Do you want coffee, he would ask. Take a seat, he would say. I have counted your columns, and you appear to have missed a number of dates. He would then proceed to read those dates, my yearly total, and my monthly average. And then he would close the folder, explain to me my responsibility to the paper and my readers, and extract the promise that no sir, of course sir, it would not happen again.

I write this because Isagani Yambot died Friday night, died on his feet still publisher of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. It is an odd thing, because it never occurred to me that Sir Gani would die.

I have heard him called one of the last idealists of Philippine journalism. This is the man who was caught weeping while lighting a candle after 57 people were confirmed dead in the slaughter in Maguindanao. Two years after the massacre, there were already journalists beginning to demand a review of the list of the dead. Many were not real journalists, they said. Many were hacks and guns for hire. They do not deserve to be counted in the list of those killed in the line of duty.

I remember how he shook his head. “Every man’s death diminishes all of us,” he said. “Whether he or she is a legitimate journalist or not, we should grieve over the death of even just one person.”

Courage is celebrated among journalists, and even the most reckless are still spoken of with something resembling awe. The journalist who ran from the ’87 coup attempt is still dinner conversation today, discussed with the same derision reserved for abusive husbands and plundering presidents. I do not know how Isagani Yambot behaved on the field. He was already old when I met him. I do know his was a different sort of courage.

I used to produce a media affairs show on ANC called “Media in Focus.” Cheche Lazaro of “Probe” hosted, and invited reporters, company heads, publishers and politicians to talk about failures in reportage and ethics. It is rare for a news head to accept an invitation, knowing, for example, that his reporter handled a story wrong, or that his editor failed to verify his lead story. Most would send apologies, or a statement, or would simply refuse to answer phone calls. Every time his paper was attacked, Isagani Yambot would appear, jacket over one arm. He would sit quietly under the storm of criticism, some of it personal, some of it over the line. And if it were clear his paper was in error, and it occasionally was, the head of the largest of Philippine newspapers would say so without hesitation, would say it, on national television, with an apology and a commitment to correct.

When provincial journalists began complaining in a national conference that they felt bypassed by the national media, he took the same stand. “I must admit there is some truth to the accusation that provincial journalists are treated as second-class citizens. This is not the right attitude.” He went on to say the Inquirer was taking the lead to prevent this.

Asked how much he made himself, he smiled. “I receive a salary that allows me to live comfortably, but I could do with a raise.”

Journalism, he said, was a calling. “It’s like a priesthood. When you enter journalism you take a vow of poverty. Because you know, especially in the print media the salary is not so high. You also have to take a vow of obedience, follow the laws and canons of journalism.

“Luckily, we don’t have to take a vow of chastity, because if we had to take a vow of chastity, 99 percent of the male journalists would not make it.”
Asked about the female media population, he laughed, and corrected himself, on the record. Females, too.

He was always kind, always understanding, except for the odd moment when he appeared at a Department of Foreign Affairs event, shook my hand, and calmly informed me that I had gained weight. It was also the first and only time he had ever told me I wrote well. I do not know if he said it to compensate, but I like to think he never made the connection.

I write this now because a good man is dead, and his death diminishes me, and diminishes the public he lived to serve. I write this for the same reason the staff of a newsroom on Pasong Tamo switched on the lights of his office the first night he was gone. I write this, too, because I know that even if he’s gone, not even God himself can stop Gani Yambot from calculating how many columns I’ve missed this year.

The landslide occurred at three in the morning at the hilly portion of Sitio Uno to Sitio 700, a gold-panning area situated in Barangay Napnapan, Pantukan, Compostela Valley. “Said incident,” according to the Jan. 14 report signed by Director Benito Ramos of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, “occurred due to continuous rains in recent days. Dozens were buried alive while several shanties made with light materials were wiped out.”

The national government ordered the immediate evacuation of the surrounding areas. Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo demanded the closure of mine tunnels. Pantukan Mayor Celso Sarenas announced that his administration would shut down all tunnels and stop the renewal of the annual permits to mine in the high-risk area.

President Aquino’s spokesperson Edwin Lacierda quoted Robredo as saying that the government was of the impression that local officials had simply allowed residents to continue mining in the area despite the hazards.

Lacierda’s deputy Abigail Valte said that unlike previous administrations, the Aquino administration would not hesitate to punish local officials who have failed in disaster mitigation and management: “Well, this time it will be different. We have always mentioned that accountability is one of the key points, one of the stronger points, of the Aquino administration, and certainly we will not hesitate to push for accountability where it lies.”
Forty-two died in the Pantukan landslide of Jan. 14. Much of the blame has been laid at the feet of the local government and the miners too stubborn to leave the site in spite of danger warnings. Critics chastised the government for being reactionary. Too little, too late, said the editorials, marking the numbers of the dead and missing.

In the 2006 geohazard map of Compostela Valley presented by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the entire Pantukan is marked in red, the highest probability of landslide susceptibility, and natural high-risk zones for mining and habitation.
It was a map that existed on May 18, 2009, when 27 people, most of them miners, were killed in a landslide in Sitio Mangapispis, also in Napnapan. The same map existed on April 22, 2011, when continuous rains triggered another landslide at Sitio Panganason in Barangay Kingking that killed 13 people. It is the same map that marks the danger zone where three miners were killed in August 2011, the same map that predicts the sort of danger that listed five dead in a December 2011 landslide, less than a month before the “said incident” on Jan. 5.

