Alamon: Of patrons and martyrs (part 2)

THE previous column was an attempt to make sense of our current political culture in the face of the apparent widespread disillusionment over the latest national elections. Never has there been a roster of senators-elect that reveals the few families that make up our political elite. And if there are exceptions, they win because they offer symbolic alternatives to elite rule.

Why is it then that the people choose either political patrons or heroic martyrs?

Montalvan: Exorcising CdO from Emano

EVERY Monday morning after flag ceremony, Vicente Emano gathers all his councilors for sumptuous breakfast.

What takes place in those meetings? A former councilor told me that when he was new with Emano, he would offer suggestions during the meetings. “I would be met with a cold shoulder instead. Then I realized he loathed suggestions. All the agenda had to be his alone.”

Vugt: OFW phenomenon – an anomaly

THE fatal shooting of a Taiwanese fisherman by Filipino Coast Guards has led to harassment and attacks on Filipino workers in Taiwan. According to news reports, the Coast Guards acted in ‘self-defense.’ The Taiwanese fishing boat had tried to ram their vessel in Philippine waters and then fled. They made a chase, firing at the boat’s engine to try to stop it. A Chinese resident was hit and killed. Clearly, the report shows that the Taiwanese had violated international law on maritime waters. The victims here are the Filipino workers in Taiwan, OFWs. They are innocent and should have been spared from retaliation in this political conflict.

Libot: Image Politics

TRUTH be told, I am one of the many who did not welcome the Election of Nancy Binay, daughter of Vice President Jejomar Binay and now Senator-elect of the Philippines. Nancy Binay could perhaps be the most victimized figure of the campaign period.

And her name was subject to many internet creations, her personhood subjected to a slew of social media attacks, many perhaps starting in range of platform but mostly and quite heavily on her skin color.

Ravanera: The Many Faces of Oppression

OPPRESSION has many faces and it is committed in various ways but nothing could beat that of a tribal community that had been coerced to live with cows. How was that? Here’s the story.

That happened in Panalsalan, Maramag, Bukidnon in the late ‘60s when a rich influential man holding a high elected position from a region in the Visayas turned the barangay (called a barrio then) into a ranch. He came one Christmas day in 1969 distributing “gifts,” P20 per family (in the ‘60s, P20 is now equivalent to about P1,500). A month later, that powerful man came back with his armed cowboys, fencing the barangay with barb wires (6 ft. high) claiming that those “gifts” were his payments for the land.

Emata: A great disappointment

A GOOD number of Filipino-Americans in the U.S. continent expressed disappointment to news reports that the last midterm elections in the Philippines was still marred by massive vote-buying and other election frauds. Leaders of various Filipino communities were dismayed to learn that the elections which is supposed to be the last resort of the people to change the stature of the country was mishandled.

Luczon: Trusting the public schools

YESTERDAY was the first time I personally attended an enrolment of a five-year-old boy whose mother have been insisting for my physical presence to “show support” that Xemnaz will finally get his first small steps to the “educated society.”

Despite objections, as it has been in our family’s on-your-own tradition that enrolments are done with less supervision to parents as years would progress, so the parental duty have fell upon this writer to “show support.”

Alamon: Of patrons and martyrs

WHILE our City is in an expectant and bright mood as a result of the just concluded political exercise, the senatorial elections; however, cast a gloomy shadow over the seeming direction of national politics.

Local politics and national elections are different political beasts that are of course entangled in a warped co-dependent relationship. But while the issues of local politics are more gut-level, the senatorial elections, on the other hand, give us an insight into where we are as a nation.

Ravanera: A book God wrote

WE are now on the 13th year of the 21st century but we don’t know anymore if we can reach the 22nd century which is only 87 years away because the global system is now collapsing. We must now be imbued with a new Gaia consciousness to nurture God’s vanishing creation. To partake of that consciousness, it behooves upon all of us to read seriously the book that God has authored, written in his own handwriting.

That book is opened 24 hours a day and has no literacy requirement for it is not written in alphabets and can be well understood using not one but five senses.

Luczon: Dawn of the new Thinking Class?

THE success of Mayor-elect Oscar Moreno in thrashing the empire created by Vicente Emano in Cagayan de Oro is just one of the few developments in the local elections in Mindanao, as a greater picture, and how possibly the majority of the people think and decide whom to vote in this age of much recent technology.

Vugt: Happy birthday to the Church!

ON SUNDAY, May 19, we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, the coming down of the Holy Spirit over the Apostles and the entire church of Jerusalem. It was the birthday of a new church, the Church of Christ, the Christian Church.

Happy birthday to our Church! The Holy Spirit has been inspiring me also to write my columns in Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro under the theme of “The living Spirit.”

Van Vugt: A plea to our new Mayor Oscar Moreno

I CONGRATULATE Oscar Moreno for his winning as mayor of Cagayan de Oro City.

Finally we got rid in our city of a political kingpin and a notorious vote-buyer. I myself could not cast my vote in the elections because I am still considered to be a foreigner despite my having worked in the Philippines for over 50 years for the welfare of our nation.

Alamon: Survey says

NOW that the elections are over and we have the official results for the city's mayoralty race, it would be timely to go back to the Xavier University survey released just several days before the elections.

Montalvan: Writings on the wall

THE story amazed me for its candor. An old acquaintance from an urban poor community in the city admitted that he voted for Oscar Moreno. What was unusual was that he was one of the community leaders for Vicente Emano in his neighborhood. He was buying votes in behalf of his master the mayor. It makes us more curios to ask - how many of Emano’s leaders did the same?

