Category Archives: Society

Qwertyman No. 169: Chatting with Apo Lakay

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Qwertyman for Monday, October 27, 2025

I’VE BEEN going out on a limb for the past few weeks, touting the possibility that President Bongbong Marcos—yes, the son of our martial-law dictator—might be considering doing the right thing and leaving behind his own legacy, one notably different from Apo Lakay’s. 

Comes now the news that his spokesperson Atty. Claire Castro—who can usually be counted on for ripostes that elevate the reasonableness of her boss—has been quoted as saying that BBM has been losing sleep conversing with his father (who, let’s not forget, passed on 36 years ago), presumably in search of some advice from the afterlife on contentious current events.

My first reaction was to wonder why their otherworldly tete-a-tete had to take so long, if father and son agreed on the same things. Could they possibly have been arguing? What about? Bank accounts? Sibling rivalry? Forks in the road? And if their encounters leave him sleepless, could BBM be that bothered by FM’s post-mortem perorations on statecraft and, well, craftiness?

This is where VP Sara Duterte enjoys the slight advantage, her father being at least alive and still capable of earthly conversation with Sara on such timely topics as “Your stepmother wants to sell the house in Davao” and “Now where did Pulong’s P51 billion in flood-control funds go?” The Hague may be almost 12,000 kilometers away from Manila, but flying there (on her own dime, she’s careful to insist) beats telepathy or telephony, and creates photo ops with the DDS faithful that nocturnal chit-chats with the departed can’t. (There’s a really nasty and cruel rumor going around, I have to note, that the VP actually wants PRRD to remain and rot away in the Netherlands until he expires—don’t ask me how—just before the May 2028 election, gifting her, like Cory Aquino did on Noynoy’s behalf in 2010, with a wave of sympathy votes. I don’t know if I should applaud or deplore the Pinoy’s political imagination, but there it is.)

Here in Germany, where I’ve just attended the 77th Frankfurt Book Fair where the Philippines was this year’s Guest of Honor and therefore the exotic insect under the microscope, the one inevitable question raised in my many reading and speaking events was “What do you think of the current political situation in your country, and of the fact that another Marcos is now leading it?”

It’s a question I’ve thought about a lot, with or without Frankfurt, and you’ve seen some elements of my answer to it right here in Qwertyman. Pitching these ideas to a foreign audience is a bit more challenging because you don’t have the time to present and explain the details of the context, and you certainly don’t want to lie. 

I’m not the Philippine ambassador, I said to them, so I can and will be frank, but if I seem to equivocate then it’s because the situation isn’t as simple as it looks. Yes, BBM is the dictator’s son and yes, I went to prison as a teenager for seven months—many stayed in far longer—under martial law. Yes, I campaigned for his presidential opponent, Leni Robredo, whom I still believe would have made a better president—and yet could.

But very recently, I noted, PBBM has been making moves that have surprised many, for their effects if not their intentions. Whatever he was thinking at the time, his public disclosure of the bigtime contractors likely tied to multibillion-peso scams that some politicians aided and profited from has shaken the country to its core. The public outrage and demand for justice has been so loud and widespread that it has gone far beyond infrastructure into a searing re-examination of corruption in every aspect and at every level of our government and society.

I brought in the Duterte factor, the continuing threat from his own Vice President and former ally, for whom BBM’s surrender of her father to the International Criminal Court could only be unforgivable. The flood-control scandal and its connection with the Dutertistas was, therefore, a bomb set off by BBM for his own political and personal survival, but one with many unintended consequences and casualties, including some of Marcos’ own soldiers, and still possibly he himself, should the stain reach into the Palace as it has been threatening to (with gleeful encouragement from the DDS).

I don’t know how well the Germans understood or accepted my reading—heck, I’m sure many Filipinos don’t—but when you put over a hundred Filipino creative writers and journalists together for a week, some points of consensus are bound to emerge over the breakfasts and endless cups of coffee. Among them: (1) 2028 can’t come soon enough; (2) BBM should double down on the kind of confidence-building measures that will shore up the rest of his presidency, like pursuing the anti-corruption campaign to the fullest, no matter what; (3) only an alliance between idealist (but sufficiently grounded) moderates and BBM’s best people (not to forget his resources) can hope to stop a Duterte restoration.

I’d tell that to my dad, who died almost 30 years ago and who, to be honest and as close as we were, I haven’t seen much of in my dreams. But like BBM and his papa, we’d likely be up all night. Having passed away while the country was still in the capable hands of “Steady Eddie,” when it seemed that Ramos’ vision of “Philippines 2000” was going to deliver us into a new millennium of political stability and economic growth, Tatay would probably crawl right back into his grave were he to be given a day off to witness what we’ve done since.

(Image from The Independentˆ)

Qwertyman No. 167: Stranger Than Fiction

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Qwertyman for Monday, October 13, 2025

IF SEN. Alan Peter Cayetano and his cohorts in the Senate minority wanted to rile the people even more, they couldn’t have done it better than by having Cayetano challenge Sen. Tito Sotto for the Senate presidency, at the same time that he was floating his supposedly heroic idea of having all elective officials resign because the public was fed up with them.

He had to know that that was exactly the kind of antic that made people throw up at the mention of certain names—a dubious pantheon of the corrupt, the bought, and the compromised. But he did it anyway, employing his imagination to yank public attention away from the burning issue of the hour—the massive flood control scam and its ties to many lawmakers—in the direction of Mars, and the possibility of honest (never mind intelligent) politicians inhabiting that planet.

Why he did that is anyone’s guess, but mine would be that anything to stop the momentum building up at the Blue Ribbon Committee under Sen. Ping Lacson was good for the minority, many of whom were increasingly being threatened by the exposure. If Cayetano had resigned first (and forthwith!) to provide proof positive of his noble intentions, the distraction would have been worth our time, but of course that was never part of the plan. 

The plot to unseat Sotto—brazen and shameless in its purpose—was more credible and worrisome. It fizzled out but remains potent, simmering just beneath the surface. Lacson’s resignation as BRC chair was probably a concession to forestall Sotto’s, but the situation in the Senate is so volatile that it can’t take much for the leadership to switch while we’re brushing our teeth. 

All we seem to be waiting for is that point of utter desperation when the beleaguered, fighting for their political lives and possibly even their personal freedom, ignore all considerations of decency and public sensitivity, weasel their way back into the majority, and deliver the Senate to its most famous watcher from the gallery: Vice President Sara Duterte, whose fate still hangs in the balance of an impeachment vote that has yet to happen.

That vote and its implications, let’s all remember, was what triggered all of this. Premised on rampant corruption within her office, her impeachment, had it passed the Senate, would have barred her from running for the presidency in 2028 (and, for PBBM, from the resurgent Dutertes wreaking retribution on their erstwhile allies). But this isn’t really just about Sara—it’s about all those other trapos who’ve cast their lot with her, whose fortunes depend on her absolution in the Senate and ascension to the Palace. 

