Monthly Archives: December 2025

Qwertyman No. 178: A Christmas Scam Story

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Qwertyman for Monday, December 29, 2025

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ONE OF the great regrets of my college life was that, for some reason or other, I never got to take a formal course in Philosophy, which might have helped me make sense of the moral sordidness permeating our lives today. Like many of you I’ve been particularly captivated by the question of why a presumably all-good and just God would allow so much evil in a divinely created world, and let good people go bad, from petty thievery to massive corruption in the flood-control billions.

I’ll get back to the billions later (I think you know where this is headed), but let me start with me getting scammed, albeit small-scale, on Christmas Eve.

It started with an ad on Facebook Marketplace, where I spend more time than I probably should in search of old pens, books, and the kind of odds and ends that bring joy to old men trying to buy their childhoods back. The item I saw was none of the above, but rather a decent-looking pair of second-hand jeans that I thought would fit me. 

(Yes, because I’m larger than most Filipino males, and because threads today cost a fortune in the shops, almost all my clothes come used from the ukay-ukay, eBay, and FB. I’m a great believer in recycling—my mom used to dress us in B-Meg feedbag cotton, if you remember that—and at my age I have no qualms about wearing some dead man’s shirt, after a good wash.) 

So I messaged the seller, whom we’ll call Mr. T, confirming the price in the mid-hundreds and more importantly the waist size. He promptly replied with a picture of the size tag, which delighted me, and he asked for and got my shipping details, offering to do the booking himself and send me the Lalamove cost, to my great relief.  About fifteen minutes later he said he was having problems finding a rider—entirely plausible, since it was probably the busiest shipping day of the year—and so I offered to add a tip, which he offered to split with me. How nice. 

Mr. T got a rider, I got the total price, and paid him without second thought. He sent me a picture of a rider bearing packages, one of which would have been my jeans, and I waited. I normally ask for the tracking, but this was pretty close and the amount was small so I didn’t bother, and besides Mr. T. very helpfully sent me updates (“He’s just five minutes away”) and even sent me a number to call. Fifteen minutes later, figuring the rider had lost his way, I called the number, and got an “out of reach” message. Holiday congestion, I figured. Thirty minutes, I called again; same reply. I messaged Mr. T on FB; messaged bounced, “Couldn’t send.” Our lively, Christmas-y conversation was over. I’d been scammed.

That wasn’t the first time it had happened to me, online or in real life. I’m no dupe, and know my way around the digital darkness, often warning friends myself about phishing scams and hoaxes, but the problem is, I’m a gambler at heart, and when it comes to small amounts, small bets, I gamble quite freely on the goodness of human nature, even in the knowledge that, at some point, I’m bound to lose. (To be fair, 95% of my online transactions have been problem-free and even profitable, so no, I’m not going back to writing checks and visiting bank tellers like some of my Boomer friends have.) 

Of course, from the scammer’s point of view, those hundreds that trickle in from suckers like me soon turn into streams of thousands. And someone like me, familiar with loss, might afford to shrug it off, but there are kids out there who would be devastated if their P500 toy never came.

What fascinates me here is the tender, loving care with which Mr. T executed his plan, and kept me hoping until the very end. He could’ve shut me off the second he got his money, but no; he kept me hanging on, then dropped me at the very last minute. I can imagine him doing this with practiced efficiency, and I suspect not a little pleasure at being proven right about the gullibility of people. 

Now the fictionist in me imagines that Mr. T wasn’t born with scamming in mind, and didn’t take Scamming 101 at Evil U. He might have studied Accounting or Pharmacy or even Philosophy, and even gotten good grades, until something clicked in his head one morning to try something different, putting self-love at the fore.

This is where I go back to wishing I’d read more of Immanuel Kant and his idea of the “radical evil” rooted in every individual no matter how good, just waiting to be activated. That resonates with me, because I couldn’t possibly do the fiction I do if I didn’t believe that the germ of evil resides in every good person, and vice versa. (In a sense I have to admire Mr. T for being the better fictionist, having put one over the pro.)

