It was with a sense of relief, yet with some sadness, that I watched the last episode of “Lee San” (Wind in the Palace), the Korean telenovela I have been addicted to for months.
“It is honored by tradition,” Sen. Edgardo Angara stressed. He meant Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s “Christmas cash gifts” of P1.6 million each to 18 “friendly” senators, including Angara. At year’s end, Enrile ladled “maintenance and other operating expenses” (MOOE) savings. Why did it ignite today’s brawl?
It was the hubby’s “brilliant” idea. For years, we had heard stories about the view from atop the hills of Antipolo, where one could espy on New Year’s Eve the entire metropolis lit up in festive lights and exploding in a riot of colors when the clock struck midnight.
As this is being written, there are already 164 persons, most of them children, who have been injured by firecrackers. Three percent of them required amputation of the limbs. There is already one victim of a stray bullet fired into the air by an irresponsible gun owner. And New Year is still two days away. I am sure that by the time the New Year’s Eve revelry is over, there will be many, many more victims, dead and injured from firecracker blasts, stray bullets and fires.
Passion Week in the Philippines is a study in contrast. All industrial and other activities ground to a halt and cities come to a standstill as Filipinos take to the Holy Week rituals with a passion that approximates the zeal usually seen in España Viejo (Spain) and España Nuevo (Mexico). But while much of the traditional Lenten ceremonies especially in Madre España have survived merely as cultural artifacts to satiate tourists’ curiosity for the archaic, the colorful and the bizarre, the Philippines, like Mexico which just recently welcomed Pope Benedict XVI with unabashed fervor, has cleaved to these practices with stubborn piety. Catholicism is alive and well in the Philippines.
The Lenten season is a time for retreats and recollections; a time for setting aside our usual routines in order to reflect on the state of our lives; a time for forgiveness and reconciliation; a time for giving thanks to the Almighty for all the blessings that have come our way. The season reminds me of two recollections in particular that I attended many years ago. The issues raised by the retreat masters, both Jesuits, remain as relevant today as they were in the past.
Beginning Monday, traffic in Metro Manila will ease while those on the highways going to the provinces will begin to get worse as the annual migration from the crowded cities to the vast open spaces and fresh air of the provinces progresses during the Holy Week. This human migration is as regular and as predictable as the annual migration of the great herds of wildebeests, zebras, impalas, buffaloes and elephants in Africa.
Sorsogon Bishop Arturo Bastes had an interesting proposition the other weekend. That was for P-Noy to go into retreat this Holy Week. It would be good, he said, if the President does not just depend on his natural discernment to lead the country in the daang matuwid, but also seeks enlightenment from above. I will be charitable since this is Holy Week and grant that Bastes means well by his suggestion, however astonishing it is that he should single out the President as needing introspection and self-examination when this country does not lack for people who might more mightily profit from it. I will be charitable as well since this is Lent and not yield to the temptation, however powerfully inviting it is for the irreverent, not to make fun of his name.
The people’s Christmas gift. The first report from the Social Weather Stations’ survey of Dec. 3-7, 2011, released yesterday in BusinessWorld, puts those satisfied with President Aquino at 71 percent, and those dissatisfied with him at 13 percent, for a very good net satisfaction rating of +58, or two points over his +56 last September.
It is a jarring feeling to watch an old woman, hand extended, begging for alms on a busy street—this, in a society that has traditionally held elderly persons in high regard. A few weeks ago, the malls celebrated Grandparents’ Day—replete with glowing photos in the papers. Not to be outdone, the Philippine government has declared [...]
