Qwertyman No. 218: A Dead Man’s Voice

Posted on October 5, 2026 by penmanila

Qwertyman for Monday, October 5, 2026

TODAY I’M going to turn over this column to the voice of a long-dead man, and all because—when last week I picked up a book he had published in 1957—I thought he might as well have been writing in the present, so uncannily familiar were the vignettes he recounted from this country’s political life seven decades and more ago.

The man was George A. Malcolm (1881-1961), the first full-time dean of the University of the Philippines College of Law whose building now bears his name, and later an Associate Justice of the prewar Philippine Supreme Court. The book he authored was American Colonial Careerist (Boston: The Chrisopher Publishing House, 1957), a collection of his memoirs and impressions as a civil servant under the American colonial regime over most of that period.

I was drawn to the Malcolm book because I collect antiquarian Filipiniana, for one, and of course because of the UP connection, but also because Malcolm graduated from the University of Michigan (where I and many other Filipino scholars took their graduate degrees) and had long been intrigued by Ann Arbor’s contributions (positive and surely some negative ones as well) to Philippine education and government. Michigan also produced Dean Worcester, who would defend America’s paternalistic rule, and lawyer Clyde De Witt, who would practice in the Philippines and later set up an endowment for Filipino student-lawyers in Michigan that would support such legal luminaries as Edgardo Angara, Miriam Defensor Santiago, and Raphael Lotilla.

Because of his positions, Malcolm came to know and befriend nearly all the major Filipino and American politicians and leaders of the prewar period, and his book gives intimate and sometimes saucy sketches of them. Manuel L. Quezon, not surprisingly, dominates his memoirs. “The Filipino is a natural and consummate politician,” he writes. “The great Jefe of them all for three decades was Manuel L. Quezon. He was the spectacular figure who gave color to the scene. A close second to Quezon in astuteness, but lacking his dynamic personality, was Sergio Osmeña.” But he also adds that “Quezon dearly loved the trappings of office. He relished the glittering appellation, ‘Your Excellency.’… An added Quezonian touch was a red shoulder-sash and three foreign decorations—a medal attached to his left lapel and two blazing badges pinned on the right side of his coat above the hip.”

Further, Malcolm notes, “Quezon gave an early demonstration of a desire to see the world at the expense of the taxpayers. In the role of official delegate of the Philippines to the International Congress of Navigation, held in czarist Russia in 1908, the young Assemblyman arrived in St. Petersburg (Leningrad) after the Congress had already adjourned. The P34,000 set aside for this trip was trivial compared to the fabulous expense accounts entailed in paying for other pilgrimages all over the globe with a large entourage. Curiously, the Filipino people were rather proud of the impression their effulgent leader was making in foreign lands and rarely complained of his prodigality.” (One who did complain was a young UP student named Ferdinand Marcos, who railed against MLQ’s “extravagance.”)

But Quezon was hardly alone. Malcolm goes on to say that “Quirino filled the expensive shoes of Quezon, and even added frills of his own concoction. A P5,000 bed to case the President’s slumbers became the prize reference in political campaigns. An investigation conducted by an inquisitive Senate purported to reveal that Quirino had spent about a million pesos on four trips abroad. Journalist Teodoro M. Locsin cynically observed: ‘This is living.’”

Indeed, presidential or not, the corruption we seem so upset about these days was already widespread. Malcolm observes that “Certain phases of the electoral process in the Philippines merit special attention. Aspirants for office have flagrantly and repeatedly flaunted the provision of the Electoral Code which specifies that no candidate shall spend for his campaign more than the total amount of the candidate. Yet, it is common information that a candidate for a seat in Congress, whose annual salary is P7,200, has been required to deposit P25,000 with party chieftains and has had to part with many more pesos in addition to have a fighting chance. In the 1953 presidential election, such sums as P2,000,000 were openly mentioned as needed by each of the three contending parties to finance their campaigns.

“Where did this money come from? The money came from candidates who bankrupted their patrimony and from the ‘big shots,’ in particular the sugar tycoons. Moreover, millions of pesos of the people’s money was drained out of the public treasury, generally for local ‘public works,’ to influence the people’s will…. Many phrases descriptive of Philippine politics have been scattered about. Merely as examples, I quote the words of an American publisher and a Filipino educator. Wrote Roy W. Howard, Philippine politics is ‘a great national pastime,’ with politicians “ten centavos a dozen.” Declared Mariano V. de los Santos, President of the University of Manila: ‘There is no activity in which we can engage where partisan politics does not seep in. Business, industry, agriculture, all are permeated by bad politics. Under such a climate, naturally politicians of all sorts thrive. But they thrive at the expense of the general welfare.’”

And where did many of these politicians come from? We go back to the UP College of Law and its poorer cousins which seem to have mushroomed all over the place:

“One potent reason why politics has come to play such a large part in the life of the people is the preference on the part of the youth for academic education. The result is a bumper crop of lawyers with no place to go except into the government service or into politics. It would inure to good government to have legally-trained and disciplined men and women in public life, if such exaggerated importance was not attached to the title of abogado in the Philippines.

“The College of Law, University of the Philippines, was organized to supply quality, not quantity, leaders. All to no avail. Law schools mushroomed all over the Islands. The Bar examinations became great sporting events, with candidates ready to mortgage their patrimony and sell their souls if only they could get passing grades. Yet when the six long years of study were passed and the Bar examination was hurdled, no clients awaited the embryo lawyers. Droves of half-baked parasites were superimposed on an already top-heavy governmental structure and a lean economy.”

Perhaps we need to bring the spirit of Justice Malcolm back in a séance as amicus curiae in the Senate impeachment trial.

Qwertyman No. 216: The Law on Trial

Posted on September 21, 2026 by penmanila

Qwertyman for Monday, September 21, 2026

LIKE MANY young Filipinos of my postwar generation, I once dreamt of becoming a lawyer. Alongside medicine, it looked to be the most challenging and the most rewarding if not the noblest profession one could get into. Medicine was also a public service, yes, but one basically remained a doctor forever, while a lawyer could go on to business, politics, or the Supreme Court. It occurred to my teenage mind that the only thing a good lawyer needed was a sharp brain—and the gift of gab, which I thought I had, at least the second if not the first.

Indeed my father Jose Sr., reputed to be the smartest boy in our island province, also wanted to be a lawyer, but was too poor to become one. So having the wits and the words but not the degree, he ended up writing speeches and drafting documents for politicians and bosses who were lawyers.

Much later, it took my younger sister and brother to achieve his dream. Myself, I entered college on the red carpet of the First Quarter Storm, and with the way the country was going, I had decided even in high school that there was no future for the law in a lawless place, and chose Engineering (and, when I failed my Math, eventually English). The imposition of martial law and my subsequent incarceration hardened that perception: the law was for the powerful, but certainly not for me.

EDSA and the restoration of our civil liberties did much to change that. I followed and listened to such luminaries as Cecilia Muñoz-Palma, Jovito Salonga, Joker Arroyo, Rene Saguisag, Fr. Joaquin Bernas, Jose W. Diokno, Lorenzo Tañada, Haydee Yorac, and others of their caliber and character, and I was convinced and relieved that the lamp of truth, reason, and justice would finally shine brightly over our benighted nation.