And this brings me in a roundabout way to something I’d been thinking deeply about these past two weeks, as I’m sure many of you have—that image of Cathy Cabral on the lip of that ravine, running her life through her head, mesmerized by the ribbon of light in the stream below. She knew what stood behind and ahead of her; only what lay below was unknowable and perhaps comforting. She was here to confront something greater than her fear of heights.

Never much of a conspiracist, even in my fiction, I have often found that the simplest truths and explanations are also the most difficult to accept. One of them is that there slithers a Mr. T and a Cathy C. in each of us, seeking a way out.

Qwertyman No. 177: Another Way to Lose Money

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Qwertyman for Monday, December 22, 2025

NEXT WEEK, after Christmas, my wife Beng and I are flying to a southern city—I won’t say yet exactly where—for a short break from the stresses of the season. (Surely you’ll agree that there’s no time fraught with more anxiety—and the entire gamut of emotion from euphoria to depression—than a Pinoy Christmas, from its tinkly inception in September to its grim, budget-busting conclusion post-New Year. Let’s not even talk about the traffic.)

Beng and I have done this for years now, making it a point to visit some local place the two of us have never been before—among them Balabac, Camiguin, Dipolog, Roxas City, and Virac, destinations usually passed over by tourists in search of thrills and spills outside our septuagenarian menu. 

We’ve done this out of a deep love for and interest in our country and culture, despite all the inconveniences we associate with local travel. We’ve never been first- or business-class-type passengers to begin with, and despite our age can take a few bumps on the road in search of native fabrics, fresh iterations of suman and fish tinola, and a dip under a waterfall.

In other words, tourism-wise, we’re the easy sell, the low-hanging fruit, with modest expectations and demands and a developed tolerance for discomfort (delayed flights, rough roads, no aircon, the occasional mosquito or cockroach).

Not surprisingly, it isn’t people like us who lift up the Philippine tourism industry. We remain heavily dependent on foreign visitors bearing dollars, won, and yuan, and those tourists—typically educated, digital-savvy millennials seeking leisure and adventure experiences—have literally a planetful of destinations to choose from, and the figures clearly show that even within Southeast Asia, we’re hardly their first choice.

A comprehensive report by Zhan Guo on the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Office (AMRO) website notes that while Philippine tourism has rebounded somewhat since the pandemic, major structural bottlenecks continue to restrain the sector from achieving its full potential.

The report notes that “Compared with ASEAN peers, the Philippines’ international tourism market remains relatively small. Even before the pandemic, the country lagged regional peers in foreign arrivals—8.2 million foreign visitors—well below Indonesia’s 16 million, Malaysia’s 26 million, Thailand’s 40 million, and Singapore’s 15 million. Moreover, foreign tourists remain concentrated in a few destinations: the National Capital Region and Central Visayas (home to Cebu) account for over 60 percent of total foreign overnight stays. Many promising sites remain underdeveloped or difficult to reach.”

In 2024, foreign arrivals barely reached 6 million. As of November 2025, we haven’t even hit 5 million. 

Completing the picture, AMRO notes that “Tourism has long been a cornerstone of the Philippine economy. In 2024, the sector’s gross value added reached ₱3.5 trillion—7 percent higher above pre-pandemic levels—and accounted for 13.2 percent of GDP. It also supported 4.9 million jobs, or 13.8 percent of the labor force. AMRO’s analysis shows that tourism-related industries—such as hotels and restaurants—can generate higher domestic value-added per unit of production input than the average for all sectors, making the sector a key driver of the country’s post-pandemic recovery.”

