Category Archives: Politics

Qwertyman No. 184: What I Told the Fil-Ams

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Qwertyman for Monday, February 9, 2026

LAST WEEK, at the Executive House of the University of the Philippines where he officially resides, UP President Angelo “Jijil” Jimenez graciously hosted a delegation of about twenty Filipino-American business and community leaders from San Diego, California, led by our honorary consul there, Atty. Audie de Castro. 

I was happy and proud to have helped facilitate this visit, having some close personal and professional ties myself to San Diego. Our unica hija Demi married a San Diegan, and has happily lived there with her husband Jerry for almost 20 years now. My wife Beng and I visit her nearly every year if we can afford it. 

San Diego also happens to be where a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Julie Hill, lives in a lovely home in Rancho Sta. Fe. Julie stayed in the Philippines for some years many decades ago when her husband was the Ford Foundation representative here and fell in love with the country and its people, and despite having traveled and served all over the world, the Philippines retains a special place in Julie’s heart. The last time I dropped in on her a year ago, Julie (who’s approaching 90) announced that she was donating what came out to more than P20 million to help the poorest of UP students. Atty. De Castro helped to formalize that donation as our consul in San Diego, cementing our relationship.

Professionally, but through Julie’s recommendation, I also served as Pacific Leadership Fellow in 2014 at the University of California San Diego, where I had previously lectured on Philippine-American affairs. Beng, meanwhile, observed operations and state-of-the-art techniques at the Balboa Art Conservation Center.

In other words, we’ve established rather close ties to this sunny and vibrant city in Southern California, where many generations of Fil-Ams have taken root, mainly because of the US naval base there, where thousands of Filipino sailors recruited from the Philippines have served. That’s how Demi’s in-laws came to San Diego from Bicol, their children born as Americans but deeply mindful of their Filipino heritage.

Many of our visitors never saw the Philippines until they were grown up, and I think most were setting foot on the UP campus for the first time. So we gave them the warmest reception and the best orientation we could, and engaged them over lunch in a lively discussion.

One of them asked: “What is the Filipino dream?” My UP colleagues responded to that in various ways, coming from different technical and academic disciplines. I tried to give a pedestrian answer: “The Filipino dream is actually a fairly simple one: a roof over one’s head, food on the table, a good education for the children, peace and justice in our communities. We dream for our families. But like all seemingly simple things, achieving that dream is difficult and complicated.”

The visitors had earlier asked President Jimenez about UP’s role in national leadership, and beyond citing how many presidents, senators, and Supreme Court justices we’ve produced—which, to be honest, has also contributed to the ruination of our nation—Jijil emphasized the value his administration places on service to the Filipino people, which can manifest even from beyond our shores. He spoke of UP sharing its knowledge and resources with other SUCs, of UP assuming its responsibilities as the country’s national university—a concept perhaps alien to the American situation but entirely relevant to ours. (I was aware, of course, that UP has many internal issues and priorities of its own to sort out—it always has, regardless of administration.)

A more challenging discussion was one that I had on the side with two ladies who admitted that they represented two ends of the American p0litical spectrum, but had managed to remain friends despite their differences. Their question for me was, what did I personally think of what was happening in America?

No longer in UP spokesman mode, I could have answered as bluntly as possible, but I wanted to give them the more nuanced answer their friendship deserved. 

I began by saying that I considered myself an exemplar of American colonial education, having gone to a private elementary school in the 1960s where I learned about “heifers” and “mackinaws” long before I ever got to see real ones, and even memorized American states and their capitals, to the dismay of my future American friends when we played Trivial Pursuit. I shed off much of the mystification as a student activist in the 1970s and took a far more critical view of the American influence over our history, economy, and politics. 

But the indoctrination was so effective that I retained a fundamental affection and even admiration for many aspects of American culture and technology, and maintained a lifelong and ultimately professional interest in the US. I studied and worked for five years in the Midwestern heartland, in Michigan and Wisconsin, I taught American literature—not just in UP but in America itself, to college students who seemed surprised that I seemed to know more about their country than they did. Not just because our daughter lives there, I continue to follow American affairs keenly, starting my day with the digital editions of the New York Times and the Washington Post (the latter now sadly degraded).