And then the 2000s came in, and with them the long backslide into the morass of corruption and authoritarianism—much of it enabled and justified by a new generation of lawyers with far fewer scruples than their predecessors. Amidst this transactionalism, my old pessimism has returned, moderated only by my knowledge that many good and honest lawyers remain to carry on the fight.

The Senate’s current impeachment hearings in the case of Vice President Sara Duterte led me to wonder how they might affect young students contemplating a future in the legal profession, and how the general public perceives lawyers and the law itself today, given what they’ve seen.

I posed these questions to some lawyer-friends who have also followed the trial keenly. First, what impression of lawyers has the trial so far left on the general public?

“Negative overall,” says Lawyer A. “Because of the way the Senate is conducting the impeachment trial, the public was collectively exposed to adversarial litigation. So DDS partisans would praise the defense lawyers and bash opposing counsel, and vice versa, not necessarily with any real appreciation of the legal points made. The people are provided with new information but we doubt if these were properly processed. More than anything else, we sense this exposure to adversarial lawyering has further fed political polarization.”

“Overall negative,” concurs Lawyer B. “We cannot blame those who came away thinking even more negatively of lawyers.” But, she explains further, “It is easy, from the outside, to assume that a lawyer believes every word he says. That his argument is his opinion, that his client’s cause is his own. More often it is not. Lawyers are frequently called to carry out a client’s instructions, to give shape to a vision that is not his and to set aside, quietly, what he might feel or think about the matter. It is not necessarily being a mercenary, it is the job. Of course, none of that spares you from the consequences of taking up the cause of the genuinely indefensible. You must be prepared for the scorn of your fellow lawyers as well as of the public. The profession does insist that everyone deserves a defense but it does not promise you will be admired for providing it.”

But there were bright spots as well. Lawyer B continues that “The most brilliant moments of the trial that made me proud to be a lawyer are actually the Chill Chel moments. With decades in courtroom experience behind him and brilliance of thought and communication, he showed the nation what a real grasp of the law can do, and how cutting and effective a sharp lawyer whose skills have been honed can be, all without the table-pounding and the theatrics and the condescension.”

For Lawyer A, “The oral arguments of Diokno and Poa and the presentations of the amici curiae, precisely because they were non-adversarial, provided the quietude so needed for important ideas to be clearly presented. Kapunan also provided valuable lessons for younger lawyers on the delicate balancing act a litigator often has to strike between pure trial advocacy and theatrics.”

The theatrics are of particular importance, given that, for over a month now, a Filipino audience of over 100 million viewers—about 70 million of them registered voters—has been privy to an almost-daily dose of courtroom drama. And like theater-goers, what most of the rest of us see and look out for is the performance. All the Senate’s a stage, and everyone stepping on to it is deemed an actor in a role playing someone not quite himself or herself in real life but something larger, more sincere, more logical, more certain of the ineluctable truth. The prosecution knows that, the defense knows that.

So in a public arena such as an impeachment trial, where ultimate guilt or innocence might come down to perception rather than fact, would good lawyering require more than a solid grasp of the law, but a performative aspect as well, ie, the awareness that one is addressing not just the court but a viewership of millions?

“Yes,” says Lawyer A, “but with an important caveat. The ‘performative’ aspect should not be drama for drama’s sake, but as a tool toward good communication and education.” Adds Lawyer C: “What makes impeachment cases unique is the fact that it is driven and decided by elected politicians rather than career judges. The performative aspect then of lawyering becomes extremely important. The Congressmen on three-year terms and Senators on six-year tenures need the votes. They have to get up, dress up, and show up, so that their constituencies will continue supporting them.”

All this leads me to think that it’s not really just VP Sara and not even the Senate itself on trial, but the law and the legal profession itself. As they say in show business, abangan.

Penman No. 489: Grateful and Graceful

Posted on September 20, 2026 by penmanila

Penman for Sunday, September 20, 2026

IT ISN’T every day that a certified celebrity comes up to shake your hand and to introduce herself to you as your fan—especially when it’s really the other way around. Here’s someone you’ve admired from a distance all your life, maybe even had a schoolboy crush on, and now here she is, taking your hands in hers like an old friend.

This happened last week at the Manila International Book Fair at SMX, where I was signing books for Anvil Publishing among others, and the surprise visitor to my table was none other than Boots Anson-Roa (now Rodrigo)—the actress, radio-TV host, humanitarian, and public servant—who, as it turned out, was also an Anvil author and who was also signing her newly minted biography titled Grateful, co-authored by Jennie Leuterio Ilustre.

Intrigued, I secured a copy of the book, and soon found myself drawn into the engaging story of a life well-lived, despite the inevitable dips and turns that come with surviving so many tumultuous decades. I recalled my own unpublished biography of another great Filipino actress, the late Rosa Rosal, whose vampish roles tended to be the complete opposite of Boots’ motherly persona, and whose real-life drama outclassed anything she portrayed onscreen—two very different images, and yet two women bonded by the same deeply held traditional values and by their devotion to family and public service.

Maria Elisa Cristobal Anson was born on January 30, 1945 ,just days before the Battle of Manila began, to Oscar Anson (later the actor Oscar Moreno, the “Robert Taylor of the Philippines) and Belen Cristobal, a pharmacy board topnotcher and chemistry teacher, who met and fell in love amidst the turmoil. Belen became pregnant, and the book reveals that it was only at age 53 that Boots discovered that the couple had considered terminating the pregnancy because of the harshness of the times; instead they decided to marry, making Boots possible. (The “Boots” comes from “Bebot” then “Bot.”)

The young Boots tagged along with her father to his shoots, so pretty that Sampaguita boss “Doc” Perez predicted she would become a star, but she was more interested in watching movies than being in them. She did join theater at the University of the Philippines where she studied English, speech, and drama and served as a corps sponsor, but it was a hosting gig at TV 5’s popular Dance-O-Rama—a slot she twice refused—that finally landed her onscreen.

That choice proved life-changing in another, even more significant way, because this is where the “Roa” in her name comes in, care of Pete Roa, her Dance-O-Rama co-host and reputed ladies’ man, who courted her with flowers plucked from the show’s bouquets and asked her out to post-show dinners “to critique her performance.” The tactics worked. Boots fell for Pete, the two decided to get married, the parents on both sides naturally threw a fit, leaving elopement the only way out. The two snuck out of their show after a commercial break, and managed to get then QC Mayor Norberto Amoranto to marry them on June 5, 1964, followed by a hasty church wedding that same afternoon.

So began a highly visible and celebrated marriage of 43 years that produced four children—Leah, Joey, Chiqui, and Ben. The “Roa” would stick to “Boots Anson” so permanently that even after her second wedding to King Rodrigo in 2014, King would urge her to keep it, to honor that bond.

The Boots Anson-Roa we know comes mostly from her movies—over a hundred of them—and her TV hostings. Her first movie came in 1968, when she was already a wife and mother of two, then highly unusual—indeed unheard of—for a leading lady. It was her role as the governess Carla in Lino Brocka’s landmark 1970 tearjerker Wanted: Perfect Mother that remains embedded in my memory, as in many others’—caring, loving, but also proper and self-sacrificing, an image that probably prompted her daughter Chiqui to call Boots “the quintessential Mama Mary.” Boots received a FAMAS Best Actress nomination for that performance, and she would go on to major roles in such movies as Tatay Na si Erap (named Best Actress along with Vilma Santos), May Minamahal, Mano Po, Blue Moon, Caregiver, and One True Love.