Now, these figures are helpful, and AI can spout them any time, but what we really need to hear are ground-level stories from real people—tourists and expats—who’ve been here long enough and who can tell us in all candor what we need to do to catch up with our neighbors. I know we Pinoys can be extremely sensitive to criticism, especially when it comes from white people who fly in from their comfort zones and begin to expect everything here to work just as well as they do back home, and who then broadcast their woes and gripes to the world like the Philippines was the foulest and most benighted place on earth, ever. I’m sure we’ve all met louts like these.

But then there are foreigners who actually and deeply love this country—sometimes more than some of us do—despite everything they and we have to bear with, and these are the friends we need to listen to. It was an online encounter with one such expat last week that triggered this column, when I came across the blog of a European who goes by the moniker “The Lazy Traveler,” who’s been living in the Philippines for over a decade now and has traveled quite a bit around the country and the region. 

Let me quote what he wrote (with some minor edits just to improve the flow):

“Main problem: accommodation is bad and overpriced. I’m planning a motorcycle route in Vietnam from south to north. Almost everywhere there, you can sleep for $3–$4. $10 already feels like luxury. In the Philippines, it’s hard to find anything under $10. The average is $25–$30, and the quality is usually terrible.

“I remember sitting at White Beach in Puerto Galera with a resort owner. He showed me rooms priced at almost $100 per night. Inside, everything was broken—doors, toilet flush, fittings. I told him, ‘Don’t be offended, but who is paying 5,000 pesos for that crap?’ His answer: ‘They come fifteen people, so it’s cheap.” (Sleeping on the floor and everywhere.) I asked why he doesn’t fix the rooms. He said, “It will be broken again in two weeks.” That mindset explains a lot.

“If I ride from Pagudpud to General Santos, the trip will cost me at least thirty times more than Vietnam, with more hassle and less comfort.

“Another big issue: transportation. If you don’t have your own transport like a motorcycle, roaming around the Philippines can be a horror—slow connections, overpriced tricycles, limited public transport, and wasted time. Mobility here often feels like a struggle, not freedom.

“Second issue: domestic flights are insanely expensive. Not long ago, Manila–Siargao was close to $400.

“Third issue: too many restrictions, no real freedom. Hiking? Register at the barangay.

Simple trail? Mandatory guide. Then come the fees: ‘local support’ fee, environmental fee, parking fee, toilet fee, shower fee…. That’s why some foreigners call it Feelippines.

“Not to mention the official Facebook page of the Department of Tourism—it’s full of Frasco and Marcos faces instead of destinations. With 1.4 million followers, their posts get 30–40 reactions. Sayang. (I checked the page, and it’s true—JD)

“I love the Philippines. That’s why I’m still here. But if tourism wants to improve, these problems need to be called out—not ignored.”

I’m sure this isn’t the first time we’re hearing these things, and that the government knows what it needs to do. The AMRO paper lays it all down: better transport connectivity, basic utilities and infrastructure, digital readiness, and visitor facilities. 

Now we need BBM to treat this like flood control: another way to lose a lot of money aside from thievery is not to make it when we very well could.

Qwertyman No. 176: Remembering CAB (1929-2025)

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Qwertyman for Monday, December 15, 2025

THE DEATH last week at the age of 95 of Cesar Augusto Buenaventura—known to his friends and associates as CAB—marked the passing of yet another member of that golden generation of Filipinos who lived through the Second World War and almost literally built and shaped Philippine industry and society in its aftermath. An engineer by training, CAB was also a management pioneer, a business leader, a civil libertarian, and a valued adviser to presidents. (As a former member of the UP Board of Regents, CAB would often text me for news about goings-on in Diliman, concerned as ever with the state of Philippine higher education and of UP’s role in it.)

I had the privilege of writing a yet-unpublished biography of the Buenaventura siblings (Cesar was followed by social worker Elisa, lawyer Chito, and banker Paeng). And while Cesar chose to self-publish his own three-volume biography a few years ago (I Have a Story to Tell), the original draft has many interesting anecdotes worth sharing with young Filipinos who barely know their economic history. Let me pull up this except you can keep in mind the next time you gas up at a Shell station, visit the UP Chapel, or see a DMCI building.

