Not too long after now, a few winks after this post, we will be having an audience with Anwar Ibrahim. As they say in Islam, Inshallah! In God’s Time! Well, in that case, God’s Will Be Done! Really. One is looking forward feverishly, to say the least, to meet Anwar.
Hmmm… I wonder what will come out of a meeting with the great Malay Reformer?
You can watch out for the details on this humble site for the coming blow by blow account of the meet with one of the world’s most celebrated and greatest leaders!
Despite the world crisis, the atmosphere due to the coming presidential, national and local polls is fairly quiet. The silence is deafening.
Still and all… Thank God for small mercies!
Jallaludin (Joel) de los Santos’ friend, wrote the poem below for Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
How do days go by? Know not I…
So how do days go by? Were I to know I’ll tell you
Best that I keep the question, close to my chest,
Though it nags at my head all the time
I feel and I know, it’s getting late, it’s getting late…
Click here for the poem by Jammehd Khalil
Kuya Eddie
The site takes a bow to some Outstanding Philippine Icons:
Senator Edgar U. Ilarde – broadcaster, visionary, pioneering advocate through bills that he filed in the old Philippine Senate, of the protection of the Philippine Ecology, humane shelter, settlement facilities for the urban poor, practitioner of yoga and clean living.
Sen. Ilarde is more popularly known as Kuya Eddie. He still maintains a radio program at DZBB aired every Saturday afternoon. His signature Dear Kuya Eddie is a byword around the country.
See the page on Philippine Icons
The former President of the Republic of the Philippines, Jose Marcelo Ejercito aka Joseph Estrada or fondly called Erap, is accused by blog Shepherd Lions Gathering of having ordered the seizure of the camps of MILF.
Many of the camps according to Lion of the Maze were sacred sites to Muslims. They were not necessarily just camps; the battlements merely served as security for the sites. The sad thing about those sites, treated as camps by Estrada and his advisers, they were desecrated and most of them were not returned except recently when the 2004 resumption of the GRP MILF peace talks kicked off. Many suffered from the all-out war of Estrada. That is why the negotiations and the appeasement schemes of his predecessor, former Pres. Fidel V. Ramos all went to naught.
Now the MILF allegedly have radicals. Leaders that do not want to toe the moderate line of mainstream MILF, so-so. And they attacked North Cotabato, the home province of Gov. Sacdalan and Vice Gov. Piñol. A lot (as in thousands) of Maranaos and some Maguindanaos live in these places. A lot of Muslims likewise live in San Juan, Pasig, Mandaluyong, and nearby in Taguig, Makati, etc. A lot of these Muslims do business at Virra Mall, at San Juan Market, and in so many places nearby.
If these radicals are really intent upon war, as Lion of the Maze said, then they should not have killed civilians when they attacked North Cotabato. Also, why attack North Cotabato when it is Muslim country? Or Lanao del Norte?
Of course, there are Christians there. But as blogger Juned Sonido says, Christians and Muslims have lived and co-existed happily over the years in many parts of Mindanao. Maybe Lion of the Maze is right in saying that there is something else behind the attacks and why the MILF is not willing to surrender Bravo, Umbra Kato nor Pangalian, the stringer.
Perhaps it is correct to say that indeed there is no truth to anxieties and fears of war erupting in Mindanao. Perhaps Lion of the Maze is right: the war is a counterfeit, fake war. It is simulated. Somebody is orchestrating the events in Mindanao. Otherwise as he says, if the hostilities are really real, authentic, the first one to die should be Estrada, Piñol, Sacdalan, all the others that are preventing the Muslims from owning their own homeland. As we mentioned earlier, Estrada is easily accessible to Muslims that are all over and all around San Juan.
But they are not killing the supposed real enemy. They must be, as Lion of the Maze says, dealing instead with people whom they are supposed to target. Now that is very sinister indeed. And it has got to stop or must be stopped. In my honest opinion, it will be difficult for the government to have been the one to instigate the present hostilities. That would also have been very self-defeating. But the rivals of this administration, as Lion of the Maze says, have a lot to gain. So there may be a ring of truth to the claim that the two are working together for the government to finally fall apart.