But from her elopement story onwards, Boots would be the first to upend her “Goody Two-Shoes” projection. “I’m not a saint,” she insists—just level-headed, fair, and thoroughly professional, the kind of performer who always shows up on time, delivers, then goes home to family. The book also chronicles her many other roles and jobs, which we know or remember little of: her work with the US Embassy in Washington in the 1980s, with the Population Commission in the 1970s, with the UP-PGH Medical Foundation, with the Philippine Red Cross, and up to now with Mowelfund. She also taught Communication Arts subjects in UP, Ateneo, and La Salle, wrote newspaper columns, and handled radio programs. Always more than a sweet face, she brought substance to the job.

Pete’s passing in 2007 is a poignant highlight. Hit by a stroke in 1997, Pete soldiered on for another decade (I recall being a few beds away from him for physical therapy in the early 2000s at Capitol Med). He later acquired incurable cancer, and facing the inevitable, the family prayed for a peaceful passing, which happened on August 9, 2007, with Boots at his side. Pete had requested a concert instead of a solemn wake, so the industry gathered to pay him tribute. “It was late into the night,” Boots recalls. “All sympathizers and revelers had left what was originally meant to be a quiet chapel. The music was silenced; the animated conversations were stilled; and the laughter was muted. In a rare moment alone with Pete, I did a ‘curtain call’ for his performers. Now allowing that tear to drop, I bid Pete good night until the next morning for his burial. I gleaned a peaceful countenance. I was confident we made him happy. I was glad that, in his repose, he applauded his friends’ command performances. But, tongue-in-cheek, I begged him to spare me his own standing ovation.”

But the book ends with the happy note on which it begins, with Boots’ second marriage to lawyer Francisco “King” Rodrigo Jr., an old family friend and also a widower. For both, it was love the second time around.

Indeed Boots Anson-Roa has much to be grateful for, as her book title suggests. But “graceful,” which she would never immodestly use for herself, seems just as apt for this woman who has led such a long and distinguished life with dignity, verve, and faith. Pleased and honored to shake your hand, and to wish you and King well for the rest of our earthly time!

Email me at jose@dalisay.ph and visit my blog at http://www.penmanila.ph.

Qwertyman No. 211: Saving the Newborn

Posted on August 17, 2026 by penmanila

Qwertyman for Monday, August 17, 2026

GIVEN ALL the political, economic, and even meteorological turmoil we’ve recently been going through, I thought I’d write about something undeniably and visibly positive this week, if only to remind us that good things are possible if the “whole of government”—including even our fractious Senate—puts its mind to it.

Full disclosure: I’ve been editing a book on, of all things, the Philippine Newborn Screening (NBS) program, and I’ve been so impressed by what I’ve come across that I requested and secured permission from its author, Dr. Carmencita D. Padilla, to share some highlights of that program. Dr. Menchit, as we call her, is no ordinary physician; a clinical geneticist and pediatrician, former chancellor of UP Manila and a key figure behind its National Institutes of Health, she was named National Scientist in 2023 for her contributions to medicine.

Back in 1990, Menchit had just returned from a fellowship in Sydney, brimming with enthusiasm about NBS, which had already been adopted and routinely practiced in Australia.

What NBS addresses is this: babies can be born with any of almost 30 conditions inimical to their health, including congenital hypothyroidism (mental retardation and growth delay, with IQ loss possible as early as the second week of life), congenital adrenal hyperplasia (salt-wasting crisis, shock, death by the end of the first week), PKU, and galactosemia.

A newborn with any of these conditions looks perfectly well: doctors and mothers will see no rash, no fever, no warning. Looking healthy, the baby will go home, with the disorder hidden for months, or even years, until the symptoms appear—by which time, it could be too late to reverse the damage. Ironically, if the problems are spotted early, there are treatments available, often as simple and as cheap as a modified milk formula for phenylketonuria (PKU), which causes irreversible intellectual disability if left alone.

So early screening of all newborns is key. The process itself is fairly straightforward: “puncturing the heel of a newborn, absorbing a few drops of blood onto a special filter paper card, and transporting the specimen to a specialized laboratory for testing.” These cards could be easily mailed to a central laboratory. In the early 1960s, an American microbiologist named Dr. Robert Guthrie—whose own son and niece suffered from developmental problems—created a test to scan blood samples for indicators of anomalies and proposed this solution. But the medical and scientific communities shunned him, until sufficient publicity forced them to see he was right.

It would take more than 30 years for NBS to reach the Philippines, largely through the efforts of Dr. Carmelita Fagela-Domingo, who had seen NBS working in the West and tried her best to persuade the Philippine health bureaucracy to adopt it, and Dr. Padilla, who finally succeeded where Dr. Domingo had initially failed.

What worked for Menchit Padilla was the support of people like Dr. Domingo herself and UP College of Medicine Dean Alfredo Ramirez, and subsequently other allies in both executive and legislative branches beyond academia. Together, the two women pushed for a comprehensive pilot study that could form the basis for official government policy. Padilla also met Dr. Guthrie, who encouraged her to persevere in the effort.

Twenty-four Philippine hospitals took part in the study as members of the NBS Study Group. Private donors contributed computers, video cameras, fax machines, and pagers. A Finnish company donated a refurbished NBS machine. By 1997 the program was well underway. What was needed now was for the DOH to take over for the program’s full implementation nationwide. By 2000, there were still less than 200 hospitals out of 3,000 birthing hospitals participating in the program.

What was needed was an enabling law. This is the part of the story that I find most instructive, given our current Senate, and which I urged Dr. Menchit to include in her book (which she did, despite her initial misgivings).

Because they couldn’t afford a lobby group, Menchit took it upon herself to draft the bill—after enrolling for a Master of Arts in Health Policy Studies degree at UP Manila. (I wonder how many of our lawmakers would go that far to get things done right—but then of course they have millions to spend on staff.)

Versions of the bill were filed at the House and Senate early in 2003, but by mid-year, hearings had yet to begin. To get the bill certified as urgent, its proponents had to get the support of Sen. Juan Flavier, who warned them that it would likely take ten years to get the bill passed. Desperate, Padilla turned to Sen. Loren Legarda, who was still hosting a talk show; between breaks, Menchit filled her in and persuaded Loren to start hearings on the bill and to file her own version, which she did on August 1. I’ll leave the rest to Dr. Padilla’s recollection:

“With barely three days until the end of the 12th Congress, we were advised to lodge an appeal for an ‘urgent bill’ with the House Presidential Legislative Liaison Officer, Undersecretary Bernardino Sayo.

“It was a Wednesday, 5 pm. We went to his office at the House of Representatives. After listening to our desperate appeal, which was supported with albums full of pictures of saved and not-saved babies, Undersecretary Sayo agreed to arrange for a certification of an ‘urgent bill’ to be signed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the following day Thursday at 10 am. We were advised to return to the House of Representatives the following day for the second reading at 4 pm, the last day of the session at the House. With the bill now certified as urgent, our schedule for a second reading was bumped up. House Majority Floor Leader Neptali Gonzales, fortunately for us, helped the bill pass the second reading in the midst of calls for adjournment from the floor.

