WRONG METAPHORS

Methinks the President has used the wrong metaphors in his Easter Sunday message to the people, as he draws parallelisms between the economic growth of the Philippines under his watch and the resurrection of Christ.  He said we have now become a country of hope, from a hopeless one, since he assumed office in 2010.  He had better told that to the Marines!

With all due respect, I cannot follow that which he is talking about.  In terms of economic growth, as far as the numbers show, we inherited a 7.6 percent GDP from GMA.  Now, we wallow in the quicksands of less than 4 percent.  The President says that more and more OFWs are returning  because there are now better employment opportunities here than before.  Correct, there are indeed many OFWs who have returned and are still returning.  But wrong! They didn't return because there are now greener pastures in these parts..  Rather, they are coming back essentially because of the growing political hostilities in the countries they were working, such as in Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Jordan, etc, as well as due to the rather inhuman treatment some domestic helpers have been getting lately from their employers in Hongkong..  Truth is, they would want to go back to their previous jobs abroad as soon as such hostilities and, hopefully temporary employment abnormalities, had vanished..  P-Noy says the "darkness" now belongs to our past.  Well, as far as I know, Mindanao used to be a "brighter" community years before than it is now -- both literally and figuratively.    There appears no immediate solution to the brown-outs our brothers there are now experiencing day in and day out.  Moreover,  recent surveys indicate a continually growing incidence of hunger among the poorest of the poor in most localities in as many regions.  And that's amid the administration's propensity for the much ballyhooed CCT..  By the way, the CCT originated in Gloria's time.  'Kala ko ba, P-Noy tends to junk everything started by GMA?  Ah, maybe -- just maybe -- he opts not to junk the CCT because of the billions of foreign-sourced money it carries, which in turn -- let's please get real and admit it -- is simply too easy to disburse, yet too difficult to audit and account for.

With all honesty and candor, I voted for P-Noy and I sincerely wish him to succeed.  Nevertheless,  all I keep hearing from him and his lapdogs are endless denials of his lackluster performance, meaningless, self-serving, press releases in his defense, and his unbridled expression of extreme hatred of GMA and the past administration.  It's odd that no other president in this country's history from Quezon onwards -- not even his mother, Cory, who had the most valid axe to grind against Marcos (who caused his husband's death)  -- can compare with P-Noy in this respect..  But, as I know, in fairness, that P-Noy is one of our most honest (not necessarily best) presidents,  I do still pray to God that he could yet learn to graduate from his extremely unacceptable flair for political vendetta.   Maipakulong nga sana niya si GMA for good, gaya ng ginawang pagpapakulong ni GMA kay Erap.  Otherwise, he is going to be the whole world's laughing stock.

CHRIST IS RISEN, REJOICE!

Very early this morning, as my whole family was preparing for the Easter Sunday mass and to watch the traditional "Dagit," my eldest granddaughter who is studying in a Catholic school, approached me, saying: Lolo, they say Jesus was resurrected after three days.  Di ba, second day lang ngayon after He died on the cross last Good Friday?  Rather than respond to her directly, I said: Recite the Creed, iha, and she did. Soon after, I told her, Di ba, it says,  'on the third day he arose from dead...' at di naman 'after three days?'  But saying that, I knew she had a point, and I must admire her remarkable common sense.

Indeed, most members of the flock believe that it was after three days that Jesus rose from the dead, even as Luke, Matthew, Mark and John were unanimous in their respective narratives about the Resurrection. They all wrote:  "... early at dawn, on the day after the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene, along with Mary the Mother of James, and Salome, with spices, perfumes and ointments, went to Jesus' grave to anoint His body, but found the tomb empty..... "   Certainly, we need not make a big deal out of this little confusion. Well, except that when we really reflect on it more deeply, we are likely to ask ourselves: Which really is the true Sabbath Day, Saturday or Sunday?  As we all know, this is one of the many sources of disagreement among members of several religious sects.  

At any rate, I just happen to mention this in passing.  Personally, I don't give it too much concern.  For me, whether or not we treat Saturday or Sunday as our Sabbath Day does not really matter.  What matters more to me personally -- hopefully to every one else -- is that we fulfill our holiday obligation on whichever.

Having said the above, and since today all roads lead to churches, let me post and share hereunder a sonnet I wrote  when I was younger -- Ah, let me venture to say., if only to cap our Lenten woes with a relatively  amusing note.