As soon as he graduated from UP in 1950, Cesar started looking for a job, and almost immediately found one with a man who would become an important influence in his life and a titan in the Philippine construction industry, David M. Consunji. Right after the war, Consunji began building houses—a skill then in high demand in the war-ravaged city—competing on the principle of “price plus quality.” David also made sure that he got the best people and paid them the best wages. And so a strapping 21-year-old named Cesar Buenaventura, fresh out of college, strode into Consunji’s office and got his first job, as Consunji himself recounts:

“In 1951, I hired my very first engineer, Cesar Buenaventura. He was then a young civil engineering graduate from UP who was waiting for the results of the board exams he had just taken. It was my brother Raul, his classmate in UP, who told him to see me because I was starting my own construction company. I thought he was very capable so I hired Cesar. 

“Soon after, we started doing our own projects, and among Cesar’s first assignments were three houses we were building in Forbes Park. Forbes was not yet a posh village then; land there was selling at just P4.00 to P6.00 per square meter. After that, Cesar and I did some more houses. I made Cesar the cost engineer and field engineer for our various other projects. He also took care of the payroll, which amounted to P15,000 to P20,000 a week.

“It was in the Laguna College project that Cesar took on greater responsibilities. While we were doing the plans, Cesar said, ‘Don’t bother hiring a structural engineer, I’ll do it. I asked him if he was sure he could do it and he said ‘Yes.’ Every time I would see him, long after the building was finished, I would tell him that it was still standing intact, even after several earthquakes, without a single crack on a wall.

“Cesar was my very first assistant, and even then, I could see that he would go far. I wanted him to stay with us, but he decided to go to the United States for graduate studies in 1952.”

(Upon returning from Lehigh University with his MS in Civil Engineering), Cesar rejoined Consunji for some work on the UP Chapel, which had been designed by a young architect named Leandro Locsin. Locsin had impressed Fr. Delaney with a small church he had designed in Victorias, and now he took on what would become one of his signature pieces, the UP Chapel. Fred Juinio served as structural engineer, with Dave Consunji as the builder. 

But armed with his Lehigh degree and eager to make full use of his new learning, Cesar could now consider more options. And the offers came. UP, for one, wanted him to teach, and was willing to pay him P400 a month. But a big petroleum company offered him P300 more, with his salary to be raised upon completing probation as an executive trainee. In 1956, Cesar went with Shell—a decision that would define the rest of his professional life.

In 1975, Cesar Buenaventura achieved what no other Filipino had up to that point by becoming president of Shell Philippines and Chief Executive Officer of the Shell Group of Companies.

Cesar’s rise to the helmsmanship of Shell also got the attention of someone in great need of executive talent: Ferdinand E. Marcos, president of the Philippines and, at that time, the country’s martial-law ruler. With the global oil crisis still hurting the Philippines in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war, Marcos put up the Philippine National Oil Company to explore for oil and develop alternative energy sources, and was scouting for the right man to head it. His eye fell on Cesar, who had just stepped up to the Shell presidency; surely such a man had the skills and the vision to head the new PNOC. Marcos had Buenaventura called to Malacañang. 

While he may have been honored to be offered the position, Cesar remembered his father’s admonition against serving in government. He went to see Marcos in the Palace. Luckily, before Marcos could make his pitch and demand Cesar’s commitment, a phone call from the First Lady, who was in New York, interrupted the conversation. Cesar used that break to gather his wits and to come up with the argument that such a move to government would be premature, coming so soon after his appointment as the first Filipino head of a major multinational company. Cesar suggested that he could serve the country’s interests better if he were able to persuade Shell to search for oil in the Philippines—which they eventually did. Marcos did not press the point, and Cesar was spared.