Former Senate President Chiz Escudero, who dragged his and the Senate’s feet in that process, has now dropped all pretensions to impartiality, calling the impeachment “unconstitutional” in a speech that would only have pleased the Vice President, a title he himself might be auditioning for. He did his part well, with what many saw to be the ill-considered assistance of the Supreme Court, to freeze the impeachment complaint. 

And there that matter sat, until PBBM—whether unwittingly or presciently—(and here we’ll go fast and loose with the idioms) shook the tree, opened a can of worms, threw mud at the wall, and unleashed the kraken by exposing the trillion-peso infrastructure scandal now rocking the country. He might have done this to suggest a link between the alleged corruption in the VP’s office and even larger acts of plunder emanating from her father’s time in Malacañang, a deft political move. But reality overtook his imagination, and now the issue’s grown far beyond that into his own administration, his own responsibilities, his own accountability. 

That said, and however we may have felt about him, PBBM has done us all a service by drawing the curtain on the systemic rot in our society and governance, for which he, Sara, and their cohorts have all been culpable, directly or administratively. By doing so he rendered himself vulnerable as well, and the VP’s forces are now zeroing in on that vulnerability to deflect attention from their own predicament. 

Thus the barrage of “Marcos resign!” calls (as opposed to the Left’s “Marcos and Duterte resign!”), which has become shorthand for BBM out, Sara in. (It was on that key point that the rumored September 21 coup plot reportedly first stumbled, with the plotters balking at the alternative.) It also explains the slew of professionally produced reels on Facebook and other social media calling for the military to depose the President—ironically, something so openly seditious that Digong Duterte’s NTF-ELCAC would have instantly pounced on them, but which BBM and his crew seem to be shrugging off, at least for now. 

What tempts our imagination in this fraught situation—where public trust in our politicians and even in the courts is hitting critical lows, and where no clear and short path to change seems visible until 2028—is the possibility of military intervention, whether by martial law or on its own volition. I’ve been assured by friends who know better that this military of ours today is much more professional in its mindset than its predecessors, and that it will abide by the Constitution. I sincerely hope they’re right, because if there’s anything that all the parties in this mess can probably agree on, it’s that boots in the streets won’t bring us any closer to a functioning democracy. 

I’m reminded in this instance of one of my favorite literary quotations, from Mark Twain who said (in so many words) that “Of course fact is stranger than fiction. Fiction, after all, has to make sense.” If you had told me three years ago that we are now relying on a dictator’s son to save us from an even worse alternative, and in the process—if almost by accident—expose corruption so foul that we are back on EDSA demanding not regime change but the rule of law, I would have called you a lousy fictionist with a runaway imagination. Yet here we are.

Qwertyman No. 166: Though the Heavens Fall

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Qwertyman for Monday, October 6, 2025

IT’S BEEN the rising refrain of some friends in media, academia, and the coffeeshop crowd—mostly somewhat to my left—to insist (and, I believe, arguably so) that there is nothing fundamentally different between BBM and Sara, between the families and factions of the ruling class they represent, and between their lust for power and money. Therefore, the correct call to the people in this situation, regardless of the consequences, can only be “Down with both of them! BBM and Sara, resign!” Those Latinate lawyers had a term for it: “fiat justitia, ruat caelum”—let justice be done, though the heavens may fall. 

For the plotters of a recently rumored coup, the heavens falling would have meant the replacement of both Marcos and Duterte with a 30-person junta that would include, as juntas go, retired military generals, civilian leaders, and a couple of clergymen. (What, no writers and artists? Thumbs down!) That plot was dead even before it got off the ground, and perhaps thankfully so—a 30-person junta already sounds worse than a 24-person Senate, and something in me resists the idea of having Catholic priests (or Protestant pastors, or Muslim imams, etc.) in any kind of executive capacity in government.

Yes, the people are marching in the streets and are in the mood for the public execution of their plunderers. Our trust and confidence in our leaders has been so badly abused and misplaced that we are now drowning in cynicism and disbelief, certain only in the fact that we are being stolen from by someone, somewhere, somehow.

Nevertheless I sense no great appetite for a revolutionary regime change that will only unsettle things even more. If anything, what we want is certainty and predictability—that the law will be applied and take its course, that the wrongdoers will be identified, prosecuted, and punished, and that proper and ample restitution will be made for their crimes, so that we can all move along as a reasonably functioning society. 

Not to say that everything will be just peachy once the robber-contractors and their patrons are exposed and put in chains, but that the alert will have been sounded, the people awakened, and the bar raised much higher for aspirants to public office in 2028 and beyond. The progressives and middle forces couldn’t have been handed a greater gift: corruption has to be the top election issue, because it affects the poor more visibly now than any other, especially those who can’t escape the floodwaters while their congressman jets off to France.

It’s a problem and a crisis big enough for another EDSA (not to mention all the coup attempts that followed EDSA), but the first EDSA taught us that a sudden change of people at the top, no matter how good the replacements are, doesn’t guarantee deep and lasting change; it merely opens the door for a new set of crooks to come in, and for some old ones to return. EDSA 1 wasn’t a waste; aside from the relief it brought, it was a lesson we needed badly to learn. But have we?

Until our electorate learns to recognize and to vote for its own best interests, no amount of EDSAs short of the bloody revolution and the mass guillotining we’re all trying to avoid will change the composition of the Congress, the Senate, and the executives they work with. The current crisis is the best and also the most painful teaching point to have come along to show Filipinos who and what exactly they’ve been voting for, and who’s been paying for all those dole-outs come Election Day—no other than themselves, from the money that should have been spent on keeping them alive and well. Vote for the corrupt, and you kill yourself and your family. You are being bribed today to be stolen from tomorrow.

The challenge now is to get that message through, make it stick, and not allow it to be muddled by clever counter-propaganda and by possibly well-meant but adventurous calls for regime change. 

Coup or resignation, neither nor both of these will happen. The coup was stillborn and could have led to worse. If the Marcoses and Dutertes are as thick-skinned as their critics make them out to be, then they will brazen it out, ruat caelum. 

The way forward can be lit up by the facts that will emerge out of the many parallel investigations now taking place into the infrastructure scam and wheresoever it may lead—not just at the Independent Commission on Infrastructure, but also in the even more independent media.

The enemies of the truth know how easy it is not just to distort the truth, but to destroy the truth-sayers. They did it to Leila de Lima with the sordid expose of a private relationship that, even if it were true, was her own business. They put NBN-ZTE whistleblower Jun Lozada behind bars.

Unlike many others, I am willing to let the albeit imperfectly constituted ICI do its work—but quickly and transparently, please—and to judge it by its results. We can expect that no one facing the ICI will come clean with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We will be dealing instead with a complex puzzle, putting it together piece by irregular piece until the broad and inescapable picture of systemic corruption emerges, with every part and element detailed—from delivery boys and drivers to district engineers to Cabinet-level officials to congressmen, senators, and ultimately to the highest offices of the land. 

