In kneejerk fashion, we read the riot act on the Kuliglig. Let’s have second look at it. It’s original like the jeep and the Thais tuktuk and the Chinese rickshaw and the Venetian gondola. It came out of nowhere and nobody minded, except the barangay tanod and the cop on the block who get some...
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo no doubt ranks as one of the most vilified Presidents of this country. Surveys after surveys gave her the lowest estimation measure as an unpopular leader well into the end of her term.
Right after the 1998 elections, scuttlebutt has it that two months into Erap’s term, election contributions kept pouring in. The donors made a beeline at the Polk’s, the well-known residence of the newly minted President.
Still reeling from the aftermath of two destructive typhoons before the year ended, we were into a pleasant surprise to find out that our good congressman from the 3rd district of Quezon, also known as the Bondoc Peninsula, foot the Big Apple’s Le Cirque bill of the President and company. It amounted to less than a million...
How do we elect Presidents? We have so far elected a number of presidents from 1935 to 2004. What then is an outstanding trait of a candidate that makes us gravitate to him and topping this off by installing him as our leader? There seems to be a common thread among the elected presidents we...
The consequent condemnations of the 57 deaths were furious and unforgiving. Even the government’s reaction was swift in its objective of corralling all at once the perpetrators to satisfy public outcry. There has to be some catharsis in the massacre most foul. By declaring state of emergency over Maguindanao that ripened into full-blown martial rule...
Sedated, and before he lapsed into induced coma, Ferdinand Marcos ordered the Sikorsky pilot to bring him to Paoay. His genius told him that with him in his hometown he is assured of an iron vault fortification. The vaunted Ilocano allegiance comes into play and the dictator can buy his time. With him ensconced in...
Stone de Noche’s story When I was a kid, my playmate Edo Boy baptized every cop on the block in the small town of Quezon. There’s that old Batangueno Tata Kariong Supot whose service de sabog was never used the whole time the cop was in employment. Then there’s that Sergeant Saripang Duling who never...
Ernie’s story Ernie de Villa has a moniker, Bahi. Bahi is a kind of wood descriptive of its solidity approximating marble. Even a coconut tree when it is 100 years old can turn into a bahi. We in Quezon call it Kamagong. The proud Mabolo tree is a good source of Kamagong. Furniture made from...
One distant relation told me that you’re getting old if the obituaries are filled with your friends or names of the familiar. Once his preferred page was the Sports section of a broadsheet, where victories are bannered, now he peeps first at the Obit, where defeats are confirmed (the Christians invented the afterlife), and feign...
In the 60′s, I always heard my late father litanized that life’s hard. It’s now my turn to say that refrain over and over again. We are faced with the same ogre that never dies. Our government is an entanglement of craft and contraption. Our nation is mired in eternal search for the ideal leader....
It was the time for Malacanang to turn ballistic. The palace however has no bulldozer to heap scorn on the holier-than-thou local press. Its stable of spokesmen looks barren of the combative type. Mac Macalintal, the consigliere , was seconded to act as the palace Merlin. Macalintal was right, or so it seems. His shrift...