Every landslide leads to the same series of events: the cancellation of mining permits, the demonization of small-scale miners, suspicions of local support from officials who own Pantukan tunnels, forced evictions and immediate evacuations, plans for livelihood programs and for shipping miners back to their home provinces, as well as reports from the NDRRMC listing its own contribution to curb the aftermath of disaster: P54,450 on cadaver bags in 2012, P5,000 to each affected household in 2011. The list goes on. Burial assistance. Management of the dead. Relief and retrieval operations. This many trucks and this many teams and this many body bags for this many dead.

Of Pantukan’s population of 70,000, those dependent on mining number 20,000. As many as 700 of 1,000 tunnels are without a permit. The miners return, and their numbers increase. At every incident, Mayor Sarenas calls for a halt in all mining activities and cancellation of permits. In a GMA 7 report, several small-scale mining permits were allowed in 2011 as a response to a public outcry in Pantukan.

It cannot be allowed to happen again, says the President.

At 10 in the morning of Feb. 17, a little more than a week ago, a number of small-scale miners reopened the padlocked gold tunnels in Napnapan, in the areas where mining and habitation have been banned. Government demolition teams sent to stop the miners backed down because of heavy rain. Miners who had planned to build a human barricade began mining instead. At least 11 tunnels are now active, according to a message from miner Paciano Banuelos, who said in a text message to the Inquirer that the tunnels were opened despite incessant rains. They say their families are starving.

Robredo says he will have this stopped.

There is a room where rescuers kept the Pantukan dead, shortly after the Jan. 5 landslide. There were many bodies. Laid out in a corner were three small bodies, daughters of a widowed miner who was still on his hands and knees at the landslide site, scrabbling in the mud for the body of his fourth child. The four girls did not live with their father in Napnapan. He had picked them up from their home in Upper Lahi in Tagdangua, Pantukan, to spend Christmas Day and New Year’s Day with him near the mines. He had planned to bring all four home after New Year’s Day, but the motorcycle ride down the mountain cost P250 for each passenger.

On Jan. 4, the day before the mountain fell, a miner named Bernabe Tolentino left for another village to borrow money to take his four daughters home to Tagdangua. By the time he returned, the tunnels had caved in, the homes had been flattened, and the bodies of 14-year-old Bernalie, 12-year-old Shiela Mae and 6-year-old Beah had been laid out in a corner of a room where the rescuers kept the dead. There were holes in their legs where their knees should have been. In the official report filed by the NDRRMC on Jan. 14, a 9-year-old girl named Chona is listed as missing.

It may be too late for four small girls and a man named Bernabe, but there are other children, and other fathers. Perhaps this is where “never again” should begin. After all, rain falls on Pantukan today. With reporting by Karlos Manlupig

The President of the Republic claims there is nothing personal in his crusade against Corona. He is fighting for justice, and because he seeks enormous changes, it is only natural that his enemy is a juggernaut. A blindfolded woman carrying scales, he says, symbolizes justice. Our duty, says Benigno Aquino III, son of saints and heroes, is to return the blindfold to Lady Justice and once again balance the scales.

I write this after five weeks of listening to my government announce my future is dependent on the men who have done all that is possible to trivialize what they call a crusade against injustice and corruption. Corona’s supporters have called the exercise a political attack, the result of one man’s attempt to wreak vengeance and wrest power from the Supreme Court. They claim that much has been wasted in the convoluted attempt to prove that Chief Justice Corona is not fit to lead the Philippine Supreme Court.

And of course they are correct, that it could have been done better, that the prosecutors are presenting perhaps the worst of examples to the legal community, that money and time and political will are being squandered on questions of improper procedure and unethical practice, that there are vital issues being ignored for the sake of the administration’s pursuit of Corona’s crown, and that this may be little more than one President’s attempt to maintain approval ratings that have shot up in the last two months’ march to mayhem. All this could be true, but it is also true that this political exercise is necessary, more necessary now than at any other time in the weeks since it was clear Corona would stand trial.

This is the Chief Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court, the hero who waves from balconies and pumps his fist with the balloon-carrying crowds in the manner of a television evangelist desperate for ratings. This is the man in whose wisdom questions of right and wrong depend on, whose moral fiber is supposed to be above the muck of politics and gossip, the man whom the Constitution describes as one whose “integrity, probity and independence” should be unquestionable. There is a reason why the gentlemen of the Judiciary are asked to conduct themselves in a manner far more restrained as that of the politicians who bounce to the “Papaya” at national elections, and why the brotherhood of the robe is asked to submit themselves to lifestyle checks that will leave the public without questions. That probity and independence mean they are independent from the influence of politics and money and personal interests, because they are aware their decisions have far more impact than the word of God himself.

It means Renato Corona is not permitted to play politician while wearing his black robe. Let the President roll in the mud with the rest of the madding crowd, let the congressmen bleed and the senators scream, let the media frenzy he was elected for his biases and in spite of his sins. When Renato Corona stands before the Supreme Court and demands the stopping of the impeachment trial, he puts the entire court in the dangerous position of interfering in a political process that it is not mandated to decide, and forces a crisis that is meant to be determined by the constitutionally mandated votes of the impeachment court. The court that Corona has repeatedly claimed as his court becomes a pawn, and the attacks against him become an attack against the same court that has until now kept its silence. And when the same Supreme Court chief begins deriding the President of the Republic with the same malicious rumor-mongering he himself is attacking, there is little to set him apart from the candidate who wailed on national radio in 2010 that his interviewer was a nobody who was abused as a child. This is not behavior that is acceptable for a presidential candidate, and it is certainly unacceptable from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

“Maybe it would be better if you also make public, Mr. President, your SALN and explain it to the people,” said Corona in a statement to Mr. Aquino. “Maybe you should also include your bank accounts and psychological records, which have been an old issue. We have an obligation to show the people that we are of sound mind.”