What I told them was that this America was no longer the America I once thought I knew and looked up to, despite its excesses. I said I thought I understood, at least in part, where MAGA was coming from, in the neglect of the American working class and their anxieties in a rapidly changed world. At the same time, Donald Trump had ridden on those grievances to empower and aggrandize himself and the billionaire elite, trampling on the very liberties that had once defined American democracy, imposing his racist and imperialist vision of America, and endangering global peace and security. The shootings in Minnesota were profoundly shocking and depressing. I said that as much as it saddened me, with loved ones in the US, I did not plan on visiting America again until this madness had passed. If even American citizens could be dragged by masked men into vans and summarily deported to El Salvador, then I did not want to risk an encounter with the American Gestapo.

I could have added that both Americans and Filipinos, as polarized as we have become, need to find some common ground, as we share problems that cut across our differences. Bu the time was short, and we sent our guests off with a smile.

Qwertyman No. 183: Lawyers for the People

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Qwertyman for Monday, February 2, 2026

I MIGHT have become a lawyer in another life, given that, back in the sixties, the profession of law still carried with it a certain gravitas, a presumption of not only intellectual brilliance but a commitment to public service. The best of legal minds found themselves in the Supreme Court and the Senate, and the latter was studded with such stars as Jovito Salonga, Jose Diokno, Arturo Tolentino, and Tecla San Andres Ziga. (To Gen Z’ers unfamiliar with these names, Diokno topped both the bar and CPA exams—despite the fact that he never completed his law studies, for which the Supreme Court had to give him special dispensation, and was also too young to be given his CPA license, for which he had to wait a few years. Ziga was the first woman bar topnotcher.) 

My father studied to be a lawyer, but other priorities got in the way; his dream would be achieved by my sister Elaine and my brother Jess. As for me, activism and martial law happened, and in that environment where the law as we knew it suddenly didn’t seem to matter, I lost any urge to enter law school, and chose between English and history instead.

Thankfully, many others saw things differently, and now make up the cream of the profession, appearing on lists such as the Philippines’ Top 100 and Asia’s Top 500 Lawyers. Their skills are formidable—I’ve been told that some senior lawyers are so sharp (or so, shall we say, highly persuasive) that they can get a Supreme Court decision reversed—and their fees will certainly reflect that.

But my utmost admiration is reserved for lawyers who have devoted their careers to that portion of the Lawyer’s Oath that says: “I shall conscientiously and courageously work for justice, as well as safeguard the rights and meaningful freedoms of all persons, identities and communities. I shall ensure greater and equitable access to justice.” 

No better group of lawyers represents that than the Free Legal Assistance Group or FLAG, founded in 1974 by Diokno himself, then newly released from prison, together with Lorenzo M. Tanada, Joker P. Arroyo, Alejandro Lichauco, and Luis Mauricio, all fellow members of the Civil Liberties Union of the Philippines (CLUP), as martial law entrenched itself and civil liberties became increasingly threatened. 

In the half-century since then—documented in FLAG’s anniversary book Frontliners for Human Rights: FLAG of the People @50 (FLAG, 2025)—FLAG has worked to locate and release desaparecidos, or persons abducted by State agents, fight the death penalty, defend victims of extrajudicial killings, and contest the Anti-Terrorism law, among other key initiatives.

“From its birth, FLAG has kept faith in its philosophy of developmental legal advocacy—the adept use of the law and its processes and institutions not only to secure rights and freedoms but also to change the social structures that trigger and perpetuate injustice,” FLAG reports. “Over 50 years, FLAG has handled over 9,052 cases and assisted over 9,591 clients throughout the country. These figures are merely a fraction of the cases FLAG has handled, and the clients FLAG has served nationwide. The number of FLAG clients excludes the communities and barangays who had experienced massacres and hamletting, urban poor communities whose homes had been demolished, and landless farmers and tenant farmer associations, whose numbers are impossible to count. Overall, FLAG’s rate of success ranged from a low of 66.89% (in 1989) to a high of 79.11% in 1990. On average, FLAG has won 7 out of every 10 cases it has handled, or an impressive success rate of 72.92%.