Libot: Triumphant

DID Oscar Moreno really win?

If you go by the figures, he already earned majority with 109,886 votes. 17,853 more than his rival Vicente Emano. And with the Comelec proclamation, it’s a done deal.

Ravanera: Co-op Ville

IT HAS been said that we can live without food for 40 days, without water for eight days and without air for eight minutes. But we cannot live even for three seconds without love!

Without that love, some 300 families, who were all rendered homeless by Tropical Storm Sendong, would still be shelter-less. Thanks to the kindred spirit, thanks to the cooperatives that have exemplified the 7th cooperative principle, which is “Concern for the Community,” to the highest degree.

Emata: The hidden wealth

I CANNOT figure out if the Philippine government is really innocent about hidden wealth of government employees, or just quietly working on it to pinpoint later who are possessing millions worth of property scattered in foreign lands more particularly in the United States of America.

Faith in Kagay-anons restored

WHAT happened last Monday was perhaps the beginning of the Purple Empire’s fall and a manifestation that the power is still in the hands of the people. The 38,000 voters’ signature more or less, who petitioned to have a recall election against the incumbent mayor last year maybe a failure, but it succeeded in this year’s elections.

Probably God heeded the prayer of the many. And then one morning, Cagayan de Oro City is a little sunnier, after 15 years of being overshadowed by smog of fear and ignorance. Today, Kagay-anons have regained their pride and dignity, for breaking from a spell that was going to killing them in the end.

Emata: Vote buying remains the king

THE notorious art of Philippine politics surfaced clearly in majority of the places in the country immediately before and during elections day, it was learned. It is an illegal exercise that surprisingly never sent a politician, a leader or just anyone to jail despite its practice every election season. It is a system that made many politicians successful in their campaigns and also electorates who made money out of their votes.

This thing cannot be stopped. The reason is, a lot of candidates engaged on this system of vote-buying to win and the matter is perhaps one of the most difficult things to prove. After its elections, people and the government forget everything about it and go on their normal style of living.

Luczon: Prayers

DEAR God,

Last week, thousands of Malaysians came out on the streets to protest the election results in their country because of alleged cheating by their ruling political coalition. Hopefully today, we won’t experience what they have experienced here in Cagayan de Oro City whose fate lies in the hands of the people.

Speak Out: Mom’s vote

BEING a mother is a choice we get to make in a lifetime.

Some of us become birth mothers by circumstance, as I have become; some of us are thrust into the responsibility of motherhood without so much a thought or a warning.

Libot: The Sacred

HOW much is your vote?

When you take that stack of cash, is that the price of your future? It’s never really easy to make calls on the value of a vote. Many of us put out the fancy “my vote is sacred line” and it’s almost universally agreeable that if you say it isn’t, you’d be a fool - heck, a traitor to a more nationalist cause. The recent Ra-Ra from the Comelec on the money-ban to stop vote-buying only cements the message that vote-buying is bad, it is evil, and it should be stopped.

Alamon: Face Off

WHILE his supporters lined the streets hoping to get in, the incumbent arrived early and quietly sat at a nondescript plastic chair. He spent his first few minutes at the venue alone, and in silence - his entourage of violet-clad supporters giving him a wide berth.

Montalvan: Dongkoy’s delusion

IT IS all about character.

Because public office is a public trust, those entrusted with public responsibility are expected to do so with virtue.

Libot: Do We Need More Journalists?

THE power to publish has traditionally been a seat only occupied by an institution we herald as the Media, it has been tasked to regulate information and its institutionalized role of filtering content through its editorial board has always been seen as a sign of stability and accountability.

Ravanera: Empowering the poor and the vulnerable

IN his Excellency’s five (5) Social Contract Priorities with the Filipino people, “poverty reduction and the empowerment of the poor and the vulnerable,” has loomed as the most critical path for the simple reason that it is the one where all other priorities are inextricably linked, such as, i) inclusive, rapid and sustained economic growth; ii) just and lasting peace and the rule of law; iii) transparent, accountable and participatory governance; and iv) integrity of environment and climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Alamon: The center

WHILE we endure the heat of the times brought to us by the tail-end of the season, the election season, I strongly feel that we must recall the events of that cold and tragic early morning more than a year ago to give us a necessary perspective.

Ravanera: Co-ops scaling the heights

IT IS just amazing!  Here’s what everyone should know especially the 700,000 members of the cooperatives in Region 10.  People from all walks of life are joining cooperatives as a means of empowering the people to have access and control over their resources and utilities.

From 7,196,097 cooperative members nation-wide, when Dr. Emmanuel M. Santiaguel, Ph. D., took the cudgel as the new chairman of the Cooperative Authority on January 6, 2011, now upped to 11,622,479 cooperative members – a staggering increase of 4,426,382, after just two years of his effective leadership.

Luczon: Political fan clubs

PROBABLY most of us already have bets of political candidates who will land on our ballots this May 13. Maybe, some of us do not consider them just as good candidates who, we believe, will bring forth good governance, but to a certain point, the ones who will save our souls from the wretched democratic system that we are in.

Emata: Long live press freedom

ON MAY 3, we celebrated the 20th WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY.

I salute to the thousands of journalists around the world who went down to their graves because they wrote the truth of news stories.