This is the man whose conscience and moral fortitude are supposed to correctly decide on issues of human rights, economy and governance, whose answer to attacks on his credibility is an ad hominem attack on his adversary’s mental health. He has decried the trial by media while feeding that same media. He has filed a petition at the Supreme Court to stop his impeachment at a time when his questionable wealth and more questionable concealment are now a matter of public interest.

If the proceedings stop now, there will be a sitting Chief Justice whose every decision will be viewed through the lens of accusations made against him in the blue-carpeted room at the second floor of a building in Pasay City. He does not need to be proven innocent; he believes his word is enough. To Corona, the weight of his robe is all that is necessary to continue on as chief justice, not his character, not his morality, not whatever image of probity or independence or integrity is demanded by the Constitution. He is willing to risk his court and all his justices as well as the Constitution for no other reason than for the best interests of one Renato Corona.

This is what it means to betray the public trust, and why Corona has done more damage against himself than even the gentlemen of the prosecution.

The sun burns hot here, melts the skin off electric posts and strikes bright white against steel. A man runs over his girl, smashes into her standing body, then stabs her with a knife and runs over her again. A 16-year-old girl is raped and killed by teenage boys, and they smile for the cameras from behind bars. In the country’s premiere university, a graduating student is assaulted by robbers in the student council office, her skull fractured by a trophy slammed against her head.

Many things are stolen here. Like laptops off coffee shop tables. Or mobile phones from the inside pocket of a boy riding a train. Or the bag off an old lady’s shoulder while she stands waiting for her husband in front of a posh Ortigas mall. Votes are stolen, along with fields of sugar canes and yards of copper wiring, copper so precious that sometimes the electricity dies on January mornings because young men have spent the night stripping the lines. Early in the year, the head of a bronze sculpture is stolen from the inside of a caster’s workroom. The body is abducted weeks later from the studio of a sculptor shining its skin. It takes four men to lift it, and a quarter of a million to replace it. Monuments to heroes lose their ornaments. The revolutionary is left without his bolo; the mayor sits by the bay reading an invisible newspaper.

People are stolen too. In Tawi-tawi, a man dives off a fishing boat on the way to Sulu, after he is kidnapped along with a pair of foreigners out on a trip to photograph birds. A four-year-old boy is taken from the Laundromat where his Daddy lies bleeding from knife wounds.

This is not a story about dead boys and girls, although there are many, or about desperation, or even about what it implies when the result of a near-fatal assault in the state university results in the addition of a single security guard in Vinzons Hall. Instead this is a story about the price being paid by a country where the single national interest has been defined by politicians as the doings inside blue-carpeted room on the second floor of a building in Pasay City, where men in suits wax eloquent over the evils of corruption and the betrayal of public trust, while the same public discovers hunger does not care who betrayed who.

Whether or not the impeachment is necessary is no longer a point of argument. It is there, and must be completed in the most ethical and correct manner possible in an attempt to progress to some semblance of judicial respect after the process ends. And while the gentlemen from prosecution and defense tangle over whether a discount is a reduction and whether a lying Chief Justice is a Chief Justice who betrayed the public trust, bills are left on back burners, a population without contraception balloons, and the Palace claims that although starvation is a problem, poverty is not.

Watch your daughters. Warn your sons. This is the country that God forgot, and good men walk the streets willing to cut throats for food. The 2011 GDP has dropped down more than 3 percent, and even with more jobs available, the number of job seekers has ballooned, and the President – and may he find joy and peace starring in his very own Korean telenovela – has been known to put the practical secondary to the political.

The trial stretches on. Quezon, Iloilo, Aurora, Ilocos Norte, Isabela and Cavite have lost their representatives. Old men with grievances are forced to troop to the Senate in the hope of catching a few seconds with the men they voted into power. The senators of the republic spend their days in red robes and their nights on interviews, while a process that could have run the same 18 days of the Bill Clinton impeachment stretches to months.

It took three full weeks for one of eight articles of impeachment to reach its vague conclusion. It takes the senator-judges almost a day to examine a single witness, interspersed with long, tedious and often necessary attacks on a prosecution that took a day to pass the articles of impeachment and weeks to explain it. The merits of the case are buried in technicality and redundancy. A hundred witnesses are slated for examination, although the prosecution claims they don’t intend to present all – another sterling example of how well the prosecution cobbled together its case for the conviction of Chief Justice Renato Corona.

I write this in February, a month where the sun outside the Senate burns hot, and the gallery is filled with a confused citizenry bundled in denim jackets against the freezing cold. There is much I do not understand about the state of the nation and the workings of government, and about how the prosecution hopes to prove crimes of bad intentions. Perhaps there are undertones that cannot be seen from the public gallery, perhaps some of the nitpicking is a result of senators afraid for themselves and of the day news reports will enumerate their condo units and luxury cars and discounts that are not discounts placed in the name of physical-therapist daughters. This is the opening act, only the actors have gone off-script, the director is on leave, and the audience has gone home to lock their doors for the night.