“FLAG has always provided its legal services, free of charge. In line with its core mandate, FLAG renders free legal assistance primarily to those who cannot afford, or cannot find, competent legal services. FLAG counts clients among the urban poor, students, indigenous peoples, farmers, fishers, political prisoners, and non-unionized or non-organized workers.”

These gains have come at a huge personal cost—no less than 14 FLAG lawyers have died in the line of duty, presumably at the hands of State agents. FLAG lawyers have been Red-tagged, harassed, and put under surveillance. 

That hasn’t stopped its lawyers from pursuing their mission under its current Chairman, former Supreme Court spokesman Atty. Theodore Te. The need for their services certainly remains, with the Philippines ranking 38th out of 170 countries in the world in the 2023 Atlas of Impunity released by the Eurasia Group for “impunity,” defined as” the exercise of power without accountability, which becomes, in its starkest form, the commission of crimes without punishment.”

We can only wish Ted Te and his courageous colleagues well, as they operate in an environment more complex in many ways than martial law.

Speaking of law books, I’d like to recommend another book that was launched just recently, Constitutional Law for Filipinos: Mga Konsepto, Doktrina at Kaso (Central Books, 2026) by Atty. Roel Pulido. One of our leading environmental lawyers, Atty. Pulido teaches Constitutional and Environmental Law at Arellano University, where he also serves as Director of the Office of Legal Aid. 

“This is a project designed to be a learning aid,” says Roel. “It has a few unique features. First, It does not explain each and every Article of the Constitution. Instead, it focuses on Constitutional law concepts. Each concept is explained in simple language. Then Supreme Court rulings explaining the concepts are quoted. And in a box, I have placed a short and simple Filipino explanation of the concept. Second, the cases are quoted to explain and elaborate each concept. Instead of including all the convoluted issues in one case, it focuses only on the topic at hand. Third, the doctrine of each case cited is summarized in a sentence in both English and Filipino.”

We need more books like this that make the ideas and the language of the law more accessible to ordinary Filipinos. That’s the first requisite of legal literacy, which is also a form of empowering people. FLAG and Atty. Pulido are the kind of lawyers I would have wanted to become.

Qwertyman No. 181: Another FQS?

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Qwertyman for Monday, January 19, 2026

I’M WRITING this piece on my 72nd birthday, so I hope you’ll indulge me if I revert to the memory of another January 56 years ago. On the afternoon of January 26, 1970, I milled with thousands of other young students on the campus of the University of Sto. Tomas, the staging ground for a large contingent of demonstrators marching to the Legislative Building near the Luneta (now the National Museum). President Ferdinand Marcos was going to deliver his State of the Nation Address, and a mass action had been called to protest a host of issues, from Marcos’ increasingly authoritarian rule to rising prices, militarization, corruption, and Philippine subservience to American interests.

I had just turned 16, and was a senior and an activist at the Philippine Science High School. But I was no radical—not yet; I stood under the banner of the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP), among so-called “moderates” led by Edgar Jopson, derided by FM as the “grocer’s son” and later to become a revolutionary martyr. Unlike the far-Left Kabataang Makabayan (KM) and the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK, which I would soon join) who were railing against “imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism,” the NUSP’s cause sounded much more tangible albeit modest: a non-partisan 1971 Constitutional Convention.

