The police could have secured and cordoned off the region, and equipped the team with the proper tools.  The media could have coordinated with the police to get the best possible coverage without undue interference.  The President could have appeared earlier to address the issue, not to catalog facts in the dead of night.  All of these exist in the conditional tense; the “could have been’s” and the “what if’s” of a situation gone horribly tragic.

Whatever drove Rolando Mendoza to hold tourists hostage, and to start shooting them afterward in an act of madness, is something he took with him to his grave.  We’ll never know the method to madness, unless we grow mad ourselves.  Yet what we can evaluate and speculate about, at this point, is the madness from otherwise sane people: police using sledgehammers on the bus doors and windows, the media who covered the incident shoving cameras and microphones everywhere, and the authorities who failed to exercise control.

The “could have been’s” and “what if’s” dwell on the things magnified by high drama.  The lack of police training and equipment, the overt disregard of restraint and prudence by some members of the media, and the Government conspicuous by its absence in crucial and critical moments, are things that were already there in the first place.

Every instance of crime – whether it’s murder, a hostage situation, or robbery – should highlight a dysfunction in institutions that keep and maintain social order.  In this case, those dysfunctions were magnified, underscored, highlighted, spread, and emphasized.  Like the grief, indignation, outrage, and anger that followed the bungled incident.

What makes this tragic – and what makes all tragedy, Shakespearean or Sadistic – was that the plot, given the tableau and the scene, will have a heart-wrenching ending.  What could we expect from people whose sense of justice comes from the barrel of a gun?  What could have we expected from an ill-equipped police force, a media force that wasn’t reined in and allowed to intrude, or a Government that was taking too long to scale the learning curve?

The blame for this rests solely on the institutions of control, for the fact that they did not exercise that duty.  They could have secured the area to make sure the media doesn’t penetrate the hotspot.  They could have prepared themselves enough to face the situation head on, without having to bungle right then and there.  They could have broadcast a statement to appease the people, instead of showing off poor tactics in front of an international audience.  It didn’t happen, and a tragic incident unfolded.  The system, out of our control as it already is, spiralled further out of control.

What makes it even more tragic is that despite the often-toxic blame games that take place, the “could have been’s” and “what if’s” are all painfully obvious.

A catalog of solutions follows.  One would be to reform the police: to train them properly, to provide them with the right equipment to deal with extreme situations, and to compensate them properly.  One would be for the media organizations to come together to create protocol that satisfies the coverage of extreme situations without being intrusive.  One would be for This Government to grow a backbone to face the people without the benefit of messaging or tactics, and to exercise command responsibility and most of all, the ability to command.

When we surrendered ourselves before the judgment of the international community, we can only hope it’s for the best.  If Emile Durkheim was correct to say that crime serves the function of being a prelude to reforms, then for our institutions, the reforms are urgent and extreme.

Yet we can’t expect it to: not here, where hindsight became eight bodies and a murderer.

Although the sight of Reps. Suarez, Syjuco, and Magsaysay dancing to this little jig right here is just wrong, but:

Wala naman sigurong masama kung ilalagay mo ang pangalan mo at picture mo lalo na kung gwapo ka o maganda ka… Iyong sa President, sa pagkakaalam namin, ayaw niya na nilalagay iyong pangalan niya tsaka iyong kanyang mukha. Kung ayaw niya, okay, ‘wag ilagay, pero kami naman kung gusto naming ilagay sa aming distrito, sana naman ‘wag kaming pakialaman. Kanya-kanyang discretion iyan.

- PDI, 8/16/2010

Uhhh… yup, I’m going there.

Wo-oh oh-oh yeah.

All The Guvmint Projects (If You Made It, Then You Should Have Put Your Name On It)

Adapted from “Single Ladies” by Beyoncé

All the guvmint projects, all the guvmint projects
All the guvmint projects, all the guvmint projects
All the guvmint projects, all the guvmint projects
All the guvmint projects…

Now put your hands up!

