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Malacañang vs. Corruption
Malacañang should not take too much offense on the statement of Manny Pacquiao’s trainor, American national Freddie Roach who said over television that his ward The Pacman is essentially more popular than President Pnoy. That quote was invariably just both hype and existential.
Instead, the Palace can focus its attention upon the people on the ground. Take the Mindanao observer interviewed almost a fortnight ago over ABC News Australia. The observer’s comments are instructive. On the question about how he sizes up the renewed hostilities in Mindanao today, the observer’s curt reply was: “President Aquino cannot solve the conflict”.
Just like the past presidents of the Republic before him he is inadequate. He said, that Aquino’s own mother, the late Pres. Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, who was much, more more popular and powerful as Head of State – coming just after a Revolution that toppled an autocrat, thought that she could bind the nation together by holding out open arms to Nur Misuari and Jose Maria Sison, making friends with rebels left and right and forgetting about and neglecting the armed forces, the members of the entire gamut of the security apparatus, who were fighting for the country with blood, sweat and tears.
Her national security adviser was asked to draft written orders to slash and burn about seventy percent of the budget for all military and security, intelligence forces. The act of cutting the fund to our armed services was actually done, when it was finally legal for the late lady president to sign the draft orders.
Subsequently, the late Mrs. Aquino failed in the quest to consolidate her hold on the country. She could not unify the nation neither heal the wounds that kept opening up one after the other, making it ripe on the part of the uniformed services for armed adventurism to smolder.
Now listen to what follows in the observer’s statement: The true power in Mindanao is wielded by the agglomeration of fiefdoms – economic, political and those who flaunt power through the barrel of the gun.
These are the power vortices, he said that prevent the resolution of the conflict because for as long as the turmoil exists, these power centers exercise control over the resources of the island. These are much, much more powerful than the elected head of state and of course, the government of this Republic.
This revelation is not new. Douglas McArthur’s father (Arthur), a brigadier general assigned to Mindanao in the early 20th century, may have realized the nascent rise of the phenomenon called guerilla warfare. The .45-caliber Colt pistol was invented to stop suicidal amucks dead on their tracks. But guerilla warfare morphed into the fourth generation warfare, terrorism, now a global problem.
Going back to Pres. Pnoy’s dilemma, the Philippine Chief Executive should perhaps be more serious and down-to-earth in his pursuit of peace.
On the other hand, his idealism and the brave advocacy of good governance, that is taking much of the government’s time, talent and resources is slowly evaporating in the midst of the corrosive effects of corruption surrounding his government.
Go to any national agency and you will not find a worker who will tell you that his bosses are spanking pure and clean. Every single one of them are out to make big bucks while in office and sometimes, their actions cannot be fully kept from public knowledge. So the smaller ones down the line will follow the same dynamics guiding his own superiors.
The franchise to illegally make money using one’s position in government ttrickles down to the grassroots. Try doing business in any municipality and you will see what I mean – you will have to go through the gauntlet of corrupt schemes and mechanics it is like passing through the eye of a needle.
If you are lucky enough to pass muster the various local government units, you will end up several tens of thousands or even many millions poorer. That is why foreigners literally abandoned the Philippines as their investment haven because of WHOLESALE corruption. Unbridled, unstoppable, coming from the top down to the bottom.
Have you been to the premier district in the country lately? In Ermita, Manila? The police precinct just in front of the United States Embassy Chancery is manned by policemen wearing sando and beach sandals. Visit their precinct quarters and you will see fifty fighting cocks kept in a gallinera. And listen to their talk about the latest events that brought in dirty money. To think that, “What the Manila Police District does, the entire Philippine National Police follows.” It is such as shame.
Even in the country’s court of last resort, the Supreme Court, the cases are not argued in chambers but discussed in private places in five star hotels or wherever the talks could be kept the least harried and tense. If you try to follow up very keenly on a case with the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court, they will refer you to an official who is traditionally authorized to take the reasons for the court to favor your case. Guess who that official is?
These are challenges facing our beloved President. The question hangs above our heads, will the guy not really be up to it or can he still be able to hack it? We hope and pray for the latter.
Adaza Mapalo Kudyeta etCetera etceteRa etceterA
The Poor, Inimitable Bono Adaza
Whoooaaaa!!!
I say!
Whoooooaaaaa!!!
The CIDG arrested Homobono Adaza, Sr. today. What for? What of? They say a lawyer Atty. Fortun filed a case vs. the man for proposing to commit a coup d’ etat!
