Soliloquy

          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.   ...