Yet more of Cesar’s friends would join Marcos’s Cabinet: David Consunji, as Secretary and later Minister of Public Works, Transportation, and Communication, then by Dean Fred Juinio in the same post, followed much later by Totoy Dans, when the Cabinet post was divided into two departments—Public Works, and Transportation and Communications. Consunji labored mightily to fight corruption in that notoriously graft-ridden department, only to find himself unceremoniously removed for refusing to play along. Dans followed the same straight and narrow path when took on the job in 1979, but he would later be, in Cesar’s eyes, unjustly vilified for his association with Marcos, even if he hadn’t enriched himself. 

So instead of taking what could have been a personally and politically costly detour into the Marcos government, Cesar Buenaventura managed to stay on at his beloved Shell, in a position he would hold with distinction for the next 14 years. 

Qwertyman No. 175: A Lid on a Dream

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Penman for Monday, December 8, 2025

LAST WEEK I used the words “tone-deaf” and “cross-eyed” to describe certain quarters with admirably exact and exacting political positions, people of stature and authority—but who then do or say something incomprehensibly off-the-wall that betrays a fundamental disconnect with reality, or with what most people feel. 

In the wake of last weekend’s huge anti-corruption rallies at the Luneta and EDSA, critics were quick to chastise, albeit politely, Cardinal “Ambo” David for seeming to drive a wedge between the two crowds by declining to ally himself with those calling for a transition council. Was he being unnecessarily divisive? 

I almost thought so (we were out of town and couldn’t attend either rally), until I read the statement from Tindig Pilipinas explaining that “The organizers chose… not to adopt calls for the simultaneous resignations of both the top two leaders of the country, or a transition council, because they recognize how easily such demands can be weaponized by insidious forces waiting in the wings…. There have always been differences because the people… are not homogenous. Unity arrives when a critical mass comes together to effect change, through the open and deliberate discussion of differences between actors of good will.” I think that’s something I can understand and even identify with; difference is not necessarily division, for so long as we share a common overarching goal.

“Disconnect” seems more applicable to the case of Trade Secretary Cristina Roque, who got a ton of bricks dumped on her head on social media for proposing that P500 could be enough for a Pinoy family’s noche buena, or traditional Christmas-Eve meal. What planet is she living on, most comments asked. Doesn’t she know that the current price of (name your ingredient) is X per kilo at (name your public market)? What do they expect us to eat at noche buena, canned sardines? Why don’t the DTI secretary and her undersecretaries stick to P500 for their own noches buenas? And so on. 

Never mind that the government later whipped out its calculators to prove, mathematically, that a P500 Christmas dinner was possible—and here’s the magic menu, if you missed it, from the Philippine News Agency: ham (500g): P170; spaghetti noodles (250g): P30; macaroni (200g): P24; mayonnaise (220ml): P121.30; cheese spread (24g): P12; queso de bola (300g): P211.60; fruit cocktail (432g): P61.76; all-purpose cream (110ml): P36.50. 

Maybe it all adds up when you punch the “equals” sign, but not politically, it doesn’t, because a Pinoy Christmas isn’t a numbers game. It’s laden with emotion and not a little illusion—the fantasy of a family coming together for a shared meal, despite the past year’s tribulations, of a door opening and Papa or Ate making a surprise appearance from Dubai with presents in hand, of sick Junior miraculously rising from his bed, to ask for some sweetened ham.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I know the DTI meant otherwise, to show possibilities rather than limits. But that P500 figure dropped like a lid on a dream, a clattering reminder of how difficult things are rather than how hopeful we should be. I guess it’s just the old playwright in me, attuned to the urgings of human hearts and minds, that keeps scripting this scenario of mismatched intention and reception.

At the bottom line, it’s never a good idea, whatever the math says, for the well-off to tell the poor to live within their means, and especially to blame them for their poverty (like “You make yourselves poor and miserable because all you do is make babies, you lack initiative, you don’t save for a rainy day” etc.). That just makes them resent you even more, and start asking questions like, how’d you get so rich, anyway? 

