunami. He thought she
was dead, says Nana. A month
later, the wife resurfaced.
Oxfam says that forced marriage has serious implications on
the education, livelihood, and
reproductive health especially of
young women. “Surviving women
may also be encouraged to have
more children, with shorter intervals between them, to replace
those lost by the community,” it
also says. “Again, this has consequences for their reproductive
health and their ability to earn an
independent income.”
Compared to the men, there
are fewer Acehnese women who
have had some education, since
families give priority to sending
the male children to school. This
practice is rooted in the belief
that the women’s best place is the
home—even though they are not
recognized as household heads.
Hivos’s Nana says some of the
women in the shelters who participate in cash-for-work activities
have admitted to her that all they
could do was cry when their husbands would not let them leave for
work without first making sure that
their homes were in order. Such
was their fate, the women said.
The harsh truth is that the
social position of women in Aceh
accounts for their disproportionate number of deaths, say local
and international NGO workers.
Because the tsunami smothered
28
&
D I S A S T E R
Double burden. Acehnese
women take part in cash-forwork activities organized in
the refugees camps, but they
have to do the housework and
take care of children as well.
the province on a Sunday, most
of the women and children were
at home while many of the men
were out—socializing, running errands, or fishing. Other men had
also not returned home for quite
some time because their jobs were
elsewhere. Ironically, 70 percent
of Aceh’s pre-tsunami population
consisted of women, because men
were either being killed or were
fleeing the conflict between the
Indonesian military and separatist
Free Aceh Movement or GAM.
But most Acehnese women,
unlike the men, do not know
how to climb trees or swim, say
some observers. This made it
difficult for them to escape the
raging waters of December 26.
Yet even those who did know
how to climb trees or could swim
perished in the end because they
were either dragged down by
the sheer weight of the children
and other family members that
they tried so hard to save—in
keeping with their traditional role
as caregivers—or succumbed
eventually to fatigue. Observers
theorize that the long, flowing
clothing that cover their arms and
legs restricted the movement of
the Acehnese women, frustrating
their escape from the tsunami.
FINDING THEIR VOICE
Aid worker Nana of Hivos fears
that Aceh’s women survivors
could only become a weaker
force now that their numbers
have been diminished greatly,
while men could emerge more
dominant. Before the tsunami,
women were already reluctant
to speak, especially in public
gatherings. Even now, despite
all the hardships they have had
to endure in postdisaster Aceh,
many women are hesitant to
voice out their concerns.
But gender and poverty expert
Yulfita Rahardjo says Acehnese
women can strengthen their
position if only they could be
made aware of their rights. She
concedes, though, that men will
have to be educated as well on
gender issues. In a gender training she conducted a few months
ago in Jakarta for the subdistrict
heads and planners in Aceh, she
says it was evident that the participants—mostly male—did not
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
understand the concept of gender
and even blamed the women if
they were not being heard, saying
the women refused to talk.
Yet women in Aceh have not
entirely kept mum about their
needs and aspirations. Some, for
example, have expressed their
desire to go back to their homes
and start a small-scale business so
they could rebuild their lives.
Nani Zulminarni, head of the
women’s rights group Pekka, says
the women in the districts where
her organization operates were
unanimous in saying that they
did not want to be dependent on
others. Alongside their yearning
to work is their dream to have a
house again, a symbol of dignity,
especially for Acehnese women.
“No one expressed desperation
and hopelessness,” says Zulminarni,
who notes that providing livelihood
is a very good starting point for
empowering women. She says the
grassroots women’s groups Pekka
has helped have gained so much
respect that their members are now
being invited to important community gatherings. Says Zulminarni:
“It’s a good sign.”
Sylvia Agustina, program officer
of the U.N. Development Fund for
Women (Unifem) says her vision
for her fellow Acehnese women is
not just for them to return to their
“normal” lives. Agustina, who also
lost a number of her loved ones to
the tsunami, says, “I want them to
have an option.” i
Research for this story was funded by a fellowship from the
Southeast Asian Press Alliance
(SEAPA).
Member: Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (Deposits insured up to P250,000)
VOLUNTEERS FOR THE
ENVIRONMENT. Many
young people are joining the
innovative protest actions
of Greenpeace, where they
are initiated to volunteerism
(this photo and below).
A GIFT OF SELF
U
.P. SOCIOLOGY
professor Randy
David rarely talks
about his family in his popular column in the
Philippine Daily
Inquirer, but sometime last year,
he wrote about his youngest
daughter, Jika. By then already in
her late 20s and enjoying a solid
career at a famous transnational
conglomerate, Jika had surprised
her parents by announcing she
was putting that part of her life
on hold because she had applied
to be part of the Jesuit Volunteers
Philippines (JVP). Jika was sent to
Palawan, where she taught math
to elementary and high school
girls enrolled in a distance education program.
It was a pleased David who
wrote about his daughter’s decision to volunteer. Other parents
would probably have reacted
differently, at the very least expressing puzzlement at why
someone still young and who had
everything going for her would
suddenly up and leave to work
somewhere for free (JVP provides
modest living allowances). Yet
here is this very pleasant fact: even
in this increasingly consumerist
and cynical society, thousands
of youths are still volunteering,
oftentimes while they are still in
school, but sometimes even when
they are already earning consider-
30
able sums, as Jika David was.
This is evident enough in
political rallies, where earnest
young faces far outnumber those
lined with age. But many more
are toiling in relative obscurity,
sometimes for just a couple of
hours at a time in underserved
communities in the city, others
for months or even a year in a
remote barangay.
Volunteering has become so
popular, there is now even a
website called ivolunteer (http://
www.ivolunteer.ph) that “seeks
to promote volunteerism for
social development.” At last
count, the site listed more than
60 organizations, from Davao to
Ilocos. Many more are out there,
relatively unknown but engaging
the youth in activities beyond the
usual gimik or nights out with
their katropa.
Volunteerism or the giving
of self for the good of others
is actually a neat fit in a country where the individual is not
recognized unless he or she is
part of a group. It is also an easy
dovetail to the traditional Filipino
concept of bayanihan or of a
community working together. “It
is part of the Filipino value system, the motivating factor being
the kaluluwa (soul) and budhi
(conscience) , and that part of our
Pagkataong Filipino (being Filipino) is pakikipag-kapwa (being
good to others),” say academics
Grace Aguiling Dalisay, Jay Yacat,
and Atoy Navarro in the book
Extending the Self: Volunteering
as Pakikipag-kapwa. They argue
that everything starts from the
individual as part of a family.
“Sambahayan is seen as the foundation of pamayanan, samahan,
and sambayanan,” they say,
emphasizing the importance of
the family to the community and
the country.
Dalisay and company had actually done a study that looked into
what made individual volunteers
tick. Foremost among the motivations was the element of social
compassion and its ingrained
feel-good effect. Volunteers also
talked about commitment to the
cause, sense of satisfaction and
achievement derived from continued service, sense of purpose
and personal meaning, and faith.
Ironically, it also turned out that
the giving of self usually meant
benefits such as self-discovery,
self-enhancement, and the realization of one’s true worth.
RANDY DAVID didn’t say what
had prompted Jika to join the
JVP, although he did remember
asking her at one point if she
was happy at work. He had been
worried about her, since she
seemed to be too preoccupied
with her job and was putting in
extra-long hours that had her going home very late at night.
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
“My inquiry surprised her,”
wrote David. “I realized I was
talking to a member of a new
generation of highly disciplined
and driven young people who
worked hard and partied hard.”
“Frugal to a fault, she saved a big
part of her earnings for graduate
studies abroad as well as for a
yearly vacation to some faraway
place,” said Jika’s father. “She liked
going out with friends on Friday
and Saturday evenings. She was
bourgeois in every way. Watching
her steady transformation into a
corporate yuppie, I once ironically
remarked to my wife that perhaps
we were going to have, at last, a
real capitalist in the family. Now I
know I was way off the mark.”
It could very well be that the
young David had been inspired
by the example of her parents,
who are both academics yet well
known in the NGO community.
But Jika’s father also recalled that
she had always wanted to be a
teacher, a dream derailed somewhat by her early success in the
corporate world. Then again, she
could have just decided simply to
try helping bring change—even
just by a little bit—in a country
that has too long a list of woes.
Her father also said nothing
about what she had been involved
in during college. But for sure,
aside from her family, Jika’s alma
mater, the University of the Philippines (UP), offered her more than
enough examples of youths who
were trying to make a difference
in their own small way. The volunteer organization Ugnayan sa
Pahinungod (literally Self-offering
Network), for instance, has been
Y O U T H
attracting students since it was
formed in UP in 1994. By the late
1990s, it was sending more than
1,000 volunteers a year in different parts of the country, and collaborating with the Department of
Social Welfare and Development
and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, as
well as organizations such as Red
Cross, the Magsaysay Agutaya
Foundation, and the UP-based
Kontra-Gapi.
Pahinungod used to get at
least P1 million from congressional pork-barrel funds. But
that stopped in 2001, and the
organization has since managed
to survive by having the participating colleges in the UP system
look for their own funding. Today,
Pahinungod has even more volunteers. In UP Manila alone, it has
a pool of 2,000.
Lilibeth ‘Lib’ Perez is one of
Pahinungod’s newest recruits.
Still in the early stages of training,
she sets aside two to three hours
a week for seminars and workshops. The 17-year-old social science student is currently learning
to make cards, and is scheduled
to share those skills later with
Manila’s streetchildren. But what
she is really looking forward to is
the summer immersion program
where she and other Pahinungod
volunteers will live for a month in
poor villages in Southern Luzon.
Long after graduation, many
UP alumni are still helping with
Pahinungod projects. But students remain the lifeblood of the
organization. If not for anything
else, the idealism of youth fuels
their enthusiasm. But Oscar Ferrer, pioneering coordinator of
Pahinungod at the UP Diliman
campus, also explains, “Most
young people in school usually
do not have that much commitment in the household. Save
for the usual responsibilities of
helping out in housework, most
of them often find themselves
with a lot of time to hang out,
or to discern and examine their
purpose in life and their future.
Volunteer work allows them not
only to bond with their peers,
it also reinforces their sense of
worth and self-respect and gives
them deep regard for other
people.”
BECAUSE IT asks for at least
a year of service from its volunteers, the Ateneo-based JVP
attracts mostly new graduates
who want to help others before
V O L U N T E E R S
focusing on their careers. Floyd
‘Noy-Noy’ Tena was a 23-yearold Ateneo de Naga graduate
when he was sent by the JVP
to Compostela Valley in 2001 as
a “senior coalition builder.” In
lay terms, Tena was supposed
to help residents and local officials work together to develop
their areas. That could have
been a formidable task even for
the most seasoned community
organizer, but Tena more than
held up gracefully, and even
took to sliding through muddy
roads with much joy.
Perhaps it helped that just
several weeks after arriving in
Compostela, it had dawned on
Tena why he was there. In a
letter excerpted at the ivolunteer
website, he wrote, “When I entered the JVP, one of my reasons
was service. That simple. But
my everyday ‘journey’ here has
deepened the meaning and my
experience of that service—it is a
mission. A mission to serve Him
in any way possible. A mission
that shows us that God can be
found not only in church or in the
oratory but also in every person
we encounter each day. A mission to serve—service that comes
from the giving of self, giving that
comes from love that is lubos,
buhos, ubos (the utmost).”
Krishna Jennifer Sonza, better
known as ‘Kang,’ was in the same
JVP batch as Tena. Then a 20-yearold graduate of Ateneo de Davao,
Sonza was assigned as a basic
literacy facilitator to the lumad
children of Bindum, Bukidnon
where, the JVP said, there was no
electricity but plenty of “natural
water resources.” In her letters,
Sonza’s excitement over being
a Jesuit volunteer was palpable.