What happened next that afternoon, when both groups of protesters converged at the Senate, would change Philippine political history. The moderates had paid for the rental of the protest mikes and loudspeakers, and wanted to pack up early, but the radicals literally seized the paraphernalia—and figuratively seized the day—launching into a verbal offensive that soon turned physical. Then a young journalist covering the event, Jose “Pete” Lacaba provides the reportage:

“Where the demonstration leaders stood, emblems of the enemy were prominently displayed: a cardboard coffin representing the death of democracy at the hands of the goonstabulary in the last elections; a cardboard crocodile, painted green, symbolizing congressmen greedy for allowances; a paper effigy of Ferdinand Marcos. When the President stepped out of Congress, the effigy was set on fire and, according to report, the coffin was pushed toward him, the crocodile hurled at him. From my position down on the street, I saw only the burning of the effigy—a singularly undramatic incident, since it took the effigy so long to catch fire. I could not even see the President and could only deduce the fact of his coming out of Congress from the commotion at the doors, the sudden radiance created by dozens of flashbulbs bursting simultaneously, and the rise in the streets of the cry: “MARcos PUPpet! MARcos PUPpet! MARcos PUPpet!”

“Things got so confused at this point that I cannot honestly say which came first: the pebbles flying or the cops charging. I remember only the cops rushing down the steps of Congress, pushing aside the demonstration leaders, and jumping down to the streets, straight into the mass of demonstrators. The cops flailed away, the demonstrators scattered. The cops gave chase to anything that moved, clubbed anyone who resisted, and hauled off those they caught up with. The demonstrators who got as far as the sidewalk that led to the Muni golf links started to pick up pebbles and rocks with which they pelted the police. Very soon, placards had turned into missiles, and the sound of broken glass punctuated the yelling: soft-drink bottles were flying, too. The effigy was down on the ground, still burning.”

The January 26 rally and the trouble that erupted would lead to the January 30-31 demos that would prove even more violent, and what would become the First Quarter Storm or the FQS was born. “First quarter” would turn out to describe not only the beginning of 1970 but of the decade itself, as the start of 1971 would prove just as incendiary, with the establishment of the Diliman Commune (and of course, now as a UP freshman, I was there). It seemed that the entire country was politically on fire, with protests mounting by the week, and it would all culminate in what everyone predicted: the declaration of martial law in September 1972. 

It took another 14 years and another “first quarter storm”—the tumultuous months of January and February 1986, following the snap election—to depose Marcos. Fifteen years later in 2001, on another January, yet another president, Joseph Estrada, would be hounded out of office over issues of corruption.

What is it about these first quarters that provoke such firestorms? And do we still have it in us to begin the year on a note of political resolve?

I’ve been worried, like many of us, that the Christmas break, the congressional recess, and intervening issues may have sucked the steam out of the public outrage that boiled over the flood-control scam last year, and lulled the government into thinking that the worst was over and that we could all just settle back into the old routine: let the Ombudsman and the courts do their job, etc. 

What’s worse is if we fall into that mindset, too. The budget deliberations, the Cabral death mystery, the Leviste files, the Barzaga antics, and even a traffic violation episode have all seemed to be distractions from our laser-sharp focus on bringing the crooks to justice. But in fact, they’re all of one piece: demanding better and honest government, the overarching issue we need to press.

And just as the radicals seized the initiative from the moderates 56 years ago, FM’s son, PBBM, can still seize the day by going against all expectations, even against his own nature, and finishing what he may have inadvertently begun: weeding out corruption in government. Never mind the motive—reviving his sagging poll numbers, saving his skin, redeeming the Marcos name, or leaving a worthy legacy behind. He has little choice, if he and his family are to survive. 

There are immediate and concrete steps he can take to achieve this:

1. Activate the Independent People’s Commission. The people are waiting for his next move in this respect; get the enabling law passed and the job done.

2. Impeach VP Sara Duterte. The grounds haven’t changed, and the urgency can only increase as 2028 approaches.

3. Revamp the Cabinet, but replace the non-performers. PBBM knows who they are as well as the public—especially the publicity-seekers whose departments haven’t delivered.

4. Find Atong Ang, Zaldy Co, Harry Roque, etc. and jail the big fish—including political allies. It’s hard to believe that with billions in intelligence funds, the administration can’t track and nail these highly visible fugitives down. Justice is perception.

Do these, and maybe we’ll avoid the generational kind of flare-up and meltdown that followed January 26, 1970.