He is unethical, arrogant and ruthless. He manipulates the law to allow his patrons their crimes. He squanders public funds and condones deceit. His judgment can be bent in favor of his own interests. He is a man who trades favors for power, who refuses accountability and schemes against his colleagues, while enriching himself and his family with the spoils of his position. He has violated the highest laws with intent and purpose. He is incompetent. He is biased. He is neither fair nor just. His crimes are legion; his power is great.

This is the portrait of Renato Corona, Chief Justice of the Republic of the Philippines, as painted by 188 men and women who demand his impeachment. Never, they say, “has the position of Chief Justice, or the standing of the Supreme Court, as an institution, been so tainted with the perception of bias and partiality, as it is now: not even in the dark days of martial law, has the chief magistrate behaved with such arrogance, impunity, and cynicism.”

If they are correct, as they claim they are, repeatedly and consistently, then the country is at the precipice of a crisis of monumental proportions. It is the wisdom of the Judiciary that interprets legislations and tempers the Executive. The chief justice, the guiding hand of the Supreme Court, whose judgments are final and whose power is vast, has destroyed the citizen’s last altar of appeal in a country buried in poverty and corruption. The danger is clear and present. If Corona remains at the helm of the Judiciary, every verdict is suspect, and every justice is tainted with his command.
This is what is at stake in the impeachment proceedings, the menace that confronts Philippine democracy.

The prosecutors believe Corona is guilty, the President believes it, the whole band of howling would-be heroes believe it, or they say they do every time a microphone wanders in their vicinity. They are servants of the people, and a threat like this demands the unleashing of phalanxes of angels with burning swords, intent on casting out the devil named Renato Corona.

“We will not shirk our duty, we will not deviate from the path of principle, and we will not betray the people,” says His Excellency Benigno Aquino III.
And yet, in spite of all the chest-beating and manly claims to action, the prosecution sends in Niel Tupas.

Tupas, the 41-year-old gentleman from Iloilo, he of the waving arms and grand speeches, half of whose 12 years as a lawyer was spent in politics, tangling against his cousins in congressional elections. Son of a former governor now government executive, brother to various siblings ranging from mayor to government directors, Tupas, who walks into the session hall defending articles of impeachment whose haphazard formulation appears every day on national television.

The impeachment court’s rules were never set in writing. The senators themselves are struggling with questions of procedure. The defense is a band of highly organized courtroom veterans whose one goal is to acquit the Chief Justice. The situation is already predictably difficult, and it is assumed that the prosecutors would have girded their loins at the prospect of battle, had spent their time gathering their witnesses, confirming their statements and preparing for one of the most important and difficult challenges facing Philippine democracy. If they did, perhaps they would have had to defend more vital issues than the placement of a paragraph.

And still, the honorable Tupas, who has been permitted his 15 minutes of fame, demands “the honorable tribunal to be liberal in the asking of questions,” after he complained of over 30 objections by the defense. The Senate president questions him.

Are you suggesting that we should allow hearsay evidence?

No, Your Honor.

Are you suggesting that we allow argumentative questions?

No, Your Honor.

Are you suggesting that we should allow hypothetical questions?

No, Your Honor.

Are you suggesting that we should allow leading questions teaching the witness what to say?

In the end, after his tirade on liberality and truth, Tupas did what Tupas does, and backed down.

It was Tupas, after all, whose obvious unpreparedness earned him a whaling by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, whose demand for a witness count resulted in little more than a head shake. It was Rep. Romero Quimbo of the prosecution who admitted that the hero of the house was asking for aid. And it was Rep. Erin Tañada who applauded Tupas in one of the oddest of statements, saying it was Tupas’ demand for flexibility that hastened the process.
“The impeachment,” Tupas told the Inquirer, “is more than legal technicalities. It involves the search for the truth, making our democratic institutions work and our officials accountable.”

It is as if the prosecutors shined their shoes, ironed their shirts, called their drivers and by all that decided they were ready for the impeachment of the highest magistrate of the land. It is odd to demand a loosening of what appears to be all legalities while in a room with a judge and jury. Tupas was certainly not selected for his legal prowess, and he may not be alone, as the haphazard articles of impeachment were supposed to be the product of the entire prosecution bench. And yet this is supposed to be a high stakes trial, with the President behind it and the future of the country in the balance. Truth does not matter so much as the proving.

Let us give the prosecutors the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they believe Corona is guilty so sincerely that the details do not concern them. Perhaps they do not realize their actions trivialize the nobility of the cause they claimed. Or perhaps they forgot the man they call a scoundrel is not the only one being judged.

This is a report from Manila in the beginning of the drowning season, a little more than a week after the President of the Republic makes a car siren the standard for good and evil. In the spirit of goodwill towards a misunderstood administration, this column adopts the language of His Excellency, and records the state of this week’s nation to the tune of a whining “wang.”

Wang goes Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, who answers a demand for a public apology by humbly apologizing in behalf of the Bureau of Immigration while forgetting to apologize in behalf of Justice Secretary Leila de Lima.

Wang goes the Freedom of Information Bill and the right to reproductive health, as the President bowed before the almighty wang of Holy Mother Church in his State of the Nation Address, forgetting to acknowledge the Muslim Imams and the witnesses to Buddha and Jehovah and born-again Christians. Artists are charged with blasphemy. A series of video clips demonstrate hazing in the Philippine National Police. Actress Maricel Soriano’s maid claims her boss gave her the dirty finger.