“Garnering a unanimous affirmative vote, the bill moved to the required final third reading the following day, Friday, the last day of the 12th Congress. I received a phone call at 6:30pm from the Chief of Staff of Senator Flavier, Mon Navarra. He said ‘The NBS bill was passed into law! We were able to do it in 10 months—not 10 years!’ And since the House had adopted the Senate version in its earlier deliberations, there was no need for a bicameral session. We just had to wait for the signature of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, which happened on April 7, 2004.”

The NBS bill, RA 9288, had itself become something of a miracle baby, giving hope to millions of newborns and the yet-unborn. Today well over 90 percent of Filipino newborns are covered by NBS, with a 100% rate targeted by 2028. Would that our government were so singularly and charitably minded in our other national priorities, especially for those already long born!

(Top image from miraclefeet.org)

Penman No. 488: Artists in Residence

Posted on August 2, 2026 by penmanila

Penman for Sunday, August 2, 2026

IT ISN’T every day that I get to spend time with two outstanding artists, and while I’ve become something of a recluse myself, exhausted by literary polemics and limiting my social life to very close friends, I couldn’t say no when my wife Beng asked me if I cared to join her on a day trip to Los Baños to visit the sculptor and painter Junyee. Junyee was a good friend of Beng’s from the UP College of Fine Arts, and while he lives in Los Baños with his wife Tess, Junyee has done many art installations around Diliman and often comes by our house on campus to drop off some buko pie. I’d enjoyed chatting with Junyee whenever our paths crossed, taking in his stories about his arduous struggle to become an artist, including a time when he had to work as a make-up artist for the dead in a funeral parlor in Cebu. But more on that later.

I was doubly pleased to learn that we would be accompanied to Los Baños by another artist-friend, Fil de la Cruz, whom I had known for over fifty years, and by his son Janos, also a talented and highly regarded young artist. Fil stands among our most brilliant, versatile, and accomplished printmakers; both he and Junyee have been nominated for the National Artist Award.

We had long been planning to visit Junyee in LB, where he and his wife Tess, who taught in UPLB, have lived for decades. When Tess retired a few years ago and they had to give up their home on campus, they found and bought a private lot just beyond the university property line, and built a new house there. Since anything that Junyee built was bound to be interesting, we wanted to see it, but the house was honestly just an excuse; we were going there for the artist himself. Now 84, Junyee recently hasn’t been in the best of health.

Though younger at 75, Fil has been facing serious challenges of his own. They had a lot to talk about, for sure—but we resolved to undertake this trip in high spirits, to celebrate art and life in joyful company.

First we picked up Fil at his home in Muntinlupa. Aptly named Bahaysining, the three-story brick house is part (if not largely) studio, part gallery, and part living space, but immediately the visitor knows it’s a house made by artists for artists in both form and function. “This was much smaller early on,” Fil says of the place, ”and then I just kept adding to it as my practice and capabilities grew.” He shares the space with his son Janos, who keeps a studio of his own on the premises and helps his dad with both work and the daily business of living.

The rooms teem with paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and most visibly, printmaking presses in various sizes that Fil himself designed and had made over the years. Much of his equipment rolls on wheels, the better to move them around when the studio has to meet a commission, and Fil and Janos have to labor long days and nights to get the job done. Fil is amazed that clients remember him and his work from way back and return to order new pieces.

Fil also paints and sculpts as does Janos, but it’s in printmaking—the art of producing numbered copies of a design pressed on paper in limited editions—that you know his heart truly lies. I met Fil in the early 1970s in one of my past lives as a printmaker. He had graduated from his studies at UST, and I had just come out of martial law prison—where, to pass the time, I had taken up drawing with my fellow detainee Orly Castillo, who then took me under his wing at the Philippine Association of Printmakers in Ermita. The PAP was a hotbed of production for young artists then, and I was lucky to run into the likes of Bencab and Tiny Nuyda (not to mention a pretty girl named June “Beng” Poticar, who became my wife)—and yes, Fil de la Cruz, who even then was already establishing himself as a master of one of printmaking’s most difficult techniques, mezzotint, which produces an almost velvety texture.

Perhaps because prints are relatively cheaper and come out in multiples, they’ve never quite gotten the respect they deserve, especially here in the Philippines, where the art market is enthralled by multimillion-peso paintings by the masters and by the exclusivity they exude. (Around 1974, when we were all working and hanging out at the PAP studio on Jorge Bocobo, it was a big day when a dealer came by to purchase our prints in bulk for as low as P15 per print, so she could stick them into frames she sold as décor to American servicemen in the bases.)

Fil’s come a long way from those days, and Bahaysining is a testament to his professional success, which has traveled a long arc from his youth in Bulacan and his student days at UST to further studies in New York and Paris, to over thirty solo exhibitions that have brought his prints to France, America, the former Czechoslovakia, Germany, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Spain, Belgium, and throughout the Philippines.

As it was a sunny weekday, the drive to Los Baños didn’t take long through the Jamboree route. Junyee had offered to take all of us out to lunch, but of course we first had to see and tour his and Tess’ three-year-old home.

To know Junyee—“Luis Enano Yee Jr.” on his birth certificate—is to understand how inseparable art and life can be in the person who, from his youth onward, has seen art not only as descriptive or decorative but liberative, rooted yet transcendent, impermanent yet memorable. Widely acknowledged to be the father of installation art in the Philippines, Junyee has always been testing and pushing the boundaries of art, unbothered by commercial trends. Whether he works with discarded wood, woven metal, or wisps of sooty smoke, Junyee seems compelled to give physical shape to our thoughts and emotions, often using outdoor space as his canvas.

Born in the South and discouraged by his father from pursuing his artistic inclinations, Junyee fled to Manila and UP, where he apprenticed with Napoleon Abueva and found support from Jose Joya—masters whom he would soon surpass in competitions. Caught in the insurgent politics of the sixties, Junyee crafted work like his “Balag” trellis on which protesters could hang their slogans, but unlike many other artists of his time, he never let ideology dictate his insight and technique. He would later devote most of his art to environmental themes.

This was most evident in his new home, a modestly modern structure from the outside, nothing showy, but warm inside with wood, stone, and other natural elements, from the balayong door to the leaflike tapestry to the upturned hammock serving as a lampshade.

Welcoming our party, Junyee points to a blank wall and remarks with a chuckle that something big used to hang there but had to be let go of, presumably for his crushing medications. It’s one of the few times he’ll advert to his maladies, of which he—and Fil for that matter—don’t make a big thing. When Junyee learns that Fil is similarly afflicted, the men knowingly embrace and call each other “classmate.” They smile, they laugh, they speak excitedly of the work that occupies their waking hours. There’s no time to be glum. Fil and Janos keep racks of sporty bicycles at home, hanging from the ceiling; Junyee shows off a gleaming high-performance BMW motorbike which he received from a patron, adding with a chuckle that “I don’t even know how to ride one!”

Over lunch at a favorite restaurant nearby, we have an animated discussion of AI and its likely effects on art and literature. I expect them to resist, but Junyee in particular is surprisingly open to the possibilities of hybridizing art and technology, as I am. “I’ve always been a fan of science,” he says, “and when I write my memoirs, which I’ll be doing soon, I’ll make sure to include a section on how science has influenced my life and work.” But even more useful and valuable than science for both men right now is faith, and Fil and Junyee speak unabashedly of how their faith strengthens them through their trials. As an installation artist, Junyee has never worried about transience and impermanence. “Everything in this world will pass anyway,” he says.