Qwertyman No. 180: Resolutions We Can Keep

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Qwertyman for Monday, January 12, 2026

ALMOST TWO weeks after the New Year, I’m sure many of us are still struggling with the resolutions we made—you know, the same ones we announced a year ago, like losing weight, buying no more (supply the object—shoes, watches, dresses), emptying the closet, and being nicer to (supply the officemate or in-law). I had to think that there must be resolutions we can make and actually keep—not easy or frivolous ones, but resolutions that will make a real difference in how we think, behave, and live. Here’s what I came up with:

1. I will not help spread fake news and hoaxes. Fighting for the truth begins with a healthy skepticism and the patience to verify. There’s no such thing as “harmless” fake news passed on. 

Last year I had to gently warn a score of friends—smart people with outstanding reputations—who posted on Facebook about Meta claiming the rights to their pictures and about pages turning blue (“It really happened!”) It’s a hoax that’s been going around for years, I told them; there was no such thing as the post described. What’s the harm, they said, just wanted to be sure. Well, the harm is in the propagation; every repost expands the space for fake news to grow, and the poster’s credibility only magnifies it further. That credibility also takes a hit, when it’s shown to absorb and help spread falsehood. Next time, visit a reputable fact-checker like http://www.snopes.com to verify a dubious post. The days are gone when you can assume that what you see is true unless proven otherwise; if you have to assume anything, assume the opposite.

2. I will think before I respond. I will reserve judgment until I understand the situation better, with clearer context and trustworthy and verifiable sources. It’s been said that today, especially online and on social media, people don’t read to understand, but to reply. Many of us have trigger itch—the compulsion to react to and comment on anything and everything that crosses our gunsights. And we do that literally without second thought, drawing on little more than scant knowledge and ample prejudice, and the unflinching conviction that we are right. 

The rise of the provocative meme—extremely compact and blunt, digitally manufactured to make a very specific point—has made this even easier, more efficient and more vicious. Memes eschew context, and invite uncritical concurrence. When I see a witty meme, I might smile and even smirk—but I will pause before joining a bashing spree if I have the slightest suspicion that something isn’t quite right. And while I’m at it, I will keep my sense of humor; I will not be baited or feel obliged to respond in anger, and I will remember that forbearance or silence is not surrender, but often victory.

3. I will use AI responsibly. I will use it as an assistant, but not let it do my thinking for me. I will use it to learn, understand, teach, and create. I will not use it to lie, malign, exaggerate, or aggrandize. I will not pretend to know everything AI can do or is doing. I will neither fear nor ignore it, but I will be wary—especially if what it produces is too clean, too good, or too intent to please. Truth often has rough edges that AI could polish out, like it enhances our portraits. 

I was watching a video on YouTube last week that purported to show the detailed production process by which the fashion house Hermes made its hyper-expensive and hard-to-get Birkin bag (am no fashionista, but am deeply curious about that industry’s workings). The video went to great lengths to demonstrate why the company’s bags commanded such high prices—the quality of the leather, the workmanship, the exclusivity—in purposeful contrast to the numerous fakes being made of the popular bag. But there was something about that video that made me uncomfortable—it seemed too luminous, its people too handsome, its tableaux too staged. An outdoor scene, supposedly outside the boutique, gave it away: the large shop sign clearly said HERMEES, with the extra E; it was no mistake—a few scenes later, they showed the sign again. The whole video was AI-driven, and no human seemed to be home and sharp enough to note the error. Now, its content may have been entirely factual, but its implied condemnation of fakery in business can’t possibly be helped by such a clumsy use of AI. 

4. I will not expect of others what I cannot expect of myself. This was something I learned during martial law, when I was imprisoned with all kinds of people—activists and common criminals, from both privileged and impoverished families. There and elsewhere, I saw how people who could speak so boldly and so well about revolution and liberty could break, sometimes so easily, under pressure. I witnessed and understood the marks of torture. I realized that everyone probably has a breaking point. I wondered what mine was. (My dentist would later tell me that I had a high threshold for pain, which surprised me.) But I came away thinking that if I asked another person to make an extraordinary sacrifice, it should be something I would be willing and prepared to do as well. I say this not to excuse weakness in other people, but to demand more of myself.