The Vice President is already involved—it was the corruption in her office, after all, that led to her impeachment in Congress. Inevitably this circuit of corruption will come around to the Office of the President and to its signing power over whatever budget proposal it receives and presumably reviews; the only question will be that of BBM’s personal culpability and what of it, if any, can be proven.

That could yet be the ultimate test of BBM himself, of our democracy, and of whether, after all’s been said and done, it may time for another regime change outside of the ballot box; fiat justitia, ruat caelum.

Qwertyman No. 165: Conspicuous Corruption

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Qwertyman for Monday, September 29, 2025

IT WAS during America’s “Gilded Age”—a period that many (not just them Yankees, but also us Pinoys) look back on with borrowed nostalgia—that an economist named Thorstein Veblen wrote a book titled The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions (1899). 

Drawing on Marx, Darwin, and Adam Smith, Veblen went against the grain of neoclassical economics and its presumption of people as rational economic beings seeking utility and happiness from their labors; instead, Veblen argued, they were irrational agents who amassed wealth for social status and prestige. Writing in a scathingly satirical and literary style, Veblen roasted America’s nouveau riche—the robber barons who had built their business empires on coal, steel, and railroads (think Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt), and who then splurged on mansions, yachts, and such other luxurious testaments to their success.

We don’t remember Veblen much, although he cut a sharp impression among his admirers and critics alike as a dour Midwestern misanthrope, a killjoy who saw little economic value in churchgoing, in etiquette, and even in sports (of course, this was way before the MLB, NBA, and NFL). 

What we do remember are some terms that his book bequeathed to our century, most notably “the leisure class” and “conspicuous consumption,” the latter being the purchase and display of goods beyond their practical value for the purpose of manifesting one’s power and prestige—which in itself became a form of social capital, facilitating the accumulation of even more of the same. (Veblen also theorized about “conspicuous compassion” and “conspicuous waste.”)

Dr. Veblen was writing at and about the turn of the 20th century, but his observations were preceded by a history of ostentation as old as, well, Jesus. (And here, being no historian, I’ll acknowledge some help from AI.) The ancient Romans held lavish feasts and circuses to entertain the masses. Their Greek counterparts passed sumptuary laws to curb excess, limiting the gold a person could possess and the number of servants a woman could bring to a public event—which tells us exactly what they were doing. In both feudal Japan and medieval Europe, laws were imposed regulating what people could wear—to preserve social stratification, and visibly distinguish the rich from the poor. 

It didn’t always work—empowered by trade, Italy’s growing merchant class brazenly copied what the old nobility wore. Things got so showy that the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola led an anti-ostentation movement in Florence, culminating in the public burning of luxury goods, cosmetics, and elaborate clothing, a.k.a. the “bonfire of the vanities.”

I’m sure you can see by now what I’m getting at, which is the Philippines’ ripeness for its own version of “Bling Empire” and “Dubai Bling,” Netflix shows both devoured and skewered for their “grotesque opulence” and hermetic imperviousness to such inconvenient topics as Gaza, Ukraine, and Donald Trump. I have to admit to binge-watching both series, fascinated and revolted at the same time—fascinated by my revulsion, and revolted by my fascination.

This is how ostentation holds us in its thrall—by indulging our fantasies while providing extravagant proof and reason to cluck our tongues in disapproval. The logical response should be to switch channels, exit YouTube, or just turn the damned TV off. But no, we watch on, bewildered by our inability to comprehend how a Birkin bag could cost $500,000, and further, how someone could afford them, and even further, how someone could own not just one but five of them, and yet even further, how that someone could be a Filipino senator’s wife (last heard opining, with admirable sensitivity to the public temper, that “Now is not the time to attend Paris Fashion Week.”)

Unlike Veblen, who employed sardonic humor to prove his point, this is no longer even satire or damnation by exaggeration, but outsize reality. The gargantuan figures emerging from the infrastructure corruption scandal now transfixing the nation—almost a billion pesos of public money lost in the casinos, P4.7 billion worth of aircraft in one congressman’s hangar, and so on—not only boggle the mind and churn the stomach, but impoverish the imagination. We are too poor to contemplate these sums. 

And so to Veblen’s terminology, we must now add “conspicuous corruption,” as it seems that even among the corrupt—who are not anonymous to one another, needing to operate as a cozy network of thieves if they are to mutually succeed—there exists a virtual competition over who can get away with more. This doesn’t even involve or require the building of real assets such as trains, skyscrapers, and power plants, like the industrial dynasts did. Why bother, when ghost accounting will achieve as much if not more for one’s bottom line?

For now, the public outrage over the flood-control scandal may have dimmed the lights for the accused and their accomplices and beneficiaries. Facebook and Instagram accounts that once flaunted luxury limousines, exotic getaways, and designer labels have been shut down or turned private, their owners gone mute after sulky disclaimers to the effect that “We worked hard for our billions!” (But not everyone, as that high-flying congressman’s wife was reported shopping with impunity in Paris last week, oblivious to the brouhaha.)

Not incidentally, there’s more than a tinge of sexism to the recent backlash against so-called “nepo princesses”—the daughters of rich, powerful, and presumably corrupt politicians and their business cohorts. Privileged indolence, after all, is an equal-opportunity affectation, and doubtlessly their brothers aren’t wasting their time volunteering for NGOs and teaching catechism.

When they will reappear is anybody’s guess. The EDSA 4 brewing in the streets should hopefully result in decisive action against the guilty parties in this mess, and if only to appease the mob, I’m sure a few heads will roll. But I’m under no illusion that human nature will reverse course and that Thorstein Veblen’s leisure class and its blingy profligacy will vanish into oblivion anytime soon.

Me, I’m in the mood for a bonfire, and it’ll be more than croc-skin handbags I’ll want to toss into it.

Qwertyman No. 163: Redemption and Reversal

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Qwertyman for Monday, September 15, 2025

“Enormity” is a word I rarely use in my writing, because I still take it in its traditional, original meaning, which is that of “a great evil, a grave crime or sin.” I would use it in the sense of “the enormity of the Holocaust, in which Adolf Hitler exterminated six million Jews” as well as in “the enormity of Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Gaza, employing bombing and starvation to bend Palestinians to its will.”

But it has so often been misused as an alternative to “enormousness,” to mean “very large” or “very big” in relation to size, that most modern dictionaries have relented and accepted that secondary definition.

Last week, listening to Sen. Ping Lacson’s revelations about gargantuan sums of money changing hands and being blown at the casinos not by business magnates or heirs to billions but by subalterns at the Department of Public Works and Highways, I saw no inconsistency whatsoever between the word’s two meanings. It was both one and the other, wrongdoing on such a scale that made you wonder if this was still our country, if we still had laws to fall back on, and for how much longer our people would be willing to endure this kind of abuse before the dam breaks and a biblical flood of justice bursts forth to sweep away the evil in our midst.

