Some thoughts after the recently-concluded 2022 national elections.
The Marcos-Duterte victory
Mr. Bongbong Marcos and his running mate Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio won the recent elections by a landslide, and are set to take office as President and Vice President of the Philippines, respectively. They weren’t my choice, I didn’t vote for them, but their victory is a bare fact.
Explaining their victory will fall to others far wiser and more intelligent than me. Instead, I wanted to reflect on some things I learned from their supporters.
Even before elections on 9 May, I’d already thought about likely scenarios. The most likely outcome, I thought at the time, was a landslide Marcos-Duterte victory. I made peace with it as a possibility. Now I’ll have to make peace with it as a fact.
Some thoughts on VP Leni Robredo’s new appointment
After being appointed co-chair of the Inter-Agency Committee on Illegal Drugs (ICAD), Vice President Leni Robredo has assumed her new post and begun to put forward some proposals for the “war on drugs”— the centerpiece program of the Duterte administration. Being a member of the opposition and a vocal critic of the war on drugs, naturally her proposals have been met with derision and criticism in some quarters, though some have also expressed support and optimism for the direction she wants to take.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m not the biggest fan of this current administration, but I agree in principle that illegal drugs are a problem that need to be addressed. I’m just unsure about the exact scale of the problem and disagree with the tactics currently in place to address it. But having laid that on the table, I’d just like to put forward a few observations and opinions about this latest development in the war on drugs.
[18 June 2019] Discussing the controversies and reactions about the maritime incident at Reed Bank
I haven’t done one of these in a long time.
Recently, the alleged maritime incident involving a Filipino and a Chinese vessel at Reed Bank (referred to as “Recto Bank” in the Philippines) has been a topic of conversation and controversy on social media and in real life, with people demanding a full investigation and, if necessary, punishments meted out to those responsible.
Reading through the news reports (multiplesources, pickany) right now, this seems to be the generally accepted version of events. On the night of 9 June 2019, the F/B Gem-vir 1, a Filipino fishing vessel commanded by Captain Jun Insigne with 22 crew members onboard, was anchored at Reed Bank northeast of the disputed Spratlys archipelago when it was allegedly rammed by a Chinese vessel. The Chinese vessel turned on its lights and then sailed away, leaving the Gem-Vir 1 damaged and sinking, its captain and crew clinging on to their boat for dear life.
Thankfully two of its crew members managed to reach a Vietnamese vessel identified by the Saigon Times as a fishing vessel owned by one Ngo Van Theng and commanded by Captain Nguyen Thanh Tam, which rescued the crew of the Gem-Vir 1 and gave them food and water until they could be picked up the BRP Ramon Alcaraz, a Philippine Navy offshore patrol vessel, with one crew member staying behind to oversee the towing of the wreckage of their fishing boat.
As this is very much a developing story, it’s possible my mind might change about certain things as more facts come to light. Since I’m a citizen of one of the two countries involved, I might also have some biases that way. Nonetheless, my purpose here is to talk about the controversies and my impressions on how people on Filipino social media reacted, and then to offer a few of my own thoughts at the time of writing (18 June 2019).
A free press and amendments to the Constitution. What’s there to worry about?
Disclosure: I don’t consider myself a supporter of Rappler (even if I do enjoy some of their content) or Mr. Duterte, but I do sympathize with a lot of GamerGate’s ideals.
In a recent decision, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cancelled news/media site Rappler’s license for allegedly violating the Constitution (multiplesources, pick any!). As the site had published criticism of President Duterte and his regime in the past, critics fired back, alleging that the ruling violated free speech and the freedom of the press.
And in the discussions on charter change making way for federalism in the Philippines, one proposed amendment to the 1987 Constitution changes the wording of the provision on free speech and freedom of the press to say that the state would not infringe on “the responsible exercise” of these rights, causing no small amount of trepidation over what this might imply.
My first reaction to these news stories was worry. These are fundamental rights, after all. In some ways free speech and a free press keep a democratic society actually democratic, in a society which purports to have and to work through a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” An accusation of violating the Constitution— of violating natural human rights— is a very serious charge. But when I realized what I was feeling, I asked myself, “Why am I worrying? What’s there to worry about?”
This piece was mostly brought on by a sense of apprehension and trepidation on my part. What I say here might not be completely warranted, but I personally feel better writing it down.
As I write this, it is February, 2016. Come May, my country will hold its national elections.
Apologies: I’m writing without a written outline again
FOR SCIENCE!