I will, however, hold public officials to a higher standard. They chose to lead—for which many are also handsomely rewarded—and so they must prove themselves better than the led. I have a right to expect that my President and congressman will act more wisely and more responsibly than me.

That said, I will live as honorably as I can, despite and especially because of the morally degraded environment in which we find ourselves today. I will not abet corruption in any way. This might be the hardest of all to keep, given how we have all somehow been complicit in this crime.

5. I will be more charitable, and share more of what I have. I will rescue “charity”—among the most human of values—from the political dustbin to which it has been relegated as useless and even harmful tokenism. I’ve heard too many people speak loudly and articulately about big themes like “social justice,” “Gaza,” and “anti-poverty” without yielding a peso from their own pockets or actually doing something concrete for the afflicted. Give, or serve. If you can’t change the system, change a life—you might even change yours.

Qwertyman No. 179: Omitting Flowers

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Qwertyman for Monday, January 5, 2026

THIS COMES a bit too late to affect the box office in any way (and it’s not as if anything I write sends people scurrying anywhere), but my wife Beng and I just saw “Manila’s Finest,” and we left much impressed and hopeful for Philippine cinema.

We were out of town for most of the Christmas holidays so we unfortunately got to see only this one film among all of the Metro Manila Film Festival entries. We’d heard good things about the other entries as well, and the fact that “Manila’s Finest” ended up in only third place for Best Picture tells me that we probably missed out on what seems to be a bumper crop. But this isn’t about the MMFF, and I won’t even call it a formal review. It’s more of an emotional reaction to a period and a milieu I happen to have some familiarity with.

“Manila’s Finest” is set in a precinct of the Manila Police from 1969 to 1972, a time of great social and political turmoil. It revolves around the character of Lt. Homer Magtibay (very capably played by Piolo Pascual), a policeman who, despite his flaws, holds on to an old-fashioned sense of duty just when the police service is becoming more politicized in preparation for martial law. He has his hands full with a gang war, only to realize that an even deadlier kind of factionalism is emerging within the force itself, with the rising power of the Philippine Constabulary’s Metropolitan Command, or Metrocom. He also has to deal with trouble at home, as his daughter has become a student activist, the kind that he and his fellow cops have to face with truncheons at the rallies. It dawns on him that it isn’t petty crooks creating chaos in the streets, but the government itself, setting the stage for a crackdown. The movie ends, rather abruptly, on a dire note of warning, hinting at darker times ahead.

The film appealed to me on many levels—the political, the aesthetic, the narrative—but most strongly at the personal, because of the memories it inadvertently brought up. To begin with, my late father Jose Sr. was a cop—or almost. A law student who never finished (like the movie’s Homer), he joined the police academy, in the same batch that produced the future MPD chief James Barbers. The very first picture in my photo album is that of him in police uniform, at parade rest. He never joined the force, perhaps because he married, but he did become an agent for the Motor Vehicles Office, and I remember how impressed I was by his silvery badge when he flashed his wallet open on the jeepney rides we took. That was the kind of thrall in which lawmen at the time were held, or at least I so imagined; they kept the world safe and peaceful, and held evil at bay. (I was too young to understand that my dad’s MVO badge got us free rides.)

I became an activist in college and joined many rallies and street marches; this changed my view of the police, who became fascist pigs, the enforcers of laws for the rich and powerful. During the Diliman Commune of 1971, I held a kwitis that I was supposed to fire if I saw cops approaching on the perimeter of UP’s Area 14. And then something happened that would reverse my perspective: I dropped out of school to find a job. At age eighteen, I finagled my way into becoming a reporter for the Philippines Herald, with zero units in Journalism but with loads of pluck and some writing talent. Seeing what they were dealing with, my editors led by Oskee Villadolid and Joe Pavia decided to give me a crash course in journalism by designating me as General Assignments reporter and making me do the rounds of the beats: police, education, sports, and so on.