We pay a visit to the Sculpture Garden that UP Los Baños has put up on campus to showcase some of Junyee’s most important pieces. It is an outdoor gallery of some of his finest pieces, displaying the full range of his concerns, techniques, and capabilities. It’s hugely impressive, but Junyee makes it clear that he isn’t done yet. Across his home, he is constructing an art museum that he hopes will help spark a cultural renaissance in Los Baños, better known for agriculture and forestry, which Junyee’s art has also tapped into. His labors have not gone unnoticed; on top of his numerous local and international awards, Junyee will soon be receiving the highest recognition his alma mater can confer, among the worthiest of its recipients.

Neither is Fil de la Cruz resting on his laurels. He’ll be showing his newest paintings in an exhibit titled “Ephemeral & Eternal” opening next Saturday, August 8, running until the 22^nd at Art Camp in Greenbelt 5, Makati. “The central thesis of the exhibition revolves around the duality of existence—the fleeting ‘ephemeral’ moments of lived experience versus the ‘eternal’ span of divinity,” according to the exhibit notes. “De la Cruz does not present time as a linear progression but as a divine force, encompassing all. In this series, he treats the passage of time not with anxiety, but with a refined serenity and deep reverence, seeking to capture the precise point where the transitory nature of life intersects with the infinite.”

It’s as good a description as any of that trip to Los Baños and of our visit to these artist-friends’ homes, at this point between our shared past and the eternity that beckons to all of us.

Qwertyman No. 208: Now and Forever

Posted on July 27, 2026 by penmanila

Qwertyman for Monday, July 27, 2026

LATER TODAY, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will be delivering his fifth—and second-to-the-last—State of the Nation Address (SONA). In anticipation of that event, I got invitations from several media networks last week to talk about how SONAs get made, and what I expected BBM to say today.

The invitations were likely prompted by someone’s discovery that I used to be a presidential speechwriter—a title that sounds grander than the job itself, which of course is a privilege in some respects (and presuming your principal isn’t a crook, perhaps more honored in the breach) but also in others a crushing chore.

As I must’ve noted in this corner at some point, in a past life, I wrote or drafted speeches for five presidents since my early twenties—for Marcos Sr., Cory Aquino, Fidel V. Ramos, Joseph Estrada, and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo—but it was FVR whom I served the longest, and frankly with the greatest satisfaction.

I wrote more than 600 speeches for him as part of a small crew of speechwriters that worked quietly off-site—the so-called West Avenue outfit headed by the late Johnny Gatbonton, my model and mentor in the craft. We operated all those years far from Malacañang—a deliberate choice, to isolate and insulate ourselves from Palace intrigue.

We produced tons of material on demand—there were days when I would write four speeches for occasions as diverse as a bridge inauguration, the Famas awards, a peace agreement signing, and a vin d’honneur, with little to go on—not even Google in those pre-Internet days—but my own wits. And yes, my training as a writer of fiction surely helped, along with a diploma in Development Economics that I picked up along the way. We learned quickly, and we delivered. (I never met FVR as a client when I was writing for him, although ironically, as I’ve related before, he was the guest speaker at the TOYM and Palanca awards when I was an awardee—and yes, bizarrely, I got assigned to write his speeches for those events. I never introduced myself to him as his speechwriter until we met again for a book interview shortly before he died. We had a good laugh then.)

The year’s biggest job, of course, was the SONA. Like I told my interviewers, at least in my experience, no single writer writes the SONA. It takes a bureaucratic barangay to produce one, which probably explains the chop-suey character of certain SONAs you’ve heard. Normally, presidential speeches are produced by the Presidential Management Staff, and the executive departments submit their list of accomplishments to the PMS for consolidation and construction into a SONA. (Under FVR, these inputs ended up with us, although of course the President literally always had the last word.) The President—or his or her chief advisers—might come up with a central theme or slogan, around which the rest of the address could be organized. In 1993, for example, it was “a level playing field” for FVR; ten years later, GMA trumpeted her “strong republic.”

My own sense of a good or ideal SONA is one that’s focused, clear, easy to understand, sincere, and above all hopeful and inspiring. It’s a tall order amidst uncertainty and despair, but it’s precisely when times are bad that people need to hear a message of hope—one they can believe in or at least hold the President to, despite their doubts and misgivings. But that’s just me, as a writer looking for stylistic coherence and a Churchillian sort of impact and memorability, rather than a laundry list of X number of bridges built and Y number of tourists brought in. Leave that to a technical appendix.

The fact is that SONAs are constitutionally mandated documents, a report of an administration’s accomplishments provided as a matter of public accountability. It began in America with George Washington and now continues as the State of the Union (SOTU). For over a century from Jefferson onward, the SOTU became just a written report submitted to Congress; Woodrow Wilson revived it as a speech, thinking that a president had to be seen and heard by the people. We Filipinos took up the practice—and also constitutionalized it—in 1935, with President Quezon focusing presciently on national defense. (Interestingly, he spoke before a unicameral assembly—no senators to complicate life then for a brief interlude.)

It used to be that no one seemed really that interested in SONAs. Even on January 26, 1970, when as a sixteener I marched with thousands of other students outside the Legislative Building to protest Ferdinand Marcos’ SONA and thereby unwittingly helped trigger the tumultuous First Quarter Storm, we neither knew nor cared what FM was saying inside. Today people watch SONAs for the fashion show and for the inevitable mayhem outside the Batasan.

But last year, BBM dropped a bomb at the SONA that I suspect even he didn’t realize was going to be that big. His “Mahiya naman kayo!” broadside against corruption set off a further and indeed continuing series of explosions, all the way to the impeachment trial of VP Sara Duterte, as well as a Kanagawa-sized wave of expectations that now hovers over the last two years of his administration.

So what will or should BBM talk about this afternoon? My short list:

1. An acknowledgment of the economic crisis our people are suffering, and an announcement of meaningful measures to bring some relief. Talk about horrendous power bills, jeepney drivers pulling 16-hour days, seniors collapsing at ayuda lines: this is reality for most Filipinos today.

2. An update on his professed campaign against corruption; what next after the ill-conceived and underpowered Independent Commission on Infrastructure? Corruption bridges economics and politics, with public money being used by and for political power. I doubt that BBM will directly address Sara’s impeachment—best for him to stay above it and let the prosecution do its job—but it remains a corruption and accountability issue, and should be taken in that context.

3. A resolve to pursue these priorities over his last two years. He won’t and can’t use the word “redemption”—a mountain of skepticism still stands in his way there—but I’m sure he’s aware that people are watching what he’ll do next. In the end, it won’t be speeches but deeds that will make the difference—but as he learned last year, a few words can make big things happen. If I were the President—which every presidential speechwriter has to fearlessly assume for a few hours—the best way to think of the next two years is to think of forever.

Qwertyman No. 207: Invicted

Posted on July 20, 2026 by penmanila

Qwertyman for Monday, July 20, 2026

WHEN I teach speechwriting—like I’ll be doing again this semester as part of my course in Professional Writing—I tell my students to avoid using quotations from obscure philosophers, great writers like Shakespeare, and even the Bible if it’s highly unlikely that the speaker they’re writing for would have read them in his or her real life and understood what they were saying.