The quoted sums were mindboggling enough: five DPWH district and assistant engineers in Bulacan accounted for almost P1 billion in casino losses, as reported by Pagcor to Lacson. A district engineer—there were 186 of them at the DPWH last year, according to the Department of Budget and Management—earns a monthly salary of almost P230,000. It’s nothing to sneeze at (my salary as a Full Professor 12 in UP was half that when I retired in 2019, and Filipino minimum wage earners still make less than P20,000 a month), and you could live very comfortably on it if you lead a prudent existence. But who needs prudence when you have tens of millions of pesos in kickbacks to play with at baccarat or roulette?

The theft isn’t even the real crime, the true enormity here; it’s what that money should have been used for, but wasn’t—the prevention of human suffering through public works projects that have instead remained unfinished or grossly substandard. Those engineers weren’t playing with cash and chips—they were playing with lives and futures, the fortunes of entire families and communities gone with a wrong turn of the dice, followed by a casual shrug and a reach for more of the endless chips. 

Forgive these murderous thoughts, but for this alone, once proven guilty, those miscreants deserve to be hanged, or banished to a prison that floods at high tide. One might add that if Digong Duterte had launched a tokhang campaign against the corrupt—but we all know why he couldn’t have—perhaps he wouldn’t be watching windmills from his window now.

Our righteous indignation aside, it’s clear that the buck should and will stop with no other than President Bongbong Marcos, who after all began all this with his surprising and explosive public revelation of the top contractors’ names. Whatever his initial or ulterior motive may have been, that’s practically been rendered moot by the massive outrage and political drama arising over the past few weeks as a result of his action and of the continuing Senate and Congressional investigations. 

In the immediate future, much will hinge on the independent commission that BBM is organizing to probe the issue and on its efficacy. In an ironic turn of history, its credibility will have to match that of the Agrava Commission, whose conclusion that Ninoy’s assassination was the result of a military conspiracy helped to eventually bring his father’s regime down.

But since irony seems to be a strong and inescapable feature of our political life, it may be the perfect time and opportunity for the dictator’s son to become his own man, to redeem his part of the family name, and to prove his doubters and detractors (this martial-law ex-prisoner among them) wrong. He can do that by finding the courage and resolve to pursue this business of weeding out systemic corruption—just beginning with our public works—to its farthest possible conclusion, no matter who or what gets in the way.

Surely PBBM would not have trumpeted this initiative against corruption if he did not expect the money trail to lead back to some of his closest associates and supporters, and even to his family—who, as no one will or should forget, have long stood accused of plunder in the billions, well before the Discayas and their company discovered the short road to riches. The Marcoses may have dodged payment for those debts through favorable court rulings predictably secured upon BBM’s presidential victory, but he cannot escape this responsibility now.

Any attempt to pause or to mute the investigations into this ugly mess will only backfire on BBM and his presidency and invite suspicions of his complicity in these scandals. His only real option is to seize the moment, press on, and do the right thing even if and until it hurts.

I can see many of my liberal cohorts grimacing at the notion that a man we once derided for his profligacy and lack of discipline could lead such a brave and sweeping reform of our society and government, and I have to admit that I too shall remain a skeptic until I see solid results coming out of these investigations. Dismissals and bans won’t be enough for the erring officials and contractors; we want jail time for the guilty and adequate restitution, we want the big fish to fry.

But I’m a great believer in the possibility and the power of redemption (think Saul of Tarsus and Ignatius of Loyola). Even in this seemingly quixotic mission of reforming government, very few people will come to the table with perfectly clean hands—or remain unsullied to the grave. Ultimately less important than their private faults is their public performance—what they did, over the course of their lifetime, to serve the public good and/or to make amends for their past misdeeds and shortcomings.

BBM may be far from the path to sainthood, but he can still employ the vast powers of his office to strengthen constitutional governance in this country, in dramatic reversal of his father’s legacy. If he fails to do that, then he will merely confirm what we have suspected all along. I pray, for once, that we were wrong.

Penman No. 477: (Almost) Working with Mike de Leon

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Penman for Sunday, September 7, 2025

IT’S ALMOST criminal to admit this, given the understandable outpouring of grief and adulation that followed the announcement of film director Mike de Leon’s recent passing. But the truth is, I didn’t really know him or his work all that well. I’d seen a few of his movies—Kisapmata and Citizen Jake come to mind—but for some reason missed out on the best and most celebrated ones: Batch 81, Sister Stella L, Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising, and so on. I shouldn’t have, but there it is, like all the great books I never got to read, because I was busy doing something else.

From the late 1970s to the early 2000s, I was writing scripts for many directors—mostly Lino Brocka, but also Celso Ad. Castillo, Marilou Diaz Abaya, Laurice Guillen, Gil Portes, and Joel Lamangan. (Never for Ishmael Bernal, either, nor for Eddie Romero; they’re all gone now except for Laurice and Joel.) Mike de Leon was and remained a mystery—until, on December 30, 2022, from out of the blue, I got this message in my inbox (I’ll be excerpting Mike’s messages to me from hereon; he typically writes in lowercase but I’ve edited everything):

Butch,

We’ve never met but I guess we know of each other. 

I just wanted to know if you are interested in working with me on a possible screenplay that I hope I can still turn into a film even at my late age (going on 76, Stage 4 prostate cancer, but still able to function). 

I admit I have never seen any of the films you made with Lino, and the only book of yours that I have is The Lavas which I have largely forgotten. But in that anthology book, Manila Noir, I found your short story, “The Professor’s Wife” the best of the lot. 

The only thing I can say about my film idea is that it is part of my memories as a young boy during summer months in Baguio in the late 1950s. In other words, it is just about a group of rich people who play mahjong and the battalion of maids and drivers who serve them. This is probably the result of the flood of memories that are still spilling out of my mind after completing my book Last Look Back. It is no big production because it is the characters I am most interested in. A picture of the members of the idle rich when Baguio was still the exclusive enclave of the privileged elite, from which I’ve descended, of course. 

I did ask Sarge Lacuesta and he was quite interested but he is going to direct his first film for Cinemalaya. So I picked up Manila Noir again and looked for that story and found out that it was you who wrote it. 

Anyway, as I always say, suntok sa buwan. Baka hindi rin matuloy because of my health but I’d like to give it a try anyway. If you think you might be interested, please email me back. 

I wrote him back to say that of course I was happy and honored to be asked to work with him:

The project sounds like something I’d be very comfortable with—a quiet family drama with an upstairs-downstairs element to it. Coincidentally, i’ve been working on a novel set in 1936 in one of those Dewey Boulevard mansions, with the Manila Carnival (and Quezon and Sakdalistas in the background). But that’s at least still another year from being done. I just wanted to say that the idea of revisiting the past to show how it has shaped the present—throwing light and shadow where they belong—is dear to me.

And now, the inevitable hitch: I’m working on three commissioned book projects at the same time, and these books will be due in 2023. I’m retired, but I’m also writing columns for the Star and teach one graduate class in UP.

I can imagine from your situation that this project is a matter of great personal significance and urgency to you—which is why I so want to be a part of it, despite my own load. At the same time, I don’t want to be a hindrance to you, especially if you want this done soonest. If you just need me to flesh out some scenes and develop some ideas and write up the sequences and dialogue as we go along, maybe we can do something together. Let the thing grow and go where it will. 