Now of course Sec. Roque never said or even suggested any of those nasty things. All she probably really meant was, hey, let’s all have a merry Christmas—look, even you can afford it at this price point, with the economy doing so well. But again—ooops—up goes the red flag, because however the government may argue that the Philippine economy is performing at a faster clip (reportedly 4.0 percent during the third quarter of 2025) than even neighbors like Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, that can’t mean much to consumers grappling with the rising costs of living (in New York and much of America, the “affordability” issue that the Democrats have seized upon as a winning theme, and which Donald Trump of course dismisses as a figment of his enemies’ imagination). 

It doesn’t help that Christmas comes at yearend, a time for stock-taking and reflection, for year-on-year comparisons of one’s well-being. What was 2025 all about? Did it make our lives any better, or give us something to feel better about in 2026? I suppose that depends on whether you’re looking at the problem (can you help it, if it’s right in your face?) or at the solution (which remains largely wishful thinking).

True, it was good that—by design or inadvertently—President Bongbong Marcos opened a can of worms with that speech on corruption, leading to the flood-control exposés and to an explosion of public outrage not seen since EDSA days. But now those worms are all over the place—some crawling back to the Palace—and it looks like Junior’s going to need a nuclear solution to bring them under control, at the risk of some damage to friends and family, maybe even himself. Whatever happens, the people’s awareness and rejection of massive corruption can’t be undone, and will be a major issue come 2028. That’s progress by any standard. We’ve rediscovered our voice, found our footing, and won’t be duped or silenced. 

On the other hand, it’s never good to realize you’ve been stolen from in the crazy billions. If PBBM can only get that money back into the treasury—and toss in a few billion of his own—then we’d have a truly merry Christmas to look forward to in 2026, with considerably more than P500 to budget for the holiday ham.

Qwertyman No. 174: Doing the Doable

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Qwertyman for Monday, December 1, 2025

AS NOT a few placards in yesterday’s big anti-corruption march would have said, both President Bongbong Marcos and VP Sara Duterte should resign, along with everyone in public office implicated in the flood-control scandal and all the other shenanigans that have come to light over the past couple of months. 

That probably means half the government, but given the current public mood, the more the better, to give the nation a chance to rebuild itself on new foundations of moral rectitude and accountability. At least that’s the long view, supported by the Left among other parties who think that anything short of a national reset will simply paper over the problems and guarantee their comeback. 

It all sounds good, and it does make sense—except that, as we all know, it ain’t gonna happen. 

It’s about as realistic as the expectation that BBM will fall to his knees, own up to the Marcos billions, and ship all that money back to the Philippines on a FedEx plane for mass distribution, any more than VP Sara will admit to her father’s drug-fueled bloodlust, seek forgiveness of all the tokhang victims, and forsake her presidential ambitions. Let’s face it: the Marcos and Duterte dragons will be clawing at each other all the way to 2028. Meanwhile, what are we mere mortals supposed to do or to hope for? 

In the very least, we can ignore the DDS calls for BBM to step down and for Sara to take over, because there’s even less appetite for that than the Both-Resign demand. The Dutertes want to make hay of the moment, but the sun isn’t exactly shining on them. Despite their strong and well-funded social media efforts, the DDS camp seems pretty much in disarray, with Digong in jail, Sara in limbo until February (it tells me something that they approved the OVP’s 2026 budget in full—it’s for the office, not VP Sara, although she doesn’t seem to know the difference), Bato de la Rosa suddenly scarce, and their shot at a junta takeover badly misfiring. 

(The ICC’s predictable decision not to grant his interim release could in fact prove to be an ironic win. Digong at this point is useful only as emotional capital for Sara’s survival and triumph. His camp, I suspect, secretly wants him to stay in The Hague as a symbol of the Marcoses’ unforgivable perfidy. Bringing him back home will mean having to take care of a grumpy old man whose greatest ability—cursing—isn’t helping him much in his present situation; he was never a Leila de Lima, and certainly no Ninoy Aquino.)

