SAD but true, Philippine elections are by and large premised on but the popularity of the candidates—over and above any other attribution objectively required by effective governance and accordingly expected by the general public. This pathetic phenomenon has special relevance to the incumbent national leadership elected into the presidential office but some months ago. What is even more distressing in the instant case is that the popularity in question is not even earned by the public official concerned—but simply inherited, deservingly or otherwise.
As factual as the sun rises up and eventually sets down, the popularity herein under particular consideration is following exactly the same route. It was at its peak on the occasion of a burial prior to the national elections. The same popularity is now fast going down precisely on account of one too many questionable—juvenile—options and actions. While is it not yet true that these are already the times that try man’s soul in the country, it is nevertheless true that something smells pretty bad in the air.
This is exactly the problem when the popularity of an elected public official is slowly but surely eroded by incompetence in governance—notwithstanding all claims and pretensions to the contrary. As administrative competence becomes more established and pronounced in the course of effective governance, incompetence too becomes more conspicuous and evident as futile governance progressively comes to fore. What is truly deplorable in this disastrous situation is that its eventual victims are always the same, i.e., the people governed.
And this is exactly the markedly adverse socio-economic reality now obtaining in the Philippines—courtesy of an incompetent governance that cannot be salvaged by merely romantic anecdotes and jokes. In this gloomy situation, there is something that begs to be mentioned, no matter how depressing and woeful it is. This: The incompetence of a leadership cannot be reversed by the competence of its subordinates. Reason: Someone incompetent does not see much less realize and actualize competent advisories from his underlings.
Past government officials who engaged in reeking graft and corrupt practices remain free and happy. People are becoming even poorer and more miserable. Prices of basic commodities continue to rise while wages and salaries remain stagnant. Men and women remain the primary foreign means of livelihood of the government. Criminals are becoming more in number and audacity. “Drug mules” remain standing realities. Want to hear more?
OVCRUZ, JCD
6 April 2011
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Monday, April 04, 2011
Gross default in the RH Bill
SEX. METHODS. NUMBER. This is the shameful tripod of the infamous RH Bill that continues to divide Filipinos—irrespective of their beliefs or religious affiliations. Whether the division is in effect the Machiavellian intention behind the Bill in order to weaken the progressive popular dissatisfaction against the Malacañang occupant—this is another question, another story. But the fact stands that for its incompetence, insensitivity and confusion, the national leadership is slowly but surely losing more and more of its once faithful followers.
The gross default of the RH Bill is the marked absence of the human person in its long litany of envisioned big benefits to Philippine society. It is good to ask: In the last analysis, without the human person justly considered and rightfully attended to in any social venture, what is there really worthwhile bothering about—in truth and in fact? And this is exactly the reality behind the RH Bill when denuded of its pretentious concern for the good and welfare of the People of the Philippines.
Sex divorced from the human person becomes but a piece of meat. It is then made to stand as but the carnal means to enjoy and delight on—without relevance to the dignity of the human person and to the fundamental Ethics that governs human acts. Withdrawn from its human premise, sex becomes but an instrument of instinctive satisfaction proper of irrational beings devoid of responsibility and beyond accountability.
Methods on how to enjoy and delight in sexual acts without its inherent significance and import—this is the central concern and main preoccupation of the Bill. What to wear and to drink as well as what will be subjected to surgical intervention—these are the main means forwarded by the Bill in order to separate the right to copulate from the obligation appended to copulation in terms of possible conception.
Number specifically resorted to in the sense that less is definitely better than more, that less people is infallibly better than more people, and that less people automatically means the disappearance of poverty and the emergence of social development and economic prosperity as a matter of course—this is core content of the thesis of the Bill. Never mind the root cause of poverty and misery in the country. Simply make the number of people less and less, and there will be more and more prosperity—ipso facto.
The nature and dignity of the human person, the ethical norms that regulate his or her conduct or behavior for responsible actions, plus the moral parameters that rule his or her actuations for principled living—these are irrelevant to the RH BILL.
+OVCRUZ, JCD
4 April 2011
The gross default of the RH Bill is the marked absence of the human person in its long litany of envisioned big benefits to Philippine society. It is good to ask: In the last analysis, without the human person justly considered and rightfully attended to in any social venture, what is there really worthwhile bothering about—in truth and in fact? And this is exactly the reality behind the RH Bill when denuded of its pretentious concern for the good and welfare of the People of the Philippines.
Sex divorced from the human person becomes but a piece of meat. It is then made to stand as but the carnal means to enjoy and delight on—without relevance to the dignity of the human person and to the fundamental Ethics that governs human acts. Withdrawn from its human premise, sex becomes but an instrument of instinctive satisfaction proper of irrational beings devoid of responsibility and beyond accountability.