Then he sent me more notes about what he had in mind:

As you probably know by now, I like shooting a film in Baguio. I now own the former family house and I’ve restored it and maintained it well. It can still pass for an authentic American colonial house of the late 1950s. Actually, the house was built in the 1930s, but I’m not sure of the exact date until I find the papers. The original owner was an American officer named Emil Speth. He married one or two native women and was the vice-mayor of Baguio when the Japanese bombed the city on December 8, 1941. Quezon was in the mansion and I read an account that Speth asked Quezon to take shelter in his house (maybe not the same one because Speth owned many houses) because he had a bomb shelter. 

By the way, this is not an autobiographical film. It’s the mahjongistas I’m more intrigued about. I used to watch them with a fascination because it was not really gambling but a form of social intercourse with its own rituals. 

Within a few days, much to his surprise, I emailed him back with a full storyline based on what he said he wanted to do. I’ve always been a fast writer, and I guess it was one of those things I would be known in the trade for. I delivered quickly, without fuss, just needing to be paid.

He responded:

Quite surprised to get this email and story idea. I just read it quickly but I will read it more carefully in a while, when I’m wide awake. It seems too complex, the characters as well. I was thinking of more opaque characters (from the point of view of the young boy, and the viewer, they cannot explain their behavior, that is what I’m looking for). His memories are speculative and will probably remain so until his old age. By which time, most of them are dead anyway. But I’m amazed at how you put this story together. Give me a couple of days to react to it and I will jot down my own notes.

On January 9, in the New Year, began what would become a painful series of revelations:

Sorry for the late reply. I’ve not been feeling well, possibly because of the gloomy rainy weather. I can’t take my regular early morning walks around Horseshoe or Greenhills. Also, I’m kinda antsy about my scheduled PET scan next week. My doctors told me last year, after the first PET scan, that I may not live another eight months or so, but it’s been more than a year and I’m still here. Fortunately, I was able to finish my book. 

I am writing my “impressions” of what I feel the film should be or “feel.” One important thing is that I think the film should start in medias res, the family is already in Baguio, several weeks in fact. The kids are playing or doing what they usually do (perhaps a little bored) and mahjong sessions are ongoing. I don’t want to give them family names, just Tita Rita, Tito Hector, Nicky (the kid). 

I think I need to paint a more vivid picture of what life was like back then for your benefit. I’m selecting photos of my youth in Baguio and sending them to you. I would like to give the impression that the film is “almost” biographical but not entirely so. So please give me another week to put something together. So there can be nothing like a murder. Psychological violence is more interesting to me. 

Pahinga muna ako, I’m always tired. 

A couple of weeks later, he followed through:

Sorry for the long silence. I’m pondering a lot of things at the moment. I haven’t written anything but the concept keeps growing in my mind that it is becoming unfeasible. I finished reading a book on the 1950s and I started reading “Cameo” last night, and I really like the way you write. 

Don’t hold me to this but I’m thinking that “The Professor’s Wife” may be the right kind of film for me but I was wondering if it can be set in Baguio. Not in my house, of course, it’s too grand for the story. I have some very dear friends in Baguio who may help me look for the right location for the story. 

I’ve been asking myself the same question over and over, do I still want to make films? It’s not just my health but a lot of other things. 

I’m sorry if I seem very unpredictable but I feel you can understand and empathize with my situation. I thought I’d be dead by now, but I’m not. 

And then:

Sorry for the long silence. My new PET scan results are not very encouraging. Although the bone metastasis has not spread (from the prostate cancer), there is worrisome new activity in my liver that was not there before. I will have to undergo a liver biopsy, an outpatient procedure but my doctor wants to have me admitted. And if I can do this early next week, it takes a week for conclusive results to come out. 

So that kinda leaves in a kind of limbo. In many ways, I feel so vulnerable, something that I did not feel when I was first diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2016. I feel that my life has just stopped. Anyway, the story I’m most interested in now is the aborted script of my own “Unfinished Business,” or its new title “Sa Bisperas” for obvious reasons. I was beginning to make major revisions when Bongbong was elected, but now it seems very appropriate to my life—an existential film masquerading as a ghost story.

Sorry about all of this, butch. I will keep you updated. Perhaps we can co-write the revisions if you are open to that sort of thing. But in the meantime, I have to try to beat this thing.

In January 2024, a year after our first contact, he wrote me:

I hope you’re doing fine and I’m really sorry for the long silence. So much is happening in my life right now but I’m still hoping to make one more film next year, that is if my medical condition doesn’t take a turn for the worse. 

I was wondering if anyone has made a film of your short story “The Professor’s Wife”, included in Manila Noir. I’ve been thinking about it and it could be something I can still do. If it’s possible, I can option it for a certain period and pay whatever you feel is a good price. The same would go for the screenplay—that you will be paid whether I can make it or not. I think it has the potential to become a small but intimate and intense film, character-based, with a murder thrown in, like Kisapmata. 

I wrote and sent him a full storyline based on my short story, but told him that I wasn’t going to bill him for anything until the project was actually underway. Six months later, on July 10, he wrote:

There are a couple of questions I should ask you right away. The professors’  academic argument, could it be about some “obscure” historical event or incident like something set during the Japanese Occupation? Perhaps an issue of collaboration. That way, we can subtly bring in the political situation today. 

Is it still possible to shoot in UP? Or in some relatively quiet location at the teachers’ village, so I can record direct sound, and avoid dubbing. It would be wonderful to set the story in Baguio, but I don’t want to force it. 

I’m going to travel in Europe in November, perhaps for the last time. My excuse is the restoration of Sister stella which is currently being restored in Bologna. I don’t have a Schengen visa and an invitation from my friend Davide of Ritrovata may help a lot in getting me one and for my caregiver as well. 

He wrote later about visiting our home on the campus, where my story was set:

I think a visit to your place would help me tremendously. There are so many possibilities to this story and since this is the first time we’re working together, I must warn you, makulit ako. But at least this time, the germ is there, the story is there. I just want to know more about the milieu. 

It’s a noir film and a social drama at the same time, I think. As I was writing, I was thinking of Cornell Woolrich, James M. Cain, and even Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley series or the Cry of the Owl, yata. Are you familiar with the 1947 film “Out of the Past” by Jacques Tourneur? 

I will continue to write down my rambling notes and send them to you in a day or two. 

He came to the house on July 29, 2024. It was only the second—and would be the last—time for us to meet. We had a pleasant chat over a light merienda prepared by Beng in our garden gazebo in UP. I can’t recall if he even touched the food; he looked pale against his usual black shirt, but then he always seemed to be like that. We discussed the revisions I was thinking of making on my story to shade it even further. He said that he found me refreshingly easy to talk to, which I was happy to hear, but at the same time we were both aware that we were dreaming up a film neither of us would get to see. 

