News From the Funny Farm

As if the House of Representatives wasn't chaotic enough the Supreme Court recently ruled that more seats must be allocated to party list groups, increasing the number of seats for such groups by 29. There is now a total of 51 party list seats, up from 22. That does not include the 219 congressional district representatives. So let's see, this brings the final tally of congressmen to... TOO MANY. A report by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines states that each congressman essentially costs PhP 200 million in pork barrel, and that Congress recently increased its pork allocation by PhP 2 billion for a total of PhP 9.665 billion. I don't vouch for the accuracy of this statement, but if it were true then the recent en masse addition of congressmen might just break the bank. The lower house (so called for the depths to which many of its members stoop) may have to be referred to as the poor house.

But congressmen have more important things to worry about than the cost of additional congressmen and who is paying for all this (us taxpayers, of course). Their primary worry is the shortage of office space. One report says that existing congressmen refuse to share their offices with the newcomers. That comes as no surprise. Said one congressman, "We are not doctors so why should we share offices?". Tama nga naman - they are not doctors. They create problems, not cure them.

I will raise a howl of protest if the House announces that it needs a bigger session hall in which to conduct its business. Congress doesn't need a bigger session hall, it only needs to run its business more efficiently. And more intelligently. If we consider that congressmen are notoriously absent when it comes to attending sessions then a rotation system of attendance can be easily adopted. For example, those congressmen with vehicle registrations ending with 8 can be absent on certain days. Or all days. Wait a minute, all congressmens' vehicles end with 8. So there's the solution. Congress might just work more intelligently if everyone were absent.

That Failon Incident

[Oops! I deleted the following post by mistake when all I wanted to delete was a picture. Originally posted on April 20 or thereabouts. My bad...]


In a fatal shooting incident celebrity radio talk show host Ted Failon’s wife dies, raising questions as to whether it was suicide or parricide. Even before she expired, however, the tragedy nearly turned into farce with the scene-stealing actions of the Quezon City Police and of Persida Rueda Acosta, chief of the Public Attorney’s Office.

On the shooting’s being reported to the police they proceeded to the Failon residence in the upscale Tierra Pura Subdivision in Quezon City, where they discovered that the household help had washed the blood off the bathroom floor. Inspite (or maybe because) of the presence of television cameras the police arrested the household helpers and forcibly hauled them into waiting police cars on the ground that they had tampered with the scene of a crime. Which raises the question: had a crime really been committed? At this point that has not yet been established. I squirmed watching the scene on television as the household helpers’ lawyer pleaded with police to be allowed to speak with her clients. She also unsuccessfully invoked her clients’ right to be informed of the charges against them.

Act two of the police drama had them arresting the victim’s siblings while they kept vigil over her in the ICU. Again, news video footage shows the police collaring and dragging the victim’s brother to a waiting police van. What looks like two plainclothes policemen then jump into the speeding vehicle and restrain him further, never mind that he is in handcuffs. According to news reports the siblings refused to answer questions propounded to them by visiting policemen. The policemen also wanted to take paraffin tests off the victim’s hands. No doubt these are standard procedures, so why all the fuss by the police? They were obviously rebuffed by the siblings but what ordinary citizen wouldn’t act in the same manner given the callousness that the police had been exhibiting in carrying out the case? If accounts are to be believed, this includes making fun of and posing for photographs with Failon when he appeared at police headquarters.

Enter Persida Rueda Acosta of the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO), which defends indigents in criminal cases. She insinuates herself as Ted Failon’s lawyer on the ground that the PAO had agreed with the National Press Club to defend its members whenever the need arises. No one disputes that Failon is entitled to counsel, but indigent he is not and can certainly afford his own lawyer. I admire Acosta for her staunch defense of the rights of poor accused, even if these are in high-profile criminal cases: no other person has raised the consciousness of the public about the importance of the PAO to the Philippine justice system. Inexplicably, Ms. Acosta forgets that the household help languishing in jail on obstruction of justice charges are too poor to obtain legal assistance on their own credit and, hence, are excellent candidates for her office’s services. But then TV news doesn’t give too much coverage to household help. Her stout defense of Failon prompts Acosta’s boss, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales, to call her crazy.

