TRASH

by Dean Francis Alfar

  He used to say that the Philippines is the most democratic country in the world. Even the dead can vote, and they do so multiple times.

  I wish there were a way to stop these ghostly voters. They’re obviously not very up-to-date – they keep voting the wrong people into office!

  The Power of the Purse

  I sometimes wonder if the widening gap between the rich and the poor is a conspiracy on the part of the elite to make bribery more viable to those of us who have been graced with the public’s trust and interests.

  My father is quick to point out that I am considered part of the elite – my family is well-off (some would say rich, but I’ve seen how the rich live and I stick by my self-assessment) and our relatives are involved in politics – but my own earning capacity is limited and I’m just not that close to my politically active kin.

  My father also points out that given the oppressive unpredictability of our current institutions, it’s not hard to imagine that some of my former classmates, co-workers, and blogcasting colleagues would be strongly tempted to engage in envelopmental journalism (slanted articles in exchange for cash, often in an unmarked envelope). Money could be tight, a crisis could rear its ugly head, and in a moment of weakness you are ensnared.

  I hope that I’m never placed in that position. I came back from the States with so many hopes for the future of the Philippines – if someone as screwed up as I was could change his ways, surely this country can make a similar recovery.

  Then again, we’d need a strong disciplinarian of a leader, and I don’t think we’d like that, no matter how well-meaning the leader might be. We prefer leaders who say what we want to hear, who hand us our thirty pieces of silver before stabbing us in the back. We prefer to believe in baseless promises of freedom, security, and comfort, rather than paying the price that those luxuries demand.

  TRO means Temporary Restraining Order

  For those of you who haven’t caught the news yet, a Makati regional trial court has issued a TRO against the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), ordering them to take down an article on their blog on the basis of personal privacy. The subject of this article – an exploration of the credentials and history of the administration’s audio-visual expert Jonathan Mallorca Tengco – seems to have touched off a firestorm of media attention.

  While I respect the organization’s recognition for the rule of law, I find this roundabout censorship of a news agency’s article offensive. Therefore, I’ve provided a link below where a PDF version of the article can be downloaded. I’ll take it down when the TRO is lifted (or expires – which is more likely).

  Download: Resident_Expert.pdf

  Fellow bloggers, download this and post it on your sites. Share them with everyone (but don’t forget to attribute the article properly).

  Oh, for those of you who don’t want to be slapped with a temporary restraining order, I’ve prepared the banner below. Copy it and stick it on your blogs, fellow blogcasters!

 

  These posts are clearly at odds with the popular perception of Blogoy: the crusading reporter, the impartial investigator, the relentless whistleblower of last year’s elections. He comes across more as an amateur pundit or a frustrated rabble-rouser.

  In fact, it was his partner in rumor-peddling – Bong Badong – who first voiced concerns about their activities:

  Spinning Out Of Control

  Our days are numbered, but not due to any Orwellian organization’s activities. Blogoy and I have tried to raise issues and alternative interpretations of the events that are transpiring in our country. We’d hoped to encourage open discussion, and have requested that all comments on our articles and editorials contain solid reasoning and logic or provide some measure of fact or truth.

  A brief sampling of the site makes it clear than these comments are few and far between. All we seem to be doing is fanning the flames of speculation.

  In the upcoming days we will attempt some format changes, but if the current trend continues, CounterSpin will have to end its online life.

  But we never got to see those changes. They ceased updating the site several days later, consigned it to electronic oblivion, then rededicated themselves to following a more journalistic ethic while retaining some degree of anonymity – Watchful Eye was born.

  The bulk of Blogoy’s more professional work appeared here, alongside the posts of his three contemporaries: Bong, who established himself early as a staunch critic of the Department of Education and popular media; Jones Bridget, who claimed the arena of foreign policy and women’s rights as her bailiwick, and Tunafriend, who was originally admired for his detailed reporting and the environmental slant of his writing but was later reviled and cast out of the circle.

  All four members of the blog originally had personal blogsites hosted on the same server as the main news-related blog, hoping to post personal notes and insights into the preparation of each article or answer insightful questions from readers.

  This practice ended soon after the following entries appeared in Blogoy’s personal blogsite and on the Watchful Eye blogcast site respectively:

  Absent Friends

  Some friends of mine went missing the other week. They were real journalists, protégés of my lolo from his days with the Times. That’s the reason I chose the term “blogcaster” over the more popular and more difficult to pronounce term ‘blogjournalist’. Not only does blogcaster sound better – it’s more accurate. There’s no art in my writing, no effort in my research, no real danger in my anonymous (though factual) posts.