But one particular letter had her
confessing doubts.
“Why am I here if they can’t
seem to learn the lessons I am
teaching them?” she wrote in 2001.
“Why am I teaching these kids
who seem to be so dense? Why?
Why? I was asking myself what
my purpose was in this area. Then
I suddenly remembered I was
inside my classroom and my students were all staring at me. And
I mean staring as if to ask, now
why is ate (older sister) seemingly
out of sorts? Nahiya gyud ako (I
felt so ashamed). I was looking
for meaning, I was asking why,
and the answer was right there
in front of me. There were the
kids reminding me that hey, we
are the reason why you are here.”
WITH THE sheer number of organizations involved in volunteer
work and the variety of situations that need to be addressed,
anyone who is willing to give up
some time could probably find
something that would suit his
or her interest, skills, and schedule. Apart from campus-based
groups, there are thousands more
sponsored by local communities
and church organizations, as well
as by high-profile groups such
as Greenpeace and Worldwide
Fund for Nature. In the last two
decades alone, organized volunteerism has gained strength,
in part because of the advocacy
of causes such as global poverty, hunger, and HIV/AIDS by
international celebrities (think
Bono and Bob Geldof), and also
because of the increased—and
The Jesuit volunteers call it being
“ruined for life”—but in a good
way, of course.
Jika David may end up being
“ruined for life,” too. Early this
year, her father mentioned her
again in his column, reporting
that she was thinking of extending her stay in Palawan. Randy
David wrote that he and his wife
had been looking forward to seeing their daughter home again,
and so he had tried to convince
Jika that there were other ways
of helping out the girls there in
their studies. Besides, wasn’t she
thinking of getting an MBA?
But Jika had replied that her
life “is going on here perfectly.
It is the first time I have felt that
I am doing something that has
meaning not only for me but
also for other people, like these
Personal journey. For
many young people,
volunteering for social
or civic work is part of
a search for meaning.
welcomed—participation of
NGOs in development work
across the country. Many of those
who volunteer may also have
found inspiration in EDSA 1 and
2, which, despite all the flak they
are now getting, did demonstrate
just what could be accomplished
if people banded together for a
single cause.
Yet while the urge to help
someone in need is probably
innate in everyone, volunteerism
attracts certain personalities, and
especially those who have a passion to serve people and have
good interpersonal skills. But not
only do many youths volunteer
anyway, a significant number of
them wind up having careers later
in community service or in professions that emphasize service such
as teaching and yes, journalism.
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
girls who have not had the same
chances in life.”
Her father then recounted that
when he and Jika’s mother had
paid her a visit months before,
the founder of the school where
she was assigned had thanked
them. Apparently, Jika and another female volunteer were not
only teaching the girls Math and
English, they were also providing
their students with “alternative
images of what they can be.”
And so, wrote David, “my heart
tells me she has chosen the right
path. For all the dark thoughts we
often harbor about our country,”
said Jika David’s proud, proud
father, “I truly think we are far
from doomed as a nation. Our
children give us hope.” i
With reporting by Tess Raposas.
31
i
> Pinoy Political Humor
Master impersonator. In
2004, Willie Nep did uncanny
impressions of Ping Lacson (left),
FPJ (standing, center), and Raul
Roco (extreme right). Below,
Tessie Tomas is best remembered
for being “Meldita.”
Impersonating
Presiden
I
ELVIRA MATA
IT MIGHT have started when this president sang a folk song after what could
only be assumed as great sex. Soon everyone was singing “Pamulinawen” off-key.
Since then, presidential impersonators
have outnumbered presidential wannabes.
There’s always someone spoofing a
president—dead or alive—on TV, during
concerts, Halloween parties, and from time
to time, at people power marches on Edsa.
There are a few who stand out, who
have endured a revolution or two and
became icons. Willie Nepomuceno, Tessie
Tomas, and Jon Santos have been around
longer than some of the presidents and
presidential wannabes (Cory, FVR, Erap,
FPJ, GMA, Roco, Ping, Bro. Eddie, and Eddie Gil) they’ve emulated.
Michael V’s GMA in the top-rated TV
show “Bubble Gang” was more cartoon
than impersonation. He wore a bad wig,
buck teeth, a mole as big as a bug, and to
approximate the president’s size, stayed
32
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
close to the ground with legs bent. He was
hilarious but the presidential task force on
politically correct humor didn’t think so
and it’s been a year since Bitoy morphed
into Gloria.
Rene Boy Facunla, the real person
inside Ate Glow, is the youngest (he’s 24)
and the latest to join this band of Excellencies. He was (and still is) a student at the
University of the Philippines when he first
slipped into GMA’s high-heeled pumps.
This was in January 2001, a few days after
Edsa 2, which ousted Erap and installed
GMA as president. The remarkable thing
about Ate Glow is he looks and sounds
like GMA, even when he’s not performing.
“But I’m taller,” he says.
But then, so is almost everyone else.
For this issue, we decided to do a
forum of these five presidential impersonators—first as themselves and later, as their
favorite presidents.
Confused? So is the country. Deal with it.
I REPORT
Close to tears. Rene
Boy Facunla emotes
as “Ate Glow,” who
keeps her cellphone
with her even in bed.
nts
PHOTO LILEN UY
MAKEUP CATHY CANTADA
HAIR JERRY JAVIER
STYLIST GUADA REYES
SPECIAL THANKS TO MANDY NAVASERO
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
33
> Pinoy Political Humor
Many faces. Michael V
in real life is Beethoven
Bunagan, but he has
other lives as well.
ON THE STREET, YOU ARE OFTEN
MISTAKEN FOR…
Willie Nepomuceno: Not too many
people recognize me immediately but
those who do, jokingly call me Mr.
President, Dolphy, Erap or FPJ and years
earlier, Makoy or His Eminence.
Tessie Tomas: There was a time they called
me Amanda Finida, Imelda, Barbara Tengco.
Ngayon, they call me Teysi because of the
impact of “Teysi ng Tahanan.”
Jon Santos: Wala. When I’m not made
up as any of my characters, I’m quite
unrecognizable. A friend once told me,
though, that if Leonardo DiCaprio and
Reese Witherspoon had an ugly baby
together, that would be me. That person
is no longer my friend.
Michael V: They look around for
cameras checking if they’re on the TV
show “Bitoy’s Funniest Videos.” Before
they used to call me Bebang, a character
I play, or Michael V.
Rene Boy Facunla: Ate Glow. Maraming
tao ang hindi natutuwa kay Gloria, pero
sa akin natutuwa sila. Pinapaabot nila
sa masayang salita ‘yung gusto nilang
ipaabot sa kanya. For example, madalas
ako tanungin, “O Ate Glow, kelan ka ba
bababa sa puwesto? (Many people don’t
appreciate Gloria, but they appreciate me.
They tell me nicely what they want to tell
her. For example, I’m often asked, “O Ate
Glow, when are you resigning?)”
WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT?
Willie: No one really. But since it has
become some sort of social responsibility
for me to do impressions of presidents,
I have to know more about them. In
the process, I found them to be quite
interesting people—Erap, in particular.
Tessie: Bill Clinton. Except for the Monica
Lewinsky episode, he did a good job of
running the country. He was sensible and
he was well-liked.
> WILLIE NEPOMUCENO
Willie Nepomuceno is
best known for his impressions of two dead
presidents—Ferdinand
Marcos and Fernando
Poe Jr. (he won di ba?),
and a chief executive
who’s alive but incarcerated—FPJ’s best friend,
Joseph Estrada.
Willie Nep gently objects to being called “impersonator,” preferring
to call what he does as
34
“impressions.” He says, “Impersonation is simply copying
something. I’d like to think
that I go beyond that. It’s like
‘painting’ an impression of a
scene, situation or character.
What you see is not necessarily the person’s character per
se, but my impression of that
person’s character.”
Willie has been doing
impressions for more than
30 years. As a young boy in
the 1950s, he would imitate
the Reycard Duet, Bobby
Gonzales, and Sylvia la Torre
to amuse his classmates in
Marikina.
He was a fine arts student
at the University of the Philippines when he started doing
his Marcos impressions. An
activist, he would entertain
the crowd before the speeches
against the usual fascists.
Later, he was hired as
a broadcaster for ABSCBN’s “Radyo Patrol,”
and was subsequently
cast as part of the
Jon: Violeta Paderon. She is the president
of the Vilmanians of Lucena Fan Club—
pero last term na niya.
Michael V: Ferdinand Marcos. I’m going to
get a lot of flak for my choice, but during
his time, malinis ang Pilipinas, maayos (the
Philippines was clean and orderly). I also
supported Cory at Edsa, pero after that…
Rene Boy: Siyempre si Gloria. Kasi
binigyan niya ako ng trabaho (Gloria
of course, because she gave me a job).
Without her, I wouldn’t be in showbiz.
WHAT IS YOUR RING TONE?
Willie: “Toreador.” I’ve always enjoyed
classical music and fancied conducting
an invisible orchestra even in my youth.
The opportunity came last year when I
was invited to conduct the entire Manila
Philharmonic Orchestra in a show at the
Aliw Theater. The surprise of my life? The
piece assigned to me was “ Toreador.”
Tessie: “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”
original “Super Laff-In.”
In one of his many interviews, Willie described his first
break in showbiz: “I had a hard
time because the criteria were
different: You had to be tall
and good-looking; talent was
not necessary. My strategy
to break into showbiz was to
imitate the famous—now I’m
stuck in it. I can’t sing in my
own voice, I have to sing in
other people’s voices.”
His last solo show
was “Willie Nep for President” in 2004 where he
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
impersonated most of the
candidates as well as other
characters. Last June, he
did “Hello Garci” during the
Kapihan sa Manila’s 20th
anniversary show.
A few days after his interview with i-report, he flew
to the United States to check
up on Garci’s new look and
to research on compatriot
Leandro Aragoncillo, the first
White House spy.
Nah. He’s there to
do shows and for some
R & R.
The real thing.
Jon Santos does a
thumbs up with the
real Steady Eddie.
Frustration ko maging ballet dancer.
Jon: My beeper doesn’t have one. Pero
i-che-check ko sa Greenhills kung puedeng
magpa-install. Aba, mahirap nang mahuli
sa technology. (But I’m going to check in
Greenhills if it can be installed. Why, you
have to keep up with technology.)
Michael V: The tunes in the video games
“Need for Speed Underground” and “Fight
Night.” May ring tone din ako na boses
ng anak ko (I have a ring tone that’s my
child’s voice).
Rene Boy: Naka silent lagi ang cellphone
ko kaya matagal ako sumagot ng text (My
cell phone’s always on silent mode, that’s
why I’m slow at answering text messages).
WHAT CELLPHONE DO YOU OWN?
Willie: Nokia.
Tessie: Ano ba ‘tong nakasulat? “Samsung
Exciting.” I changed my phone two
years ago. My last phone was a 3210 and
everyone was laughing at me. Bakit ka
TESSIE TOMAS
If Willie Nep is the king of
presidential impersonators, Tessie Tomas is First
Lady. From the late 1980s
to the early ‘90s, Tessie
didn’t just give an excellent
impersonation of Imelda
Marcos, she made Meldita
her own. She was so convincing, she was cast as
Imelda in the TV movie,
“A Dangerous Life,” which
was shown in the United
States in 1988.
pa naka 3210? But it works! Baduy ako sa
telefono. I’m always the last one to change
phones. I have a new phone but it’s still in
the box. I’m so proud to be low-tech.
Jon: Only the latest state-of-the-art beeper
for me. Easycall, but of course! Ako pa.