Media reportage about the curious events in Malacañang involving generals and the President, could all be a way to convince us, poor average people that the end has come for this regime and the new transitional regime will now take over.
Aw come on.
For many Malaysians, it is a heady day. Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim once more is in Parliament. Whatever past recrimination vs. the opposition leader, will now be moot. The campaign of Dr. Mahathir did not prosper. Anwar got his vindication. As girbaudz had hoped for, Malaysia will get back its democratic institutions; hopefully intact and in one whole piece. Let us pray for Datuk Seri Anwar’s and his party’s success in their peaceful revolution in Malaysia.
If you are reading this open letter, you might already be embarked on your official visit to the United States. I am writing about the tragedy that befell the Sulpicio Lines MV Princess of the Stars that really got to your gut.
Sulpicio and the Philippine Coast Guard now both look bad in the eyes of the families of the missing passengers. And that is the least of your worries. Both to the public and the international audience you will be facing during your travels, you will be the primary culprit by way of command responsibility.
Therefore it is correct to be really concerned about the situation. I shall not venture to offer any unsolicited proposals but for your information, the Republic of the Philippines’ Tenth (10th) Congress had already enacted a law on the establishment of a unified transport safety agency (a combination of the proposal bills for a maritime safety board, air transport safety board, etc.)
The consolidated bills were finally legislated into Act Creating the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) series of 1997.
Why the Transport Safety Board Law was never implemented must be because of many factors, among them certainly would have been money.
I remember clearly however, that a lot of both public and private funders have already been committed as early as 1995-1996 during our earlier advocacy for Philippine safety to provide as much as US$50-Million for various concerns affecting safety!
And this was only the initial leg of their commitments. It is also further noted herein, that since the Air Transport Office (ATO) privatization bill has already passed into law, another of our advocacies of being able to collect international standard rates for users’ charges for flyovers, landings, passenger (and cargo) arrivals and departures, will now be realized.
So Dear Madam President, money is not an object. There is enough money to go around with once the NTSB is made operational. Furthermore, at the onset, it does not need to have its own staff. It can initially be staffed by people already in government’s employ.
The final decision on this and all other concerns to address the recent tragedy is yours to make.
i hear this: ressa’s people were checked in at the pen many days (or hours?) prior to mr. trillanes’ and magdalo’s march and violent seizure of control of that establishment. up teacher or former, odina bagnat, id’d in the video huddled with nicanor faeldon, composer of the song that won in a u.n. tilt, really did give an id to the cashiered captain. the questions in my mind are too many. none have answers.
why did ces and co. check in at the pen, if true? booma cruz of probe and pcij as well as a few of her companions are my friends. but they were not at the pen, since they still work with gma?
i was there and looking for my nephew who had the bad sense to side with sonny trillanes’ magdalo. i never found my nephew but he was the last one, i saw on tv, to be caught. well, at least he wasn’t harmed. i saw sandra — although i never did talk to her nor to any other press people inside or outside the pen. why was she out of the loop?
then the people of the press were ushered out, most of them with cuffs and put on a bus to bicutan.
in another country, that would not have happened. the media persons would have even been wearing government issued bullet proof vests and gas masks just to help cover the event and not get shot or be tearified by the tear gas. but these people were in their working or house clothes, none to protect them from gunfire nor the obnoxious gas.
but that is in another country. here, the media were the reception committee and the darlings of the coup makers, and who knows, probably the ghost writers too. certainly, i heard that too. or haven’t you?
it’s too late for government to respond accordingly to the assault of maria ressa and crew. they lack hard intelligence; the supreme court even did a much better job than the executive in verifying the history of the events at pen as they unfolded. i bet chief justice puno knows much more now than he’s actually showing. more than all the agencies of the government combined — about what really transpired at the pen.
at the end of it, the pen was a faux pax. not so much for trillanes — since he has been a mere pawn from the beginning (expose of navy anomalies, oakwood siege, and so on and so forth). it was a lesson learned for maria ressa, luchi cruz valdez, ces drilon, and even, God bless her soul, odina bagnat. how was she placed in the loop at all, for christ’s sake when it was an abs-cbn affair? close ba sila?
