NOUN. Great delight.
I’m over the moon when Curlee finally named the crocs. The crocs, confident they have Curlee under their control, clearly forgot. They are the dirtiest among the dirty. And Curlee apparently realized that.
For indeed, what are 40 brand new cars to the congressmen’s multi-billion stash?
Apparently, Curlee realized that given they’re going to lose everything anyway, it’s better to expose the congressmen for what they are now than remain silent and become the scapegoat.
For they may be able to afford a Rolls Royce because of its payong, but even the Rolls Royce is just barya.
Curlee himself admitted that his company earned more under PRRD because no one was demanding their shares. This despite having a lot of contracts terminated.
As contractor, it’s clear. You earn more, in honest money, when corruption is tamped down to the minimum.
But with the government budget in the hands of Martin and Zaldy, you will get more (if not all) contracts. Except that, you’re just the dummy given pittance to their condominium unit full of cash.
Now, everyone’s talking.
Flashback, 2018, when I created a tiny shockwave in my tiny space on Earth after resigning at the peak of my career.
Now it can be said: media is dirty. Very dirty. And it nauseates me that those we see daily on television are the dirtiest. The attack and collect radiomen in the provinces are nothing but bit players happy with a thousand or ten. The bigger the name, the bigger the payola. And in the metro, it runs in the millions.
I’ve been sneered at by my aunt, who happened to be the first woman police general in her time.
She was telling me that those anchors all had monthly allowances in hundreds of thousands of pesos. And that was in the 1990s. I brushed it off, my naive self believing they’re too upright for that.
Then PRRD became president, and I find myself staring at the truth and hearing their made up “truth”. And the main reason being, the payolas have been cut and naive probinsyanos have taken the helm of government offices, clueless about the millions in payola that is SOP.
Down here, the realization that there is a puppet master and the big names are all puppets, made bile rise up my throat. The industry I was so proud of being part of isn’t the vigilant truth finder I thought it to be. I quit. Period.
I’m praying that not only Martin and Zaldy and all those sleazy congressmen will be exposed, but also the sleazy media, as well. Tama na ang pagkukunwari.
-o0o-
Stella, former editor-in-chief of SunStar Davao, is a Pranic Healing educator and an Arhatic Yoga practitioner. Email: saestremera@gmail.com, fb: /saestremera, IG: @saestremera