On October 12, 2024, I got the message I could not be surprised by. I wrote back to wish him well.

I’m sorry I have to write you this email, wherever you are. I’ve been quite sick these last two weeks. I was in the hospital for several days for a blood transfusion.

My recovery will be slow, according to my doctors. But they don’t really have to tell me that. I’ve been very weak, most probably due to a multitude of causes, foremost among them is the metastasis caused by prostate cancer. 

Needless to say, I don’t think I will be able to make a film, so you might as well know now. I even had to cancel my trip to Europe. I’m sorry that I wasted your time. I hope you understand.

Best and thank you very much

Mike

Qwertyman No. 161: Torre for Senator

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Qwertyman for Monday, September 1, 2025

CAN THERE be any question that the logical next step for cashiered PNP Chief Gen. Nicolas Torre is to run for senator?

The next elections are still three years away; the newly sworn-in senators haven’t even warmed their seats. But the public disgust with the current crop—coupled with Torre’s elevation to hero status—just might create enough momentum and leave enough time for a new wave of Torre-type do-gooders to emerge and coalesce for 2028. The ongoing swell of public outrage against massive corruption in our public works could well become the trigger for a broader and more enduring coalition for good government. 

Many remain skeptical of President Bongbong Marcos’ resolve to pursue this drive to its politically torturous conclusion, but such a coalition—which can tap moderate elements from within the administration’s ranks—could force BBM’s hand, being the only viable option to a DDS resurgence in 2028. 

Let’s get this clear: BBM may not be our idea of a progressive democrat, and he’s been making the right noises not because he found religion, but because a Duterte comeback will threaten the Marcoses with more vicious punishment than they ever got from Cory Aquino. 

Still, it can only be a boon for the middle forces if he helps rather than hinders this brewing tsunami he was at least partially responsible for initiating when he publicly called out those divinely blessed contractors by name. We still don’t know what impelled him to take that extraordinary step, but now that the cat is out of the bag, there’s no pushing it back in, and the people won’t take anything less than decisive action against the greedy rich. You can feel the anger forming out there, the mob right out of Les Miserables taking to the streets, prepared to lynch the next billionaire who flaunts his or her Rolls-Royce umbrella while the poor drown in the floods. 

And the message is getting through: ostentation is in retreat, the Birkins and the Bentleys vanishing from Instagram beneath temporary covers until the wave subsides. But will it? How can it, when, trembling and fuming in their fortresses, the objects of our attention continue to manifest consternation rather than contrition? I love it when one of these clueless ingenues, in the midst of the uproar, protests that her family “owes nothing to the Filipino people, because the government paid for services (they) delivered.” 

The pretty miss obviously never heard Lady Thatcher, or even saw her meme reminding us that “The government has no money. It’s all your money.” (The full quotation, from a Conservative Party conference in Blackpool in 1983, goes thus: “Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay—that ‘someone else’ is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers’ money.”)

This brings us back to Gen. Torre, who showed the kind of resolve we’ve long hoped to see in our leaders by attempting to clean up and straighten out a national police force badly begrimed by President Duterte’s tokhang campaign and by its continuing involvement in such nefarious cases as the apparent murder and disappearance of at least 34 sabungeros. 

It seems odd that we civil libertarians should be supporting a general—and one who was ostensibly fired for ignoring his civilian superiors—but this was a man who went against the grain, who employed his authority for the tangible public good in ways that his predecessors (and yes, those civilian superiors) never did. Can people be blamed for thinking that one Torre is worth more than two or three Remullas when it comes to the delivery of public service?

And Torre was right in rejecting the notion of being designated an “anti-corruption czar” in charge of prosecuting corrupt contractors and their cohorts in government. It’s a trap and a setup, for the inevitable failure of which Torre will once again be the fall guy. Does anyone really believe that yet another toothless commission—on top of all the anti-graft and anti-corruption agencies we’ve seen come and go, and all the laws we already have in place—will solve this mess? 

The Senate could and should have been that commission, but it’s too laughably compromised to investigate its own, and their brethren in the Lower House. Perhaps we should begin by driving the crooks out of both Houses of Congress, and replacing them with men and women of fundamental virtue, honor, and decency: our Vico Sottos and Heidi Mendozas, among others. And yes, I would even include Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong in this list, despite his professed and unapologetic gratitude for President Duterte’s assistance to his city during the pandemic. His loyalty, he says, is to the people of Baguio, and I would rather believe him than all those jokers and poseurs in power who speak of corruption and even of establishing “Scam Prevention Centers” when they should be holding up a mirror to their own faces.

Hmmm, maybe that’s a good idea for our next rally against corruption—let’s bring hand mirrors, the way Hong Kong protesters carried yellow umbrellas to fight for their rights in 2014 and South Koreans lit candles to demand President Park Geun-hye’s resignation in 2016—the “Mirror Movement” to shame public officials and the filthy rich. Mga kapal-mukha, mga walanghiya. Not that we truly expect them to change, but that we expect to change them. Torre for senator!

Qwertyman No. 160: Not More Ampao

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Qwertyman for Monday, August 25, 2025

IT MAY be too soon if not downright foolish to believe that President Bongbong Marcos’ recent focus on massive corruption in public works projects represents a turning point in his presidency, and is more than another political stunt designed to shore up his popularity after the disastrous results of the recent midterm election. Critics have been quick to point out the irony of a man from a family accused of shamelessly plundering the nation’s coffers and winning back the presidency to avoid restitution now manifesting his “anger” over the billions lost to crooked contractors from the same rapacious elite—even singling out a flimsy dam project in Bulacan as just so much air-filled ampao.

And yet, despite all the predictable and understandable skepticism, I’m willing to bet my low-budget house that many millions of Filipinos of all political stripes would grudgingly if not happily forgive BBM for all his perceived debts and shortcomings if he were to follow through on this initiative with unflinching resolve. Let’s not even talk about sincerity, of which only concrete action and results will bear ample proof. 

What we need and want to see is BBM employing all the powers of his office to bring the massively corrupt to justice, to ensure the full delivery of what the public paid for with its hard-earned money, and to redeem himself and the Marcos name with acts of virtue redounding to the public good. Those acts could be worth more than the many billions his parents were charged with spiriting away—some of which has been recovered, and the rest of which the courts have effectively condoned and we will never see. With three years left on his presidency, BBM might as well use the time to attempt to do what all of his predecessors miserably failed at—go against the grain of the political culture that brought him to power and, for once, uphold the public over personal interest.

As even his detractors concede, BBM has already scored highly on two counts: his departure from Rodrigo Duterte’s catastrophic “war on drugs” that claimed thousands of innocent lives, and also from Duterte’s craven submission to China’s takeover of our territory in the West Philippine Sea. Whatever his ulterior motives may have been, his banishment of former President Duterte to the International Criminal Court at the Hague was widely applauded as a definitive step forward for human rights albeit a major political risk and a clear severance of ties to his “Uniteam” running mate, VP Sara Duterte. 

