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Cong Corrales

I GUESS my column, “Dongkoy’s greatest hits,” reached quite a number of netizens. As of this writing, the article has had 1,751 hits. However, it has garnered only one comment so far. “Only” because, like most writers, I welcome as much feedback from the readers. These opens me to opinions, analyses, and perspectives on issues other than my own. Thus, it improves the public discourse.

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Going back to that solitary comment, please allow me to address a certain netizen named “Dongkoy” who commented: “So you call those people who work hard to feed there (sic) families ‘Flees’ (sic) How nice of you. Filled with bias.”

First of all, I am sorry, Sir, but I’m afraid you may have missed the point I was driving at.

When I called Dongkoy Emano’s Night Café a flea market, I was neither calling the vendors names nor casting aspersion on how they work to feed their families. At the risk of sounding condescending, a flea market is defined as an open-air street market where inexpensive or second-hand articles are sold. So by definition, Dongkoy’s Night Café was a flea market, and so is Mayor Oca Moreno’s Paseo de Oro.

As for the bias part, the list was nothing but just an enumeration of incidents that happened during Dongkoy’s rule in the city. By calling it “biased,” you suggest that what I enumerated were deflected versions of things Dongkoy did—or did not—before, during, and after typhoon Sendong. I made the list to remind Kagay-anons.

I cannot help but remember the Sendong flashfloods with eerie vividness because my family and I survived it. The decision to elect him back to city hall is, of course, entirely yours.

Like most writers, I would love to get feedbacks from readers. But let’s just stick to the topic or issue at hand because I have neither the time nor patience to read ad hominem arguments. If you want a specific issue discussed in my future columns—be it local, regional, sectoral, or otherwise—just zap an e-mail to congcorrales@gmx.com.

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Before joining the Gold Star Daily, Cong worked as the deputy director of the multimedia desk of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), and before that he served as a writing fellow of Vera Files. Under the pen name "Cong," Leonardo Vicente B. Corrales has worked as a journalist since 2008.Corrales has published news, in-depth, investigative and feature articles on agrarian reform, peace and dialogue initiatives, climate justice, and socio-economics in local and international news organizations, which which includes among others: Philippine Daily Inquirer, Business World, MindaNews, Interaksyon.com, Agence France-Presse, Xinhua News Wires, Thomson-Reuters News Wires, UCANews.com, and Pecojon-PH.He is currently the Editor in Chief of this paper.