Soliloquy

      What is a fetcher bill?  William Safire's  Political Dictionary defines it as "a legislative proposal designed to attract a bribe to bury it."   Another definition elucidates on it as "a measure that, by threatening to curtail some commercial interests, provides incentive for a payoff to obtain the death of the bill" .  The obvious flip side of either definition is that it can also be a bill that seeks to grant some advantage or privilege to identified individuals or sectors that are pre-contracted to provide incentives for the expeditious enactment of the measure.  Example of this is a proposed legislative franchise to engage in certain areas of business.  The other type of legislative proposal is an omnibus measure where many interests are affected, more often unfavorably, and they are prompted to mount  lobbies or representations for favorable amendments or deletions in the proposed law.  This is where the action is, so...

        That basic question signifies that of resignation to what is not possible anymore or the other implication is a despairing wish for a reason from anywhere so that the person who now occupies the highest position of power in the land can somehow become respectable as it should be.  It is simply that people have already given up on having a President in Mr. Duterte that one can look to as a model for propriety and decency as a person and leader.  Many even among those who voted for Mr. Duterte are now just hoping his era, like some awful winter, will sooner than later pass with the least damage on the humanist values and culture of the nation.  A few are still hoping for that the man would undergo some psychological transformation that would sensitize him with moral accountability in his governance and his objectives, some of which are positive and welcome, can be carried out forcefully but in civilized ways.        ...

                 The ASEAN Summit the country hosted is finally over and it is time for the postscripts and assessments on both the physical staging and the results that came out of this semi-annual meeting of heads of states in the region.  Those who had a part in the planning and implementation of physical arrangements, capitalizing on some polite praises from foreigners, have preempted all others to proclaim that the Summit here was an unprecedented success.  The usual political experts routinely sought to consume the time of TV talk shows will again exert efforts to give prolonged discourses to embellish and convey their takes on the results of the summit.  That's all part of the show and although I do not belong to any of those groups, I also have my own footnotes.                 Like most Metro-Manilans, with the exception of those who decided to get away and hied to the pro...

          To a retiree like me, with nowhere to go out to in the morning, breakfast is a pleasant ceremony of waking up to the physical world, provided there is no Duterte aggravation in the news.  From my chair at the table, through the parted curtains the promise of a sunny day is clear in the cascade of morning light spilling all over the garden lawn and somehow that wholesome feeling embraces you like the warmth of coffee spreading all over inside.  And intrusively, from somewhere you do not wish to define at the moment, comes a reminder to be thankful because you realize that despite the aches and discomforts of ageing, you are among the fortunate who may spend the afternoon of life without much of the burdens and pains that you see weighing down others around you.                                                   ...

          The newspaper this morning announced that President Duterte has appointed a new spokesman.  That kind of news ordinarily should not wake me up faster than a cup of coffee but this time it did because only a few days ago I posted here my thoughts on past presidential spokesmen in general and in particular the replaced Ernesto Abella.  I had bewailed, naively of course, how those individuals could accept and stay in a job where the main qualifications are a lack of intellectual honesty and moral principles or the weak character to be able to sell out for the perks of the position.  I particularly lamented the case of Ernesto Abella because I thought that his being a former religious pastor was anathema to the job he was doing as Duterte's spokesman where he had to be untruthful and dishonest in order to deodorize or embellish many things about his principal.                      N...

       Year in and year out as far back as we can remember, the two chambers of Congress have been holding  public hearings on assorted subject matters and concerns related to government and governance.  These hearings have become popularly known as in aid of legislation.  In theory these are done with a lofty and ideal purpose to enable our Congress to re-examine the workings and policies in agencies of government and to correct by legislative action any systemic and procedural  irregularities and shortcomings in the implementation of government functions.            This legislative power is one of many features of governing we have adopted from the U.S. system where it is obviously proving to be positive influence for the improvement of the bureaucratic functions and in exacting official discipline in the governance of that nation.  It is really something ideal to adopt.  However, given the general ...

        The position of spokesman of the President of the Philippines is decidedly a high and very visible cabinet job in the government.  For that reason, the occupant is always under the evaluation of the public in terms, principally, of the intellectual and moral  dimensions he puts into the performance of the job that is meant to clarify and convey to the public the policies and actions of the president.         The younger among us may have only Estrada's Dong Puno, Macapagal-Arroyo's Ignacio Bunye, Pinoy's Lacierda and Valte, and now Manuel Abella for Duterte as examples of the personalities that have occupied the position.  Our generation goes farther back to include others in the past but all together they are essentially of the same genes and they all contribute to and engender the absence of respect for their breed as they have invariably descended to the level of cheap propagandists instead of dependable explainers ...

