Ka-Blog!

This country just can’t have a break.

            Making good the rumors going around political and media groups these past weeks rebellious soldiers led by Senator Antonio Trillianes held another caper today, walking out of their “sham” trial and holed themselves up at the posh Manila Peninsula Hotel. 

            I don’t buy the statement that it was unplanned.  How can Senator Trillianes and General Danilo Lim’s custodians suddenly become comrades, complete with Magdalo armbands?  Another “coincidence” I don’t believe is the fact that all these guys were heroically handsome.   Really, all of them were good-looking!

            It was a rainy day and I just wore shorts and a round-neck shirt.  I was late arriving at the Kodao office because it was color-coding for my van.  I thought I’d just be spending the day writing, answering emails and listing our shoot last night.  I am recovering from another bout of flu, after all.

            But there was no other driver at Kodao when I arrived.  Our other video teams were already on coverage.  So I was sent rushing to Makati with our executive director Jola Diones-Mamangun.

            Pretty soon, we found ourselves camping at the head of the hallway where the Magdalos and their supporters were having a closed door meeting.  Jola did our initial camera work while I was busy charging our batteries and firing off updates to our colleagues at the office.  Things became more interesting when Police Superintendent Geary Barias tried to make his way to where the rebels were.  Then he loudly ordered all media persons off the premises.  Many cheered when he was driven off the lobby by the rebels instead.  I took over the camera by this time.  I was literally on top of the action at the time, standing on speakers on the band loft where ritzy hotel diners were serenaded under more normal times.

            Jola’s slippers snapped when someone stepped on them.  Seeing it was beyond repair, I told her I had another pair of sneakers back in the van.  Off she went but was not allowed back inside by the police outside even when the rebel soldiers were already waving her in.  I was left alone with all our equipment inside.  The only other media persons in there who could vouch for me if things go very wrong were Dana Batnag and Lito Ocampo.

            With good positioning I got Trillianes on video when he came out of the room to deliver his statement and answer some questions.  I was so strategically placed a GMA camera person used my head as a tripod.  My left cheek got mashed by a female reporter’s right breast because of all the jostling.  I got terribly mangled when Trillianes made a curious tour of the lobby and the media banged each other for a good shot.  I took videos of the APCs (armored personnel carriers) and the loyal government troops while they took positions outside the hotel.  By this time, the entire hotel palpably tensed up.  Guests were already being hustled out of the hotel and the managers were near tears over the destruction of lobby furniture and trashed rooms vacated by boorish guests.  I was drenched in sweat and I took a table napkin from vacated bar to wipe my face dry.

            Then I received a succession of text messages.  Mama asked me where I was.  I texted “I am okay.  I’m at work.”  Pom texted me about the impeding assault by SWAT.  Jola texted me to come out already. 

I did not want to leave.  I was sure the Magdalos would still hold a press conference.  I also wanted to get good shots of the assault if it came to that.  It would be invaluable.

But Jola again texted me to leave.  It dawned on me that it was stupid of me to stay there when I am not from a big network and there was no one to buddy me up.  It was all quiet all of a sudden—the proverbial calm before the storm.  I looked at Lito who whispered, “Labas na tayo.”

I grabbed all my equipment and rushed down to the lobby.  The rebels manning the door refused to let us out at first.  I told them I already ran out of batteries and tapes and I have get some from my colleague outside.  After a few awkward seconds, he took the thick looped ropes off the doors and we were out.

Lito and I were the last media persons out that lobby door before the APCs thundered down the driveway and the assault teams began making their moves.  I think the snipers on adjacent skyscrapers started the shooting.  Booms and rat-tat-tats echoed around the artificial valleys created by the buildings.  All the while, Jola and I did this crazy dance of taking videos and taking cover behind OBvans and police cars whenever the firing became frantic.

When the armored personnel carrier charged through the glass doors of “The Pen,” the police ordered us to run for safety.  We knew by then our media colleagues inside the hotel were being overpowered by tear gas and were pinned down by bullets.  Crouching low as my big gut allowed, we bolted from there and reached the street corner where my van was parked.  From there, we audio-recorded more booms and rat-tat-tats for good measure.

We were done.  We thought it was time for us to leave, although we were thinking about Lito who was with us outside and Dana who was still inside.  I squeezed through military trucks while Jola took more videos of soldiers in position.  After several counter-flows and u-turns, we finally found ourselves on EDSA on our way back to the peace and quiet of Quezon City.

But it was an excruciating drive.  It wasn’t the snail-paced traffic but the reports coming out the radio that media persons inside the hotel were handcuffed, dragged into polices buses and truncheoned like criminals.  A while later, the interior secretary was on air justifying the roughing up and continued detention of the media persons who were just in the hotel doing their job.

I was happy we were out of there just in time.  I feel good about the footages we took.  But I am boiling about what they did to our colleagues back there. 

Sure, the rebels were no match to the state forces who attacked them.  But the state forces again showed why people rebel in this country.

There was nothing yesterday morning to suggest the day would end so badly.  I got up in time to drive my niece to school.  After that, I drove to the nearest gas station to give our van a much needed wash.  Then I cooked lunch for our volunteers and staff before leaving for Kodao.

            But in this country ordinary mornings should not be viewed as they initially seemed—banal and uninteresting.

            Upon reaching Kodao I was asked to cover the artists’ picket at the National Press Club to protest its bastardization of the “Press Freedom” mural.  I should have seen this as ominous.

            I never thought I’d see the day when we’d be picketing the NPC for being an instrument of censorship.  As a campus journalist being sued for libel for the first time the NPC was where I found my pro-bono lawyer who’d win my case for me 15 years later.  The NPC was not only a place of good food and cheap beer for me.  It was a pillar of democracy.  But today’s NPC leadership can not even bring itself to countenance freedom of expression.