PICNIC 

One Easter Sunday morn, as was their weekend plan,
A couple, with young Anne, packed up their tinted van
With food and drinks galore and lots of picnic ware,
Then beach-ward drove in haste to beat the summer air. . .
The car had passed the church when suddenly the lass,
On seeing worshipers march off the morning mass,
Remarked with focused glance at people on the way:
Mom, aren't we and Dad going to church today?
Trading embarrassed eyes, the couple felt aback
For, lo, in quick response their lips did truly lack;
The mother fumbled long to satisfy Anne's plea:
Dear, we can also pray and worship by the sea.
To which, as only from a four-year old may come:
But we won't Mom" said Anne, "will we? Oh, come on, Mom!

Happy Easter to one and all!
    

OF HEROES AND VILLAINS

On this day, Good Friday, the whole of Christendom wallows in a mixture of conflicting emotions: - love of, and mourning for, Jesus and his suffering and death, and extreme hatred of Judas Iscariot, the traitor.

Since time immemorial, scholars, philosophers and theologians have endlessly debated on whether Judas should indeed be condemned for what he did.  There is at least one Gospel truth that one may never assail.  I mean,  Jesus knew from the very beginning that Judas would betray him. Matthew 26:20 and John 6:64 had amply wrote about this. "When it was evening, while sat eating at a table with the Twelve, Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me!" And,  "I chose you, the Twelve, didn't I? Yet one of you is a devil. Then he spoke of Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, as the one."

That said, and before anybody gets me wrong, I am not defending the treachery of Judas; merely positing that Judas' role as a villain had been clearly providential and that, not himself realizing it, Judas just didn't have the free will to go against.it.  And so, let there be enough reason for us to ask ourselves on this day of of the world's extreme sadness for Jesus equally providential passing:    "Had not Judas performed his luckless role, could there have been the Resurrection of Jesus and the Joyfulness of Easter, which we will in very due course commemorate?"

Incidentally -- pressed forward to our own times -- who could have ever imagined that former President Fidel Ramos and now Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile would turn villains to then President Marcos and end up as two of the principal heroes of Edsa 1?  I ask this without malice towards any one. 

   

DISHONEST GAS STATIONS

It is needless to say that buyers of any commodity in the market place should be concerned not only with the price they pay but equally with the quantity they get in return.  It is a bit strange, however, that this does not exactly hold true in the case of petroleum products.

I mean, even as some housewives are known to complain every now and then that they are not getting the right quantity of the LPG they buy in cylinders, we have yet to hear,  generally speaking, of motorists, much less the noisy jeep drivers in our midst and times, ever suspecting that they are being short-changed in the volume of the fuels they buy from gas stations.  But alas, there is reason to believe not all gas stations are honest in this regard.

I discovered this very coincidentally, anyway.  Sometime last month, I decided to burn the fallen leaves and twigs in my backyard. (I know there is what I think to be a stupid law or local ordinance prohibiting the burning of garbage, but that is an entirely different matter I may probably dwell on later.)  Realizing that the trash  I just swept into a mound was still moist from a previous rain,  I took an empty, 4-liter plastic container (the one used by bottlers of purified water) and walked to a nearby gas station to buy kerosine.  I read from the station's pump that a liter of kerosine then cost 47 pesos, so I reckoned that if I bought two hundred pesos worth of it, the container would just be full to the brim.  To my surprise, it was just slightly half full. But I just kept silent, knowing there's no use arguing with the gas tender.    Even as I did not wish to store too much kerosine at home, I went through the same process with two other gas stations the next couple of days thereafter. The respective volumes of the kerosine I got in each of the succeeding experiments were just about the same I got from the first gas station:  roughly 60% of the container's 4-liter tare capacity.

I know  that the Department of Energy requires  regular calibration of the meters of all gas stations.  As a matter of fact, the oil companies, particularly the Big Three, do maintain so-called Sales Reps, whose primary function is to ensure the accuracy of their respective gas stations' pumps and meters.  But then we are not born yesterday not to know that which apparently happens just after those calibration schedules.
Notwithstanding this unfortunate finding, I dare not reveal the identity of the suspicious gas stations.  Suffice it for me to know that I know at least three gas stations who can't be relied upon, and for me to warn my own children and a few close friends who have vehicles never again to patronize these stations.   I now leave it to the readers to try my very simple experiment and to be guided accordingly..   .       

  

GO FARTHER AND FARE WORSE

The United States Trade Representative (USTR) has certainly no valid reason to be irked by the allegedly strict safety rules and regulations imposed by the Philippine Department of Agriculture on meat and meat products imported from the United States -- as reported in a broadsheet this morning.  That is even as, truth to tell, we are still to hear of people's health and safety unduly endangered by meats we import from the US, as much as they are  from  those  coming from China, for example.