Michael V: Sony Ericsson P910i. It’s a
fun phone and it does everything—word
processing, voice recording, it has a
camera, a music player, I can make
sketches and save them as files. And
when I dress it up, lagyan ng wig, ngipin
at ilong (put on it a wig, teeth, and a
nose), it can do impersonations. I also
have a Nokia 6630 quad band phone. It’s
handy when you’re always traveling. You
can use it in Japan, Europe, and the U.S.
Rene Boy: Nokia 6600. It was given to me
by Globe president and CEO Gerry Ablaza.
NORANIAN OR VILMANIAN?
Willie: I became a Nora fan in the
early ‘70s. In fact, when I was a virtual
The daughter of radio
legend Laura Hermosa, Tessie star ted in radio when
she was nine years old. She
worked in advertising for 10
years before she got her first
break in showbiz as Amanda
Finida, a spoof of weatherman
Amado Pineda, in the TV gag
show “Champoy.” She also
popularized Barbara Tengco,
socialite wife of a corrupt
congressman in the TV sitcom
“Abangan ang Susunod na
Kabanata.” She followed that
up with a daily morning show
a la “Oprah” called “Teysi ng
Tahanan,” making her the
queen of daytime talk shows
for six years.
Tessie is acknowledged
as the pioneer in stand-up
comedy, paving the way for
comics like Candy Pangilinan,
Allan K, and Tessie’s protégé
Jon Santos. Today she stars in
the top-rated sitcom, “Bahay
Mo Ba ‘To,” on GMA-7 and
hosts a new show, “Pusong
Wagi,” on Channel 11.
unknown in showbiz, I did an oil portrait
depicting her as a grand old lady and my
dedication read, “Fifty years from now
and you’ll still be a Superstar!” I’m more
or less 15 years closer to my prediction.
I wonder if she kept that painting? In the
late ‘80s, however, I was charmed by the
sophisticated personality of Vilma.
Tessie: Nora, I admire as an actress.
Vilma, I admire as an actress and a friend.
Jon: Guess.
Michael V: The V in Michael is for …
Rene Boy: Nora. Kasi she won all the
major acting awards. She’s also been
through a lot.
Just for fun, we asked our impressionists extraordinaire to assume the personality of their favorite president (or First Lady)
and answer a few questions. Everyone
thought it was an easy enough request
except for Jon Santos who was faced with
a quandary, or should we say, quandaries?
She is also involved in
civic work, helping her lessfor tunate town mates in
Catbalogan , Samar, with
education scholarships. In addition, she is the
PRO for Community and Family
Services International (CFSI), an
NGO that helps
women and children displaced
by the war in
Mindanao.
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
Her favorite impersonation is that of Mrs. Pullin, devoted wife to Roger
Pullin, a marine-biologistcum-jazz-musician.
TT describes their
relationship: “He’s
a ver y Brit husband, coping with
a wacky wife who’s
moody but very loving, charming, and
whom he can ask
to make coffee and
look after him when
he’s sick.”
<
35
i
> Pinoy Political Humor
Double trouble. Willie
Nep is hilarious as FPJ’s
double, while Tessie
Tomas’s Meldita is the
caricature of a caricature.
He wanted to do all presidents.
He explained, “It’s so difficult to
choose. Love ko silang lahat—Tita Koree,
Heneral Eddie, Syerrap, and Tita Glorring. It’s like asking me to choose my
favorite child. They are all so fascinating
and colorful. Literally. Kasi may Mellow
Yellow (Koree), Kleen and Green (Eddie), at may dalawang Pretty Im-peach
(Syerrap and Glorring). I guess depending on the topic, iba-iba sa kanila ang
pumo-possess sa akin.”
Since he put it that way—Jon, be
yourselves. As for the rest of the
presidential posse, the following is their
impression of the state of the nation.
WHAT ARE THE TOP THREE PROBLEMS OF THE COUNTRY?
Willie channeling Erap: The top three
problems of the country are breakfast,
lunch, and dinner. There’s not enough
food at the Filipino family’s table from
sun up to sundown. They deserve a
decent meal even on a small budget. I
propose a linkage with the food chains
to provide Pinoys with value meals—
may softdrinks na, may French fries pa!
Tessie internalizing Meldita: (Sings)
Don’t cry for me Argentina... Top three
problems? National amnesia. Yung may
kasalanan today, bukas nakalimutan at
>
36
JON SANTOS
Jon Santos has two new
preoccupations: getting
to know Okrah, a new
character he’s developing based on talk show
queen Oprah Winfr ey,
and the search for the
perfect murse.
A murse, as defined
by urbandictionary.com,
is a male nurse. It is
also a man’s purse, of
which Jon has six. But
napatawad na natin. (Someone may be
found guilty today, but by tomorrow,
that’s already forgotten and forgiven.)
Jon possessed by Syerrap: Puede bang
top 3,000 problems? Actually, isa lang ang
solusyon sa lahat ng iyan. Awatin natin
ang pagtaas ng oil. ‘Yun lang. Delikado
‘yan pag tumaas. Susunod kasi sa pagtaas
ng presyo ng oil, ang pagtaas ng presyo ng
powder at lotion. (Actually, there is only
one solution. Stop oil prices from going
up. It’s dangerous when oil prices rise.
After that will come increases in the prices
of powder and lotion.)
Michael V spoofing GMA: Ang pagtutuligsa sa aking pagkapresidente, ang
pagtutuligsa sa aking asawa, at ang
pagtutuligsa sa aking anak. Naapektuhan
lahat dahil dito. Dapat isinasantabi muna
‘yan at mag-boxing muna tayo. Pag may
boxing, nagkakaisa ang madlang Pilipino. Wala silang iniintindi. Nakakalimutan ang problema. Lahat sila nasa likod ni
Manny Pacquiao. (The finding of fault in
my presidency, in my husband, in my son.
Everything is affected because of these.
These should all be set aside while we
box. When there’s boxing, the Filipinos
become one. They are oblivious to
everything else, they forget their problems, they are all behind Manny Pacquiao)
Go, Manny, go!
he’s still looking.
In the age of the cellphone, the PDA, the car’s
locking/alarm/ignition system remote, and lest we
forget the iPod, real men
carry murses.
Jon show s of f his recent purch ase from New
York: a murse in off-white,
shiny faux leath er, which
looks like a cross between
a man’s clutch bag and a
lady’s shoulder bag.
He just got home from a
successful U.S. tour of “In
Kilitikal Condition,” a show
he did with Nanette Inventor and Leo Martinez, and
directed by Freddie Santos.
They are currently working
on Manila shows scheduled
at the end of the year, and
dreaming of a London and
European tour, hopefully to
start early next year.
He talks a little about
the show: “It’s meant for the
Rene Boy being Ate Glow: Traffic, drugs
at kulang sa bigas. Kulang tayo sa
nutrisyon. Siguro kailangan mamahagi
ulit ng nutribuns. (Traffic, drugs, and rice
shortage. We lack nutrition. Maybe
nutribuns should be distributed again.)
WHAT IS YOUR MOST PRESIDENTIAL
MOMENT?
Willie as Erap: Swearing in as President at
the historic Barasoain Church in Bulacan.
Tessie as Meldita: Noong pinagawa ko
ang Cultural Center of the Philippines—
kese hodang libagin na ngayon ‘yan, may
daga sa kisame, binabaha ang banyo at
hindi gumagana ang flush. Noong
panahon ko, si George Hamilton at Van
Cliburn ang pumapanhik diyan. World
class ang CCP. Ngayon, maski sino
puedeng mag-concert. Ngayon, maitim na
maitim na ang CCP. Puede ba maski
kalburo, i-repaint n’yo? (When I had the
Cultural Center of the Philippines constructed—who cares if it’s now grimy,
there are mice in the ceiling, the toilets
flood, and the flush doesn’t work. During
my time, the likes of George Hamilton
and Van Cliburn graced that building. It
was world class. Now practically everyone can have a concert there. It’s now so
dirty. Can someone try to at least whitewash it?)
home sick Pinoy s abroa d.
The setup is that there are
secret agents on a mission
to work on our country’s image. Armida Siguion-Reyna
(Jon) has proposed the revival of real Filipino
music. Doña Buding (Nanette) gives
her own take on
what the country’s
problems are. Sen.
Manhik Manaog (Martinez ) has his own
platform. Ate Vi
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
(Jon) wants showbiz to go
global…”
Oh.
Jon is set to do a
show with John Lapu s
titled “Ang Ganda,” produced by Pops Fernandez. If there are no
hitches—like an impeachment or a
coup—it will run
all weekends
in November, he
says.
All my presidents. Erap
(center) is Willie Nep’s favorite
president, but then he likes
Ramos (left) and Marcos
(right), too.
Jon as Tita Glorring: Siyempre when I
returned to the Palace, no longer as a
presidential daughter, but as president na.
I went straight to my former bedroom.
Hindi nagbago! (Nothing changed!) There
they were—the same bed, the same table
and the same chair I used as a little girl!
Kasya pa rin ako. Hindi din pala nagbago
ang aking height. (I could still fit. My
height also didn’t change.)
Michael V as GMA: Noong pinagsisipa ng
mga tao si Erap at ako na ang pinroklamang presidente. Ngayon hindi na ako
natutuwa sa mga tao kasi parang gusto
nilang ulitin sa akin ‘yung ginawa nila
kay Erap. (When people kicked Erap
around and I was proclaimed president. But
now the people don’t amuse me because it
looks like they want to repeat what they did
to Erap, but this time with me.)
Rene Boy as Ate Glow: When Erap was
ousted at ako ang nanumpa sa Edsa.
WHAT IS YOUR LEAST PRESIDENTIAL
MOMENT?
Willie as Erap: Taking a boat ride as an
exile out of the historic Malacañang Palace
like a Katrina refugee by the Pasig River.
Tessie as Meldita: Aba noong pinalayas
ninyo kami. Mga walanghiya! Akala ko
Paoay! Bakit kami napunta sa Hawaii!
Puro pinya ang kinain ko doon. Sumakit
MICHAEL V
His real name is
Beethoven Bunagan or
Bitoy. No kidding.
So where did
Michael V come from?
In an interview with the
late Inday Badiday, he
said it was a combo
of the names Michael
Jackson and Gar y Valenciano. In an interview
with Ricky Lo this October, Bitoy said V stood
ang tiyan ko. At wala ng keh-viar at
imforted cheeseses (Why, when you
kicked us out. You shameless fiends! I
thought it was Paoay? Why were we sent
to Hawaii? All I ate there were pineapples.
My stomach ached all the time. And there
were no keh-viar and imforted cheeseses.)
Jon as Tita Glorring: I requested for a
presidential vehicle. May nag-suggest ba
naman that I send for a Little Tikes car!?
Michael V as GMA: Basta negativo ay
nakaka-apekto sa aking buhay (Anything
negative affects my life).
Rene Boy as Ate Glow: When Mike and I
were in Boracay, nag-try kami mag-surf at
ako’y nahulog (we tried surfing and I fell).
HAVE YOU EVER TOLD A LIE?
Willie as Erap: Never!
Tessie as Meldita: Bakit, ano ba ‘yung
lie? I lie down. I lie on the beach. But I
never tell a lie.
Jon as Heneral Eddie: I think Sen. Meeeriam
Defenseeeve should answer that question…
Hindi ba, sabi niya, “I lied, hahahaha!”?
Michael V as GMA: I… am...sorry.
Rene Boy as Ate Glow: Sabi nga ni Kris, “I
may be many things but I am not a liar.”
TELL US THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE
HELLO GARCI TAPES. IS IT TRUE THEY
WERE JUST RECORDED CONVERSATIONS
for Del Valle, his mother’s
maiden name.