Up in the club, you just put up
Thought I owned the whole damn thing
I decided to dip, and now you wanna trip
‘Coz another Mayor noticed it

I’m up on him, he’s up on me
Don’t want his reelection
‘Coz I put up that bridge, for three good years
You can’t be mad at me

If you made it then you should have put your name on it
If you made it then you should have put your name on it
Don’t be mad once he says that he made it
If you made it then you should have put your name on it

Wo-oh oh-oh, wo-oh-ohh-oh, wo-oh, wo-oh-ohh
Wo-oh oh-oh, wo-oh-ohh-oh, wo-oh, wo-oh-ohh

If you made it then you should have put your name on it
If you made it then you should have put your name on it
Don’t be mad once he says that he made it
If you made it then you should have put your name on it

Got your mug on the sheds, your signs on the trees
Got your name on the roofing sheets
Acting up when you tell me to stop
I couldn’t care less what you think

I need no permission, when I mention
I put up that irrigation
‘Coz you had your turn, but now you gonna learn
What it really feels like to be me

If you made it then you should have put your name on it
If you made it then you should have put your name on it
Don’t be mad once he says that he made it
If you made it then you should have put your name on it

Wo-oh oh-oh, wo-oh-ohh-oh, wo-oh, wo-oh-ohh
Wo-oh oh-oh, wo-oh-ohh-oh, wo-oh, wo-oh-ohh

If you made it then you should have put your name on it
If you made it then you should have put your name on it
Don’t be mad once he says that he made it
If you made it then you should have put your name on it

Wo-oh oh-oh, wo-oh-ohh-oh, wo-oh, wo-oh-ohh
Wo-oh oh-oh, wo-oh-ohh-oh, wo-oh, wo-oh-ohh

Don’t tell me I can’t paint my name on this world
Or the tarps that I’ve unfurled
The projects I prefer, or I deserve
Is a name that makes me, then takes me
And delivers me to a destiny to infinity and beyond
So let me put up my signs
Say, “Priority project by”
I’m not another unknown
‘Coz I’m a freaking solon

All the guvmint projects, all the guvmint projects
All the guvmint projects, all the guvmint projects
All the guvmint projects, all the guvmint projects
All the guvmint projects…

Now put your hands up!
Wo-oh oh-oh, wo-oh-ohh-oh, wo-oh, wo-oh-ohh
Wo-oh oh-oh, wo-oh-ohh-oh, wo-oh, wo-oh-ohh

If you made it then you should have put your name on it
If you made it then you should have put your name on it
Don’t be mad once he says that he made it
If you made it then you should have put your name on it
Wo-oh oh-oh

If you made it then you should have put your name on it
If you made it then you should have put your name on it
Don’t be mad once he says that he made it
If you made it then you should have put your name on it
Wo-oh oh-oh

That’ll do.

It is silliness to remain thinking these people are the “helpless and innocent” ones.  Just think, there were 20 improvised explosives, besides the pillboxes, that were found in these shanties during the demolition.  Think of what these people are capable of.  If only it were directed to a more productive way, these people could be contributing citizens of the society.  But they choose not to.

I repeat, they have a CHOICE.  Poverty is no excuse.  There were a lot of those who have been poor but were able to rise above it, through honest means.

- Compassion or Justice? @ Prudence, M.D.

In many respects, yes, when people start throwing pillboxes at police officials and resort to violence to defend “their property,” it is wrong.  Then again, demolition – with the presence of authority figures who are anything but prudent and just in the exercise of their duties – is itself a form of violence, so it gets eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth really fast.  Of course it’s not compassionate for police officers to violently disperse people who are there fighting for their right to abode, but it is not just for people to merely occupy a space for their own without thinking of the right of the property owner for that land, too.

I think that as long as we look at things in the black-and-white of who’s right and who’s wrong, we’ll always have a problem with informal settlers.  We’ll be stuck in that cycle of settlers occupying land, and authorities taking people out of that land.

A quick paraphrase of Amartya Sen’s approaches in economics: that for us to be able to exercise choice, we need to have the capability to make that choice.  Let’s take housing as an example: the right of abode and changing of the same is something doubtful because we don’t know whether:

• We should be provided with land and houses, and/or the materials should be provided for us;
• Our land and houses cannot be taken away from us, whether we’re in it or not in it;
• Both.

As such, the definition of the right remains in doubt.  As long as some form of development affects rights, we’re faced with that dilemma; there are many barriers that keep us from doing things completely from choice or legal procedure.  Indeed, some things get in the way of our right to abode and changing of the same:

• Can we afford the house and do we have land to put it in?
• Do we have the education and training necessary to earn enough money for a house?
• Could we sustain ourselves when we buy this house and not have to worry about food and shelter?
• And so on and so forth.

They aren’t “responsibilities,” as much as they are “obstacles” to freedom.