            As I was preparing to go home last night an officemate rushed into the office to inform the rest of us of a bomb explosion at the House of Representatives.  We immediately thought about friends and comrades who are staffs of our progressive lawmakers.  Already, she informed us that Gabriela Representative Luz Ilagan was among those seriously injured.

            We started gathering our gear.  We have to send a team to cover the incident as they unfolded.  We also started talking about security measures.  Whenever a bomb goes off in Manila there is real danger Malacañang may declare Martial Law.  It happened before; it may happen again.

            Then I heard two Gabriela drivers were among those injured.  Gabriela Rep Liza Masa’s driver Ismael Lim was one.  A few minutes later news reports informed us that Rep Ilagan’s driver Marcial “Tibong” Taldo actually died on the spot.

             Thoughts flooded my mind.  Ka Tibong was a friend.  He once offered Pom and I a Labrador Retriever pup.  Whenever I came calling at their immaculately-kept house he never failed to offer me coffee and biscuits.  His son was a Kodao volunteer.  Still another son was a revolutionary martyr.  His dear mother is a tireless community organizer and he was married to a women’s organization president.

            As of this writing, Basilan Rep Wahab Akbar and one Ma-an Bustaliño have died as well.  Just recently, Akbar spoke against the ongoing military operations in his province.

            There are many bastards in Congress.  Sadly, the worst among them are almost always spared by acts of terrorism such as this one.  Tragically, good people like Rep Ilagan and Ka Ismael are harmed and kind people like Ka Tibong die.

            I drove slowly on Commonwealth Avenue on my way home.  My hands and feet felt detached.  The cool night air was rent with sirens as ambulances rushed past me laden with victims who need to be taken to hospitals and morgues.  I thought of Ka Tibong, his son, wife and mother.  I thought of my poor country made even poorer by his death.

          And tears rolled down my cheeks as I turned up all my lights in honor of our latest martyr.

There is one current news story that is grabbing the country’s attention like nothing else.  This is different from the usual government corruption and extrajudicial killings stories many of us may have gotten used to already.  I am talking about the suicide of an 11-year old girl in Davao City because of her family’s grinding poverty.

            This is not the first time this happened, actually.  Most suicides in this blighted country were brought about by the victim’s poverty.  But I think this is the first time that a kid was driven to this kind of desperation.  An 11-year old, for chrissakes!

            All Marianette Amper wanted was to go to school, a new bicycle and jobs for both her parents.  Kids in other countries do not have to be worried about these things; these are part of their birthright.  While Manette’s last tragedy was death by her own hands, her first was being born in this country of inept and corrupt governments.

             I can not claim to know the kind of desperation that pushed this angel to commit suicide.  What I can claim though is seeing this kind of situation everyday.  I see malnourished kids begging in our streets.  I see schoolchildren staring uncomprehending at the chalkboard because they have had no breakfast before school.  I see kids clambering up garbage trucks for whatever things they can sell to junk shops.  I see kids sniffing glue to stave off hunger.  I see kids being peddled to perverts (usually old, white men) so their family can eat for a day.

            Malacañang tries hard to play cute in dealing with this story.  It uncharacteristically took the blame for Manette’s poverty.  But, characteristically, it said that it is already addressing poverty in this country.  I don’t know.  gma has been president for seven years already but there are more Filipinos who live on less than an American dollar a day this year than last year.  It was 9 million in 2006; it is 11 million in 2007.  And just when we think that government corruption could not possibly be bigger, it has become more brazen.  ZTE, Northrail, cash “gifts”—you name it, they’ve done it. 

            I agree with Manette.  If I am an eleven-year old kid in an abjectly poor family and gloria is my country’s president, I am better off dead.

Help!  My brain has again been addled by both ABS-CBN and GMA-7!

            Six days into our undas break here in Isabela and with only these two channels on TV, I have no choice but to rely on these rival networks for news.  What do I get?  Forty-five minutes of ghost stories in an hour-long program, ranging from maldeveloped pictures that show “spirits” and fantastic Angela Jones stories about almost being raped by a ghost when she was 14.

Last night, GMA’s early night news program 24-Oras interviewed a guy claiming to have an open “third eye.”  This loser looks around and says he sees a ghost near a trash bin on a walkway full of people.  It isn’t enough that Mike Enriquez delivers the news like a clown he is and Mel Tianco (Ti-yan Ko) asks the most inane questions.  Not to be outdone, ABS-CBN’s TV Patrol World wasted precious broadcast minutes on Aubrey Miles’ Paris Hilton costume for a halloween party.  In both their live reports in cemeteries, the networks’ stories are almost always about famous dead people buried there.  Puro salsal na trabaho.

Give me a break!

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK!

Where has straight news reportage and straight news reading gone?  Is ABC 5 the only sane free uhf television station remaining in this country?  Unfortunately for the entire Filipino people, ABC-5 is so poor it can’t broadcast beyond Novaliches, Quezon City.  (As a point of comparison for my legions of foreign readers, both ABS-CBN and GMA are like Fox News Channel on stupid mode.  Wait, isn’t that redundant?)

Nagmamagaling na lang din naman ako, if I were one of these two networks’ reporters, what would I file as my undas reports?  First, I would look for the families of gloria’s victims of extrajudicial killings and file a story about what they feel and how they celebrate All Souls Day.  There are 880 of them, none of whom have gotten justice yet.  Second, I would look for the families of arroyo’s victims of enforced disappearances and file a story about their wish to have at least a grave to visit for their missing loved ones when they already know deep in their hearts the victims are already dead.  There are 188 of them. 

These are true horror stories.  These are true stories that make our blood curdle. These are true stories that should haunt us. And these are true stories that must be broadcast to give perspective to where this country is now under gma.