When Michael V started
in showbiz, he wanted to become a rapper like Francis
M and Andrew E. He won a
rap contest in “Eat Bulaga,”
and then recorded a rap hit,
“Maganda ang Piliin Mo,”
his answer to Andrew E’s
“Humanap Ka ng Pangit.”
He discovered his talent
for doing impersonations in
the now-defunct “Tropang
Trumpo” on ABC-5. He
made the characters Junnie Lee, Betong, Etoy, and
Bebang household favorites
in the longest-running gag
show (10 years and counting) “Bubble Gang” on
GMA-7.
Michael V is also known
as the Master of Disguise
and for the tagline “Yari ka!”
which he uses in his top-rated
program, “Bitoy’s Funniest
Videos,” also on GMA-7.
BETWEEN WILLIE NEP AND ATE GLOW?
Willie as Willie: Naku ah!
Tessie as Meldita: Kayo naman, bakit
nga ba missing in action? De may
tinatago! For all you know, nagpa-sex
change na si Garci at hindi n’yo na
makikilala. Pagdating niya dito, rarampa na lang ‘yan sa Library. At iba na ang
tawag sa kanya: Gracia. (Why else
would he be missing in action? Because
he has something to hide! For all you
know, he already had a sex change and
he’s now unrecognizable. When he
returns, he will sashay into the Library.
And he will be called: Gracia.)
Jon as Tita Glorring: Next question please.
Michael V as GMA: Nagkamali sila. Ang
sabi ko, Hello Kitty! (They made a
mistake. What I said was, “Hello, Kitty!”)
Rene Boy as Ate Glow: I was just inquiring
about my pasa load tapos kung anu-ano
na ang lumabas na istorya (and then all
kinds of stories started coming out).
WHOM DO YOU ADMIRE MOST—LIVING
OR DEAD?
Willie as Erap: FPJ living and FPJ dead.
Tessie as Meldita: Sarah Geronimo. Kasi
ang ganda ng boses. I wish I had her
youth. Gusto kong maging bata ulit. I’m so
jealous of her. I miss my youth. I really do.
Kung young ako, nasa “ASAP” ako—
When he’s not brainstorming for his TV shows
and taping episodes (usually in disguise), he
takes care
of youngest
son Migo,
drives his
kids Yanni
and Milo to
school, his
wife Carol to
the grocery,
and takes
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
pictures of strange signs
with his hi-tech cellphone.
One of his most recent
snaps, taken at the
entrance
of a toilet:
“Barado
—no tae,
ihe puede
(Clogged—
no dumping, but
pissing allowed).”
<
37
i
> Pinoy Political Humor
kumakanta at sumasayaw. (If I were young,
I’d be on “ASAP”—singing and dancing.)
Jon as Tita Korree: My husband. A real
hero. Sa katunayan, nasa pera siya. (In
fact, he is on money.)
Jon as Heneral Eddie: Buti pa si Tita
Koree, ‘yung asawa niya nasa pera. Ako
‘yung pera ko, nasa asawa. (Tita Koree is
better off, her spouse is on money. Me,
my money is with my spouse.)
Michael V as GMA: I admire the dead
because they don’t talk. Hindi na sila
makakasimbulat ng mga sikretong dapat
kalimutan. (They don’t reveal secrets that
are best forgotten.)
Rene Boy as Ate Glow: I admire…’yung
dead.
WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST FEAR?
Willie as Erap: To be caught lying.
Tessie as Meldita: Yung magka-wrinkles
na ako. Kasi hanggang ngayon batak na
batak pa ang mukha ko. (Because up to
now, my face has none.) Made in Switzerland. At kahit ang laki-laki ng wasitline
ko, Balenciaga pa rin ang suot ko. (And
however large my waistline gets, I still
wear Balenciaga.)
Jon as Syerrap: Envelopes.
Jon as Tita Glorring: Tapes.
Michael V as GMA: ‘Yung mga buhay ang
nakakatakot kasi puede ka nilang patayin
(The living are scary because they can kill
you).
Rene Boy as Ate Glow: ‘Yung hindi
tumangkad (Not to grow tall).
IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING
ABOUT YOURSELF WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Willie as Erap: I guess I’ve learned my
lesson while incarcerated. I now read the
Bible and if there’s one thing I’d like to
change about myself, it’s my gambling
habit. I used to play truth or consequence
with my grandchildren. I would always
bet on the consequence. Now I know
better. Now I bet on the truth, because I
know the truth shall set me free.
Tessie as Meldita: Gusto kong palitan
>
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO DIE?
Willie as Erap: I’d like to die a Filipino.
Because the Filipino is worth dying for!
Tessie as Meldita: I do not want to die. I
want to live forever! Pero ‘pag ako
namatay, ang rebulto ko nakatayo. Ilagay
n’yo ako sa gitna ng Tacloban. (But if I
die, my statue will be standing up. Put me
in the middle of Tacloban.)
Jon as all four presidents: Next question
please.
Michael V as GMA: Hindi ko iniisip ‘yan.
Ang iniisip ko ay kabuhayan para sa ating
RENE BOY FACUNL A
Rene Boy Facunla says
his uncanny resemblance
to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo —right down
to her voice—is “all in
the hair, makeup, and
voice muscle control.”
The young man’s got
pluck. How many people
would wear a red terno,
jump into a swimming
pool, and prete nd to
drown? He lost a mole
and almos t caugh t a
cold, but Rene Boy said
“cheese” for this maga-
38
ang apelyido ko. Gusto kong bumalik sa
Romualdez. Kasi mas class ‘yun. (I want to
change my last name. I want to go back to
Romualdez) Romualdez is Spanish. Marcos
is Ilocano. Kinakain namin cocido, paella,
mga Marcoses kinakain saluyot at pakbeht. (We eat cocido, paella, the Marcoses
eat lowly vegetables.)
Jon as Tita Koree: Ayoko na ng signature
color ko na yellow. For a change, try ko
naman ang light yellow, or better yet,
dark yellow, canary, butter or lemon
yellow. Kung ayaw n’yo lahat ‘yan eh di
off-yellow or yellowish.
Jon as Tita Glorring: I want to change my
husband.
Jon as Eddie: I want to change from exPresident to Prime Minister. Hehe.
Jon as Syerrap: Gusto ko mag-comeback a
la Arnold Schwarzenegger. Leader siya, not
only of California but of Planet Hollywood.
Michael V as GMA: The position of my
mole. Mas maganda siguro kung nasa
gitna ng aking noo. Dahil pag nasa gilid,
tumatagilid ang tingin ng mga tao.
Nagiging leftist sila. Minsan kumakanan.
Maganda kung nasa center—nagkakaisa.
(It would be nicer if it were in the middle
of my forehead. When it’s on one side,
people don’t look at you straight. They
become leftist, sometimes they go right. It
would be better at the center—so everyone would be unified.)
Rene Boy as Ate Glow: My teeth. So I’d
look more sincere when I smile.
zine’s cover shoot.
It is courage and determination that make his GMA
impersonation remarkable,
plus the fact that he loves
what he’s doing. “I don’t
consider this a job, but as
art,” he says.
Rene Boy is taking up his
Bachelor of Arts in Philippine
Studies with majors in film and
literature at UP Diliman. He
is writing his thesis on youthoriented films while juggling
appearances as Ate Glow.
Ate Glow was born in
2001, a few days after Edsa
2, which ousted Erap and
installed GMA as President.
Recalls Rene Boy: “I was
supposed to be a gay character doing satire in a show
presented by UP Samaskom
(Samahan ng mga Mag-aaral
sa Komu nikas yon). Then
Edsa 2 happ ened . They
asked me to do GMA. I was
given three days to change
the material. I’d never done
impersonations so I was nervous. I thought I didn’t look like
GMA and I certainly didn’t
sound like her. But after that
night, I became her.”
sambayanang Pilipino. (I don’t think of that.
I think about livelihoods for our countrymen.)
Rene Boy as Ate Glow: With my partner
after sex.
WHAT IS YOUR LEGACY TO THE FILIPINO
PEOPLE?
Willie as Erap: I’d like to believe that I am
the only President who has touched every
Filipino’s heart in good and bad times. I
was able to bring to each household the
gift of happiness despite desperate economic conditions and a lot of laughter
amidst embarrassing scandals and controversies. That is my legacy—the Erap jokes!
Tessie as Meldita: Siyempre ang aking
beauty. Meron pa bang gaganda sa akin
bilang First Lady? (Is there any other First
Lady more beautiful than me?) Excuse me.
At ang aking mga edifices-ces-ces-ces.
Lahat ng mga center d’yan—akin ‘yan.
‘Yung lung center—akin ‘yan, cultural
center—akin ‘yan, heart center—akin
‘yan, puericulture center —akin ‘yan.
Jon as Heneral Eddie: I changed our
country’s image from “Sick Man of Asia” to
“Emerging Tiger.” Nariyan ang successful
APEC conference and Centennial Celebration.
Most importantly, napapunta ko si Thalia
a.k.a. Marimar sa Pilipinas (I was able to have
Thalia, a.k.a. Marimar visit the Philippines).
Jon as Tita Koree: Of course, aside from
the return of democracy, I contributed
some improvements in infrastructures by
way of flyovers, which helped in our election process kasi nadidikitan sila ng posters tuwing election (because posters can
be pasted on them during election). Lastly,
my daughter Krissie.
Michael V as GMA: Ang height ko. Sabi ko
sa kanilang lahat, ang small ay talagang
terrible. Akala nila ako’y basta-basta.
Eh hindi pala. Mas malaki pala akong
pumuwing sa kanila. (My height. I’ve told
everyone that small is really terrible. They
thought I could be pushed around, but
they were wrong. I’m better at kicking
sand in their faces.)
Rene Boy as Ate Glow: My mole. i
And people liked what they
saw and heard. “If you project
the aura of the person you are
impersonating, it transcends
to the crowd,” Rene Boy explains. Or as Ate
Glow puts it: “Ang
saya-saya, noh?”
In just four years,
he has made three
movies, appeared in
various TV shows,
and even recorded
an audio CD of children’s songs. When
GMA’s term ends,
“It will be hard, ”
says Rene Boy, “but
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
I can always reposition my
character. Showbiz is not
the end-all and be-all of my
life. I plan to go into film
directing, photography, and
writing.”
A c t u a l l y,
his impersonation s don’t
start and end
with Ate Glow.
He can also
do starlets
Maui Taylo r
and Aubrey
Miles.
Ang sayasaya talaga!
i
> Pinoy Political Humor
Just for fun. Tony
Velasquez can juggle
oranges, but his real—
and not-so-hidden—talent
lies in mimicry.
La Vida
Doble
T
TONY VELASQUEZ
THEY HAVEN’T shown up yet in any
of my medical scans. But I suspect that
buried somewhere in my genome map,
mixed in with the DNA of my mom
and dad, are bits of mynah and parrot
chromosomes.
Not that I’m bird-brained, mind you
(c’mon, say it, and I’ll peck your eyes
out). It’s just that when I’m in the mood
to be cuckoo, my vocal chords effortlessly adjust for the tone, pitch, and diction of say, FVR, Congressman Teddyboy
Locsin, or for those tipsy moments, even
Erap Estrada. All of them prominent,
powerful men whose voices have to be
heard, and whose voices I just love to
mimic, with monologues that borrow
from their speaking styles and favorite
themes. When I’m in mynah/parrot
mode, I don’t do it to ruffle anybody’s
feathers. It’s just for laughs.