Few people are truly that learned—not that they have to be to render good public service—and the last thing you want to see and hear is your client squinting at and struggling with a sonorous phrase he or she never saw before. Especially if they’re politicians, I’d much rather that they poach “hugot” lines from pop culture that their listeners can relate to, with disarming and self-deprecating humor rather than malice aforethought.

A lot’s been said about VP Sara Duterte’s obvious reference to William Ernest Henley’s oft-quoted poem “Invictus” at the abbreviated “press conference” she held on the second day of her impeachment trial at the Senate. “In this bloodbath and bludgeoning,” she intoned, “I will be bloodied but unbowed.” Lit-savvy netizens quickly jumped on “bloodied” being a misquote, the actual word in the verse being “bloody,” but in the context of her premise about being bludgeoned in a bloodbath (never mind how cheesy that alliteration sounds), “bloodied” makes better dramatic sense, positioning her as the unfortunate receiver of an injurious action, perhaps even more victim than victor.

I wouldn’t put it past VP Sara to have known the Henley poem, which many Filipinos of a certain age would have encountered at some point, like Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” Indeed, it’s the very popularity of the poem—plus again that awful alliteration that’s the hallmark of a speechwriter reaching for cheap effect (also note: “bloodied” sounds ridiculously inevitable after “bloodbath,” yes?)—that accounts for its hokeyness.

Did a PR consultant put her up to it? (“Go in there, say these lines, then exit forthwith.”) We can’t say. But something tells me that’s the way VP Sara herself wanted it. The speech and the action were entirely in character with someone who sees and represents politics as theater, where broad gestures visible from across the room and the archipelago—the bullying of sheriffs, for example—matter. With the Dutertes, everything has to be punchy, dramatic, theatrical, staged. DENR giving you problems? Dump truckloads of trash right in front of their office. That’s the kind of gesture the DDS faithful lap up as creative, courageous, and even inspired.

So when Sara sneaks into the Senate (the lions’ den!) to give her little speech but quickly departs before she can even be called to the witness stand, let alone bludgeoned, we’re supposed to take that for both bravery and cunning—or at least her supporters are.

On February 18, 2026, when she declared her intention to run for the presidency, she used a series of statements ostensibly begging forgiveness for once having allied herself with her tormentor.

Mga kababayan, humihingi ako ng paumanhin sa inyong lahat. Patawad kung tinulungan kong mahalal si BBM bilang Pangulo ng ating bansa.

Patawad kung hanggang ngayon ay marami pa ring Pilipino ang nalulunod sa baha nang dahil sa malawakang korapsyon.

Patawad kung lantaran ang pang-aabuso sa ating mga institusyon para sa pansariling interes ng mga pulitiko.

Rhetorically, this usually works. She (or her speechwriter) is employing a device called anaphora, which repeats key words or phrases with incremental changes. It’s effective because it establishes a certain cadence, a regularity of structure that implies you’re in command of your material and know and mean what you’re talking about. The best-known example from modern history comes from Martin Luther King Jr., who declared in 1963 that “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up… I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia… I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin…”

Now, Sara Duterte is no MLK, but she was saying things her own people needed to hear. It wasn’t a speech to persuade BBM’s followers much less Kakampinks to seriously consider her as the better alternative. It was a speech to malign the enemy, a litany of grievances to justify her turnaround and to pass some moral ammunition for her troops to shoot with. Never mind that “malawakang korapsyon” and “pang-aabuso ng institusyon” are precisely the issues that have now landed her in impeachment court. As with Donald Trump, she’s learned that the best way to deal with political mud is to throw it right back at the accuser.

She has no problem working up her minions with these verbal broadsides. But beyond the home crowd, the problem with VP Sara is that she can’t seem to sustain an extended, rational, and unemotional argument. If I were her handler, I would worry that, on her own, she might prove incapable of discussing specifics, of fleshing out policy, of speaking beyond platitudes and generalities. You can imagine how she would respond to the cool but relentless questioning of an Atty. Ligutan or an Atty. Diokno. She would sputter and explode, and walk off the stand.

I’ve gone through her speeches on her OVP website, and they betray little of whatever originality she may be capable of. The major pieces—an education keynote in South Korea, for example—are competent, but pedestrian and undistinguished, patently outsourced. Her talks to grade-schoolers focus on the “4 Be’s”—“be kind, be humble, be happy, and be careful”—which is all well and good if you can inspire them by personal example.

It’s not that she’s unintelligent; her feral brain knows what it needs to do to survive.

In her mind she has already dismissed the Senate trial as a fruitless exercise. She’s confident she has the votes to be acquitted, and they can rail at her as much as they want and work themselves blind trying to prove her a crook, but in the end the votes will break her way, her misdeeds will be deemed expunged, and best of all, she will emerge triumphant—bloodied but unbowed—and even more powerful, which is all that will matter leading up to 2028.

That’s why she can afford to ignore whatever summons they send her way, and deprive her prosecutors and the public of the spectacle of her appearance at the witness stand. Her absence, heavy with mystery, is within her control. Her testimony, fraught with danger, will not be. That is cold calculation, intelligence of the hardest kind.

And that’s why she can’t give a damn what Lit profs like me say about her spouting “Invictus” in lieu of testifying—she’s boxed herself into that character, which makes her sound like she’s fighting when she’s not.

Qwertyman No.204: The Anatomy of a Grievance

Posted on June 29, 2026 by penmanila

Qwertyman for Monday, June 29, 2026

BARELY HAD we wrapped our heads around what happened to lead to the deaths by drowning of the two Ateneo athletes Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili when we got the news of a mass shooting at the San Jose National High School in Tacloban, Leyte, with two teenagers allegedly responsible for killing three students and injuring many others.

Both events were met with shock and outrage, as was to be expected. Even in the long catalog of evils and misfortunes that we Filipinos have become familiar with, these did not exist. Healthy, star-quality athletes do not suddenly die; Filipino teenagers tied to their cellphones do not bring guns to school and shoot their peers dead. It was as if we had let new and unfamiliar monsters into our fold, and we were eager—indeed adamant—to give them a face, a name, and a motive. At the very least, we needed someone or something to blame, to ease our consciences.

That consternation likely accounts for the plethora of suspicions, accusations, and conspiracy theories that emerged in the wake of these tragedies, ostensibly to throw light on “what really happened” but achieving the opposite effect of leading us even farther away from the truth. I myself have been mighty confused by some of these responses—who said exactly what, where did that come from, etc.—that I turned to AI (yes, I know, something that some of us trust even less than the cafeteria Marites) to help me sort things out; in this instance, I used Claude, which has proven to be a reliable assistant in my nonfiction work. (We can have another debate another time about whether writers like me should even resort to AI—at which I’ll ask if you’ve ever used Google or an electronic calculator, for that matter—but I’m hoping that this present discussion will offer proof enough that there’s room for mechanical assistance in human argumentation.)

Most troubling if not ridiculous of all have been a couple of memes I’ve seen claiming that Rene was beaten up and drowned by his fellow players and that the coaches merely looked on.