  They told me that an informant had suddenly called for an emergency meeting scant days after their last tête-à-tête and didn’t even haggle over price. I warned them that it sounded suspicious, but Erlinda scoffed at my paranoia. “Death will come for us in the night,” she said with a fatalistic glint in her eye, “not from some coffee meeting with an aging bureaucrat.” Louis laughed and slugged back the remainder of his beer.

  Now, two days later with no responses to texts or calls, all I can do is hope for the best.

  Two Journalists Murdered in Manila

  The body of Louis Torreo was found in an open field near Roxas Blvd just a few hours ago. He was apparently stabbed to death and was pronounced dead on the scene. His colleague, Erlinda Chen, died twenty minutes ago at PGH from internal bleeding.

  Both were reportedly investigating a story on the electronic voting booths that were summarily junked three weeks ago, necessitating the return to paper ballots.

  The members of the Watchful Eye condemn these atrocities and urge the authorities to find the guilty and punish them.

  So the members of Watchful Eye took steps to distance their online personas from their real lives, afraid of the consequences of their blog entries on their friends and family. They hid and purged their personal blogsites and limited their posts to articles only.

  Comments (2):

  Good post. Well-researched.

  BatManong | 5:30 AM

  Good post. Astig!

  KidKonyo | 3:45 PM

  UNMASKED

  [ KIDKONYO | 6:51 PM ]

  Duwag ang nag-out kay Blogoy in the comment pages for Watchful Eye.

  After going through very complicated things like IP address tracing, account hacking, and even some stalking, this guy revealed that Blogoy was Benjamin Penado Macaranas, a distant relative of President Tambuk’s Chief of Staff Jose Penado.

  Instead of deleting the comment, pinost nya ito:

  I Am Who I Am

  I’m not certain why there’s a hue and cry over my identity. Yes, I am Benjamin P. Macaranas and I have made no secret of my privileged upbringing or the fact that I belong to a political family (our branch is not active politically, but that’s beside the point). Part of the reason we have these personal blogs is to disclose personal information that may impact our articles but obscure them in such a way as to retain some measure of privacy.

>   Much of the sentiment surrounding my unmasking seems to originate from the perception that my articles are “anti-administration” and “anti-rich” and “anti-establishment”. For those of you still reading, look closely and you’ll note that I’m only “anti-corruption” and wholeheartedly write and fight for the good governance of this country the best way that I can.

  Even rich kids want a better country.

  Comments (1):

  It is unlikely that Blogoy was unaware of the dangers of posting too much information on the web such as an admission of identity. Despite his professed desire for privacy in matters concerning his family and loved ones, he was quite forthcoming about himself, and many of his subsequent posts seemed obsessed with proper disclosure, especially after the traumatic accusations of being branded a fake and a traitor to the blogcasting community.

  Also, please re-write your entry in English.

  EDM_III | 9:45 AM

  [deleted by moderator]

  KidKonyo | 6:01 PM

  [deleted by moderator]

  KidKonyo | 3:47 PM

  THE FUSE IS LIT

  [ EDM_III | 10:30 AM ]

  Blogoy suffered a few weeks of ignominy, and then successfully reclaimed his reputation and respect after a series of exposés on the erosion of the integrity of traditional media organizations spearheaded by his “Who Knew I’d Be Worth It?” post.

  For weeks thereafter he revealed the inner workings of several election campaigns – the early groundwork on pre-election surveys, pre-fabricated election returns, pre-stuffed replacement ballot boxes, strategic buy-offs and positioning of key Comelec personnel – complete with times and dates of meetings, the schedules of payoffs, and the personalities on either side of the exchange.

  Comelec Chameleon

  It is becoming difficult to keep track of which side certain Comelec officials now answer to. Take the example of Atty. Armando Juete, who has been wined and dined on no less than fourteen different occasions to date.

  If frequency of visits is the measure of loyalty, then President Tambuk leads with separate visits by four different spokesmen, followed by Senator Apples Magdao with three visits by a single spokesman. Renowned actor Artemio “Art” Torrales follows with two visits by two spokesmen, and each of the remaining candidates had one visit apiece.

  How can he hope to retain any semblance of independence or impartiality? How can he avoid being beholden to one or all of these parties? There is clearly one side he does not consider himself beholden to: the Philippine People.

  So it falls to me. Perhaps I should visit him on our behalf. But I don’t think I can match the caliber of the last spokesperson that visited – I look terrible in a miniskirt and lipstick.

  Blogoy also called into the question the integrity of all other sources of news – the broadsheets, the TV channels, the radio stations:

  Temptation Islands

  When I was studying in the States, an Imam once told me that the “Powers That Be” have a progression of methods in dealing with agitators and troublemakers:

  “First they try to trivialize you. Then they try to buy you off with sex. Then money. Then power. Failing all these, then they try to hurt you. Killing you is the final option – no one wants a martyr for a cause.”