And why not? These men are some
of the most humorous politicians I’ve
ever covered. If they weren’t making
40
quips or cracking jokes themselves, I’d
be copying their voices to crack jokes
on their behalf. In a way, it’s my own
personal tribute to them, along the lines
of “imitation is the best form of piracy,” er,
flattery. Which means that even if I screw
them with my impersonations, I’ll still
respect them the next morning.
I don’t aspire to be a professional
impersonator. I never did. I’m strictly
amateur, holding impromptu performances
during dull moments with colleagues at
work, or while relaxing with friends. Once
though, I used my FVR impersonation for
the National Press Club’s 1997 Gridiron
satire. The Gridiron is the NPC’s annual
musical comedy play where the political
high-and-mighty get skewered, rightly or
wrongly, for either entertaining or irritating the public with their words and deeds.
Then President FVR (Fidel V. Ramos to
non-Pinoys) was in the audience, but it
wasn’t the first occasion where he saw or
heard me doing my spiels as “El Tabako.”
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
The first time I sprang it on him was at
a Palace cocktail party he hosted for the
Malacanañg Press Corps in 1995, during
which he threw in an impromptu raffle
where, in what may be liberally construed
as true Ilocano generosity, he gave away
those wide golfing umbrellas and golf
balls, all with his autograph. The members of the Corps urged me to emcee the
raffle, and in that moment, like an evolving mutant superhero, my latent mynah/parrot ability kicked in. With raised
thumb and a convincing FVR voice, I
thundered one of his favorite lines, “Kaya
ba natin ito (Can we do this)?”
With a resounding cry of “Kaya!!” and
peals of laughter from my audience, I
proceeded to say in my FVR-voice, “Tonight, I will be raffling off…my autographed balls. But please, whoever gets them,
please just display them. Don’t hit them!
That would be too painful!” As First Lady
Ming Ramos repeatedly slapped FVR’s
arm while she laughed herself to tears, I
recognized that, indeed, I had a modest
talent that great impersonators like Willie
Nepomuceno, Jon Santos, Rene Facunla
(a.k.a. Ate Glow), and Jaja Bolivar (a.k.a.
Kikiam Defensor) have honed to moneymaking perfection. In that serendipitous
moment, I found myself considering a
career change.
IT TOOK just a second for me to realize that politics in the Philippines is funny
enough by itself without impersonators
adding the extra twist that makes it even
more hilarious. Yet precisely because it
I REPORT
<
gets to be so excruciatingly ridiculous,
Philippine politics provides a treasure trove
of issues for impersonators to play with.
Recently, on the short-lived and now-defunct weekly show, “Isyu: Ang Pangulo,
Special Edition,” which I co-hosted with
Cheche Lazaro on ABS-CBN, Ate Glow and
Kikiam Defensor put the Garci and Chacha controversies through the humor mill,
grinding them up with sharp and wacky
wit. We had Ate Glow in a segment where
she phones in a question to an Ernie Baron
sound-alike (yours truly), on how to prevent tooth decay, only to have “Ka Ernie”
tell her that she has a bigger problem with
“truth decay,” one that can only go away
with – are you ready for this?—“Gloriagate
toothpaste.” Pa-rum-pum!
Some colleagues remarked later that
it might have been inappropriate to treat
these serious political issues too lightly.
Certainly, these controversies have caused
a lot of gnashing of teeth and growling
among disgruntled Filipinos, most of all
the anti-Gloria forces. But tension was
running high during the president’s nearimpeachment crisis, and impersonators
did their share in defusing as much of this
as they comically could. This is where
they became most medically useful: comic
relief for the republic’s biggest political
headaches. In the nation’s search for the
truth behind Gloriagate, impersonators
may not be able to break or untangle a
web of lies, but they do what they do to
break the ice, expecting, of course, that as
the targets of their humor fall through the
cracks, the sound of laughter will drown
out the sound of angry protests.
Personally, I don’t think any public
figure that’s been spoofed should get
upset or offended (or charge a copyright
fee). Senator Aquilino Pimentel (when
he was still very fond of President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo) once criticized shows
that spoofed President GMA, simply
because he felt she was being ridiculed.
Impersonators usually do caricatures of
prominent people not because they dislike them, but quite the opposite. The
“Ate Glow” character spoof of 24-year-old
comedian Rene Facunla is one example.
Facunla told Newsbreak magazine in a
2003 interview that he considered the real
Ate Glo (GMA of course) “a president of
substance,” and added that his friends
believed his impersonation was “helping
the president improve her image.”
Then again, that was two years ago,
long before the Garci controversy exploded, and long before Ate Glow’s
“president of substance” was challenged
by an impeachment complaint “lacking in
substance.” (Do we hear the good Senator Pimentel now asking for more ridicuPHOTOS BY LILEN UY
lous Ate
Glo CANTADA
spoofs?) This time around,
MAKEUP
CATHY
Malacañang’s
attempts to evade or brush
HAIR
JERRY JAVIER
aside the
Garci
issue has spawned copySTYLIST
GUADA
REYES
SPECIAL
NAVASERO
cat AteTHANKS
GlowsTOinMANDY
protest
rallies. Defi-
nitely, none of them
has anything glowing to say about Ate
Glo. But all of them
are weapons of mass
distraction, drawing the
public’s attention to the
alleged sins of Ate Glo.
AS FAR as great impersonations
go, though, the Garci tapes may showcase
the best of them. That could be why it took
weeks after bootleg CD copies of the tapes
were given away in rallies and in schools,
and after Congress listened to recorded conversations in open session, for Environment
Secretary Mike Defensor to come up with
an audio analysis of the tapes and draw this
enigmatic conclusion: “That’s the president’s voice, but she’s not the one talking.”
Okay, I can’t mimic this president’s voice.
So was that you, Ate Glow?
The Garci tapes were about wiretapping, and that’s a crime. But if, as
Defensor seemingly implied, the tapes
were the product of an impersonation,
there’s a greater crime here – a crime
against the humorous art of impersonation
itself. Sure, history is replete with cases
of the famous and the infamous using
doppelgangers as decoys. At one point,
there was even this rumor (long since debunked) that an impersonator was standing in for the real disco-loving Ferdinand
‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr., who had supposedly died. None of these, by any stretch
of the imagination, was for any humorous
purpose. And I heard no laughter either
while people listened to the Garci tapes.
Impersonations in the Philippine setting are really just an expression of the
The great
pretender.
Velasquez hosts
office parties
when he’s not
reporting on
the news or
pretending to be
Joseph Estrada
(above).
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
Filipino’s fun-loving,
and occasionally
sarcastic, nature.
The Garci tapes are
nowhere near that
kind of expression.
If anything, they have
evoked only expressions
of disgust and dismay, and
deprecating humor.
A flood of text jokes did pour out
from the Garci episode. But one of the
more unexpected and surreal results was
the sudden re-emergence…of Elvis. Yes,
Elvis was once more in the building! Or
to be more specific, in the studio of the
government-run NBN Channel 4. Hot on
the heels of the Garci controversy, and
at the height of opposition attacks on
the Arroyo government, NBN launched
a show, “Dagundong (Reverberations),”
where the hosts and the guests mingled on a set designed to look like your
neighborhood sari-sari store. Conspicuously in the background stood Elvis…actually, Elvis impersonator Edgar Opida.
In the initial episode of ABS-CBN’s
“Isyu: Ang Pangulo,” I asked Opida to
come over and make sense of why an
Elvis impersonator would be part of
Malacanang’s media counter-offensive.
Opida really couldn’t say, or maybe I
just couldn’t make out his version of a
Memphis mumble. In any case, I still
don’t know if there was any subliminal
message in having an Elvis look-andsound alike on the NBN show—except
maybe to ask Ate Glo, “Are you lonesome tonight?” or to warn her that she
was dangerously close to dancing the
“Jailhouse Rock.”
That Elvis episode reminded me of
something the late great U.S. TV host
Johnny Carson once said: “If life were
fair, Elvis would be alive and all the
impersonators would be dead.” To borrow from Carson, if life in the Philippines
were fair, all the real politicians would
disappear, and their impersonators would
be left behind. After all, the impersonators cheer us up, make us forget our
troubles, and achieve what their real-life
political counterparts haven’t done: bring
Filipinos together in feeling good about
something—anything.
It is to everyone’s benefit that when
impersonators go and get a life, they
copy somebody else’s, to the point of
hilarity. They are the embodiment of la
vida doble (no relation to that lothario
of a wiretapper, Sgt. Vidal Doble). And
in sharing with us the wit and humor of
their double (or more) lives, our own
existence becomes much more pleasant
and bearable in the end. i
When he isn’t impersonating presidents,
Tony Velasquez is a news correspondent
of ABS-CBN.
I REPORT
41
i
> Pinoy Political Humor
Mobile
Clowning
T
SHEILA S. CORONEL
THE EVER-PRESENT mobile phone may
have changed the way Filipinos communicate with each other, but it has not
restrained their sense of humor. Far from
it. Instead, the mobile phone has served
as an efficient transmitter and disseminator of jokes, particularly of the political
variety. Thanks to cellphones, jokesters
have had a field day as their attempts at
humor are not only sent out instantaneously, but are also passed on from phone
to phone to phone to phone…
There are over 30 million cellphone
users in the country today. The potential
audience for a single joke is thus easily
in the millions, surpassing the audiences
of newspapers and all but the best-rating
television and radio programs. Chances
are, every Pinoy who owns a
mobile phone has used
it, not just for passing
on personal messages
but also jokes. Phone
company executives
say that jokes are a
staple of SMS messaging, surpassing
most other types
of messages sent.
This, plus the amazing speed in which
jokes can travel
in the mobilephone age, can
only encourage
amateur humorists
of every stripe.
And almost surely,
within hours, even
minutes, of a major
news event, some
joker somewhere
has already
forwarded to all
42
in his or her address book a
polished gem of humor.
The “Gloriagate” political crisis that began in mid-2005 has inspired a resurgence
of political humor. The crisis was set off
by the release of wiretapped recordings of
the phone calls made and received
by elections commissioner Virgilio
Garcillano in May and June 2004. Some of
those calls discussed election fraud. Several of them were from President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo, who began her calls
with the now famous line, “Hello, Garci?”
Not long after excerpts from the “Hello,
Garci” recording were made public in
early June 2005, cellphones were buzzing
with jokes about the tapes. The symmetry was perfect: cellphone jokes about
cellphone calls. Where else, but in a cellphone-crazy country can this take
place? Within days, too, the first
“Hello, Garci” ringtones made
the rounds.
Spliced from some of the
audio material (particularly
President Arroyo’s inimitable voice) contained in the
wiretapped conversations and
combined with pop music,
the ring tones
were the delight
of cellphone users. They were
passed on from phone
to phone and were also
posted for downloading in MP3 format in a number of
blogs and websites.
This was ideal for
music-mad Pinoys,
many of whom
owned, apart from
cellphones, also
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
MP3 players. Within three weeks after
the tapes were made public, there were
already two dozen versions of the “Hello,
Garci” ring tone. Most were made available for downloading from several cyberplaces, among them the PCIJ blog (www.
pcij.org/blog). Perhaps only in the Philippines has the ring tone been used as a
weapon of resistance: by passing them on,
anonymous ring-tone composers and disseminators defied the government warning
that propagating any part the wiretapped
conversations is illegal.
The ring tones are gems of political
humor, their combination of music and wit
irresistible. There is no purer distillation of
Pinoy humor in the cellphone era than the
“Hello, Garci” ring tones.
FILIPINOS like to think that they can
laugh at anything, and however much they
put themselves down, they believe that
their sense of humor is not only a defining
national trait but also their saving grace.