The only little irony here is that government doesn't seem to be equally alarmed by the "bothca" or double-dead meat that we have to contend with very frequently in our midst and times.  That reminds me of the saying, "kita ang butas ng karayom, hindi ang butas ng palakol."  The "pilosopos" amongst us will certainly retort:  "But of course, because the axe's hole is concealed by its handle!"  Fine.  Allow me, then, to quote another adage:   "Go farther and fare worse!"       

'MON TULFO'S "BUKO" THINKING

In his Inquirer column today, Ramon Tulfo is so extremely bullish in highlighting the apparent great demand for "buko" juice in the US, Europe and China, he says the Philippines, being supposedly the world's number one coconut grower, should already forget copra.  Tulfo's optimism is of course not entirely new..  One recalls that sometime in September last year, it was President Aquino who first broached that idea locally upon returning from one of his trips to the US, even as no one has since heard about it from the President.  Maybe -- just maybe -- the President had eventually realized, or was reminded that coconut was, and is, no longer our principal crop and that, in fact, we can barely meet the likewise fast-increasing demand for buko juice and young coconuts in the local market.

That Tulfo suddenly suggests we avail of the opportunity to cash in on the current demand for buko juice worldwide and, at the same time, for other coconut products like virgin coconut oil,  "tuba" and "lambanog," as well as coconut husks and shells for making upholstery and charcoal -- though he rightly says we may forget copra -- amuses me endlessly, indeed.  Doesn't Tulfo realize that the production of buko juice and of all the other coconut products he mentioned is a contradiction of sorts?   It's a matter of plain common sense that buko juice comes from young coconuts while those "other" products are produced only from fully matured ones.  I didn't know, alas, that such rather "buko" thinking could emanate from an otherwise very coherent journalist, whose ideas, excepting this one, I highly respect.  Excuse be for bluntly saying so; it's just that I always tend to react to statements that defy plain common sense.    

CHICKEN-AND-EGG SITUATION

My rather long respite from watching daily the televised impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato C. Corona has afforded me ample opportunity to digress from merely digesting the proceedings per se into thinking of matters I barely considered before.  To be more specific, I now tend to ask myself:  Granting that Corona is convicted and removed -- or opts to resign albeit found innocent (having thereby duly vindicated himself) -- may President Aquino smoothly proceed to appoint a new Chief Justice?  I strongly doubt so.

It should be worthwhile revisiting the related provisions of the Constitution at this juncture.  Sections 8 and 9 of Article VIII provide, among others, that: "(a) A Judicial Bar and Council is hereby created under the supervision of the Supreme Court composed of the Chief Justice as ex officio Chairman, the Secretary of Justice and a representative of the Congress as ex officio Members, a representative of the Integrated Bar, a professor of law, a retired member of the Supreme Court, and a representative of the private sector. (b) The Council shall have the principal function of recommending appointees to the Judiciary.  (c) The members of the Supreme Court and judges of lower courts shall be appointed by the President from a list of at least three nominees prepared by the Judicial and Bar Council for every vacancy."

That is fine and well said!  But then, a big question curiously emerges.  I mean, without Corona, may the JBC -- ergo, sans a Chairman! -- still continue to exist constitutionally, so as to convene itself for the purpose of preparing the required official list of three nominees from which, in turn, Aquino may choose Corona's successor?

I have spent quite sometime scanning the charter, yet I failed to find a clue pointing to another government official -- for example, the most senior among the Justices -- who may at least briefly and temporarily sit in an acting capacity as Chief Justice. Looking back, methinks the contentious situation in May 2010, where former President Arroyo forthwith appointed Corona after former Chief Justice Reynato Puno had retired, was even slightly better or relatively more manageable than that which awaits the present administration if Corona were suddenly removed or voluntarily stepped down.  At the very least, assuming Arroyo had then allowed Aquino to appoint Puno's replacement, the mandatory list of nominees from which Aquino might have named his choice -- although also still controversially -- had all along been readily available when Puno stepped down.  As things now are, vis-a-vis the constitutional requirement that there be a separate list for every vacancy, there will definitely be no such thing for Aquino to consider in selecting Corona's replacement, if necessary.

In a nutshell, the Constitution is in effect practically saying -- subject, of course, to the dissenting views of some -- that without a Chief Justice to chair and convene it, no Judicial and Bar Council can legally function as such, and without a JBC to prepare the mandatory list of nominees, there can never be a new Chief Justice.  A virtual chicken-and-egg situation, isn't it?