Butch Bagabuyo “The family is more sacred than a state.” – Pope Pius XI “To be ignorant of what happened before is to remain a child forever.” - Cicero HOME is where one starts, T. S. Eliot once wrote. However, because of the culture of impunity spawned by debilitating greed, our government and private business conspired in constructing houses instead of homes which our country is in dire need of. In 1964, world-famed composer Burt Bacharach and Hal David co-wrote a truism into a song which became a movie of the same title,  “A house is not a home,” starring Shelley Winters and Richard Todd. Ironically, our 1987 Constitution, perhaps due to the brutal experience during the ruthless conjugal dictatorship, willingly defied an ideal constitution which should be brief yet concise. So instead of following the traditional separation of Church and State, the chosen few commissioners of the late and well-loved President Cory wrote four Sections in Article XV of our Constitution on the family, hoping in vain that our government would protect and not interfere with the family. But as we now know, the state chose to dip its dirty fingers into the affairs of our families. Now, what we have is family culture that is alien to Pinoys. Because of our penchant to imitate and adopt the culture of the West, we have become Asian in looks but Americans in lifestyle. Gone are the beautiful Filipino tradition of a family where the father is the head and bread-winner while the mother is the queen and keeper of the purse, and in-charge of developing if not, fine-tuning our unique heritage as Asians. Luckily for us, despite everything, God has not abandoned us! While the western lifestyle has made our children independent from their own families and rebellious to our beautiful tradition, God, in His infinite wisdom, created out of the blue, the kalyeserye––a unique type of bringing to fore the beauty of the Filipino way of life as opposed to the western lifestyle of to each his own and live and let live. ‘ I’m not privy to what the producers of the kalyeserse have in mind. But whatever they may have thought of, the play on the streets where the poor live in the concrete jungles of Metro Manila has taught millions of people all over the world that “poverty is not a sin.” If I may add, God loves the poor so much more than anything else because He has created so many of us. Now, He is teaching us through the kalyeserye that life is not about wealth and worldly possessions but about simple joys and happiness in the thought that one may be lacking in material possessions but extremely happy because he has a family to call his own in a home that may only be a hut that is a bedroom, a sala and a kitchen all rolled into one, for everyone to share with. It is so unlike the expensive and exclusive villas of the rich and powerful but no one there to call your family in the confines of a home. Kalyeserye pa more! Tsada, di ba?
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“The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.” –Carlyle, Heroes and Hero worship The main reason why I’m almost certain that PNoy would end up where his predecessor is now is because he insists to this very day that he has succeeded in his governance of “matuwid na daan.” However, other than the greedy “Hyatt 10,” who are now lording over the entire cabinet, and the Liberal Party, everybody knows that only PNoy is following his own mantra. The rest are taking undue advantage of PNoy’s arrogance in refusing to listen to anyone but his own. Mar Roxas, I’m afraid, is going the way of Gibo Teodoro in the time of the former President GMA. In the last presidential elections, at about this time, all the trapos and the filthy rich were using most of the money stashed from the government coffers to buy the political survey-takers kuno to make it appear that Gibo was improving in the surveys. But the truth was the undeniable fact that the trapos and the filthy rich were secretly giving the rest of our money to the campaign funds of the then senator Manny Villar. The latter, using his own private funds, played his game so well that he consistently topped all surveys until the end. Today, I suggest you take a closer look at the two “presidentiables” supporting the infamous “Daang Matuwid” and you would readily see what I mean. Right now, the government is spending lavishly for the candidacy of both its “presidentiables.” But each of them are, of course, keeping close to their chests their own financed private surveys. So please don’t be surprised if by October 16th this year, the first deadline for the filing of the certificates of candidacy, both “presidentiables” would have practically identical senatorial slates. They would, however, differ in their local candidates. But fear not. Mindanao’s landslide victory is a certainty. And please let me repeat that in the most likely event that Davao Mayor Rodrigo “Super Digong” Duterte becomes the President on May 9, 2016 either of our country or the Independent Federal Republic of Mindanao-Sulu-Palawan-Tawi-Tawi, this is what we can expect of him:
  • Strictly impose our God-given right to have a revolutionary government within the first six months of his term by abolishing Congress but encouraging free and independent (not owned by dummies) private media fairly competing with the government propaganda;
  • In the interregnum, adopt and implement a unique (true to our ideals and culture as Asians) federal-parliamentary government down to the lowest level of governance; and,
  • Simultaneously with the imposition of a revolutionary government, call for a “Concon” based on demographics and reorganizing the Comelec from top to bottom but providing employment to the good ones and forcing early retirement to the rest.
Lest I forget, our young and idealistic IT wizards volunteers should already be opening the Twitter and Facebook accounts “Du30AtoNi.” After all, our country is composed mostly of the poor, the deprived and the oppressed. So we are the “Aldub nation.” And “God gave us you.” Tsada, di ba?