Among the most strongly held of Pinoy
beliefs is that the ability to laugh—especially at themselves and the dire circumstances they find themselves in—has enabled Filipinos to survive not only natural
I REPORT
calamity and
social upheaval,
but also the strange
world of Philippine politics and the even stranger
characters who inhabit it.
“Humor has many
uses in the Philippines,”
writes film director Jose
Javier Reyes. “As leveler,
it serves to expose the
foibles of people in high
office, thus bringing them
down to the company of ordinary
men. Humor is also used to circumvent taboos… Humor, both irreverent and banal,
serves as a soft rebellion against what is
otherwise regarded with awe or considered correct behavior.”
To Filipinos, humor has always been
a form of protest. Our national heroes
used it in the struggle against Spanish
colonialism. Jose Rizal poked fun at both
colonial authorities and his countrymen
who wanted to be more Spanish than the
Spaniards. Marcelo del Pilar used political satire to hit at the Spanish friars who
dominated Philippine life and the hypocritical Christianity that they preached.
In their everyday lives, ordinary
Filipinos resort to joking and humor to
undermine the rich and powerful who
have long kept them in thrall. Humor has
always been the preferred weapon of the
weak in this country. The powerful may
prevail in the end, but they can always
be subjected to mockery, mimickry, and
ridicule. Jokes are subversive. They are,
as Reyes says, the great leveler, a way of
fighting back, a path of resistance.
If anything, cellphones have made
this path easier to take. Any Joey or Josie
can think up a joke, key it into a phone,
and pass it on. You don’t have to be a
Jose Rizal or a Marcelo del Pilar. You
don’t have to deal with censors or editors
either. In the anonymous, instantaneous, and spontaneous world of
mobile telephony, everyone is
welcome and all jokers are
equal. Any joke is passed
on as long as the receiver
finds it funny.
Jokes can be said
to be an important
artifact of our
life as a nation.
They are not just
a commentary on
our politics and
politicians, they
are a form of
political participation. The effect
may not be quite the
PHOTOS BY LILEN UY
same
displaying
MAKEUPas
CATHY
CANa placard in a
TADA
demonstration,
HAIR JERRY JAVIER
STYLIST
but by GUADA
joking,
Filipinos
show that
they are
watching,
commenting,
and taking
part in what is
going on. Jokes are as good
an indicator of the public
pulse as opinion polls are.
The fall of Ferdinand Marcos
was preceded by an avalanche
of jokes. The election of Joseph
Estrada was also foretold by the jokes,
and indeed, so was his ouster. It is safe to
say that any major upheaval or development in our political life is punctuated by
jokes.
Jokes, therefore, are like tea leaves:
those who are astute enough can tell the
political future by reading them well. But
we will not go that far. Lacking that kind
of astuteness, we can only say that the
jokes currently circulating and entertaining
us show that Pinoy humor is as irreverent and indiscriminate as ever. The jokes
poke fun at politicians of every stripe.
While many are jokes about President Arroyo, there are many as well that ridicule
actor Fernando Poe Jr., who lost to Arroyo
in the 2004 elections. Vice President Noli
de Castro and the other celebrity-politicos
have not been spared. And neither has
the unflappable Senator Miriam Defensor
Santiago. She is up there in the jokers’
pantheon, together with Erap Estrada,
Imelda Marcos, and the crank presidential
candidate Eddie Gil (who, when asked by
a TV journalist what a normal day for him
was, answered “Saturday”).
Some of the jokes, in fact, poke fun at
the entire political class (Sample: Political
curse: May you have a wife like Imelda, a
daughter like Kris, a mistress like Baby, a
son like Jude, and a husband like Mike.)
Some jokes are mean (remember the baby
stroller delivered to Erap’s Tanay resthouse, in preparation for GMA?). Others
are green or some other off-color;
many are politically incorrect.
But all of them reflect the sentiments—and the frustrations—of
the political moment. Jokes are
the true signs of the times,
even as they make the
unbearable bearable,
eliciting laughter as we
shed tears over the failings of our leaders and
o f ourselves. i
JOKE ONLY!
We all know what PROs and Cons are. What
is the opposite of PROgress?
CONgress!
How does GMA sleep?
First she lies to one side, then she lies to the
other side.
Teacher: Today we’re studying percentages. If
there are 10 questions in a quiz and you get
10 correct, what do you get?
GMA: Accused of cheating.
May threat na naman daw sa buhay ni Zuce.
Pinadalhan siya ng mansanas at kawayan.
Galing daw kay Aling Lydia, as in Lydia’s
Lechon.
Good morning, countrymen. This is Noli de
Castro, your future president. I would like to
apologize in advance for all the lapses in judgment that I will commit. I’M SORRY, BAYAN.
GMA: Sana palarin akong magkamit ng katangian nina Cory at Susan.
Reporter: Ano po yon, ma’am?
GMA: Ang pagiging biyuda nila. Wala sanang
problema ang bayan.
Reporter: What is your plan now, Madame
President?
GMA: I have thought of drowning my troubles
but I can’t get my husband and son to go
swimming.
Mike: Whenever Gloria asks for her share of
jueteng money, she calls me handsome.
Nani: Really?
Mike: Yes, she says, “Hoy, HAND SOME of
that money over.”
A man just died and was asked by St. Peter:
Where do you come from?
Man: Philippines, Sir.
St. Peter: You may enter heaven…you’ve suffered enough from your opposition politicians.
Daddy: ‘Nak, bili mo ko ng softdrink.
Anak: Coke of Pepsi?
Daddy: Coke
Anak: Diet o regular?
Daddy: Regular
Anak: Bote o in can?
Daddy: Bote
Anak: 8 oz o litro?
Daddy: Punyeta! Tubig na lang.
Anak: Mineral o natural?
Daddy: Mineral
Anak: Malamig o hindi?
Daddy: ‘Tang ina, hampasin kita ng walis, e!
Anak: Tambo o tingting
Daddy: Hayop ka!
Anak: Baka o baboy?
Daddy: TARANTADO!
Anak: De Venecia o
ang Kongreso?
This is an excerpt
from the preface
of the PCIJ’s latest
book, Hello, Garci?
Hello, Maam:
Political Humor
in the Cellphone
Age.
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
<
More jokes are in
Hello, Garci? Hello,
Ma’am: Political
Humor in the Cellphone Age. For
inquiries, contact marketing
@pcij.org or call
9293117.)
I REPORT
43
i
> Pinoy Political Humor
Where Has
All The
Laughter
Gone?
F
KATRINA STUART SANTIAGO
FIVE YEARS ago, we had a president who
made as much fun of himself as everyone
else did. Who had his very own jokebook,
and his very own thinktank to make
up stories and jokes that would revolve
around his supposedly being uneducated,
as well as his being uncouth and unpresidential. This was a time when President
Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada’s impeachment trial
was proceeding in the Senate, and where
the real stars of that show—the senators—
provided us with all kinds of material for
comedy. There we witness moments of
high anger: (Miriam Defensor Santiago
having two women kicked out of the Senate gallery for allegedly giving her inappropriate looks) and sorrowful tears (think
Loren Legarda in hot pink), moments of
insanity (Miriam Defensor Santiago, period) and just plain cluelessness (Ramon
Revilla Sr., duh). As respite, there were
the vocabulary lessons (who can spell
“gobbledygook”?), the law lessons (“si Sir
Roco kasi e!’”), and the lessons in patience
(“Ang tanda na kase ni Ople na tulog
nang tulog”— Ople’s so ancient, he can’t
keep awake). And as a fitting climax to
the show, there was that infamous dance
number (by Tessie Aquino-Oreta)!
At that time, everyone was portrayed as
fair game on the Internet and everywhere
else—from text messages to emails, from
print cartoons to comic strips. There was
no escape. The Internet, after all, is the
most liberal and liberating of media to
work with—uncensorable, untouchable,
although perhaps also incomprehensible
to many. Then, so much was published
from the computers of hi-tech Pinoys who
could only deal with the Erap presidency
by consistently putting down the man, his
cohorts, and all those who voted for him.
Proof of this production is the fact that
when PCIJ’s Alecks Pabico decided to look
at online Pinoy parodies of that time, there
44
was just so much to cover (http://www.pcij.
org/imag/Online/pinoyparody.html).
Everyone wanted a piece of the action
then, if only as audience to such a creative
force. This creativity easily moved from
computer screens to the streets of EDSA 2,
when people created and recreated chants
to fit the hated senator of the moment,
and when banners and streamers were
as funny, and disrespectful, as they could
come. Then, it was our way of dealing with
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
a historical juncture that we thought was not
our doing (we didn’t vote for that man!), but
which we felt we could do something about.
At the very least, we could shake our heads
in disgust and bring the hysteria to the point
of laughter—online and beyond.
Now, a failed EDSA 3 and a junked
impeachment complaint against the new
president later, most of those sites that
Pabico featured—even writer Bob Ong’s
website (http://www.bobongpinoy.com)—
are dead links (pun intended). And one
can’t help but wonder why.
It cannot be that there’s nothing to laugh
about at this point, can it? If it’s true that
all things humorous are based on grains of
reality, then laughter need not end. And yet,
as we continue to receive and forward funny
text messages and emails of jokes, editorial
cartoons, and comic strips from print media,
delving into the state of this GMA-Garci nation (the last email I saw has GMA’s face plastered onto a dancing Sexbomb girl’s body),
there is quite a silence on the Internet front.
THIS IS not to say that nothing is being
written. There are tons of complaints,
many bordering on anger. But instead of
sites dedicated to parodying or satirizing
the daily events that should so concern us,
what’s proliferating are weblogs or blogs.
These are online diaries that can be on anything and everything, with no pretensions
to objectivity or truth, and with illusions of
an audience that will want to read through
text upon text of opinion, rants, and raves.
There are, of course, bloggers who have
used the form of the blog well, basically
because they know what they want it to be
about. Luis Teodoro’s site (www.luisteodoro.
com) is basically just on politics for example,
while Paolo Manalo’s site has always been
on Pinoy (pop) culture (be it in the old
www.psychicpants.net and the spanking new
http://www.livejournal.com/~paolomanalo).
These blogs also seem to have a clear sense
of an audience, limited though it may be.
Manalo’s blog, in particular, is funny, not just
because of its chosen concern but because
it is lightly and cleverly written. But it rarely
talks about politics.
In contrast, there are blogs that
are overtly political, such as www.angasngkurimaw.blogspot.com and www.
ourthoughtsarefree.blogspot.com, which
zero in on issues—including media responsibility, cultural ineptitude, and GMA’s
hardheadedness—hitting the nail on the
head every time. But perhaps because of
the seriousness with which politics do need
to be dealt with, there’s rarely anything to
laugh about in these political blogs. The
funny blogs I’ve found, meanwhile, are
mostly nonpolitical if not altogether apolitical. There’s the http://akosipaeng.blogspot.
com blog by a Pinoy who seems to always
write about his world as if he’s seeing it for
the first time; and there are those blogs like
www.tabulas.com/~apester that talks about
I REPORT
<
nothing else but food in its recent incarnation, but has always been fun easy reading.
It is these types of Pinoy blogs, which are
more personal diaries than political commentary, more this-is-my-life than this-is-the-stateof-the-nation, that have made up much of our
Internet production in recent years. The blog
of course has been celebrated as something
that can function as an alternative source of
information (the PCIJ has its own blog, for
example). For the most part, however, it has
been used by Pinoy techies as a form through
which they may write without limits, even
when there’s nothing much to say. It has
become the rule rather than the exception to
be apolitical and apathetic in the blogs we
create, and that in itself, is no laughing matter.