A disclaimer, before everything else: when it comes to religious faith, especially the Catholic Church, I’m probably the least qualified person to talk about such matters. As far as possible, I go to Mass every Sunday, though, regretfully, I haven’t always been able to go. I can’t always make heads or tails of the Church’s internal politics (they’re a messy affair I’d rather avoid 😀 ). I carry a rosary in my pocket whenever I go out, but I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the most perfect example of the faith. My experience of the Church is our local parish, my family, and the news stories and feature articles on the Internet. A more tame, down-to-earth experience, perhaps, but it’s one I wouldn’t trade for anything else 🙂
Which brings me to this post: in the news this month, speaking at the Pontifical Academy for Sciences, Pope Francis made positive comments regarding the theory of evolution and the Big Bang, saying that they weren’t incompatible with the teachings of the Church, and Britain’s Independent, erm, somewhat blows it out of proportion 😉
How the Independent read it
First of all, why did the Pope make such remarks? The remarks were made at the unveiling of a bust of Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican, where a plenary session was held from 24-28 October on the theme, “Evolving Concepts of Nature.” To my knowledge, the full text of His Holiness’s remarks hasn’t been released yet in English translation, but the Vatican’s website has it in Italian here. I suppose, then, that he made these remarks because the plenary session was centered on the theme of nature and “evolving concepts” of it–thus tying it to the theories of evolution and the Big Bang, which deal with the origins of human life and how the universe and the world as we know it came into existence.
I’ve noticed that the media, much like ordinary people, tend to look at events and interpret them according to a certain understanding the world–what we might call the “general narrative.” For instance, as the Aletheia Observer, my understanding of the world is informed by my religious, social, and family background. I think that otherwise sane, healthy people always have a tendency to be silly, unreasonable, and insensitive at times– it isn’t because they’re naturally and irredeemably evil. Quite the contrary– they are naturally good and have free will, and because they are free they will naturally choose what is good, for themselves and everyone else (now that I think of it, this kind of sounds like Confucius and Mencius, doesn’t it?). When they do things that are wrong, it’s because they’ve forgotten this essential thing, and so they’ve gone off-track.
In a similar way, the Independent has a general narrative of things, and this is what comes into play in this article, as well as others concerning religion in general and the Church in particular. In the case of Pope Francis and the Church, the narrative seems to go thus,
Pope Francis has very liberal tendencies– he just might be the man to “bring the Church into the 21st century”
Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI was an intolerant conservative, whose work Francis will undo
The Church is backwards, anti-science and anti-freedom
In the article, all of these things come into play: the author recounts the Pope’s words on evolution and the Big Bang and how “God is not a magician with a magic wand”– and takes the opportunity to take a shot at Benedict and portray him as a sort of evangelical fundamentalist. The author once again brings up the misunderstood story of Galileo to portray the Church as anti-science (there’s an article about it here, written by an atheist), and alludes to the fact that the remarks were made at the unveiling of a bust of Francis’s predecessor at the Pontifical Academy, and that the Pope lauded his predecessor for his contributions to theology and love of learning, but it was worded in such a way that made it sound condescending.
This general narrative, I think, is unfair, not only to the Church and Pope-Emeritus Benedict, but also to Pope Francis. All of them deserve better.
Ghosts and an unusual detail
A lot of religion news stories have “ghosts”– details that are important to understanding a story which are somehow mysteriously misplaced or missing. The charitable explanation is that the journalists covering the religion beat might be rushing, and thus don’t have the time to read through things like Church documents that explain the what and why of doctrines (understandable– they do sometimes tend to be unwieldy! 😀 ); the more uncharitable explanation is that there’s something in the water at J-School and the newsroom.
For me, one of the most disappointing ghosts in this story is the lack of any mention of two influential medieval-era Catholic theologians: St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo, both of whom are honored with the title “Doctor of the Church.” Centuries before Darwin was even born, Aquinas, the “Angelic Doctor,” advanced the notion that God is the “First Mover”– the One who set everything in motion. This understanding of God doesn’t rule out the possibility of evolution, since He could also have set evolution in motion.
More tellingly, St. Augustine actually proposed a version of the theory of evolution, on the idea that God’s creative act does not preclude the possibility that He would use natural means to create the body of Man– only the notion that the soul also evolved seemed more improbable.
Also, the article mentions the theory of the Big Bang,” which was proposed by a Belgian Catholic priest, Monsignor Georges Lemaître of the Catholic University of Louvain.