All the while, the public’s appetite for news can’t get satiated enough and Failon is in the unfamiliar position of having to plead for his privacy. To his advantage, the information flow is controlled by his employer, ABS-CBN, which has been pushing the suicide theory non too subtly. It is also getting exclusive public interviews with family members, leaving the other news networks in the dark.

From tragedy, to police drama, to low comedy - this is how The Failon Incident is developing. And like any primetime TV drama, there are winners and losers. The losers: Ted Failon, who has suffered a grievous loss and whose reported senatorial ambitions are scotched until the truth about this gripping whodunit finally comes to light. Then there is the Philippine National Police that – try as its superiors might to polish up its image with smart slogans and conspicuous billboards – is stymied by the antics of its Keystone SPOs. The winners: ABS-CBN in the battle for the network ratings and - tadah! - Attorney Acosta who, given her high public profile of late and having been bestowed by no less than Secretary Gonzales the tagline “that crazy woman”, might be able to convert this into a successful Senate candidacy. After all, crazier people of lesser achievements have accomplished that feat.

The Case of Odd Albert Wilson

Of late the media have been closely following the Daniel Smith story. The most recent article I read was that in the Inquirer that proclaimed, "Smith Gone With the Wind". The article rues the American marine's immediate departure from the Philippines upon his acquittal by the Court of Appeals of having raped a Filipina whom we all know as Nicole. My reaction to his departure - good riddance and not a moment too soon. What do we expect him to do upon his release, anyway: visit the local tourist spots and sample the nightlife, maybe?

This reminds me of a case I handled when I was a new lawyer in a Makati law firm. It involved a British national who was accused of having raped the twelve year old daughter of his Filipina live-in partner. The trial court convicted him but, on appeal to the Supreme Court, the court acquitted him on the ground that the accused's conflicting and oftentimes fantastic testimonies cast doubts on the existence of any crime. While the case did not gain the widespread attention of the Smith case, it did warrant some passing mention in the British press. This was at a time when the death penalty was in effect for rape cases - the death penalty has since been abolished - and the UK government was concerned about the British public's response to the execution of one of its own in a foreign land (read: in a third world country).

The accused Albert Wilson was not the most sterling specimen of a subject that the UK could offer. Down and out and possessing a petty criminal record for theft prior to his having landed in the Philippines, he nevertheless unshakeably maintained that rape was a dastardly act to which he would never stoop. He also sincerely adored his live-in partner. They were a fit. She couldn't be said to be a Filipina beauty - fugly is how they now call it. She was devoted to him, bringing his meals to the municipal jail each day, washing his clothes, and allowing him to enjoy his fair share of conjugal visitation rights. But submissive she was not and she would fight him and threaten to leave him when he would get despondent over his incarceration and blame her for spoiling her daughter, a daughter whom he took as his own, and fed and clothed, etc, etc. at which point they would both break down and cry and hold each other. Whilst I silently cursed my boss for having assigned me to this case.

Wilson was also a lawyer's nightmare client, refusing to accept advise and perrenially overriding accepted legal theory with his own version of reality. His downtrodden demeanor masked a condescending attitude that many foreigners affect toward the locals of developing countries, an attitude that in all probability earned him the shoddy treatment he complained of at the hands of prison officials and other inmates. In a book he later published he accuses his legal counsel of a shoddy defense, forgetting that it was his counsel's own efforts at drawing out the inconsistencies and fabrications of the accused that moved the Supreme Court to overturn his conviction. I should point out that it was that same legal counsel who represented Wilson all the way to the Supreme Court. Wilson also never settled his huge legal bills which were, at the embarrassed request of British embassy officials, waived by legal counsel.