A personal blog like www.professionalheckler.blog-city.com is a rare exception
in that it ridicules the political state of the
nation by poking fun at its personalities
–akin to Erap’s time. More known for his
spoofs of political speeches, blogger Loi
Reyes Landicho calls the site a humor blog
born of his agitation over recent political
events, which to him make for “desperate
times <that> require desperate measures.”
But because of the form that it takes,
what Landicho really offers the blog-reader
is still just a hodgepodge of thoughts on
various issues and events that may be
political (why is there no outrage over the
junked impeachment complaint?) but are
not always so (why didn’t U.P. win in a
recent pep squad competition?). Still, Landicho can be funny, especially with his Top
10 Lists a la David Letterman. A recent one
is “The Top 10 (Silliest) Reasons Why GMA
Won’t Resign” (September 23 blog entry):
1. Unlike the Ejercitos, her family does
not own a posh villa in Tanay, Rizal.
In the event that she goes to jail, she
would languish at Camp Capinpin,
deprived of the same luxury being
enjoyed by her predecessor.
2. She would never allow some guy
named Manuel ‘Noli’ de Castro, a graduate
of some school known as UE to take over
the presidency. She did not spend years at
Assumption, Ateneo, UP, and Georgetown
only to give way to a UE graduate! [Taaskilay to the 9th degree… hmmpf!]
3. Resigning would enrage her god
whom she claims to be on her side and
who makes everything possible for her.
Remember her father’s dictum that has
become her favorite cliché? “Do what
issh right. Do your bessht and God will
take care of the ressht.” Whatever.
4. Luck is still on her side. [As I have discussed here before, she is fated to become
president.] Filipinos have more important
things to do than join rallies. Despite unfavorable SWS, Pulse Asia and Ibon FounPHOTOS BY LILEN UY
dation surveys showing unprecedented
MAKEUP CATHY CANTADA
and distrust, fact is,
HAIRpublic
JERRY dissatisfaction
JAVIER
these
are just
figures. People would rather
STYLIST
GUADA
REYES
feedTHANKS
their families
than
burn effigies.
SPECIAL
TO MANDY
NAVASERO
5. GMA won’t step down unless Cong.
Mikey Arroyo wins an acting plum.
His latest movie, Sablay na, Pasaway
Pa [which had its premiere in Biliran
Province some time in June] has yet
to be shown in Metro Manila theaters.
Reports say bookers decline to release
the cheap flick for obvious reasons.
6. She will only relinquish her post as
soon as the Philippines has overtaken
Indonesia in the Asian corruption index
ranking. We’re still at number 2. Becoming number 1 would be a feat indeed!
7. The concept of delicadeza is alien to her.
8. GMA simply cannot imagine herself behind bars while the First Gentleman goes
shopping in Hong Kong with Vicky Toh.
9. GMA dreams of a royal wedding for
her only daughter Luli in Malacañang.
Not in Lubao Church, not at the Manila
Cathedral. The plan is to invite heads of
state as well as former US President and
GMA classmate Bill Clinton. The event
will eclipse the profligacy of the Imee
Marcos-Tommy Manotoc wedding.
10. And finally, GMA won’t resign because she’s not the president. She’s just
an overstaying palace visitor.
STRANGELY ENOUGH, while this list is
funny in its “silliness,” all it musters is a
smile—hardly a laugh. Probably because
it hits too close to home, and there’s
nothing funny in the way Landicho has
reworked it. In fact, most of these could,
if not altogether, be true (save for number
9, which is actually referring to the Irene
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
Marcos-Greggy Araneta wedding). It is
obvious that GMA has no delicadeza, and
it is possible that she has believed her
own propaganda about God being on her
side. Even more painfully true is the possibility that she’s just lucky—people aren’t
in the mood for rallies, or for information
that will lead them there. Number 10, in
particular, isn’t funny because it reminds
us that we may have handled Erap and
EDSA 2 all wrong. In fact, the funniest
thing about this list is the way it makes
fun of GMA’s speech defect (see number
3), which is similar to the way we made
fun of Erap’s grammar.
So, why doesn’t this work? If Landicho’s blog entry for September 6 entitled
“The Award Goes To” is any indication,
then this may have more to do with
ideology than with creativity. This entry
pokes fun at the personalities involved
in the impeachment case against GMA.
There the “Cry Me a River” award for
example, given to Dinky Soliman for
crying publicly three times since resigning as social-welfare secretary, while still
looking “fashionable with the highlights
in her hair <...> Jolinaesque indeed!”
There’s the “Mag-diet Ka Muna” award
given to Taguig-Pateros Rep. Alan Peter
Cayetano (for obvious reasons), and the
“Not Enough Vitamins, Not Enough Life”
award given to Sorsogon Rep. Francis
Escudero for being absent during the
pro-impeachment walkout in Congress
because, according to him, he was ill.
Here, it becomes clear why Landicho’s
humor blog isn’t always funny. On the
one hand, it has the temerity to make
fun of the current state of the nation
(when it wants to). On the other, it isn’t
very clear where the blog stands in all
these issues. When we find the need to
poke fun at both GMA and her opposition, i.e., Soliman, Cayetano, Escudero et
al., we also end up being unclear about
who we’re for. As far as Landicho’s blog
is concerned, strong statements are also
made against what he calls the “obsolete
Left,” obviously without taking into consideration all the steps this Left has taken
toward compromise over and above the
rallies that it has led. In Erap’s time, our
enemies were clear, and our allies even
clearer. We did not criticize both sides,
and we reveled in having more and more
people on our side—the Left, the Right,
the religious in all its denominations.
Now, as far as the professional heckler is
concerned, there are no enemies, or any
allies. And it’s unclear what all that (supposed) laughter is addressing.
Over at another humor blog, the sides
are even less clearly drawn. Created by
graphic artist, now blogger Retzwerx,
www.retzwerx.com has become known
for what are called “poop-to-graphs.”
Here, Philippine politics is made fun of
by adding thought and speech balloons
I REPORT
45
> Pinoy Political Humor
to photographs of the President, for
example, and her gang:
That this is barely funny is again proof
of the mediocrity of political humor on the
Internet today. What exactly is it making
fun of? Is it making fun of GMA? For having done what exactly? What is it grounded
on? That Retzwerx himself has recently
shifted from politics to reality TV’s “Pinoy
Big Brother” as main topic is indicative not
of the freedom allowed the blogger who
owns his blog, but of the lack of a clear
political agenda that should drive any site
set on inspiring change through laughter.
For the most part, it looks like the Pinoy
blogs that have the guts to make fun of our
politics are really only reactionary. They
don’t have a clear stand on things, much
less a sense of what to aspire for.
BEYOND THE blogs though, there seems
to be hope, albeit a very small one. The
site www.pldt.com has continued to survive, and is in fact one of the few sites that
fills that gap between the anti-Erap parody
sites and the anti-GMA angry/reactionary
blogs. While serious in its thrust of being
anti-Arroyo at this point, particularly after
the impeachment complaint was junked
in Congress (see http://www.pldt.com/
tipping%20point.htm), the site itself continues to be a force to reckon with. Not only
does it continue to belong to the Top 50
Google sites in the news/satire directory, it
also continues to rightly claim that it cares
for the state of the nation, beyond Erap Estrada and EDSA 2. Just the same, however,
there is obviously a lot less irreverence
now than there was in Erap’s time—and a
lot more anger directed at GMA.
Probably the only site that more than
makes up for the dismal lack in political humor in light of current events is
journalist Alan C. Robles’s online tabloid
Hot Manila (www.hotmanila.com). Created by someone who has been writing political humor in newspapers for
nearly 20 years, Hot Manila is clear in its
stand and has a good grasp of issues. It
is also well-researched, and obviously
well-thought out. It uses graphics and
photographs as well, alongside anti-GMA
articles that make fun of her and the way
she runs the country. It creates lists, too,
but only to point out the parallelism, say,
between having GMA as your lavandera
and having her as president. (Among the
top 10 reasons you wouldn’t want her as
lavandera, it says, is that she might “launder something other than your clothes.”)
Hot Manila skewers other political
personalities, such as the missing elections commissioner Garcillano in an article
entitled “Cooking with Garci” (http://www.
hotmanila.com/humor/cookbook.htm),
which is a cook (read: pagluluto ng eleksyon) book that’s particularly his (Recipe
1: Malacañang Delight, take one ballot
box, and that’s it!). “The Arroyo adminis-
46
tration: Good and bad,” meanwhile, is not
only funny but is also a reminder of how
this government has wasted money, ignored
public clamor for better governance, and
helped big business in its continuing plunder
of the economy all these years (http://www.
hotmanila.com/humor/good&bad.htm).
But a Hot Manila that captures an audience’s attention because of its humor, and
also informs enough to force us to take a
stand is but one in a sea of sites and blogs.
Generally, what we have are sites that are
nothing but exercises in proving one’s ability to write and attract a readership, even
when one isn’t saying much. This is what
abounds today, to the country’s detriment,
and the GMA government’s delight.
This brings to mind a friend’s observation
that it was so much easier to gather people,
i.e., the middle class, against Erap because
of the “matapobre factor.” We felt that he
was not good enough for us, and we were
fighting him on all levels—particularly on
the Internet where nothing is censored, and
where the jokes and parodies can go from
foolish and childish to great and creative.
These days the lack of online laughter is not
only a measure of our stand on things, if any,
but is also revealing of how exactly the Net
functions in this country: it is really but a middle-class tool, and one that we used successfully against Erap because he wasn’t like us.
Faced with a president who is the opposite
of Erap—a GMA who is highly educated
and doesn’t seem to be crass, and who talks
about the economy with such authority we
come to believe what she says as true —our
Internet production has become useless. We
can’t quite see GMA as the enemy, since the
enemy in this case is Noli de Castro, who is
perceived to be of Erap’s social and educational class. It is the “matapobre factor” all
over again, except that this time, it is working
for the incumbent because the pobre who
can’t quite measure up is the vice president.
With the really funny parodies and
satires, laughter becomes the only defense
against the truthfulness. But what happens
when those truths aren’t clear to us? What is
there to laugh about when the reality means
looking at ourselves and being uncertain
and lost, counting on others to tell us what
to think? We cannot make fun of the state
of the nation without being serious about
where we stand. We can’t just simply hate
everyone—the government, the opposition,
the church, the communists—without having
a sense of the different colors they carry,
and what those colors mean. We also can’t
simply be angry—that doesn’t achieve much,
as proven by EDSAs 2 and 3. Maybe that’s
why blogs like professionalheckler’s just
aren’t funny. There are no truths to pick on
and laugh about so hard that it hurts.
Meanwhile, as we problematize the fact
that we can barely laugh in this country, elsewhere in the Pinoy internet (blogging) world,
young poets are fighting among themselves
over their craft, their influences, their art. Now
THAT, in the context of a nation in the throes
of despair, is worth laughing at. i
The author is working on her master’s
degree at the U.P. She is a freelance writer
and editor, but her passion is teaching.
The Arroyo Administration: Good and Bad
GOOD
BAD
Spent more than P600 million on road building
It was just one road
Killed Marcos henchman and arch opportunist
Blas Ople by forcing him to do real work
Declared his corpse a national hero
Magnanimously went out of its way to help out
a family that was in serious trouble
It was the Lopez family
Successfully redistributed incomes
Nobody knows where the incomes were
redistributed to
He wasn’t an ordinary nincompoop
Showed that any ordinary nincompoop could
run the Department of Trade
Won the war against terrorists
The terrorists don’t know it
Made the country recall President Diosdado
Macapagal’s greatness
Seems there was nothing to recall
Showed extraordinary compassion
To Joseph Estrada
Fought corruption
Corruption won
Was the first administration in 30 years to
successfully invite a US president over for a
state visit
The president turned out to be
George W. Bush
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
i
> Pinoy Political Humor
Kick
Out the
Clowns
O
ALAN C. ROBLES
OUR FOLKLORE is populated by frightful, bizarre monsters. For instance, there’s
the aswang, a shape-changing horror that
eats human fetuses and runs for public
office. Or the amaranhig, an undead
creature that tickles victims to death and
runs for public office. Or the tikbalang, a
horse-headed humanoid that attacks unwary travelers and runs for public office.