These measures—and the government’s dismissal of POGOs—were enough to make self-avowed “Kakampink” influencers such as the writer behind the Juan Luna Blog declare that “So here I am—a Kakampink still rooted in my principles—saying this with guarded optimism: This version of Bongbong Marcos is not the Marcos we feared. And if he keeps choosing accountability over loyalty, and stability over revenge, then maybe—just maybe—the Philippines has a chance to move forward.” 

Even among the moderates and indeed the Left, there seems to have arisen the general consensus that for all his problematic pedigree and personal flaws, Bongbong Marcos remains infinitely better and more “presidential” than his predecessor. And I’m sure he knows it, well enough to cultivate the image of a reasonable and well-spoken leader, the kind we porma-prone Pinoys find reassuring, at ease in the company of the world’s A-listers, in crisp barongs and smart gray suits, and most recently wearing glasses that make him look more thoughtful than ever. In short, pretty much everything the old man Digong was not (which, it should be noted, may have been the very same bugoy traits that sent the Davaoeño to the Palace and continue to endear him to the DDS faithful). Whoever his stylist is, she’s earned her keep. 

That said, his administration has been far from stellar in its performance. BBM has had the benefit of good Cabinet members such as Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro and Transportation Secretary Vince Dizon, as well as a capable and adept spokesperson in Atty. Claire Castro. (Let’s not forget that, on paper, his father had some of the best-educated Cabinet members ever—none of whom proved strong enough to bridle that regime’s excesses.) But Filipinos cannot and should not easily forget the fiscal folly of the Maharlika Fund with which Marcos II began (and about which we have since heard almost nothing), as well as our runaway debt, the dismal state of our primary education, the lack of housing and basic social services for our poor, and yes, those infernal floods that brought up all the corruption in our infrastructure programs to the surface, so starkly that BBM had no choice but to name names and point fingers.

The question now is where all that finger-pointing will lead. Some fingers will be pointing back at the President’s own political entourage as the enablers behind the billion-peso scams that he now seems so outraged by, as if they had been hatched just yesterday behind his back. Observers have noted that Congress can’t even investigate these scams, with so many of its own members likely to be implicated as either the contractors or beneficiaries in question. And for the cherry on top of the icing, consider the absurdity of a sitting senator—whose family business profited vastly from road diversions and who himself did nothing as a Cabinet member to staunch the outflow of public money into private pockets—now filing a bill to establish the Philippine Scam Prevention Center. Good Lord. Did I just hear someone say “Regulatory capture?”

Whatever we may like or dislike him for, right now, only Bongbong Marcos can sort out this mess and let the axe fall where it may—if he’s really serious about righting historic wrongs and leaving a positive legacy behind him. There’s time enough to do it—but is the will there? In his message acknowledging Ninoy Aquino Day last week—something we didn’t really expect—BBM called the occasion “an invitation to govern with sobriety, conscience, and foresight. Our commemoration achieves meaning when the lessons of the past are reflected in our actions and in the moral architecture of (our) institutions.” I hope that lofty rhetoric has real substance to it, and not just more ampao.

Qwertyman No. 158: Other Battles to Fight

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Qwertyman for Monday, August 11, 2025

A LOT has been said this past week about the 12-0 decision of the Supreme Court on the impeachment case against Vice President Sara Duterte essentially supporting her contention that the one-year rule against bringing up new impeachment charges had been violated by the House of Representatives, and pushing back the earliest date for any resumption of such charges to February 6, 2026.

Predictably, the decision raised a storm of protest involving no less than former Justices of the Court, our top legal luminaries and lawyers’ organizations, and key media and political personalities who accused the Court of judicial overreach. On the other side were somewhat more muted voices calling for respecting the Court’s judgment—including, surprisingly or otherwise, a very sedate Sen. de la Rosa, now all flush with legal wisdom and temperance; to be fair, some of these people were hardly Duterte fans, but likely just citizens tired of all the bashing going on. (The Senate’s subsequent vote to “archive” the impeachment complaint would catch even more flak.)

However this issue is ultimately settled, one thing is clear: the Filipino public’s trust and confidence in their political institutions has hit a new low. And contrary to certain suggestions, it’s not because of journalists and gadflies like me who seem keen on tearing the house down, but because, well—it’s in the nature of the beast (or the human) for something so supposedly venerable as our Supreme Court to behave strangely in certain situations. 

The controversy stirred up by the Court in the Duterte case reminded me of a passage that I quoted in my recently published biography of retired Associate Justice and Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales, who has also manifested an opinion contrary to that of her current peers. The quotation comes from the former law dean and legal scholar Pacifico A. Agabin, who wrote in his book The Political Supreme Court (Quezon City: UP Press, 2012):

“The Supreme Court, like the US Supreme Court, is both an appellate and a constitutional court. Unlike most countries in Europe, we do not have a constitutional court, and so our high tribunal performs these dual functions under the Constitution. And when it decides constitutional cases, it becomes a political body, just like the executive and legislative branches. ‘Political,’ as used here, means that it acts as a legislature, according to Richard Posner, in the sense of having and exercising discretionary power as capacious as a legislature’s. According to Posner, ‘constitutional cases in the open area are aptly regarded as ‘political’ because the Constitution is about politics and because cases in the open area are not susceptible of confident evaluation on the basis of professional legal norms.’ Thus, when the court decides constitutional cases, it becomes a political organ. Like a chameleon, it changes color and assumes a different role as a political body.

“To repeat, I use the term ‘political’ here not in its partisan sense, but more in its ideological connotations. Unfortunately, there is no dividing line between the ideological and the partisan meanings, and sometimes, these blur into each other. The court itself sometimes fall into the partisan trap.

“This holds especially true in a personalistic culture like ours, where values like utang na loob and pakikisamaare embedded in the Filipino’s subconscious.”

Now, that’s all still very high-minded, but another memory that’s even more disturbing comes from a book that I edited (anonymously, because I didn’t want to be saddled with a libel case—as its author inevitably was): Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court (Newsbreak, 2010), written by my friend, the prizewinning journalist Marites Vitug. In her prologue, she recalls this incident:

“During an interview, after I asked an aspiring candidate to the Supreme Court about the unsavory realities of the appointment process, he advised me to tread carefully. The candidate, a Justice of a mid-level court, was fearful of the effects of a book that would pry into the sanctuary of the Supreme Court and ruffle the institution. 

“Over an oatmeal breakfast (mine) and coffee (his), he worried that the public may lose their confidence in the Court. He then told me the story of a staff member of a Supreme Court Justice decades ago. This man had access to confidential information and, after learning of Court decisions, immediately approached winning litigants and informed them that he could work on their cases and get favorable results. He asked for money—and, voila, delivered them the good news when the decisions were promulgated. He always had happy clients.

“The Justice I was speaking with was, at the time, working on the Court. Disturbed by the corrupt behavior of a colleague, he reported this to the Chief Justice. However, the Chief Justice took a benign, almost indifferent view. He told the young lawyer that this would soon come to an end because the erring staff member was about to leave the Court; he held a post co-terminus with that of his boss, an associate Justice. 