An unusual detail in the story is the re-casting of the much-maligned and misunderstood Pope Pius XII from arch-conservative (he’s been called “Hitler’s Pope” for his perceived silence during World War II) to a pope opening the Church to the world. There’s something you don’t see every day 😉 In response to the opinions of the Nouvelle Theologie (New Theology), he released the 1950 encyclical letter Humani Generis“concerning some false opinions threatening to undermine the foundations of Catholic Doctrine,” which touches on the concept of evolution and how it wasn’t incompatible with the idea that God created Man.
These details are important, but kick up the word-count, sadly to the point that the facts are misrepresented.
From the back pews
I’m certainly not a scientist or a theologian, and I’m just viewing this “from the pews,” so to speak. Not even from the front pews, but the back pews. What struck me most in this story is its unfairness to Catholic doctrine; perhaps it was unintended, but it was still irresponsible.
The author seems to believe that Catholics read and interpret the Bible literally, like some evangelical fundamentalist sects do. The Bible is really a much larger book than the small thing that some people make it out to be– indeed, it isn’t a single book, but a compilation of books, similar to an anthology or a library. And so, I’m not sure if the author was talking about a Catholic like myself, or one of my aunts who became a fundamentalist 😉
Anyway, one of the first things that a student in Catholic school learns is that the books of the Bible were written by different people, in different periods of time and in a variety of literary genres. For example, the Psalms were basically King David’s hymn-book, and the Song of Solomon was erotic love poetry as an allegory of the relationship between God and Israel. Hosea the prophet set out to write oracles, and ended up inadvertently writing a love story interspersed with proverbs and pithy sayings.
More to the point, the Creation story related in Genesis isn’t meant to be read as a literal historical account, but as a mythical account– what it expresses is not exactly fact, but Truth. The main point of the story is that God, “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” as Dante would later say, created the universe, and created Man as someone to share Himself with. Because that’s the thing about Love: it always looks outward and sees itself reflected in the Other, and finds that the Other isn’t so “other” after all.
I suppose we should stop here. The bottom line is simply this: liberate your minds, by any means necessary– even if it means having to slog through Church documents. 😀
Aletheia Observer, signing off. Careful out there! 🙂
– A.O.
P.S. I owe you guys a song 😀 Here’s “Red Hands” by Walk Off the Earth
“In the News” will be something which I hope I can do regularly, where I’ll write about news stories that have struck me.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I’m interested in people– in what they do and say, and why they do and say them. One (admittedly unscientific) way to do that, I’ve found, is to watch and read the news.
That in mind, in the news we have wars and rumors of wars, and sometimes rumors of rumors of wars: the Filipino peacekeepers in the Golan Heights and US cyber-warriors taking the fight against the Islamic State to cyberspace.
“The Greatest Escape”– Filipino Peacekeepers besieged
One of the most-discussed events recently here in the Philippines was the standoff between Filipino peacekeepers stationed in the Golan Heights and Syrian rebels. The peacekeepers are part of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) manning the buffer zone established between Syria and Israel after the 1973 Yom Kippur War; the current UNDOF commander is Lt. Gen. Iqba Singh Singha of India, who took over in 2012. More on him later.
To summarize what happened, on Wednesday, 27 August 2014, Syrian rebels overran the Quneitra crossing on the buffer zone; a day later, a number of Fijian peacekeepers were captured (the UN said 44, but the rebels reported 45) and Positions 68 and 69, manned by the “Blue Helmets” Filipino peacekeepers, came under siege from rebels demanding that they surrender their weapons and assuring them that would be treated well in captivity. The Filipinos refused, even when General Singha ordered them to raise a white flag and comply, and “exercised their right to defend themselves”– they traded fire for around seven hours. Apparently, Manila was kept apprised of the situation on the ground. On Saturday, the thirty-five peacekeepers stationed at Breiqa were safely escorted out of their encampment while being covered by the Irish quick reaction force. Shortly after midnight on Sunday, the other forty stationed at Rwihana fled under cover of darkness (“While the rebels were sleeping,” as the Philippine military reported) and walked across the minefields and rough terrain to make contact with the rest of the peacekeeping contingent. No casualties were reported, and as of this writing, all the Filipino peacekeepers are now safe (in a manner of speaking) at their base camp in Camp Ziouani.