The “wanging” goes on as the wankers surge forth, and yet in a week of bad deals and worse atrocities, the state of the nation takes on an odd glitter.

An elected official caught in a national controversy resigns from his elected post, offering the first dignified political exit to recent history. A team of athletes stripped of their status goes on to fight in the world championships with borrowed paddles and a depleted membership to prove that politics cannot stop the rage of dragons. A general is held accountable by two of his victims after five long years of waiting. The state’s cultural agency holds its ground in the face of a moral juggernaut, even as the oldest university washes its hands. Ruffa Gutierrez gets back her shoes, and a taxi driver is justly rewarded for owning a conscience.

The President may appear odd in his State of the Nation Address’ attempt to convince congressmen that poverty is a matter of national interest – odd because his argument appeals not to congressional duty but to congressional self-interest –but his attempt, spoken as the son of the elite, may be what is necessary to push poverty into the forefront of the congressional agenda.

“How can [the poor] buy products and services from businesses if they do not have a proper income? When a poor father turns to crime in order to feed his family, who would he victimize, if not us? When people cannot properly take care of themselves and fall ill, do we not run the risk of getting sick as well?”

“We,” it is to be assumed, refers to the President and the small group of landed gentry and Porsche-owning celebrity in the House of Representatives whose pineapple silk and butterfly sleeves control most of the nation’s national wealth.

Much has been said about the State of the Nation Address, and this column offers little more. This much must be said – finally, there stood a president whose speech did not include any references to heroic fathers or sainted mothers or revolutions of prayer and confetti made possible by the will of God and people.

He was Noynoy Aquino, finally president, whose father and mother were no longer trotted out at public events to serve as props to their son’s claim to power. Instead he built his own mythology, and although jacking the juice out of his “wangwang” metaphor a third of the way through was not particularly inspiring, there’s something to be said about the persistence of his thrust. In the course of a 53-minute speech, the President brandished his metaphorical wang 23 times against the evils of corruption, the sale of second-hand helicopters and the dangers of overpriced caffeine.

This is a report from Manila, in the beginning of the drowning season, where one less car siren is perhaps as good a standard for progress as is the unemployment index. And although it is premature for His Excellency to announce that “We have put an end to the culture of entitlement, to wang-wang: along our roads, in government, in our society as a whole,” there is much to celebrate, even one less wanker with a grip on the state of the nation.

My mother said that if you want to go into law, then you take another course which has a pre-law that you can make use of if you don’t finish law. I took up accounting. I took up ROTC in order to be a diversion from my studies, because I didn’t like my course. It was a very lonely course, you’re counting figures. So to have fun, I took up ROTC. For young people, you have to have some group.

I found out that I had some leadership skills. That was my inspiration to get through my studies. I could talk to a number of people and they would listen, you know, and do what I wanted, do what I desired. Initially I was a model cadet in the ROTC. I enjoyed that because you know, when you’re young, you like ceremonies also.

As a model cadet you have to follow orders very seriously. I was good at following orders. You have to, because in order to be a leader, you have to be a good follower. So I wanted to become an ROTC officer, so I had to be a good follower.

Maybe I was 18 at the time. My leadership was more of inspirational. I like to inspire people, instead of forcing people to do something. Because there were those who followed strict leadership, which is dictatorial, authoritative, I didn’t like that. I opted to be inspirational or persuasive. People seemed to like you with that. If you are good to them, you’ll have a lot of people volunteering to come into your company and leaving others. And so, upon finding that skill, I proceeded to become an officer.

First you establish your relationship with friendly gestures. And then you now lay down your policy. Then of course they would start behaving sometimes quite indifferent because when you set a policy, when you set rules, usually there are reactions. It’s normal, because people don’t want to be tied up, you know.

They don’t want to be told, you know. So there will be reactions. So you remove the threat by your gesture of being friendly. And so, it is easy for them to follow you because they don’t want to break your relationship. In that way you are inspirational. They don’t want to offend you, because you are a friend.
When you side with the government, then the military is a very, let’s say, is a good option. I was already in the military when martial law was declared. I finished my training already in May, June, July, December, October, October, October – I think during martial law I was undergoing training.

We didn’t have much of an idea about martial law at that time, but we just thought that maybe it was necessary because, according to what we heard and read, the country was in peril by rebels both communist as well as Muslim, that it was an emergency that should be declared to avert destruction and the takeover of the government by illegal forces.

I was engaged in the Muslim rebellion in Sulu and Basilan, and I think I did a little better than others because I stayed longer than many of us. Before GMA (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) I was already against – I was running after the NPA already.

Communism being already a discredited ideology and a violent ideology has got to vanish. It should not exist. It should not exist. Meaning it was wrong to conceptualize that ideology. Whether it’s socialist or Marxist or Mao’s, they’re all the same, you know. The difference is only in the people implementing the ideology.

I do not like mostly the, well, the whole of it. The violence as well as the government system. It’s easy to distinguish a communist. They believe in a one-party rule, and then they follow a set of beliefs that cannot be questioned. So there’s no freedom, in other words. But the real communist according to Karl Marx as written, is that it will give us total freedom, total freedom and state of utopia, but that is impossible. But that’s what they are promoting you know, paradise. You are talking of an extreme situation where everything is free, then you can do just what you want and people do not resist you because they like it. It’s really impossible! There’s just got to be rule.