I had since left the employ of the law firm, but one day several years later Wilson's lawyers received a phone call from the national penitentiary, informing them that they had just received the Supreme Court's decision and would they be so kind to collect their client? This was at five o'clock in the afternoon and, aware that there was a BA flight to Heathrow Airport that evening, his lawyer rushed to the penitentiary and retrieved Wilson. As the party was about to proceed to the airport Wilson resisted and said that he was not leaving the country without his Filipina partner. Embassy officials went apoplectic and told him that they were having none of that, whereupon he threatened to stay on in the Philippines and they relented. For good measure, Wilson demanded that they issue a UK resident's visa or he would come back to the Philippines. Oh yes, and for her son, too. British good sense prevailed and Wilson's precious cargo of partner and son were immediately given the necessary travel documents, visas, and put on the plane that very night.

In a bizarre epilogue, I learned that a year after Wilson's release the accuser, his partner's daughter, demanded to be reconciled with her mother in the UK. Once again, Wilson threatened to return to the Philippines unless Her Majesty's government issued to said daughter the requisite permits to visit and stay in the country. And so were they united in the United Kingdom as one happy (albeit dysfunctional) family: accuser, accused and partner.

Taken, the Movie

I just finished watching the action thriller Taken, which stars Liam Neeson. It's fast-paced and overloaded with cool fighting moves and, when it ended, I sat staring at the screen, my breath taken away. Not because of all the crazy action, but because of the sheer audacity with which the movie has taken to new heights the image of the upright American versus the rest of the evil world, characterized by Albanian flesh traffickers, corrupt French police, and fat old wealthy Middle Eastern tycoons who just want to have sex with American teenagers.

In the movie, Neeson’s character, retired US secret agent Brian Mills, searches Paris for his 17 year old daughter who, while on the first stage of a grand European vacation, is kidnapped by a white slavery ring. In the process he kills a hundred bad guys (I actually forgot how many guys he killed, but he did kill all the bad guys), accuses his former French law enforcement colleagues of being ingrates for not being more helpful, and leaves behind a trail of catastrophic vehicular pile-ups. Is this movie trying to say something about Americans, as in, let them into your country and expect them to wreak havoc? Is it a rant at external forces that Americans feel helpless to do anything about? Or is it just a good old fashioned smash ‘em and bash ‘em? Hmm, let’s dissect this.

Americans are great tourists, just lousy guests. I remember a railway trip I once made from Paris to Barcelona. In the first class car that I was riding were a couple of Japanese, a Swiss family, a sprinkling of French and Spanish, and two American couples. Watching the south of France roll by is a pleasant activity when you’re travelling along that way but not, as I discovered, when you have to share the railcar with Americans who talk in loud mid-Western accents for all the world to hear about their homes, their children, their dogs, the heat of Europe in summer and the enduring complaint that no one speaks English. After five or so hours of having to suffer this (during which time none of us other nationalities stood up for our rights for them to be silent) the conductor came along and requested les Americains to please pipe down, to which one of the women answered, “It’s alright, we’re American”. Chastened, the hapless conductor slunk back to wherever it was he came from. Sigh. And we were just so close to enjoying the scenery. Such effrontery! Such incivility! Such disrespect for the locals! Such... Oh well, it could have been worse. Look at Baghdad.

Back to Taken, the action was great and the fight scenes showcased Brian’s ability to massacre an entire village of Balkan thugs with his bare hands ala Jason Bourne. Never mind that this is happening while he is being shot at from all sides and not being hit. This reminds me somewhat of Michael Douglas demolishing Japanese gangsters in similar fashion in the 1989 yakuza movie Black Rain. This was at a time when Japan was at the height of its economic might and the Japanese were on a US real estate buying spree and setting up Honda and Toyota manufacturing plants in the American heartland. So we’re on to something here – as America's xenophobia grows and Americans see the world as an incomprehensible babel of foreign languages and sinister palette of skin tones, they face their fears in the best way they know: Hollywood style and kickin’ the s__t out of any foreign-looking dude.