The interesting thing about news sites on the Internet is how interactive they are. Before, people sent in letters to the editor if they wanted to comment on an article or pick a fight with a reporter, which took some time; now, most of them have social media plugins, and people can share them or pick a fight with the reporter in real time 😛 From reading the comments, I saw that most of them, barring the ones written by obvious trolls, fell into one of three camps (if you’ll excuse the word):
The “Proud to be Pinoy” and their supporters
Negative commenters
People who don’t quite know what’s going on
“Proud to be Pinoy” commenters are Filipinos (“Pinoy” is a slang term which we use to call ourselves) who are obviously very proud of their men and women in uniform, with just cause. Reports say that among those peacekeepers were members of the Scout Rangers of the Army’s Special Operations Command, elite and experienced troops who have probably fought against insurgents at home, though I’m not sure how reliable those reports are. Also, seven hours may seem relatively short, but I’m sure it’s a long seven hours when you’re under fire and certain death is whizzing past you.
They commonly cite a quote attributed to General Douglas MacArthur: “Give me ten thousand Filipino soldiers and I will conquer the world,” or bash President Obama (I’m not sure why) or General Singha, who must have been a lot of pressure at the height of the standoff– we won’t know for sure now, but some scenarios paint a dire picture and more lives put at risk.
And about General Singha, some are even insinuating that he’s working for the rebels from inside the UN, pointing out that he’s a Muslim (I’m not sure if he is, but many Sikhs apparently are). For me, it shows a sort of latent anti-Muslim tendency in my countrymen, maybe a sad holdover from colonial times when most of the country was Catholic while the Muslims in Mindanao held out and refused to fall in line. The stereotype is that Muslims are terrorists or purveyors of pirated DVD’s, and Indians (whom Filipinos refer to as “Bumbay” from “Bombay”) are usurious money-lenders. I’m a Catholic myself, and I think such talk does nothing useful. Christ is the Prince of Peace.
Some of these commenters seem to go overboard, though, to which I say: Guys, I’m proud of what our gallant Filipino peacekeepers have accomplished and I love my dear country, too, but we’ve got a lot of conflict already. I don’t think we need more. 😀
Negative commenters are mostly calling for the Philippine government to bring the troops back home, which is understandable. Gen. Singha commanding the peacekeepers to surrender their arms and raise a white flag was seen as him sacrificing the Filipinos to save the Fijians, which might be a little unfair; I think he owes everyone an explanation. In any case, they’ll probably get their wish, because after their tour of duty ends in October, the Philippines has indicated that it doesn’t want to send more peacekeepers to that part of the world.
They also cite the fact that up to now, the problems of the decades-long Communist insurgency and the Islamist separatists in the south– some of whom have allegedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State– haven’t been completely resolved yet, and that China seems to be threatening the country.
Another common theme is that the peacekeepers “ran away with their tails between their legs”– which is unfair to them. They nailed the colors to the mast and held out until they found a way to escape; it wasn’t really their job to fight and defeat the besiegers. They fought and survived together, and God willing, they’ll all come safely home for their hero’s welcome.
The ones who don’t quite know what’s going on include Filipinos who, well, don’t really know why the peacekeepers were there. It’s rather sad, since the peacekeepers are there doing an important job– keeping the peace. And they deserve some recognition for what they’re doing.
Also, like a lot of Filipinos, they’ve forgotten or haven’t heard of the PEFTOK– the Philippine Expeditionary Forces to Korea, five Battalion Combat Teams who served in the Korean War; one of them was designated as an armored battalion, but it arrived in Korea without tanks and spent most of the war without them 😛 . Among them was a Second Lieutenant named Fidel V. Ramos, who later in life became President. It’s usually passed over as a footnote, but in Philippine schools, when we discuss the story of the martyred opposition senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr., we’re told that he went to Korea as a journalist. He was there to report on the PEFTOK’s campaigns. The Philippines is in the UN, and it isn’t uninvolved in the world.
For that matter, we shouldn’t be uninvolved in the world, either.
Twitter warfare– US cyber-warriors take the fight against ISIS to cyberspace
This will be shorter than the previous section, but apparently, the US Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (USCC) is now taking the fight against the Islamic State to cyberspace. They’re probably now flaming and trolling the IS on the Facebook, the Twitter machine, and all over the Internets in a war for hearts and minds.
I don’t know if it’ll be effective, but I hope it will be. And I hope somehow, someday, all this war and rumor of war, and rumors of rumors of wars, can stop. It isn’t the way things should be.
That’s all for now, friends 😀 I want to hear from you. What’s happening in your side of the world?
Aletheia Observer, signing off. Careful out there! 🙂
-A.O.
P.S. Obligatory music post, after a long blog post. This is “If A Song Could Get Me You” by Marit Larsen.
Aletheia Observatory 