In this country, a left-wing politician is the same as a communist. I could really say that it’s just the same. There are some, some differences perhaps. You can tell by the body language. Moderate communism or what we call the leftist is just an introduction to the real communism, meaning, it is being developed. Maybe he believes that he cannot be involved. He doesn’t like communism, he’s just trying to be a catalyst. Just trying to have change, reform, but then, he could be eaten by the system he joins in.

Those who claim to be for labor, for press freedom, I would like to say that these are deceptions. I personally think I succeeded in my military career. I contributed to the country. I was successful, but I feel that I ran out of time. If I had more time, I could have done more.

Tagged as “The Butcher,” retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan is blamed for the killings in Mindoro Island, Eastern Visayas and Central Luzon. He once said the tag has helped in his congressional campaign. Human rights organizations as well as the United Nations have demanded that he be investigated. Even the Arroyo-created Melo Commission also found Palparan liable for the killings in Central Luzon.

On July 7, after five years of campaigning by the mothers of Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño, the former congressman appeared before the Department of Justice to face accusations of rape, serious physical injuries, arbitrary detention, maltreatment of prisoners, grave threats, grave coercion, and torture, among other charges, against the University of the Philippines students.

Palparan calls the accusations an effort to embarrass the Armed Forces, the military and himself. He has done his duty, and the country is a better place for it.

Girly is a single mother to four boys and a baby girl. The children are in school, and they are good boys, smart boys. She has had three husbands, and knows that the child will be the last – she has learned not to look for love.

Every morning, she wades into the water and digs in the muck for the plastic bottles of soft drinks and mineral water that have washed into the river. Each bottle is cleaned carefully of soil and grit. They are more expensive this way, she says. She wades to her home, a small woman in a white dress whose neckline shows off the ample breasts of a heavily pregnant mother. The dress is a donation from the time a fire burned down the shanties.

On July 31, a demolition team will rip down the homes of several hundred families along the waterways of E. Rodriguez, and with just cause. The city government has recognized that shanties crowding waterways do not only endanger those who live in them, but also a city unable to manage the floods storming an already crowded metropolis.

Girly says she will not be removed. The government has taken her and her neighbors on a long bus ride to Montalban to show them their new homes, and she says she would rather risk running from E. Rodriguez’s floodwaters than the landslides in Montalban. There will be no jobs there, no schools or hospitals or the possibility of digging for plastic in the muck. Residents once relocated to Montalban because of typhoon “Ondoy” have already made their way back to crowd E. Rodriguez and the slums of Marikina.

Today, the squatters of E. Rodriguez have a message for the city government. Girly is ready with her placards, and the women have readied the pots for the noise barrage.

On the day the demolishers come, Girly will be eight months pregnant. She will stand in her borrowed dress before the backhoe and the men with batons. She is not afraid, she says. She is strong. She is a mother.

She has already sent away the children. They might get hurt.

Curfew begins at 10 p.m in the shantytowns of Navotas. A reminder is spray-painted on the wall of a police outpost – If you walk, you walk with God.

The homes begin on the edge of a cemetery, where the dead are piled in layers like floors on an apartment building. A group of young boys plays basketball. The hoop has been nailed to a marker six feet above the ground, right over the date of birth.

Navotas is where 27-year-old fisherman Jerwin de Antonio used to live before he was killed on April 21 this year. De Antonio had been jailed for drug use when he was younger, and had spent the last years supporting his sisters and mother. His membership in activist group Anakbayan was still provisional on the night he was arrested. Although his death has been pegged as another activist execution, De Antonio only expressed interest in joining, but never had the time after long hours on the lake.

Karapatan’s report said that three policemen forced De Antonio into a patrol vehicle. He was beaten up, booked for vagrancy, and beaten again. Witnesses say the policemen told De Antonio to run and then gunshots were heard after which they were seen putting him inside a tricycle. He was declared dead on arrival at the Tondo General Hospital. He died of four bullet wounds. His sisters found his body in the morgue.

The three policemen were suspended after the initial clamor, but are now allegedly back on the streets. No cases have been filed.

A police report calls the shooting self-defense.

In the cemetery outside, the basketball has been stored inside an open tomb. A shrieking swordfight has begun among the smaller boys. The swords they clutch are dirty bones.

Along Mother Ignacia Avenue, in a small room four feet square, a woman named Julie holds her week-old baby. The boy is her fourth, and they have yet to decide on a name. Her husband Joseph would like the boy named for himself, but Julie refuses. She says, smiling, that the boy might grow up into his father.

Three other toddlers crowd the room; two of them cling to Julie’s legs while another laughs with Joseph. Julie hikes up her shirt and cups her breast. Her stomach is covered with sores, her nipple is dark with infections. The baby begins to suckle.

This is a rare night for Julie and Joseph and their family. Most nights are spent along Panay Avenue, inside a blue van parked across a convent. They have lived in the van for years. Showers are rare for the couple, although the small children are bathed every two days. The van is crowded with old blankets and small toys, a pink Barbie backpack is hung on the place of honor. When typhoon “Falcon” flooded Panay Avenue, Julie wrapped her babies in blankets and rushed them up the church steps. Only her daughter’s schoolbag was saved when the water engulfed the old van.

In the weeks after, Julie and Joseph thought of adoption. Joseph said he would allow it, for as long as he never saw his child first. Julie said she couldn’t put another baby through the life she leads, especially after someone stole the pedicab Joseph used to make a living. His one dream is to be a janitor with a regular paycheck, but every time he is given a chance, employers discover he has no IDs, no money for an NBI clearance, and cannot read or write. It does not stop him from haunting the front offices of Quezon City buildings. Now he assists residents parking cars.