These speculations apparently ride on the allegation made by Rene Baterbonia’s mother Rovelyn that her son’s death was no accident—a short step away from claiming that Rene was murdered, as some netizens have chosen to interpret it. But nowhere in her many interviews did Rovelyn clearly and verifiably say that “My son was murdered.” (And neither am I saying that she had no right to claim that had she wanted to, as the most aggrieved party entitled to her darkest fears and suspicions.)

What the record shows is that, based on what she initially heard, she believed that Rene’s arms and legs had been weighted down (subsequently denied by the autopsy results), and that the dangerous exercise had taken place without informed consent (a continuing issue). She also took Ateneo to task for not communicating with her quickly and clearly enough (I think a fair charge). So no, Mrs. Baterbonia never said nor suggested that someone purposely killed her son. She does allege criminal negligence, which many people suspect, and a sorely inadequate response on Ateneo’s part, which I think even Ateneans admit in their heart of hearts.

What muddled this further was the CIDG’s reported statements, made more than a week after the June 9 incident, that the deaths were “not an accident,” apparently contradicting the local police’s initial assessment. That later statement, made by CIDG Director Robert Morico II on June 17 and repeated on June 18, was hedged as a presumption awaiting further evidence. It ultimately recommended, in its June 26 findings submitted to the Department of Justice, that an anti-hazing case should be filed against 11 individuals led by Coach Tab Baldwin, since the team-building activity constituted hazing under dangerous conditions. But “not an accident” resulting in homicide again doesn’t translate to willful murder—or a plot, as the DDS puts it, for Luzon to kill off Mindanao’s finest. It’s now up to the DOJ to move matters forward.

What this tells me is that in the absence of factual information, clearly and promptly disseminated, all kinds of malicious rumors will emerge and easily find sympathetic receptors and transmitters. (I suspect the counter-narratives would have arisen anyway—the trolls have to earn their keep, which means the fact-checkers and truth-sayers have to work at least as hard.)

The same miasma now threatens to engulf the Tacloban shootings, in which two teenagers carrying a .38 revolver and a Glock 9-mm were involved. The Internet was quick to spit out AI-generated pictures of Sens. Kiko Pangilinan and Risa Hontiveros coddling the two suspects, with Sen. Kiko being blamed for his sponsored law setting the bar for criminal responsibility at age 15 (the UN recommends a minimum of 14 years).

There are many other aspects to this case, including that of gun ownership, but let’s focus for now on this age-of-criminal-responsibility thing, which Pangilinan’s DDS detractors want to bring down to 10. Again, to be clear, Kiko stated that the law as it stands doesn’t automatically absolve the juvenile shooters from responsibility; they remain accountable in various ways, and cannot simply be released.

If they used the same AI they used to malign the senators, the DDS propagandists would have discovered that the UK, which does use age 10 as its baseline, has a higher crime rate than other European countries using 14-15. The Nordic countries start at 15 and are among the world’s safest. (North Korea reportedly sets its bar for criminals at 6.)

We seem so eager to establish at what age young offenders can be punished that—as horrendous as the Tacloban shootings were—we forget the far more numerous and grievous crimes committed every day by adults in this country that go unpunished.

In any case, the most sensible response I’ve read to the Tacloban shootings came from a Facebook poster named Raffy Magno, who said that “There is something deeply troubling about a society that is quick to demand the harshest punishment for young people, while celebrating convicted plunderers, tolerating corruption, and rewarding leaders who normalize violence.

“Young people do not grow up in a vacuum. They learn from the values we model, the behavior we reward, and the systems we build around them. Violence rarely begins at the moment it becomes visible. It is often preceded by bullying, social isolation, neglect, untreated trauma, and countless missed opportunities for intervention.

“If we want children to reject violence, then we must also be willing to examine the ways our society excuses, glorifies, and profits from it. We cannot celebrate violence among adults and expect young people to learn a different lesson.”

The call for justice begins with raw and strong emotion, but ultimately it has to be dispensed with cool and thoughtful reason.

Qwertyman No. 203: Camara v. DENR

Posted on June 22, 2026 by penmanila

Qwertyman for Monday, June 22, 2026

I WISH I could say that this is a welcome break or a pleasant diversion from the infernal politics rocking the Senate (which thankfully seems to have settled down, at least for the time being, with the miscreants licking their wounds), but it’s neither pleasant nor a diversion, as it reminds us that real problems remain out there that demand both governmental action and civic awareness to resolve.

As an opinion writer, I receive a fair number of messages requesting that I highlight certain issues and causes, and while many are patently trivial and self-serving enough to easily ignore, some pique my interest because of their strategic implications for our future—not even just ours, but our children’s and grandchildren’s.

One of those messages came from Philip Camara—whom I don’t know and have never met, but who introduced himself as a Zambales resident and Executive Director of the Institute of Area Management (IAM). He had served as the DENR Undersecretary for Field Operations under the late Sec. Gina Lopez, before the mining lobby gutted her appointment.

Philip himself may have been out of a job, but he continued his advocacy in private by founding the Zambales-based IAM, an NGO that promotes “areaism,” an alternative community development framework that emphasizes resource management and governance by geographic area than by sector.

This month, Camara and IAM—along with minor Placida Natividad C. Montefalcon and “generations yet unborn”—filed a petition for a Writ of Kalikasan and Continuing Mandamus before the Supreme Court against the DENR and the Mine and Geosciences Bureau (MGB). The petition also asks for a Temporary Environmental Protection Order (TEPO) for immediate interim relief while the case is pending.

What’s the issue? Philip says that “Living in Zambales—where there are highly destructive watershed-based mines and where the political dynasty acts with impunity in its pro-extractive corporate activity—gave me little choice but to take legal action. This action challenges what we call ‘Sectoral Rationality’—the bureaucratic practice of approving mining and dredging projects based on short-term revenue while assigning a value of ZERO to environmental destruction and public health burdens. Backed by hard 2024 and 2025 scientific data from Zambales, our petition argues that this framework is now explicitly illegal under the new PENCAS law (RA 11995), which mandates natural capital accounting.”

In other words, Philip claims that the DENR and MGB have been approving potentially destructive projects without taking their environmental and health impact into account. This runs contrary to the new Philippine Ecosystem and National Capital Accounting System (PENCAS) Act, signed into law in 2024 to factor the environmental costs and benefits of projects into development planning and align the Philippines with international environmental accounting standards. So when you put up a mine, you don’t think about just how much money it’s going to make for the short term, but also what it’s long-term impact on the environment and the community will be.

The “writ of kalikasan” that the petition is praying for is a Philippine legal remedy for environmental protection, based on the constitutional right to “a balanced and healthful ecology” under Article II, Section 16 of the 1987 Constitution. Created by the Supreme Court in 2010, it’s a pioneering remedy that few other countries have. The idea is to give citizens a fast, powerful tool to stop large-scale environmental damage without getting bogged down in ordinary litigation.

The writ has a scale requirement that comes into play when the environmental harm is large enough to “prejudice the life, health, or property of inhabitants in two or more cities or provinces.” It can’t be invoked for local or isolated environmental damage, like a factory polluting your backyard—it has to cross jurisdictional boundaries, which Camara argues is the case in Zambales, where the contamination and erosion produced by mining reaches out toward Pangasinan.