They also arrested Lt. Col. Oscarlito Mapalo Palo, as well as Lt. Col. Rafael Cardeño for planting a piece of metal into the back of the head of the vaunted Calf Teyn Servant Es.
For God’s sake! Bono had been debating all his life about the need for a revolution like a raving lunatic and it just happened that this particular revolution that he was debating about was directed against Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
What’s wrong with that? Well, perhaps what makes it wrong is Oscarlito Mapalo Palo, whom the praetorian guards of the Kingdom will never ever like at all.
What media says is that the poor Labandera’s Mapalo Palo was so thick with another officer, The Feared One, Col. Allen Capuy Puyan, who was said to have ordered the wire tapping of the mobile cellular phone of Madame Gloria in the presidential campaign and canvassing for the 2004 elections that led to the Garcillano controversy. Hmmmmm……
Capuy Puyan also was implicated in the planned secret smuggling of high powered guns to be purchased from Vietnam into the country through South Korea, possibly via the southern backdoor.
Who was their sponsor? Well, don’t ask. It might get you into a lot of trouble. A colonel named Camagay Gay, whose house was rented for a hundred years by guess, who, Dinky Soliman, Karina David, and the anti-GMA tomboy fans of Madam Coritas Aquino, etcetera was the one negotiating in Seoul for the purchase of the heavy duty guns.
So now Bono too is implicated with them. Poor man.
After keeping in his heart that post-victory plan for the revolution of The Horseman, The John Pons En Rilley and The Gringo nearly centuries ago he could not bear not to see the plan get implemented.
But I remember him saying “Whoooaaa!!!”, one time, too though.
He was looking at a picture. It was a very quaint picture about a lady smiling to everyone from her perch at a table in an elegant, antique hotel’s function room. Miss Maricor Imperial of the Friends of Ramos, at the time, Director at Malacañang. The function was absolutely over and for the photo op, pictures were being taken by that function’s hired photog or photogs (if there was more than one of them).
In one of the pictures, incumbent president, Man With A Giant Cigar, was smiling into the lens of the photog’s camera, beside Perched Lady.
But caught by another lens is the hand, uhurrmmm, The Hand, of the Incumbent President, mining into the place between the legs of the Perched Lady.
Bono said, Whoooaaaa!!!!!! He was still on his toes at the time and could tell what a really fun picture was and what wasn’t.
After running around all over helping a lot of people, including that truly fake and fucking despicable Don Esteban Benitez Tallano (Who He?) who has been forging, fraudulently manufacturing too many historical and Court documents (aren’t the thefts at the National Historical Institute related to him one way or the other?) has Bono lost it?
Is it just because he is an incorrigible Dreamer? Naïve? He was taken with a DILG freak group that was mouthing Libyan Revolution in the Philippines! For the love of God!!! And under of the noses of Angelo Reyes, Ronaldo Puno, shit! That group of idiots took Bono in their tight circle and made him dig a tunnel into the nest of the group of Erap. Their group and Erap’s almost made a blood compact! Except that someone did not like blood with a lot of Johnny Walker Blue in it, just because his brand might have been rum, or red wine or whiskey instead.
I hope not. But his arrest is unkind and unnecessary. A nuisance is nuisance is a nuisance. But if especially, that nuisance is a candidate for dementia (unless he takes those memory enhancer pills from China and rams a hundred Vitamin E pills into his throat and drinks Goji Juice from Nepal, is it?, and gets drunk with alkaline water, and eats a ton of asparagus, and drinks so much carrot juice, eats taho, etcetera, etcetera), then it is sad that they have to take Bono in.
I hope that they release him. Anyway, they get to keep Osquee Mapalo Palo, and they can always keep Lt. Col. Cardeño.
And for good measure, they can also run after Capuy Puyan, Camagay Gay, Dinky Soliman, Coritas Aquino, and all the rest of the ABS-CBN, Gokongwei, Sulpicio Lines relatives, friends, colleagues, classmates, neighbors, etcetera, etcetera.
But the poor Bono should be left alone. He is in the 70s range for God’s sake. General Fortunato Abat had to be allowed to ride his wheel chair home after being a captive for a few minutes because when he smiled, he looked like a really grand, kind and loving grandfather, which is what he really is after all. Except that, like Grandpa Bono, these septuagenarians keep going with bad company.
Let Bono be.
Otherwise, as inimitable as he can be, there might be many Bonos that the Arroyos have to deal with in the coming days.
Imagine a hundred like him raving and ranting like lunatics? Who knows how many might be their followers? Well, Pro-Bonos. Anyone?
Hmmmmm….
Bandera Uno's Bulletin 