Of course, the police beat turned out to be the most challenging and instructive. I was stationed at MPD headquarters on UN Avenue, and put on the graveyard shift that ra through midnight until the morning. When nothing much was going on, we played ping-pong and waited for the fire alarm bell to ring (we ran out only for major fires, like the Family Clinic fire where my job was to count the dead). I kept a little black book of phone numbers where I could ring up hospitals to ask if any major accidents had come in. I learned of a restaurant near the Luneta where killers could be hired for not too much. Being a snot-nosed newbie, I trailed veterans like Ruther Batuigas to avoid being kuryented or bum-steered. I covered murders and suicides, visited the city morgue at three in the morning, and joined cops on their drives along Ermita, checking on vagrants, just like in the movie. It was all heady stuff for an eighteen-year-old.

But what proved to be most stressful was covering demonstrations, now that I was looking at them from the other side of the barricades, parked in a Herald jeep with a driver and photographer. Despite my job, my sympathies strongly remained with the activists, and I dreaded watching the police donning their riot gear and preparing for certain trouble. These being the days long before cellphones and pagers, there was no way I could warn my comrades about what I thought to be snipers or provocateurs or just agents taking their pictures from the rooftop of the Shellborne Hotel near the US Embassy. When the tear gas canisters began flying all I could do myself was duck and run, and I remember visiting some wounded marchers in the ER later. After I covered the funeral of a rebel killed in combat, praising him effusively and playing up the drama, an editor cleaned up my prose and gave me a very dry lesson in reportage: “Omit flowers.”

That’s the kind of treatment director Raymond Red gives his material in “Manila’s Finest.” Nothing is romanticized, no hero left unsullied, except perhaps for the young activists whose further awakening yet lies ahead of them. This well-crafted and well-acted film deserves all its plaudits; the mature Piolo Pascual is outstanding, as is the period production design (except again perhaps for everyone’s new-looking uniform, the bane of period movies, and a few questionable references time-wise—“barangay,” “the New Society,” and Pierre Cardin-style barongs all came after 1972, if memory serves me right). Most of all, “Manila’s Finest” deserves and indeed demands a sequel, into the time of tokhang, when the moral choices facing the police became even starker. But as it is, at least for me, “Manila’s Finest” may indeed have been the finest of its kind this year.

(Image from walphs.com)

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. 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)

Qwertyman No. 173: A Page from 1937

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Qwertyman for Monday, November 24, 2025

I”M NOT a historian, although there are times I wish I were, and at an early crossroads in my youth, I actually had to choose between Literature and History for my major, settling for the former only because I thought I could finish it faster. But I’ve retained a lifelong interest in history, for the treasure trove of stories to be found in the past and for what those stories might foretell of the future. 

I’m particularly fascinated by the prewar period—what Filipinos of the midcentury looked back on as “peacetime” and what Carmen Guerrero Nakpil called our “fifty years in Hollywood,” which were enough to occlude much of the influence of our “three hundred fifty years in a convent” under the Spanish. It was an age of many transitions, from the jota to jazz, from the caruaje to the Chevrolet, from tradition to that liberative and all-embracing buzzword, the “modern.” Much of that went up in smoke during the Second World War, but you can still catch the ghost of this lost world on the Escolta, among other vestiges of our love-hate affair with America. (You might want to visit the Art Deco exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Arts, ongoing until May 2026; I have some items on display there.)

So entranced have I been by this time that I decided, during the pandemic, to set my third novel in it, at the birth of the Commonwealth and upon Quezon’s assumption of ultimate power, an upstairs-downstairs narrative about the comprador upper class and the world of the Manila Carnival set against the embers of the Sakdal uprising, the fuming and scheming Aguinaldistas, and the netherworld of printing-press Marxists and tranvia pickpockets. Progress has been slow because novels always take the back seat to life’s more pressing needs, but I still hope to get this done if it’s the last thing I do.