The night Julie gave birth on July 7, Joseph took her to the small shanty along Mother Ignacia, borrowed from a sympathetic squatter who said she could stay until the floods stopped coming. It was an easy birth, she said. One moment the baby was inside her, the next moment he was hers.

Joseph walked down Panay Avenue that day with a grin on his face, announcing to anyone who would listen that he had another son.

They will go home soon, they say. They will see what is left of their home. At least, says Julie, nobody can take her children away.

The mayor did not hesitate; neither did she mince words. She gave the police a tongue-lashing, and ordered them to stop the demolition. She turned on the residents, and demanded they drop their weapons. This was the daughter of the notorious former mayor of Davao, the man marked as the “Punisher,” whose alleged Davao Death Squads had bled out the rabble from the populace and restored order to his fiefdom. It was the female Duterte who by the authority of her voice alone had angry residents literally at her feet, who demanded that the police behave according to procedure. And after she successfully brought about order, it was Duterte, new hero of Davao, her father’s daughter, who called for the sheriff and shot off four blows, one-two, one-two, against the man’s surprised face.

That Sara Duterte had found it fit to assault a constituent, in the presence of national media, is a commentary on the state of national morality. I use the word loosely, as morality in this country carries the uncomfortable image of Catholic priests howling excommunication at progressives who believe a woman’s uterus is her own. By morality I mean the basics of law and order, the questions of right and wrong taught to a society unwilling to live by the law of the gun. You do not steal. You do not kill. You do not take a van of journalists with the intent to bury them on a hill in Sitio Masalay, Ampatuan, Maguindanao. You do not beat your wife and say it is your right, you do not rape your daughter or murder your brother, you do not, for example, use your authority to call an unsuspecting man into your presence and use your fists to make a point—especially since the man has been properly cowed by your authority.

The Duterte incident is not a matter of local authority, as Sara and the citizens of Davao claim. It is a matter of national concern when a public official believes that she has the right to take out a metaphorical gun and punish somebody without the benefit of court or counsel. Sara Duterte’s assault was not an instance when a champion stands between right and wrong. It was an instance when an insulted ego finds itself unable to lash out. She said it herself. She was angry at the sheriff for dismissing her authority. She had asked for only two hours.

The danger is not limited to the rift Duterte has created between already tense groups.  Duterte, in spite of her new role as savior of the people, herself supported the demolition, and was angry only because enforcement occurred without her presence. The residents worship her now, but they are residents who will still have to be evicted, the courts will still have to enforce, and the incident only increases the probability that blood will be shed on the day that happens. If another sheriff walks in, armed with the proper papers, who unlike Andres has the unequivocal backing of a judge, fists will fly, and it won’t just be one cop in the hospital with an arrow through his leg.

The reason power without limitation is dangerous is because no man is infallible, wherever his heart is. In 1972, another man claimed that authority. His name was Ferdinand Marcos

“I don’t care,” Duterte told media, saying that if she were cited for contempt, the local judiciary would find itself penniless.

“Say goodbye to your budget. You asked for additional fund? My God, I am having difficulty with the budget. They will cite me for contempt? I will also cite them for contempt. Starting tomorrow, no more gasoline for them, no allowance, no job order!”

It begins with this, and continues with her father’s declaration that if positions were reversed, he would have taken a gun to whoever threw the first punch. That Duterte fought for the right side does not matter, the same way Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan’s claim his butchery of Central Luzon was a campaign for the security of the Filipino people. And yet the progressives, those who know better, those who have counted the bodies and watched the mothers weep, say this is all right. BagongAlyansangMakabayan-National Capital Region (Bayan-NCR) said in a statement that Duterte’s assault was a “rare showcase” of a local official showing concern for her constituents at her expense—forgetting that Andres himself was a constituent with rights. Neither does it help the legal profession when the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) offers its support to an erring colleague who has, for all intents and purposes, put herself above the law. Duterte, the group said, stood for the rights of the “poor and powerless.”

“While we must of course follow the ‘rule of law’, this is subsidiary to social and compassionate justice, equity and humanitarian considerations,” NUPL secretary general Edre Olalia said.

Assault is not humanitarian, it is assault no matter who throws the punch. And yet the divide in national sympathy may not have occurred if Duterte were a man who punched a woman, or if Duterte herself had punched a mother who ignored her authority by refusing to be evicted.

It is rare that situations are this clear-cut. It is not, as Etta Rosales of the Commission on Human Rights says, a moment with “traces of human rights violations.” Neither is it reasonable for Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo to say he “understands” Duterte. What is necessary is for the government to demand both apology and restitution, to draw its own line two years after another government allowed a yellow backhoe to rip through it. It is a case when democracy fell before one woman’s temper. Now Rody Duterte defends his daughter, and says he would have done worse. Now Sarah Duterte counts her crowd of supporters, and refuses to apologize.

This is the story. Sara Duterte was insulted. She swung out her fist, and beat up the man who made the mistake of insulting Rudy Duterte’s daughter. All over the country, other men are making other mistakes, and Sara Duterte says this is what should be done.

Cue the credits. The villain is laughing. The hero is dead.

The story begins in July of 2006, in a remote hamlet in the town of Hagonoy, Bulacan.

“Four armed men passed us holding Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan. Ate Sherlyn was screaming and begging for help while they were being brought out of the alley.”