Choice occurs when the barriers are removed, and the individual has the access and freedom to exercise the choices available to him or her.  Many of the poor lack the education needed to succeed in life, live by a constrained set of values, and simply do not have the capabilities to exercise their rights within what the educated and learned members of society consider “just” and “fair.”  If they knew better ways to do things within their pool of choices, then there wouldn’t have been any need for pillboxes or heart-wrenching photos of old women packing up their meager belongings.

The excuse to poverty is a lack of proper care and education: lacking the tools necessary to rise above their condition.  It’s the realization that the poor cannot be productive members of society if the first recourse of enforcing the law is to force them out, so they can occupy another space.  Poverty is the deprivation of one’s capabilities, and therefore the poor should be accorded with the capabilities to exercise those rights and make life meaningful for themselves.

It means access to healthcare, education, and social services – for free or within the limits of what they can afford without depriving themselves – instead of dole-outs of food and undeveloped relocation centers without prospects of development.  It will take a while before the most indolent of our archetypes could be convinced to help himself, but I have no doubts that most of the poor would rather have a hand-up for capabilities, than a handout of land parcels and government relief.  Most poor people I know rose above poverty not because of a Horatio Alger story, but because of the opportunities that opened up capabilities.

I’ve always advocated education as a tool to improve one’s lot in life, but only with a proper one does it become the great equalizer and provider of opportunities.  Yet quixotic as that hope may be, I look at South Central Farm can be an example of how we can rise above the indignity of being a “squatter” and make productive use of idle land through community farming and community building in urban areas.  I already wrote about this before, so please take a gander here.

Informal settling is unjust in the sense that it takes away individual rights to property, in the same way that violent dispersal is unjust in the sense that it is an affront to human dignity.  In the end we not only seek compassion, but also justice; that the way to freedom is always paved by broken barriers, so to speak.

The blog is an intensely personal medium fortified by friendships and networks, the most formal being very loose associations, but there was never a need to “accredit the blogosphere;” the handful of those actively seeking accreditation not (and never) representative of the entire population of bloggers in the Philippines.

As a blogger, I understand where Tess Bedico (in invoking Regina Bengco) are coming from: more than territorial pissing, it’s to uphold journalistic standards in the Malacañang Press Corps.  Sure, a passionate blogger would have all the right to get all riled up and perhaps even insulted with being called hao-shiao (to drive the point home, fake journalists), but it stops at the swipe.  The rest of the rant, where “blogging is the future of reporting” and “some journalists are hao-shiao anyway” fall under the category of conjecture.

It’s a tired line from those making noise in the periphery (including myself), but again: journalists can be bloggers as bloggers can be journalists. The relationship between bloggers and journalists is a matter of difference, not inferiority or superiority.  That comes with the caveat that every blogger who writes about current events and politics is a consumer of “traditional,” or “mainstream,” media; an opinion-maker in a symbiotic relationship with the journalist.

If by hao-shiao we mean that flak-vest wearing usisero who is a journalist by virtue of the occasion where he or she happens to have a media pass or a press ID, then the derogatory statement is not without basis.  Hao-shiao applies to bloggers as it applies to journalists in pretty much the same contexts: freebies, perks, the buffet table.  That said, it is insulting, and perhaps Miss Bedico and Miss Bengco went overboard with that.  No matter how small the audience for blogging is, it is still an empowering tool for citizens to disseminate information, views, and opinions.  And yes, there are bloggers out there who adhere to the standards and ethics of journalism, and there are journalists who blog.

Moving forward, I suppose the minimum expectation of the Press Corps reporter is to write the news, report on the hour, by the hour, everything newsworthy that occurs in the beat: something that bloggers with other commitments and responsibilities cannot fully commit to.  There are codified standards of objectivity, detachment, accuracy, and style in journalism that run counter to the “anything-goes-it’s-my-space-so-it’s-my-opinion” styles in blogging.  If a blogger, or a group of bloggers, under independently-funded associations and online publications could accomplish the barest minimum, then well and good.

Sure, there’s merit in putting commentary writers on the Malacanang Press Corps if Ricky Carandang sees it fit to put them there, but how can the MPC police its ranks and uphold its own standards to people who aren’t journalists?  The absence of, and the recalcitrance towards, all-encompassing “bloggers’ associations” should be that clarion call that blogging is, at its worst and at its best, an intensely personal medium.  Everyone with a blog has a stake in that word and in that practice, so if you accredit a blogger as a blogger then you might as well accredit every applicant and let them in State functions as a matter of “fair coverage.”