Of course I’m lying. These creatures
could actually never run for office—
they’d be disqualified for being imaginary (they could probably cast votes,
fictitious characters do that all that time
in our country). But even if they were
real and tried to run, they’d find all the
positions already held by truly loathsome, bloodsucking abominations.
You’re betting I’m going to say “politician,” aren’t you? How did you guess? But
don’t think this is a cheap joke. Nothing
about our politicians is cheap—we pay
billions every year to support them. And
what do we get in return? Dedicated,
selfless and incorruptible service. Integrity
and fearless espousal of the rights of the
poor. If you aren’t laughing bitterly by
now, you’re clearly not a Filipino taxpayer.
Not many of us give too much
thought to our politicians, and rightly so.
There are more important things to think
about, such as human intestinal flora, or
the mating habits of tropical nematodes.
But if we’d only spare some time and
give some thought to our politicians, if
we looked closely at the role they play
in our lives and our country’s day-to-day
dealings, then I’m pretty sure we’d immediately go back to the nematodes.
Yet even a close study of nematodes,
which reference books say include simple, parasitic worms ranging up to eight
meters in length, has a disturbing way of
bringing Filipino traditional politicians to
mind. And it’s possible that studying our
politicians will help us understand why
our country is in its current shape (in a
word, “screwed”). So if were to keep our
inquiry dispassionate and treat politicians
as we would any other slimy, spineless
lower life form, we’d certainly come to a
keener and deeper understanding of why
we keep wanting to move abroad and
change our citizenship.
ANY DISCUSSION on politicians would
have to begin with their origin. Most
Filipinos would certainly love to know
48
where their politicians come from (one
reason is that maybe they can return them,
or claim some form of product liability
from the manufacturer). If we want to be
mythological about it, we can speculate that
our politicians were perhaps created at the
dawn of time when lightning split a tree
open, and from the trunk emerged the very
first beings: Malakas, Maganda, and Magulang. One of them would have looked like
a Speaker of the House.
If we want be more scientific, then we
can theorize that politicians, like all the rest
of us, came from single-celled, primitive
life forms, only in their case they skipped
any further development. On an evolution
chart, politicians would be somewhere
between talk-show hosts and TV-commercial copywriters. Imelda Marcos would
have her own branch, a dead end. Another
possible explanation is that politicians are
mutants who spring into existence when an
otherwise normal person is brought near to
a deadly, toxic substance like money.
All politicians have similar characteristics: they have thick faces and hides and are
immune to heat, cold, and extreme poverty.
They are very nimble, able to spin around
into any position while turning their coats.
Just as cats are supposed to be able to always
land upright, traditional politicians are capable of surviving any fall, landing on their feet
with their hands still in your pocket.
Generally speaking, Filipino politicians
come in two varieties: alive and dead. If you
think the dead ones can’t ruin your day at all,
you clearly haven’t been paying attention to
the names of the corpses being buried with
honors at the National Heroes Cemetery.
There are several types of live politicians,
but the most common is the “traditional”
variety, so called for their firm adherence to
“traditional” core values, which are love of
self and self-interest, in that order. Traditional politicians—trapos for short—have
keen analytical minds that enable them to
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
see all sides in an issue, so that they can
pick the one that will help them fulfill their
main purpose: to build huge mansions and
send their kids to school abroad using other
people’s money. In fact, one of the dead
giveaways that a person is a trapo is that his
or her home keeps steadily getting bigger
each year. Through hard work and patience,
a politician who starts with a humble modest
house could in a few years hope to end up
owning the Lower House.
POLITICIANS USUALLY belong to groups
called “parties.” There used to be only two
of them, the Nacionalistas and the Liberalistas, but free-market economics and globalization have opened up the field so that now
there are dozens of parties. But all of them
can trace their roots to that great “mother
party” of the Philippines, the Opportunistas.
To help them in their work politicians
rely on a variety of faithful assistants and
supporters, which they create by synthesizing life in great unholy laboratories. Just
kidding. Actually they buy them: in the
marketplace, where flunkies are available
at great volume discounts. When Americans
hear the word “stooges” they probably think
of that famous comedy team of Larry, Moe,
and Curly Joe. Here in our country, stooges
go by many names, for instance, Belinda,
Alex, and Amando. They will remain loyal
until death, or until the next administration
changes, whichever comes first.
And of course, no trapo is complete
without at least guards, affectionately
called “goons,” to protect his or her
person. Even if the trapo doesn’t need
protection, a squad of goons brandishing
handheld radios and guns always give the
right touch of class. Some trapos bring
them everywhere, even to the bathroom.
Having briefly discussed politicians, we
now come to the most important question:
where is the best country to move to? No, actually, the question is what are our politicians
good for? The popular view is that politics is a
circus and that our politicians are clowns who
entertain the public and make them laugh.
Just look at these great moments of
comedy. In 1949, the Senate president, Jose
Avelino was investigated for corruption. He
got very angry and exclaimed, “What are we
in power for?” He got off the hook. In 2001,
Tessie Aquino Oreta, a senator who voted
to protect Joseph Estrada and was caught on
video capering gleefully about it, later told an
interviewer, “What is most important to me is
my family.” And this year, it was discovered
that the president’s eldest son, Congressman
Mikey Arroyo, was worth P74 million, when
last decade he only had P50,000.
Okay, so you might not find that funny.
But at least the clowns are laughing. i
Alan C. Robles is editor of Hot Manila, a
columnist at the South China Morning
Post, and a lecturer at the International
Institute for Journalism in Berlin.
I REPORT
MA I L BO X
But let us not delude ourselves because the
same ignorance, hunger, aversion, suffering
and dissatisfaction exist in all of us.
Yes, we remain trapped in this condition
but not because of our political system
or our social structure. It is because the
seeds of ignorance, desire and aversion are
deeply implanted in our very being.
ED ARO
The Philippine Embassy
The Hague, Netherlands
WRONG FORMAT
SCAPEGOATING THE SYSTEM
In “The Unmaking of the President” (i
Report Special Issue), Ms. Sheila Coronel
faults mainly the social and political
system or structure for the recurring crises
that afflict the Philippines rather than
on the individual. What is suggested by
this position is that if we just reform the
system or the structure, we would spare
ourselves from these recurring crises.
But it is individuals that make up
and operate the political system and
the agencies of government not just of
the Philippines but of all systems and
governments. According to Buddhist
precepts, the world is on fire with desire
and aversion. We are constantly running
after things that are pleasurable and are
fleeing from things that displease us. No
one is immune from these twin afflictions
for as long as one is immersed in the
phenomenal world of impermanence.
Ms. Coronel in the very first sentence
of her article captures a key Buddhist
principle regarding individual karma—
whatever you sow, so shall you reap. It
is also one of the key teachings of Jesus
Christ. It is not just Filipinos who suffer
as a result of their ignorance of their true
nature and the pursuit of their desires and
ambitions. It is a universal and existential
condition and not just the effect of any
particular political system or structure.
Anywhere we look in this world, there is
suffering and ignorance. Rich and poor,
developed and developing countries are
all in the same condition. Absolutely no
one is spared.
In the Philippines, we are witnessing
today the high drama of individuals
caught up in their insatiable hunger for
power, money, position, popularity and
possessions. What makes it scandalous
is that our highest officials are involved.
50
Your first issue, about food is amazingly
worthy reading. I found the book formatreally interesting. It will also last, considering the kind of paper used. That was the
main reason why I decided to subscribe to
the i Report.
All the while, I was expecting to
receive the same type of material. To my
dismay, your September issue (despite
its important contents) was presented in
a magazine format and had a less lasting
cover. I am sorry, but I do not agree with
your reasons that magazine vendors like it
that way to attract more customers.
I want you to revert to your original
book format, which will be on my shelves
for a longer time.
LAURENCE L. DELINA
Civil engineer
laurence_delina@yahoo.com
The editor’s reply:
Thank you for your feedback. We regret
that you do not find the magazine format
of i Report as interesting as the book format. The change in format was a difficult
one for us to make. But in the end, our
sales and circulation—which have nearly
tripled since the format change—reaffirm
our decision. I hope you understand. I
prefer the book format myself, but I have to
concede that the market at this time seems
to be more hospitable to the current, magazine format.
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
COMPARATIVE GOVERNMENT
I am one of the many who admire the
timely relevance of your articles, and the
depth of your analyses. It is just so sad
that after everything has been said and
done, we make issues come to pass like
these were simply part of everyday life,
and accept the system that breeds what
is basically wrong in our society. I grew
up in the days when individual and family honor were revered and the likes of
Salonga, Tañada, Diokno, Rodrigo, etc.
graced the halls of intelligent and nationalistic discourse. Gone may be those days,
but our basic sense of right and wrong remains. We know what you write is right.
As we are about to debate on our
future form of government, I would like
to request that you come up with an issue
that contains a comparative analysis of
the presidential, parliamentary and federal
forms of government. We’d like to know
the difference in their structures, manner of
governance, funding allocations, advantages
and disadvantages, pitfalls of each in the
Philippine setting, etc. For instance, the
Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) is an automatic appropriation for LGUs in the current
system, so what happens if there would be
a shift to, say, parliamentary or federalism?
It would be very informative if we can have
a matrix of what the differences are.
Of course, I understand that, regardless of form of government, the success
of whatever system we adopt can only
depend on the quality and the character
of our leaders. Kindly enlighten us on
this issue. I’m an incurable optimist,
but it would also be nice to know how
we are going to get screwed parliamentarilly or federally, knowing that we are
already getting it presidentially.
JOSE MA. D. VILLANUEVA
Executive Director
The NOVA Foundation for Differently
Abled Persons, Inc.
Unit 28, 2nd/F, Columbia Tower
Ortigas Avenue, Mandaluyong City
I REPORT
THE MOCKERY
OF MIMICRY
This is a country where there’s always someone
spoofing a president—dead or alive—on TV, during concerts, Halloween parties, and from time to
time, at people power marches on Edsa.
There are a few who stand out, who have
endured a revolution or two, and became icons.
Willie Nepomuceno, Tessie Tomas, and Jon Santos
have been around longer than some of the presidents and presidential wannabes (Cory, FVR, Erap,
FPJ, GMA, Roco, Ping, Bro. Eddie, and Eddie Gil)
they’ve emulated.
Michael V’s GMA in the top-rated TV show
“Bubble Gang” was more cartoon than impersonation. He wore a bad wig, buck teeth, a mole as big
as a bug, and to approximate the president’s size,
stayed close to the ground with legs bent. He was
hilarious but the presidential task force on politically correct humor didn’t think so and it’s been a
year since Bitoy morphed into Gloria.
Rene Boy Facunla (who occupies the left side
of the presidential bed) is the real person inside
Ate Glow (the one wearing a satin nightdress and
feather boa.) He is the latest addition to this band
of Excellencies. The remarkable thing about Ate
Glow is he looks and sounds like GMA, even when
he’s not performing.
“But I’m taller,” he says.
But then, so is almost everyone else.
PHOTO BY LILEN UY; MAKEUP CATHY CANTADA; HAIR JERRY JAVIER;
STYLIST GUADA REYES; SPECIAL THANKS TO MANDY NAVASERO
PCIJ
i REPORT