The research for the book, however, has brought its own rewards. Among my main sources for the background has been a slim volume—long out of print and now very  hard to find—titled The Radical Left on the Eve of War: A Political Memoir by James S. Allen (Quezon City: Foundation for Nationalist Studies, 1985). Allen (actually a pseudonym for Sol Auerbach) was an American scholar and journalist, an avowed Marxist who traveled to the Philippines in 1936 and 1938 with his wife Isabelle, also a member of the American Communist Party, to meet with local communists and socialists (then headed by Crisanto Evangelista and Pedro Abad Santos, respectively) and to get a sense of the Philippine situation under American rule. 

Even that early, the threat of a Japanese invasion was already looming on the horizon and causing great anxiety in the Philippines; Japan had earlier occupied Manchuria and as much as a quarter of the entirety of China by 1937. It seemed like a confrontation between Japan and the United States was inevitable, although some Filipino nationalists—fiercely anti-American—preferred to ally themselves with their fellow Asians than with prolonged white rule. At the same time, others like Pedro Abad Santos feared that the independence Quezon sought would be granted prematurely to give the US an excuse to abandon the islands and avoid confronting the Japanese. 

This is where I tell you why I’m bringing up James Allen’s memoirs this Monday—because of our present situation vis-à-vis China and (in one of history’s ironic reversals from victim to victimizer) its growing domination of the South China Sea. In Quezon, Filipinos had a leader who was deeply mistrusted and opposed by many; the United States’ willingness to defend the Philippines was in doubt; and the threat of a foreign invasion was clear and imminent. 

Allen actually sat down with Quezon for a long interview at the latter’s invitation, and was impressed by the man’s grasp of politics and his singular ambition. But the article that came out of that encounter displeased MLQ; Allen, after all, was still a communist at heart, which makes the following quotation—from a letter Allen would compose and send to his American colleagues in October 1937—even more interesting. I’ll leave it to you to observe the parallels, and to cast them against the Marcos-Duterte issues of our time.

“Filipino Marxists and radicals need to relate independence from the United States to the world crisis created by fascism. The immediate concern in the struggle for an independent and democratic Philippines is to safeguard the country against the threat of Japanese aggression. The objectives of complete independence from the United States and the internal democratic transformation must be obtained without endangering such gains as have been made or subjecting the country to new masters. The people must be awakened to the prime and pressing danger to their national existence. The United States is moving toward alignment with the democratic powers against the fascist bloc, albeit slowly and indecisively.


“Roosevelt is shifting somewhat toward the Left of Center to keep pace with his mass support from the surging labor movement and anti-fascist and anti-war popular sentiment. The national interests of the Philippines call for vigilance and precautions against Japanese aggression. This coincides with the interests of the United States in the Pacific area, and it would be folly not to take full advantage of this concurrence. In the broader perspective, the outcome of the struggle in China will be crucial for all the peoples of the Far East, and if the United States were to withdraw from the Philippines this would be a serious blow against China and encouragement to Japan’s designs upon Southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific. The cause of Philippine independence at this time can best be served by cooperation with the United States.


“The situation also requires a change in the attitude toward Quezon, from frontal attack to critical support. Unprincipled opposition for the sake of opposition-as with some leading participants in the Popular Alliance is dangerous, for it plays into the hand of pro-Japanese elements and sentiments. Quezon certainly is not an anti-fascist, but he is not intriguing behind the scenes with Japan. The greatest opposition to his early independence plan comes from the landed proprietors, particularly the sugar barons, while it enjoys support among the people. The Popular Alliance should also support the plan, including provisions for mutually satisfactory economic, military and diplomatic collaboration after independence. Though Quezon is far from being a Cardenas or Roosevelt in his domestic policies, every effort should be made to move him away from his pro-fascist and land baron support by providing him with mass backing for such pro-labor and progressive measures as are included in his social justice program. In sum, the Popular Alliance should encourage a national democratic front devoted to the preservation of peace in the Pacific, the safeguarding of Philippine independence, and defense and extension of democracy in the country.”