Karen was blindfolded with her own shirt. Sherlyn was two months pregnant. Both were college seniors, active among farmer groups, and members of the activist group League of Filipino Students, often accused of being a recruiting hub for the New People’s Army. A farmer named Manuel Merino heard the girls scream that July morning, and ran out of his house to help.

“When the armed men caught sight of Manuel Merino, they rammed a rifle at his throat that caused him to fall to his knees. The armed men brought him along and put him in the jeep.”

A 14-year-old boy nicknamed Jollibee told this story before the Court of Appeals. He was one of two witnesses who filed a joint statement after the abduction of UP students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno.

The complaint named as respondents Lieutenant General Romeo Tolentino, Major General Jovito Palparan and Lt. Mirabelle Samson, among others, all under or commanding the AFP’s Seventh Division, the AFP division that controlled an area that had seen the deaths and disappearances of dozens of activists.

Jollibee hesitated only once, when he caught the eye of a grinning Lieutenant Colonel Rogelio Boac, one of the respondents and commander of the Task Force Malolos Special Operations Team designated to fight the communist insurgency. The 14-year old looked away, and missed the sight of an AFP lieutenant colonel sticking out his tongue at a minor inside a court of law.

The search

When the abduction was reported, human rights volunteers went to the 56th Infantry Battalion headquarters in Iba. A stainless steel jeep with plate number RTF was found parked inside the compound. The military denied its existence.

In an episode of the TV show “Debate,” host Solita Monsod asked Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan, nicknamed “The Butcher” by activists, about the allegation that the military was responsible for the abductions. He claimed his soldiers knew nothing of the incident, but said there had been two girls and a man picked up in the area, “But they are real NPA, who for five years were dominating the area.”

Task Force Usig, formed to investigate extrajudicial killings and disappearances after international pressure on the Arroyo government, claimed that investigating the disappearance of the two UP students was a task that did not fall under its mandate. The local police, they said, should investigate the case.

The local police, in the person of one Police Officer 3 Ponciano dela Cruz, claimed that there was no student kidnapping. He claimed the police could not investigate without an existing complaint filed in the police blotter. Told there was a complaint and given the filing date, he claimed that no family member had come forward. Told the name of the sister-in-law who personally went to the police station to file the report, he claimed nothing could be done as no witnesses had stepped forward. Told that witnesses had been stepping forward for weeks in open court, he was indignant. “Why did no one tell us?” he asked.

At the end of the conversation, the man who did not know there was a kidnapping gave his assurance that he and his men had been working doggedly for weeks to investigate the crime.

The trials

Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan, retired commander of the 7th Infantry Battalion, failed to appear four times at Court of Appeals hearings, citing anniversary parties, meetings with the President, fevers that demanded hospitalization, until the court threatened contempt.

“General, Sir,” asked the petitioners’ counsel, “is there a war going on between the government and the Communist Party of the Philippines?”

“It is a conflict, not a war,” Palparan said.

Asked the same question, Boac answered. “If you think so, I agree.”

Samson’s answer took much thought. “Maybe.”

Palparan claimed that there were groups of militants “posing to be legal and ordinary” but which were actually enemies of the state. Asked to name them, he said he was unsure. Reminded of his statements to the press, he said he “cannot recall.”

The CA Special Former 11th Division dismissed the petition for habeas corpus on the ground that it was not the proper remedy in the case, and recommended the filing of criminal complaints. The decision also included the following note:

“The respondents were not telling the whole truth as they appeared to be evasive in their declarations. They were persistent in their denials but their assertions contradict each other.”

Samson, when asked about her knowledge of her team’s tactics against the Left, claimed she was not aware of any manual or guidelines.

“What do you do,” asked the lawyer, “operate on instinct?”

“Yes, your honor,” she said.

The witness

In November of 2006, a Bulacan mining worker named Oscar Leuterio surfaced after five months of disappearance. He swore to a statement that narrated months of torture and captivity in what he claimed was Fort Magsaysay. The 48-year-old, whose statement was interrupted by coughing fits, said that women fitting the UP students’ description were also held captive, along with a man whose torture he witnessed. The man was his friend, Manuel Merino.

The AFP, in a letter to the editor of this paper, complained that Leuterio’s testimony was “despicably inaccurate and farcical.”

On Aug. 13, 2007, a 22-year-old farmer named Raymond Manalo appeared after being abducted more than a year before. His story, described by the Supreme Court as “harrowing and believable,” described thievery, murder and torture by the military. He named Palparan as the leader, and claimed personal contact. On April 2007, he said, he saw Sherlyn naked, both wrists and one tied, leg propped up. He said she was beaten, electrocuted and half-drowned. He saw Karen, dragged out of her cell, burned with cigarettes and raped with pieces of wood. He said he was there when they killed Manuel Merino. He identified the soldiers as elements of the Philippine Army based in the 56th Infantry Battalion headquarters in Barangay Iba, Hagonoy, Bulacan under the command of Palparan.

Palparan denies all of these, and adds that Raymond Manalo is a proven member of the New People’s Army. “We have records of that. He’s an enemy.”

The wait

Since the abduction, the mothers of the two UP students have become constants in human rights protests. Raymond Manalo and Oscar Leuterio remain in hiding.

Jovito Palparan was voted a congressman of the Republic of the Philippines.

Last week, five years after the abductions, the Department of Justice served retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan with a subpoena, after the Supreme Court demanded that he and his men release Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno.