No impunity

NEW normal for protests.

Last June 12, a “lightning rally” composed of 10 persons and lasting for “only half a minute” was held along Gorordo Ave. to protest the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020.

As reported by a SunStar Cebu team on June 12, professor Regletto Aldrich Imbong, president of the All UP Academic Employees’ Union at the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu, said the “lightning rally” responds to the present intolerance of the police for mass assemblies beyond 10 persons.

Convenors of the Movement Against Tyranny (MAT) Cebu and the Youth Act Now Against Tyranny (Yanat) Cebu, which organized the June 12 lightning rally, protested police discrimination in allowing supporters of the same bill to disperse “at least eight minutes” after their assembly in downtown Cebu. No riot police present.

Why should dissenters of the bill be singled out for violent dispersal and arrest?

Based on grammar and praxis, there is no distinction between “riot police” or “anti-riot police” because, as seen from the June 5 dispersal and arrest of dissenters, the formation outside UP Cebu of the Civil Disturbance Management Unit (CDMU) of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) turned a group of 30 or so persons into a riot requiring “hot pursuit” of unarmed rallyists by heavily armed officers.

During the Marcos years, activists covered their faces with “tubao” (woven indigenous scarves) because agents in civilian attire, mingling with rallyists and spectators, were filming and photographing street protesters for the dossiers compiled by the police and the military.

Smart phone videos of the June 5 incident uploaded by UP students and faculty confirmed that operatives in civilian clothes emerged from the crowd and chased the rallyists when the order to disperse came from police higher-ups. They breached the low walls of the academe, with some snatching at and wrestling with rallyists helping companions being manhandled by these operatives.

Police presence in UP Cebu, as well as allegations of campus guards cooperating with the police in the June 5 dispersal and arrests, must be acted upon by the UP Cebu administration.

Such acts violate UP autonomy from military and police interventions, as sealed by the 1982 accord signed by student leader Sonia Soto and then defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile; the 1989 agreement signed between UP president Jose Nemenzo and then secretary of the national defense Fidel Ramos; and the 1992 agreement covering the Philippine National Police (PNP), signed by UP president Jose Abueva and then Interior Secretary Rafael Alunan III.

Police impunity should not be part of the new normal.




Mouthwash? Tom and Jerry image sourced from bbc.com



(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)


* First published in SunStar Cebu’s June 14, 2020 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Engage

WHEN my paper was rejected by a journal, what took the edge of the rebuff was the rebuff itself.

The rejection motivated because it ignited a new way of approaching the problem. All because the editor “engaged” with my writing.

In the age of virtual connections, doesn’t the verb “engage” have an antediluvian ring? Yet, even a dyad, facing each other, has to work with, not against, each other. Talking at the same time means no one is listening.

Each could pretend the other doesn’t exist. That only means the parties are not “engaging,” a Middle English word combining “in” and “gage,” the latter meaning, in French, “pledge” or “contract”.

A social contract honors the principles of engagement: dialogue, argumentation, even dissent. What makes a drawn-out, messy process valuable at the end is the participation of all parties, not just the privileging of a few dictating and imposing the terms of “engagement”.

Despite a century of student activism, some at the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu conflate dissent with subversion. When students marched in October 2016 to demand a dialogue with then acting chancellor, lawyer Liza D. Corro, she and some members of the faculty locked the doors of the Performing Arts Hall (PAH) to prevent the activists from “storming in”.

The barricade made a parody of consultation: UP Cebu constituents were at the PAH to participate in the livestreaming of the search forum for the next UP president, yet our acting chancellor refused to face students protesting over facility rental fees imposed without consultation.

In the confusion of people appointing themselves the guardians of the PAH doors, an open backdoor allowed the students to slip in. They marched to the front; made their ear-splitting chants; jabbed with their fists; and walked out.

The acting chancellor might have appreciated that the protest was over in less than ten minutes. But she had slipped out after ordering me to message another teacher to face the protesters, many of whom were Mass Communication students.

On Nov. 29, after the UP Board of Regents’ votes are tallied, UP Cebu’s next chancellor shouldn’t even just focus on the activists, noisy though we may be.

Swathes of silence simmer in the university. To interpret these constituents’ silence as contentment with their lot is to close one’s mind to “endo,” “JO (job order),” and “agency-hiring,” variations of the same iniquity denying fellow workers the rights and benefits of regular employees.

Only in nominee Rolando B. Tolentino—teacher, activist, public intellectual— do I put my faith in leadership that will listen to the voices, clamorous, discordant, silenced. Listen and engage.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)



*First published in SunStar Cebu’s November 18, 2018 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Soul search

THERE is more to the search for the next chancellor of the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu than a contest between the incumbent, lawyer Liza D. Corro, and the challenger, professor Rolando B. Tolentino.

That is how a newspaper framed the “fight”.

The writer missed the story. When the storyteller misses, the story slips past and disappears.

A university is not a boxing ring. To be sure, there are passions seething or running rampant but these are details, not the story itself.

The story are the students. They are proof of life beyond the campus. The monks in the Dark Ages saw themselves as the keepers of enlightenment. They copied books by hand and preserved knowledge while the monastery walls kept the world, savage and cretinous, at bay.

Monks, no matter how learned, wither. Libraries, no matter how great, crumble. As it was in the Dark Ages and in every period thereafter, the world overruns enclaves of learning and unheedingly proceeds with its business.

So is the academe mere shadow on the wall of history? Covering priests squabbling over parish assignments and plum salaries, I wrote that a church of the poor should nip venality at its seminaries.

Two friends—a former seminarian and a former rector—observed that temptations begin in the seminary, where students watch the priests come to class with the latest car model or dangle a medallion that can serve as the cat’s saucer.

We covet what we see. We become disciples of our mentors. We practice what we learn.

Enrolling last August at UP Diliman, I swam in a raging current of students hoping to qualify for a slot. Free tuition in state colleges has spiked the desirability of UP.

Any of those private high school students I queued with have better chances than others of getting in UP. They are better fed, better educated, better supported. Even in UP, excellence is still a sieve privileging the privileged.

What do we give the young who swim against tremendous challenges? An overweening belief in the individual, entitled to reap the rewards of their striving?

Excellence alone will set UP for obsolescence. Only honor and excellence are UP’s true hallmarks, my teachers say. As I say, too, to my students.

The world is such that we in the academe must connect with the “barbarians” at the gates. We are them. By definition, the Middle English “university” traces its roots to the Latin “universitas,” meaning “the whole”.

As alumna, teacher, and student, I believe that UP Cebu should be led by professor Tolentino as its next chancellor. He can catch the tail of the story, steer UP Cebu to find its soul. All else is a march beyond the pale.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu’s November 11, 2018 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Paper cuts

WHEN you write, you make an incision. You make a cut and think you know what follows.

Sometimes, the writing surprises. The sliver opens and a stranger looks out. You cannot look away. You can. You want to. You don’t want to.

Writing is pain. It should come with the standard warning for danger zones: DO NOT ENTER.

I should have said this when I was invited by the “Tug-ani,” the official student publication of the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu.

Michelle Grace Cabrales, a Business Management student who’s the current Tug-ani EIC, and her team invited writers to discuss the craft and make a critique of articles submitted by the participants.

I chose covering human trafficking to jumpstart the talk on features, which two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jon Franklin likens to “news of the emotions”.

Students of UP and the University of San Carlos showed up for the Friday talk, which included fellow teacher and writer Joanalyn Gabales and our resident cat, Walter Stefano.

Our small group discussed after my talk our reactions to four articles written by “Tug-ani" writers. Claire Michaela Obejas, a Psychology major who wrote one of the articles, asked how one knew which voice to follow when a writer found herself shifting from one point of view to another in the course of writing an article.

During the workshop, my response addressed the question as a technical one involving planning and publication: on an assignment, a writer discussed with the editor the desired format, angle, length, and deadline.

If contributing an article, a writer has better chances of publishing if he or she scopes out the targeted section, the ratio of text to graphics, and the targeted audience.

Yet, Claire’s question went beyond the challenges of deadline and market. Striking out beyond the safe harbor of information and “verifiable” truth, a writer can wander without noticing into the quagmire of memory, introspection, and self-conflict.

When one finally notices the water rising, what act of self-preservation does one choose: retreating back to the shallows or going into the deep?

In a movie directed by Wong Kar-Wai, a journalist and a secretary discover that their spouses are having an affair.

“In the Mood for Love” is set in Hong Kong in the 1960s, which Wong depicts as a claustrophobic prison of cramped apartments, nosy neighbors, and double standards.

Albeit betrayed, the protagonists do not want to betray their spouses. Or think they don’t.

Not even his profession in dealing with truth saves the man from self-deception.

Beyond the tidy rules of grammar, writers learn that paper cuts are the deepest, “the most unkindest cut of all”.



*First published in SunStar Cebu’s July 16, 2017 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 0917 3226131)

“A very bad man”

IN the strange saga of Ferdinand Marcos, his many burials should qualify for a citation in Ripley’s “Believe It or Not!,” an illustrated series about the bizarre.

While exiled in Honolulu, Marcos died on Sept. 28, 1989.

After President Corazon Aquino banned his remains from returning, he was stored in a refrigerated crypt in Honolulu.

Under President Fidel Ramos, the body was transferred from Hawaii to Ilocos Norte on Sept. 7, 1993. Marcos ended up in another refrigerated crypt, which became the major attraction at the Ferdinand E. Marcos Presidential Center in Ilocos Norte.

President Joseph Estrada resurrected the move to bury Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, but cancelled the planned burial on July 11, 1998 in the face of fierce public opposition.

In 2011, President Benigno Aquino III delegated Vice President Jejomar Binay, who recommended the interment of Marcos in his hometown of Batac, with full military honors. PNoy ignored the Binay proposal.

Last Nov. 18, 27 years after his death, Marcos’s remains were finally buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani during a “private burial” that took place at noon.

In this predominantly Catholic country, burials traditionally take place at 3 p.m., timed with Jesus’s death on the cross.

While workers broke off for lunch or stepped out to withdraw their yearend bonus before the weekend queues and monster mall sales began, Marcos slipped in to lie down with heroes, a place history denies him.

This actual “private burial” contrasted starkly with the mock public burial of the effigy of Marcos at the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill last Nov. 15.

I interviewed Linya Ocampo Fernandez, 17, who created with her father, Raymund, the effigy buried in the “Libingan ng mga Basura,” as well as the dummies of the nine Supreme Court magistrates who ruled that President Rodrigo Duterte was within the bounds of law in ordering the burial of Marcos at the Libingan.

Soft-spoken and calm, Linya often collaborates with Mons, the latest being the dictator’s likeness constructed from chicken wire, stuffed with garbage, and used clothes, including a fake medal.

On a rickety cart, the effigy of Marcos had its mock wake at the University of the Philippines Cebu’s Oblation Square before joining multi-sectoral participants of the mock funeral march and burial.

Given only three days to make the effigy, Linya recalled that she and her father were still enthusiastic about the commission. She said that, after living through Martial Law, her Papa did not want his children to go through a similar experience.

Linya learned about the Edsa Revolution from her elementary teachers but read little about “what actually happened” under Martial Law in textbooks. Now homeschooled by Mons, Linya understands that the late dictator was “a very bad man”.

She recalls tagging along with her father to a rally protesting against the vice-presidential bid of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. After listening to survivors talk about how their children and classmates disappeared during Martial Law, Linya realized how the late dictator was “much much worse than what I had imagined”.

“I heard that kids my age like Bongbong Marcos' s son who they say is very ‘gwapo’,” she emailed. “I think that if they had the chance to listen to victims, they would change their minds… I hope they won't vote Sandro Marcos for president.” 


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 0917 3226131)

*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s November 20, 2016 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Crossover

MORE than a line is needed to connect two points.

Blame it on the heat, which dissuades us from leaving our homes for the outdoors unless the consequences of not doing so are dire enough.

Or on rage, which displaces the discourse that should be taking place face-to-face and online as the election approaches.

Actual or polemic, the heat serves a purpose: we draw back, evaluate. How we deal with the heat tells us something about ourselves.

Over the past weeks, for three occasions, I crossed over from my building to the Performing Arts Hall, venue for three forums.

Even in the heat, the stroll required physical exertion that paled with that expended by workers contracted to tear up and rebuild the city’s streets. Yet, every time, the walk had a disproportionately rewarding effect on me.

Crossing over is more difficult in the world of ideas than in the physical world. The closer one works with ideas, the greater the risk of ending with a closed mind.

The trap is sprung after roaming in innumerable rooms, we settle for the one room we enter to escape from the rest of the world. Then we lock ourselves in and throw away the key to be sure we are beyond the threat of ever wanting to leave the sanctuary of our beliefs.

Ironically, the new media that brings down walls and penetrates borders also feeds an atavistic instinct for self-defense. Freedom is frightening. We want our chains. We “like” only those we think are like us; we “unlike” those that betray this assumption.

So the challenge to “Free your mind”—the theme of this year’s “Mass Communication Days” at the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu—seemed self-flagellating, a typical academic exercise in futility.

Fortunately, these past two weeks were bookended by speakers who showed why communication is the antidote to the disruptions that split apart and set society adrift.

Last Apr. 8, Jiggy and Marnie Manicad walked the audience through the art of storytelling, from the perspectives of traditional television journalism and the brave new world of media content creation.

The UP Cebu forum was a continuation of the “Jiggy Manicad TV Lectures,” a free series conducted by the couple in public and private schools all over the country. Alumni of UP Los Baños and UP Diliman, respectively, Jiggy and Marnie continue to pay forward, professionally and personally.

In his Apr. 12 interactive talk on “War and Media Studies,” Prof. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya peeled away— text by text, image by image—the layers by which mainstream media constructs and feeds Islamophobia.

By talking about his actual experiences as a journalist witnessing the “Arab Spring” in North Africa and Libya during the NATO bombing campaign and meticulous reading of media coverage, the UP Cebu visiting professor showed how Islamophobia, not Islam, is the demon lurking behind every act of terrorism.

Sun.Star Cebu editor-in-chief Isolde D. Amante closed the last forum on Apr. 14. She pleaded convincingly for “The Case for Journalism” by pointing out how, despite shifting technologies and vogues in business models, the act of witnessing and truth-telling remains timeless.

Freed from all fears, including resistance to self-examination, the communicator is well-adapted to the media landscape, crossing over to worlds and ideas once feared as alien and alienating.


*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s April 17, 2016 edition of “Matamata,” the Sunday editorial-page column