All the players’ moves are interesting in this grand melodrama. I frankly can’t trust the Left, either, to show the way forward. Like a religion (did I hear someone say “Iglesia ni Cristo”?), the Left likes to flaunt its moral ascendancy—to “virtue-signal,” in today’s parlance—and its rock-solid grasp of the global and local situation from the Marxist standpoint. And yet it gets all tone-deaf and cross-eyed when it comes to picking its horses—ditching EDSA, but backing billionaire capitalist Manny Villar and then pseudo-nationalist and butcher Rodrigo Duterte for the presidency (should we even mention slaughtering comrades it deemed wayward in the Ahos campaign?). 

Interestingly, the INC also supported Duterte in 2016, and then BBM and Sara Duterte in 2022. While adopting some progressive liberals like Franklin Drilon, Risa Hontiveros, and more recently Bam Aquino and Kiko Pangilinan into its senatorial slate, it has also flexed its machinery behind Duterte surrogates Bong Go and Bato de la Rosa, as well as corruption-tainted Senators Joel Villanueva and Jinggoy Estrada. During its last mass rally last November 25 for “peace, transparency, and accountability,” however, it was careful to distance itself from recent calls for BBM’s resignation. In other words, the INC is the perfect straddler, the seguristathat makes sure it will survive and prosper under any administration, reportedly to secure key government appointments for its favored nominees.

That leaves us and our own wits, which—considering everyone’s else’s brain fog—might yet prove the most trustworthy.

In the realm of the doable, I want to see heads roll—as close to the top as the situation will allow. One way of looking at this, and strangely enough, is that the Filipino people aside, the party with the greatest stake in seeing this anti-corruption campaign through to the end (i.e., just short of the Palace) is PBBM himself. Having opened this Pandora’s box, he well knows that the only way he can keep his own head and hold sway over 2028 is to catch all those demons he released. I don’t know about you, but right now I’m desperate enough to let BBM finish his term in relative peace if he achieves nothing else than the herculean task of cleaning up the stables.

VP Sara’s impeachment trial should resume in February and will be a more efficient and definitive way to shut her out for good. But we have loads of senators, congressmen, department secretaries and undersecretaries, and lesser flunkies all caught up in this mess who should be held to account for their thievery. Hold the big bosses, the ultimate signatories, accountable, sure. But don’t let the second- and third-level enablers and functionaries off, because the message needs to be sent that complicity won’t pay—and that your sponsors will ditch you when things get too hot.

I want to see our courts work, overtime, to expedite the prosecution of these corruption cases. No pussyfooting, please, no Maguindanao massacre here. Let’s put a quick and decisive end to the kind of legalistic foolishness that lets a senator off the hook for a P30-million “private contribution,” with the judgment rendered by the Comelec commissioner who had previously served as that senator’s lawyer. How the heck can that be allowed to happen? What ethical universe are we in? The same goes for former Ombudsman Samuel Martires’ “forgetting” why he had kept secret his decision junking his predecessor’s carefully crafted case against Sen. Joel Villanueva. 

If the Comelec accepts Sen. Rodante Marcoleta’s ridiculous excuse that he kept millions of political donations off his report of campaign expenses because they were meant to be “secret,” then we should launch a million-people march not just against the likes of Marcoleta but also specifically against the Comelec to hound those charlatans out of office. That commissioner who couldn’t find the shame to recuse himself from his former client’s case should be impeached if he doesn’t resign.

I have no problem with people marching and screaming “Marcos, Duterte, resign!”, because we have billions of reasons to be upset with both. But I hope that doesn’t keep us from going after immediate and tangible if less-than-perfect results. Look at it this way—gut the body, and you’ve effectively chopped off the head.

(Photo from rappler.com)