            One of the luxuries of retirement is to wake up in the morning without having to dress to go to work or do a job elsewhere.  And in the congenial space of home, you can lazily savor your coffee, taking all your time to read the newspaper and finding that there is no item in the news that riles you up.  But over time, this could become essentially routine and somehow boring as it was with me and I would look for or do other things to perk up the morning in addition to coffee.               Somehow that has not been a problem since Rodrigo Duterte became president.  There are few mornings now that the newspapers do not carry an item of news or commentary on what he said or did and how he said or did it that does not agitate the better side of my human sensibilities in varying degrees and I would be induced to cogitate and contemplate on dark thoughts even.  Could be congenital or in the...

               Unless it is a day for golf  when I leave very early, the newspaper and breakfast are the first in my schedule.  This morning was no exception except that the newspaper today gave me nausea even before I could start breakfast.                In the banner headline was that the Supreme Court, voting 9 to 6, had dismissed the petition of Sen. Leila De Lima to quash the drug charges and arrest warrant against her.  While I applauded and admired many of her official actions as chairperson of the Commission on Human Right and later as secretary of justice, I have no personal bias for the detained senator, one way or the other.  But I think I have been sufficiently trained to understand the law and this decision by the Court's majority and the casual and absentminded reasoning to support it awakened my dormant disrespect over the years for the lack of integrity and common s...

                    Going through airport Immigration recently, the lady officer, while examining my passport, showed facial disposition to be cheerful.  "Are you related to the Secretary, sir?"  It is a question I am asked often but decided against my set answer and instead teased the lady.  "Young lady, look at my hair.  It's real, not a wig!  We are not related."  I laughed and we both laughed as she stamped and handed back my documents.            The secretary referred to is, of course, Secretary of Justice Vitaliano Aguirre II, the powerful and popular classmate and cabinet member of the sitting President.  I have not met him but some years back as a lawyer of the ordinary variety, he was caught in the sweep of a spotlight during the impeachment trial of the late Chief Justice Renato Corona when he stood up to the verbal bullying of the late Senator Miriam D...

             The level of my concern about tattoos is, at best, curious interest.  I occasionally wonder what aberration or mental set makes an individual want to have this or that figure needled into his or her epidermis.  In some cases, it is easy enough because the answers are obvious: undying love in a heart shape with a name and pierced by Cupid's arrow; profession of religiosity in the form of a crucifix or other holy images; pretension to masculine toughness in the form of lethal objects or sinister figures; and so on and so forth.  But it gets to be difficult when you see all those symbols in one individual or when it's a masculine name that you see in the heart shape tattoo on the chest of another man.  That challenges you to go into the realm of psychiatry or mental health but I would be digressing from from the subject of my new-found interest in one particular tattoo and what it means to the whole country.   ...

         Let me begin this by saying that Rodrigo Duterte's election victory does not really deserve the hype and euphoria that greeted it.  He was chosen under an undemocratic electoral system that only requires mere plurality of votes to win, not by a majority which is the true essence of democracy.  It was a flawed choice like all the other presidents elected before him under this system and there should be no basis to boast that the mandate of President Duterte was overwhelming.  And it should not be used to excuse or mitigate the indecencies and arrogance in the exercise of presidential powers.         The time might be premature to make an assessment of  Duterte's  governance, highlighted by his violent and bloody war on drugs, the extrajudicial killings, the illegal shortcuts to do or get what he wants, persecutions, insults, threats and mass slander of people he does not like.  But it is time to ...

         The project of President Duterte to amend the Constitution to establish a federal form of government quickly mobilized supporters and sycophants eager to please so that the revision of the Charter is quite imminent.  Other sectors pulling for vested interests are also preparing amendment proposals so an open season on the Constitution is very likely despite statements from so-called guardians of the charter that the amendments will be limited to the form of government.          With all the possibilities and driven by the embarrassment and nausea I go through every time I read news accounts and watch TV footage of the crass behavior and gutter mouthing of the present occupant of Malacanang, I strongly advocate that the Constitutional provisions on the Presidency be revised to require that candidates for presidents and vice-presidents, as part of their qualifications, be required to get expert and independent physica...