  Well, we’ve already been officially trivialized before. I wonder if the sudden increase in attempts to personally contact us through our site are for the sex? We’d better hold out for the money – I don’t want the responsibility of power, and I certainly don’t want anyone hurt.

  On a serious note, two friends of mine (real journalists) have shared with me the terms “envelopmental journalism” and “ATM journalism”. Both of these are the derogatory terms associated with the practice of giving money – usually in an envelope or through an ATM debit card – to journalists to slant their writing to favor a particular politician, issue, or corporation.

  I understand envelopes, but ATMs? Well, I guess there are benefits to that approach: they can earn interest if the journalist opts not to withdraw the hush money. They can also empty the accounts if the journalist doesn’t deliver.

  So the next time you find yourself taken by the portrayal of a candidate on a TV channel, or are swayed by the arguments of a persuasive radio personality, think twice.

  It was not, as many of the journalists took it at the time, a blanket condemnation. Had they bothered to read all his entries, they would have realized that the institution of the free press was of particular import to Blogoy, as it dominated the content of his “professional” posts. His dogged coverage of the terrible epidemic of journalist killings in that year, as well as his advocacy for strong, honest, and professional news coverage of the political arena, earned him a reprieve from derision in select journalistic circles:

  Philippines Again The Most Dangerous Spot for Journalists

  The Philippines has reclaimed the number one spot as the most dangerous spot in the world for active journalism. With the deaths of two more journalists just last week, the total count for this year is 21, bringing the total journalists killed since President Tambuk’s rise to power to 61, pulling further away from the record set by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo during her term.

  The Bigger Issue

  I don’t normally respond too directly to comments made on the blogcast articles, but the posts of news peak (whose comments, I might add, share the same IP address as TunaFriend’s post-Eye comments) concerning the article titled “Philippines Now Most Dangerous Spot for Journalists” irk me by raising issues that, while having some merit, clearly serve the purpose of redirecting the topic of discussion away from the subject at hand.

  He says:

  Why are the so-called “Watchers”, and you in particular, so taken with this elitist view of journalists? All murders pose a threat to society.

  I find this unwarranted emphasis on the deaths of journalists, as if they were better than any other citizens of the Philippines, hypocritical and smacks of a biased slant.

  If you really wanted to address the ever-growing number of journalist corpses, then write about the core issue: murder in Philippine society.

  First, I disagree with your statement that we need to address the issue of dying journalists by addressing murder in a broader sense. We have already done so by cleverly stating in our laws that murder is illegal and should be punished appropriately. What we need to do to address the “issue of journalist murders” is to investigate the murders, catch those responsible, and prosecute them to the full extent of the law.

  Second, the frequency of deaths in this profession is statistically significant, indicating that there is a threat to what I consider one of the pillars of a strong democracy. For this reason alone, there should be increased calls for action. A free press must act as a watchdog on the activities of rich and poor, public servant, and citizen alike.

  Third, despite your abrasive and inflammatory tone, you have a point. Perhaps there should be an investigation into why there has been an increase in murders (largely unsolved) during President Tambuk’s term of office. The strict enforcement of the law is of concern to everyone, wouldn’t you agree?

  I take issue with the phrase “bringing the total journalists killed since President Tambuk’s rise to power”.

  What are you trying to insinuate? There is no basis in trying to establish a correlate rise in journalistic deaths with an arbitrary period that coincides with the presence of a particular politician.

  I’m insinuating nothing; I’m simply stating facts. Perhaps a better analysis of the statistics would yield better results as to the causes.

  On the other hand, a president has a responsibility for law and order and candidates past and present have made it a key component of their election platforms.

  This last post came somewhat ominously after President Reynaldo Tambuk’s “surprise” declaration that he would run for a second term despite the clear lack of constitutionality.

  Comments (0):

  [No
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  FIRST BLOOD

  [ BATMANONG | 2:32 AM ]

  This is not the final version of the links page, but I’m certain that this was the first series of links that was published on Watchful Eye.

  All self-proclaimed experts on his career agree that Blogoy consciously avoided publishing this post to the blog, but few agree why. Some argue some family-related conspiracy, others claim an attempt to blackmail President Tambuk, and still others believe simple cowardice drove Blogoy to withhold this post from publication for months.

  We may never know why the lines were crossed, and that post (clearly dated months before the Blogoy’s downward spiral) aired for a day and a half on his site. Though not too many people caught it at first (due to the bandwidth problems that were plaguing the Philippines at the time), some enterprising soul managed to copy all the files on the file server, including several videos not listed on the blog entry.

  Mga Putang Ina Ninyo!

  My dad used to tell this joke: An American, a Frenchman, and a Filipino were stuck in a WWII foxhole. Knowing they were doomed to die, they went one by one to their deaths.