You don’t even have to be directly affected to be able to file a petition for the writ before the Supreme Court (and yes, such petitions go straight to the SC, bypassing the judicial bureaucracy, in recognition of the writ’s importance). It’s worth noting that the petition is also being made on behalf of “generations yet unborn,” taking a page from the landmark 1990 Oposa v. Factoran case premised on the argument that natural resources such as forests belong not just to the present generation but the future as well. If it agrees, the SC can then compel the respondents (public or private) to stop the damaging activity, protect or rehabilitate the environment, monitor compliance, and submit reports.

The Camara petition rests on the legal notion that the 1995 Mining Act (RA 7942) requires that mineral exploration be “rational” without actually defining what “rational” means, effectively assigning a value of zero to watershed destruction, shoreline collapse, food contamination, public health damage, and harm to future generations. It cites two scientific studies to back up its claims as to the critical nature of this negligence. A 2024 toxicity study in Sta. Cruz, Zambales found nickel enrichment factors, cancer-risk, and hazard values exceeding international safety thresholds, and contamination reaching local rice crops. A 2025 erosion study in San Felipe, Zambales found dredging within the “Depth of Closure” zone, shoreline retreat of about 16 meters per year, and projected losses of ₱3.88 billion by 2030.

There are globally adopted scientific methods and measures in place to establish “rationality.” Leaving it vague and undefined—we hope not intentionally—opens doors to misinterpretation, abuse, and corruption. Far worse, it will destroy the future, with the law standing by in complicit silence and virtual approval, if this loophole remains unplugged.

So thank you, Philip Camara, for bringing this to our attention—but more importantly, I hope it reaches sympathetic ears at the Supreme Court, whose favorable judgment can make a tremendous difference for those “generations yet unborn.”

Qwertyman No. 202: Oh, Ateneo

Posted on June 15, 2026 by penmanila

Qwertyman for Monday, June 15, 2026

WITH SO much already having been said and posted about last week’s saddest story—the tragic drowning of two Ateneo student-athletes in a training activity far off-campus—it seems pointless to add anything more. But as a former university administrator (with that other big school at the other end of Katipunan Avenue, the University of the Philippines), I feel compelled to think aloud and wonder what we should and could have done had this happened to us across the street.

The Ateneo university administration has been roundly (and I believe fairly) scored for not saying and doing enough in the immediate aftermath of the apparent accident to establish what happened, determine accountabilities, and provide sympathy and support to the bereaved. What drowned in Aurora were more than two boys and their hopes; into the depths went their school’s hard-won reputation for a culture of caring.

Institutional mindsets would reflexively call this “damage control,” but “damage control” sounds profoundly inappropriate and inadequate in these circumstances—the greatest damage done was that to the families of Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili, and it is permanent and cannot be undone. Even to a people inured by tokhang, the heartrending video of a mother’s grief cuts to the bone.

The damage to the university’s reputation is substantial but, in the thick-skinned way these things go, fleeting and survivable. What people are calling for is justice, and let the damage fall where it may. In an academic universe increasingly driven by global ratings, a university’s reputation should seem to matter more, but where in the statistics do factors like compassion count?

I know how difficult it is for academic bureaucrats to respond to a crushing crisis like this. My old job at UP, aside from teaching English and creative writing, was that of Vice President for Public Affairs, which meant that I was both the university’s spokesperson and shock absorber, the one who had to face the likes of Ka Tunying at seven in the morning to answer questions about all the rich kids in UP, fraternity hazing, communists on campus, and UP’s squatter problem.

It was understood that I was there to help promote and protect the university’s image, at a time when that image was being battered from both right and left, often from critics at the very top of the same government that we were dependent on for our annual budget. For the sake of that budget—which had its own critics—we had to tread a thin line between cooperating with authority and preserving our autonomy and academic freedom, a process fraught with conflict and, yes, sometimes hypocrisy, as when we had to smile in the face of politicians we would otherwise have cursed. While each little and isolated case may have been challenging and disturbing, eventually they all became administrative routine, necessarily tolerable.

But for every institution, there comes a defining moment when more than budgets or reputations are at stake, when its very spirit itself is under question and under threat. That moment seems to have arrived for Ateneo, a great university unlike many others, even unlike UP, founded as it is on Christian and indeed Ignatian principles that include magis or the striving for excellence for God’s greater glory and cura personalis or caring for the whole person. As Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ put it, a Jesuit education aims at producing “men and women for others.” UP has its “Serve the People,” but its secular character imposes less of a spiritual and more of a political mission on its community.

This is why the Ateneo administration’s seeming inadequacy of response to the accident, beyond its terse initial announcement, comes as a perplexing disappointment to many, on top of the awful pain and grief caused by the deaths themselves. In the very least, a statement providing more details of what happened, committing to a thorough and impartial investigation, and offering support to the affected families would have eased many initial concerns.

Ultimately an institution’s image is made more by what it does than what it says, but the saying is also part of the doing. I would have arranged an immediate meeting between the Ateneo president and team coach and Rene’s family—and at least by Zoom with Divine’s—for them to personally explain what happened and to make the necessary amends.

Despite efforts to politicize and capitalize on the issue, I myself believe that what happened was a terrible accident, albeit a preventable one, with better foresight. Almost exactly a year ago, I lost a good friend, Don Rodis, to a rogue wave and riptide that pulled him into the waters off Los Cabos in Mexico; one minute he was just strolling on the beach, the next he was gone.

That’s nature at its indifferent and cruelest worst, which, beyond preparing for, we can do little about. Human nature also arises spontaneously, in the shock, grief, and even anger that followed the accident. But human agency is something else—the “what could and should have been done’s,” both before and after the event.

I can imagine, as administrators would have instinctively responded, that Ateneo’s academic and athletic managers first called the lawyers in to find out who was responsible for what and what the university’s liabilities were. It’s a logical institutional reaction, but again Ateneo could have risen above that to show true compassion, which should come instantly and unbidden, without lawyers or preconditions. I have no doubt that the likes of Fr. Flavie Villanueva, Fr. Albert Alejo, or Fr. Robert Reyes would have rushed to and embraced the grieving mother if they could.

(It has been a bad week for Ateneo in more ways. The athletes’ deaths obscured the passing of another prime Atenean talent, the poet and professor Rofel Brion. Rofel once said that “I write mostly about small, ordinary events, and in doing so, I capture them. I hold on to them and never let them go. And this, I guess, is how I pay homage to them.” This was his way of living the Ignatian principle of finding God in the ordinary. )

I have many friends at Ateneo and have even taught there—once as a substitute for the late Prof. Doreen Fernandez when she was unwell, and another time as the holder of its professorial chair in creative writing. While not particularly religious myself, I am a strong believer in its mission and in its products. I appreciate its efforts to diversify and to bring in more poor scholars into its fold.

If Ateneo is as great as its history suggests, it will use this instance to reflect deeply on what it wants to be, and to be regarded as. I have no doubt that with sincere introspection and self-criticism, it will find the best ways to do right by the families of Rene and Divine, to run a fit and humane athletics program, to set the right policies and put the right people in place, and to reassure its community that it has recovered its true Ignatian spirit.

Pinoy Penman 3.0

The continuing chronicles of Jose Dalisay Jr., aka Butch Dalisay, a Filipino collector of old fountain pens, disused PowerBooks, '50s Hamiltons, creaky cameras and typewriters, VW spare parts, poker bad beats, and desktop lint.

Category Archives: Philippines