for now, let the sleeping dogs lie. time will come when the truth will be known and that would be when the media should be able to open its eyes to what is really happening around them. and us.
there was a time, when i told a horde of gay and lesbian movie writers straight to their faces, that they did not understand a thing they were saying and that did they not read their own newspapers? the reaction was a storm!
i got a grand time at notorious publicity. our staff at the office compiled several feet-thick news clippings from those lovely gays and handsome lesbianas in the so-called movie writers’ world of bad writeups against yours truly.
it was hard, it was truly hard to be suddenly famous! although i never did get any fan calls on the phone. 
so there, the pen incident will soon be laid to rest, never mind that there are threats to change this regime and perhaps make a certain tv station the revolutionary government’s favored channel.
thanks, and no thanks!
left a comment on bob’s wordpress blog. i hope he reads it and deletes the comment and calls. shit, it’s been more than 10 years, the space of time between our meetings.
when we brought in Harris of Florida USA, that my uncle-in-law laughed at for being 147 in Jane’s Defence list, and the Fortune Top 500, ATO was ready for change.
apparently, fv ramos then president, was not. we formed an executive order for him to privatize at least the air traffic control part of ATO. but he never got himself to doing so, instead he threw the whole paperwork i slaved on for more than 6 months to congress.
nothing came of it. on the side, at the time, i made another pass at my pet project – the safety / devt council of the philippines. lo and behold! ramos threw it again at congress, and it was made unto a law! it became the legislated national transportation safety board (ntsb) law. although not my original name for it, and unoriginal in the sense that its name is derived from the u.s. ntsb, the passing of the law was enough to sustain me gloating over my genius, for a lifetime. hehehe.
the clincher is: dbm, at the time of ramos said, it was returning the law to congress because there were no funds.
that’s the old bullshit. but when erap came to power, sec. rivera challenged me to head ntsb and was visibly very, very angry when i turned him down, politely telling him that my politics and erap’s politics might not mix well together. sec. enteng rivera said, politics has nothing to do with it since ntsb is an apolitical item, or so-so. i did not believe that would be the case so i stayed pat on my decision not to accept even if it would make me a sec. or under secretary in the erap government.
in those days when we were trying to privatize a section of ATO, that was about 12-13 years ago, there were a lot of items about ATO that needed reform. a lot of do-gooders did make some changes over the years, but there is so much to change in the country’s aviation industry that it would not take just 12, 13 or 20 years to mend the serious irregularities and errors. a lot of mistakes that are bound to happen.
consider this as the same situation prevailing in the maritime and land transport industry. the primordial concern of safety still has to be addressed. when sec. mendoza received a now deceased friend’s good word about my project and my desire to serve the arroyo administration, mendoza did not ask about the ntsb and how it was made into law. neither did he care to know if i had or had not refused the same offer by the erap administration. what sec. mendoza said to my friend was: atin ba siya?
i wonder what kind of question is that. we both helped run the campaign of de villa in 1998, among all the other times when we worked together in other areas. certainly, he has his own peer group, his own golf mates, etcetera etcetera but the question is way too far off the mark. and hurt a lot.
from the point of view of security, safety, air worthiness and other factors, ATO will have to accept that it deserved a low FAA rating and will continue doing so. however, and i hope sec. mendoza is reading this one way or the other, there are a lot of ways to skin a cat. you can’t get government to fund the ATO changes, at least you can let the ntsb roll and it might be able to take care of the problems of ATO half of the way. then, you, mr. secretary can meet ntsb half way and undertake the rest of the reforms but this time on a lesser budgetary requirement. because by then, fifty percent of the load had been shouldered by ntsb.
fortunately for me, sec. mendoza did not notice the first time so i am not involved in the ATO mess. and the chief of that agency was sacked ingratiously. yet, on hindsight these things would never really have happened if sec. mendoza was keen enough to realize that there is a way to solve the ATO problem, only that he needs to do it from another angle — or from the side, or from behind.
next time, he ought to stop asking the question: atin ba ito? atin ba siya? and instead, start investigating if a project and those behind it can help ease his concerns as transport and communications czar.