“It was best, the Chief Justice said, to let it pass. He feared that if the Court acted on it and the anomalies became known to the public, confidence in the ‘last bulwark of democracy’ would wane. It was paramount to keep the institution pristine in the eyes of the public, never mind if wrongdoing was gnawing the Court.

“The Justice looked back at this moment and narrated the story to impress on me how important it is to protect the institution. For him and the Chief Justice who initiated him into this misplaced patriotism, strengthening the institution meant glossing over grave offenses.”

I’m not a lawyer (something we very often hear these days, followed by some legalistic opinion), but my pedestrian sense tells me that this Court and this Senate aren’t going to dig themselves out of the hole they’ve jumped into. Pinoy officialdom never admits mistakes and apologizes, like the Japanese do; we love to brazen it out with the thickest of cheeks. 

Given that, let’s not hang our expectations on this one peg of VP Sara Duterte’s impeachment. Whether she gets impeached or not, she’ll still have to answer for the serious charges brought against her, perhaps with even more finality than her removal from office will bring. 

February 6, 2026 is less than six months away. Let the prosecutors use the time to prepare an airtight case that will secure a clear conviction, in the court of public opinion if not in the Senate tribunal—a case so compelling that it will embarrass any senator-judge who will ignore its logic (and let’s face it, there will be many), and hold him or her accountable to the people at the next election.

In the meanwhile, we have many other and far more consequential battles to fight—our bloated budget, our growing debt, the illiteracy of our youth, the hunger and homelessness of our poor. These can’t be “archived,” and the “forthwith” on these issues came and went a long time ago.

Penman No. 476: Angels over Angela

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Penman for Sunday, August 10, 2025

AS A collector of many things old and wonderful—vintage fountain pens and typewriters, antiquarian books, and midcentury paintings—I occasionally come across the stray and even the strange object that I simply can’t say no to.

My wife and I are inveterate junkers—as I’ve often written about, we travel the world not to visit magnificent palaces, posh boutiques, or Michelin-starred restaurants. Rather, we dive right into a city’s flea markets, resale shops, and discount stores to see what treasures could be had for a song.

But travel costs money, so the next best thing is to go to the Web for the online equivalent of flea markets, among which there’s none larger than eBay, with millions of items on sale at any given minute. Having been on eBay almost since it opened 30 years ago, and with a feedback score over 1,500 (100% positive), I practically live in it, checking out its offerings several times a day, using targeted searches for certain pens, old books, and Filipiniana. 

You’d be surprised how much Philippine material exists out there. I’ve repatriated paintings, maps, magazines, engravings, and such, feeling it my patriotic duty to bring them home. I have collector-friends scouring eBay just as diligently for Philippine medals, coins, stamps, and postcards—the results of which often turn up on our own auction sites, sometimes for millions.

Another virtual flea market that junkers like me habitually visit is the Facebook Marketplace. Facebook is full of selling groups devoted to everything from antiques, collectibles, and furniture to used clothes, fake gold bars, and broken appliances. They all end up at the Marketplace—which, frankly, was the principal reason I finally went on FB, after resisting for many years. I didn’t want to make friends and influence people—I wanted to shop for cheap gadgets like used iPhones and Apple laptops (both of which I’ve bought on FB many times) as well as the odd collectible, like the 1897 two-volume facsimile edition of Don Quixote that I picked up at a Jollibee, and a large pastel seminude by the modern Japanese master Ryohei Koiso.

But as with eBay, and because we’re right at home, nothing interests me more on FB Marketplace than Philippine material, and just this past month two outstanding discoveries reminded me why I should keep an eye out for the good, the strange, and the beautiful.

The first was a stunningly lovely picture of a Filipino woman in native dress, apparently from before the war. The dress seemed to have been colorized, but by hand and not digitally as we often find these days.

As soon as I saw that picture on FB, I knew that I had to have it (or to put it more nicely, I knew I had to get it for Beng). The seller posted it as an “acrylic on board from the 1950s,” which I wondered about but was just barely possible, with acrylic paint beginning to be used in the 1940s. (All the seller could tell me was that it had come from an old house in Sampaloc, and that he had nicknamed her Esther.)

It could have been a modern giclée print or a lithograph, but assured that it was indeed a painting under glass—the seller was highly reputable and lived just 15 minutes away from me—I took a chance and asked how much. Given a quote just in the four figures (I was expecting something significantly higher), I instantly “mined” it, as they say on the Marketplace.

When it arrived, Beng and I couldn’t believe our luck. It was large and gorgeous, but what medium was it? The painting was under glass, and we could see the paint strokes but not discern the texture of canvas. There were some mold spots under the glass, and some adhesions (this is where it pays to be married to an art restorer who has done all the Philippine masters from Luna and Hidalgo to Amorsolo and Magsaysay-Ho). Beng looked more closely at the face of the woman and, informed by her practice, realized what it was—a foto-óleo! 

It was a new word for me, which of course I looked up. Google’s AI Overview had more to say about the technique behind the picture:

“Foto-óleo refers to a technique of hand-painting oil colors onto black and white photographs to enhance their appearance, making them more lifelike and visually appealing. This practice was popular in the Philippines during the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries, particularly in portraiture before the widespread use of color photography. According to the National Museum of the Philippines, it was a way for families, especially those of middle-class and prominent backgrounds, to signify their wealth and social standing. The National Museum of the Philippines and other institutions have collections of foto-óleos, some of which are displayed in exhibitions like ‘Larawan at Litrato: Foto-óleo and Picture Portraits in the Philippines (1891-1953)’.”

Before he let go of the picture, the seller asked me to take good care of his “Esther,” and we certainly will!

Just two days later arrived one of the most beautiful but also the saddest of my discoveries on FB Marketplace. My first reaction upon seeing it online—as might be any viewer’s—was a shudder of realization at what its subject was. But when I zoomed in on the details, I was soon taken and comforted by the care and love and the unspoken grief with which this child named Angela, whose passing on March 27, 1938 is marked, was sent off by her family.

These recuerdos de patay, as keepsake funeral pictures were then called, seemed more than a testament to the dead; they also exalted the living who cared enough to invoke the eternal watchfulness of glass-painted cherubs and angels over Angela.

And so began for Beng the task of restoring the funeral picture of young Angela. As the picture had presumably not been taken out of its frame for over 80 years, both the photograph and the glass were full of dust and grime. Hundreds of mold or age spots pimpled the surface.

The decorative border had been painted on the glass from the inside—but as Beng established after a quick solubility test, the painter didn’t use oil or enamel but likely tempera which dissolves in water, so she will have to be very careful to make sure its surprisingly vivid colors don’t come off. The narra frame will be cleaned and retained. It may be a morbid memento to some, but as art it gives Angela another life beyond March 27, 1938.

These two finds on FB Marketplace, heavy with emotion, reminded me that collecting sometimes goes beyond fun and profit. It involves respect and even reverence for a past that left us some brilliant images to remember it by.