Accreditation is not a matter of granting permission, but institutions recognizing institutions (a lot like the relationship of CHED with colleges and universities).  It is hubris to think of individuals as institutions, or such a diverse group of different people with diverging opinions writing in their own personal spaces could be lumped under an “institution” without their prior consent.  They have as much right to the word “blogger” as everyone else who has a blog, whether they mind their own business in a space called the blogosphere or fight for some higher abstraction beyond the individual (like society, polity, the economy, and so on and so forth).

On a question of accreditation: my stand is no. To accredit one is to accredit all, so tough luck finding that “all,” whether we encourage bloggers to form their own media agencies or whatnot should be a challenge to whoever seeks that holy grail.  It’s about adhering to standards, following practices, and living and working by a code of ethics: the things that make journalism a profession as much as it is a vocation.  As parochial as it may seem there’s the matter of paying your dues and earning the respect of your peers once accredited: the by-the-hour, on-the-hour reporting expected of every member of the Press Corps, pulling your own weight under the merciless world of news, looking for the best angles and distilling the information as best you can.  We need not do that when we blog, where – outside the requisites of civility and magnanimity where necessary – there aren’t any rules.

It’s a “when-in-Rome-do-as-the-Romans-do” thing: that the moment your lanyard bears a media ID meant for journalists, it behooves you to act like a journalist and practice that vocation for as long as you’re with them covering.  Otherwise – and this is just my personal opinion – there’s nothing wrong with the Aquino administration inviting bloggers to Malacañang every now and then for the President to share his thoughts, to learn from people who have opinions, and basically be the welcome host to his (hopefully regular) guests, the bloggers of the Philippines.  Maybe it would do him some good to listen to empowered citizens from where he is, more than being covered by them wherever he is.

Let me get back to that “periphery” and “difference” thing I was rambling about earlier.  I think that coming to terms with that periphery has more importance than writing “in protest” of mainstream media.  There will always be a need for the journalist to report the news as comprehensively and objectively as possible, as much as there’s a need for the blogger to interpret the content of the news to as far as his or her personal biases will allow him or her to do so.  For the blogger, I think it is from the periphery where he or she has the most freedom, and therefore the most power.  To move to the center is to give up a lot of that freedom, a lot of that movement and dynamism, and in effect become part of the old guard.

In that periphery, where the rules have nothing to do with how to write and what can and cannot be written about, the blogger has the ability to influence and to empower.  Perhaps that freedom, when used wisely and prudently, has far more value for the citizen journalist than an MPC accreditation, don’t you think?

I wrote before that L’Affaire du Le Cirque was insulting and disgusting not because of the political and legal concerns that it raised – something that GMA and her peons were very willing to argue from – but because it hit the Filipino smack dab in the stomach, where it hurts.

Impunity – or for all intents and purposes, bastusan - works as an excellent coercive tool because there is perceived power in being bastos, that in some interpretations, it is power.

Every act of impunity, especially when it takes place in the political sphere where participation is a privileged position, is a slap in the face where turning the other cheek becomes somewhat expected.  Le Cirque, police sirens on civilian and government vehicles, and the name of a city councilor on a waiting shed is expected: to do otherwise is either innovative or idiotic.  That’s how impunity works: it shades the world in black, and all sorts of different shades of gray, and to practice it is to exploit every degree in the gray area.

Then we forget: Le Cirque is all but forgotten, GMA entering and leaving Congress at her whim, vindicated by every minor – if not momentary – triumph of amnesia.  She’s no longer that wine-swilling, steak-wolfing Head of State who feasted at the expense of a nation in mourning, but a President with a legacy in coffee-table books that take us on a joyride to every claim.  She’s now a hardworking Representative, working alongside her son who wants to experiment with tricycle receipts and swear upon all sorts of dander and dash that he’s the best representative for security guards.  Yessir, she got away with it.

Of course, all of this is expected.  In a country mired in poverty, it’s only expected that the rich flaunt their wealth, the powerful use the iron hand, and the rest just shush while God’s in His Heaven and all is right with the world.

I believe we’re on the right track with this Administration: getting rid of wang wang, and penalizing people who name public works after their forebears, that’s a good start.  In the quest for making Gloria pay, maybe we should demand the meal receipt that, somewhere along all the headlines, got lost.  With measures against impunity somehow taking center stage in the Aquino administration, there’s a faint expectation even in this hardened, if not rabid, government skeptic: that at least for the next six years, none of this would be expected.