      I last posted on this Blog some 6 years ago. Somehow I lost the interest for it to a confluence of  other interests having to do with addicting senior golf and involvement in the affairs of the subdivision where I live until the idealism that fueled that involvement finally gave up to the general indifference to concerns I advocated in the community for years.  There was, too, the concerning bouts with health issues that come with ageing, seemingly more often felt in one's retirement years when the daily pressure and diversion of having to work for your keep do not serve anymore as diversion or pressure.        So now I can find the time and the disposition to rejoin the social media mix with the same motivation and purpose as in the first time: Talk to myself about what crosses my mind and heart and share what I can appropriately do so, in the hope to influence and help complete the perspective of others on what interests and what...

Finally, as anticipated, the noises of righteous indignation coming from assorted personalities posing as moral guardians of the country has driven U.S. Ambassador Thomas to offer an apology of sorts for a statement he made sometime recently that 40% of male tourists coming to the Philippines do so for sex.  He admitted, as also expected, that he did not have the concrete data to support his assertion. It is not clear whether this lack of concrete data refers to the fact that many male visitors include sex in their tour, or only to the percentage of those who do, but we will not read any naughtiness in the Ambassador's apology by pursuing this point.   Anyway, the apology appears satisfactory to our moral guardians who seem to have now calmed down and may not pursue anymore their threat to have Ambassador Thomas declared persona non grata. Hopefully, the whole incident is now over with a lesson left for Ambassador Thomas to be not so reckless in what he says in the ...

      I was taken aback by the righteous reactions by some lawmakers and "moral crusaders" to a recent statement of the U.S. Ambassador Harry Thomas to the effect that 40% of male tourists (Americans included, obviously) come to the country for sex. Apart from the consideration that it was, perhaps, diplomatically or politically incorrect for Amb. Thomas to have to say such a thing, I think the outcry over it was unnecessary and should have been better ignored. But the fact that it seems to have become a national concern with no less than some lawmakers mixing in only suggests to me that this again is some manifestation of a national moral hypocrisy, this time to deny that sex can be commercialized wholesale here in this Christian and catholic country and we have to be on guard and extra sensitive against claims to the contrary. (I am told  none of the male protestors ever had any experience in professional sex , if ...

       It is one of those weekend days when you wake up to a gray morning light.  A little later when I stepped out to the lanai, I confirmed a sky overcast all over in gray save for occasional cottony patches where sunlight was trying to break through.  It does not look that it will rain but it is going to be a dreary day that will not at all encourage any activities for retired folks like me.  On the contrary, it is the kind of a day that engenders some of the aches and pains of ageing and concerns that these aches and pains are already pangs of mortality.  I dislike dreary days except when they are my golfing days because then I usually succeed in ignoring them.          I see golf balls still scattered all over the backyard lawn.  I did not collect them around the coconut tree after I did some pitching practice yesterday....

      As far back as I can remember, the Philippines , through succession of governments, has been exerting efforts to invite and attract foreign investments to come to the country and help develop our economy.  But  up to now we have not been successful in attracting any significant share in foreign investments to push appreciable progress in our economic growth.  What we have been getting are superficial and minimal investments in service and product imports, processing and business process outsourcing that do not really go to the core of real economic development as would industrialization and other capital and income intensive ventures do.      There are the obvious reasons that inhibit if not prevent foreign investors from coming here such as: the constitutional limitation on foreign ownership and...

Shortly, President Aquino will return from his state visit to China. We do not have to wait for that to concede the success of this visit in that it was a timely gesture of friendship and goodwill towards the government and people of China, coming at a time when things tend to heat up between the two countries in view of resurfaced irritants in their relations. The reception and diplomatic "accommodations" extended to our President indicate that the gesture earned a reciprocal measure of goodwill and friendship from the Chinese as well and we should let things go at that. That is the total success package of the PNoy visit for now. If any change for the better in the relations of the two countries will result from this visit, that cannot be seen yet, not for a long time. In the meantime, it may be advised, unsolicited of course, that Malacanang, especially the spinners there, to refrain from trumpeting speculative successes of the China...

Finally I've been induced to try this new way of socializing, principally because my son volunteered to go through the complications (as far as I am concerned) of creating my Blog. I do think a lot about many things and this might be one way of sharing some of those thoughts. They may not really matter much but if some of them can provoke others to come up with bigger and more profound thoughts, the purpose might have already been served. Hope this will be a beginning, auspicious enough.