In the end, it's a good old smash and bash flick - I loved it! Still, however, the ideologue in me managed its revenge against the American imperialists: I watched the movie on a pirate DVD. Take that! And that! Oomph, ugh, (groan)...

Good Friday, 2009

Every year I approach the Holy Week with a certain amount of trepidation. As the city's denizens make the trek back to their home provinces or flee the country to escape the heat, Metro Manila winds down and its incessant hum comes to a stop. Shopping malls shut, streets empty, and there is only stillness. It was worse when I was a kid: in the days before cable television the only shows that the TV channels aired from Maundy Thursday to Black Saturday were The Robe, The Ten Commandments, and Ben-Hur. It's uncanny how from one show to the next the characters all looked and talked alike - hirsute and with the voice of God. It was a penitent's dream blockbuster lineup. Denied all distractions, there was not much one can do but look inward. Which is not always a pretty sight. Hence, to this day, the trepidation.

But bad television and the severe silence notwithstanding, I've come to accept the Holy Week and embrace it. For one, traditions that I would not normally notice are served up sometimes spare (the starkness of a church whose statues are covered in purple cloth) or sometimes gaudy (the last mass at which the priest washes feet while incense lingers in the air and the choir chants tantum ergo), enriching symbols of my Catholic beliefs of faith, charity, and hope.

Hope, most importantly. In a world hit by one financial crisis after another, rocked by national and international (not to mention my own internal) conflicts, yet never once losing its commercial bustle, these few days give me an opportunity to reflect about my place in it and to discover - once again - that redemption is always an available option. That though I sometimes do things that I'm not necessarily proud of, I must always strive to be a better person - sometimes failing, but always trying. To me then the Holy Week closes the circle that begins at Christmas, revealing to us that the story that starts off with great joy, and is marked with great loss and sadness in the Passion, ultimately ends in glory and triumph. Now that, as the philosophers say, is what life is all about. Happy Easter to all.

Fashion Forward: Plaid Shorts

If life is lived out in cycles then I'm at the stage of plaid shorts-all-over again. Twenty or so years ago I discovered my father's bermudas in a box of old clothes that my mother was about to hand over to her favorite charity. Constructed of weathered yellow madras cotton, with pink, orange and green checks and stopping just short of my knees, they were perfect for achieving that non-chalant (but obviously studied) prep school look that was just then enjoying a renaissance. You wore these with battered boat shoes or white canvas tennis shoes, a pastel-colored sport shirt and you held it up with a web belt of any primary color. If you sported a tan and spoke with the right accent, you might have gotten away with lying that your family owned a boat.

They were perfect for summer - indeed, defined summer by being worn at the beach, on campus or on lazy afternoons at home. GQ featured lean bronzed Scandinavian types lounging around in them, inexplicably looking serious even though they were surrounded by seriously hot-looking women. The Preppy Handbook, that satiric guide to all things preppy, was closer to reality when it showed them being worn by pale-faced chunky college students with beer bottles attached to their hands. Probably not unlike my dad's bermuda-wearing days in the late 1950s to early 60s, too.

Just recently, I came across racks of plaid shorts in the mens section of my favorite department store. They're now called cargoes and reach beyond the knees and - with a shape that's more tapered than their 1980s forerunner (actually closer in form to the 1960s version) - still evoke memories of vacations spent at the polo club and of my math teacher's long lectures during summer make-up classes. The twenty-something salesgirl assisting me explained that they are the latest summer fashion, to which I remarked that these were the thing in my time (without specifying when that was), to which she could only uninterestedly answer, "Oh, really?". I was going to explain further but stopped myself. After all, every generation should think that it has discovered something new.