Methods on how to enjoy and delight in sexual acts without its inherent significance and import—this is the central concern and main preoccupation of the Bill. What to wear and to drink as well as what will be subjected to surgical intervention—these are the main means forwarded by the Bill in order to separate the right to copulate from the obligation appended to copulation in terms of possible conception.
Number specifically resorted to in the sense that less is definitely better than more, that less people is infallibly better than more people, and that less people automatically means the disappearance of poverty and the emergence of social development and economic prosperity as a matter of course—this is core content of the thesis of the Bill. Never mind the root cause of poverty and misery in the country. Simply make the number of people less and less, and there will be more and more prosperity—ipso facto.
The nature and dignity of the human person, the ethical norms that regulate his or her conduct or behavior for responsible actions, plus the moral parameters that rule his or her actuations for principled living—these are irrelevant to the RH BILL.
+OVCRUZ, JCD
4 April 2011
Friday, April 01, 2011
“Kawawa naman, walang magawa ang payaso”
Thus thinks and speaks a leading national broadsheet about the antics of someone who precisely appears to have the haughty Spanish blood and flamboyant spirit of “Damaso”
running in his veins and invading his mind. Translation of the above perception and description of the character concerned: “Pitiful clown with nothing to do.” Someone who has nothing to do is bad enough as he is pathetic. Somebody who is a clown is both the source and object of jokes, of ridicule and laughter. This is also why clowns hide their faces and persons behind ridiculous make-up, exaggerated clothing and antics.
The current Damaso caricature is a good jumping board to bring to fore certain relevant as well as significant on-the-ground realities about the Church as an institution that has been operative on the imperatives of reason and the article of faith. It all began some two thousand years ago—and that Church is all around. She, yes “She” as a loving and caring mother, started local then went regional and has become truly global, long since. Not only her enemies but also her own members have repeatedly and earnestly attempted time and again to stop her, to ruin her, to make her disappear from the face of the earth. They are all gone and the church is still around.
Human history, for what it is worth and what its import is, has long since evidenced and affirmed the following more relevant and simple sound and solid truths about the church:
One, it is downright impossible to silence the church in proclaiming the objective truths about humanity and the world—in the here and now as well as hereafter and beyond. There must be thousands if not millions across the centuries, who attempted to muffle her, who earnestly tried to make her deaf, dumb and mute. But all of them are gone—silent and quiet—and the Church remains well and around.
Two, it is quixotic to fight the Church. Many in tenure of brute power and might already and repeatedly tried to down her, to do away with her, to make her disappear. But it is they who eventually failed to fight their own sickness and age. Yet, the Church remains well and round.
Three, it is a big exercise in futility for individuals and organizations, governments included, to tell the church what to think and say, what to do and refrain from doing. However, the time infallibly comes when it is the church that’s stands as a witness to their death and burial—while she remains still in teaching the truths she holds dear, in defending the norms and principles she considers good and proper, right and just. Again, the Church remains well and round.
OV CRUZ, JCD
1 April 2011
running in his veins and invading his mind. Translation of the above perception and description of the character concerned: “Pitiful clown with nothing to do.” Someone who has nothing to do is bad enough as he is pathetic. Somebody who is a clown is both the source and object of jokes, of ridicule and laughter. This is also why clowns hide their faces and persons behind ridiculous make-up, exaggerated clothing and antics.
The current Damaso caricature is a good jumping board to bring to fore certain relevant as well as significant on-the-ground realities about the Church as an institution that has been operative on the imperatives of reason and the article of faith. It all began some two thousand years ago—and that Church is all around. She, yes “She” as a loving and caring mother, started local then went regional and has become truly global, long since. Not only her enemies but also her own members have repeatedly and earnestly attempted time and again to stop her, to ruin her, to make her disappear from the face of the earth. They are all gone and the church is still around.
Human history, for what it is worth and what its import is, has long since evidenced and affirmed the following more relevant and simple sound and solid truths about the church:
One, it is downright impossible to silence the church in proclaiming the objective truths about humanity and the world—in the here and now as well as hereafter and beyond. There must be thousands if not millions across the centuries, who attempted to muffle her, who earnestly tried to make her deaf, dumb and mute. But all of them are gone—silent and quiet—and the Church remains well and around.
Two, it is quixotic to fight the Church. Many in tenure of brute power and might already and repeatedly tried to down her, to do away with her, to make her disappear. But it is they who eventually failed to fight their own sickness and age. Yet, the Church remains well and round.
Three, it is a big exercise in futility for individuals and organizations, governments included, to tell the church what to think and say, what to do and refrain from doing. However, the time infallibly comes when it is the church that’s stands as a witness to their death and burial—while she remains still in teaching the truths she holds dear, in defending the norms and principles she considers good and proper, right and just. Again, the Church remains well and round.
OV CRUZ, JCD
1 April 2011
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