Con-Ass and Con Men

Something just sounds strange each time Manila-based national papers report about how Malacañang (presidential palace) and the House of Representatives would insist on a Constituent Assembly as a first step to their game plan of changing the Philippine constitution. Reporters have invented Con-Ass as a short for Constituent Assembly in the same way that they coined Cha-cha for Charter Change. Cha-cha sounds harmless and I often associate it with tango or even with waltz and other ballroom dances.

But Con-Ass? It just sounds like con man or con artist. And Con-Ass, particularly the “Ass” part, sounds not only slang, but vulgar, a term that should not be used because one of our unwritten rules as writers is decency. But somehow the acronym has become a regular fare in our newspapers.

I tried to do my homework by searching the Web for some definitions of con man and con artist, and, to my surprise, the definitions gave me some insights into the Con-Ass.

One website defines con man or con artist as “a confidence man or a swindler who exploits the confidence of his victim.”

So I asked myself, “Granting that Con-Ass is the confidence man, are we, the ordinary Filipinos, the victims?”

According to reports, the Lower House of Congress and may be a few senators would be convened into a Con-Ass and would engineer how it could amend the Constitution and form an interim parliament. They already have in mind a timetable for a plebiscite and elections for parliament in 2007.

Some senators, including Senate President Manny Villar and administration Sen. Miriam Defensor, have rejected the Con-Ass move. But the big guns in the Lower House are still optimistic that they can still go on with the Con-Ass because they have the numbers. So the proponents of Cha-cha via Con-Ass are relying on numbers, not on the sound reason of their moves.

In pushing for Cha-cha via Con-Ass, House Speaker Jose de Venecia said: “We are on the eve of a constitutional revolution because we’re destroying the old, oppressive structure and creating a new, and hopefully more liberating, political system. It’s now or never.”

We had heard similar pronouncements from the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos when he changed the 1935 Constitution and created his new Constitution to pave the way for what he called “a new society” through martial law. And to give his iron-fist regime some sweet icing, Marcos called it “constitutional authoritarianism.”

For a time, the “New Society” had remained as new as the bell-bottom fashion in trousers at that time. But Marcos’ “New Society” eventually became a tired refrain as it failed to bring the paradise it promised. And during his reign, Marcos drowned the country with US$30 billion foreign debt, which, together with the foreign debts of succeeding regimes, we are paying up to now and which our children will continue to pay after we, their elders, are gone.

From Ms Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, we also heard about her “Strong Republic” and her tough-girl pronouncements to “crush” the “enemies” of that republic. The opposite of strong is weak so building a “strong republic” is akin to the dream of building a “new society” from the ashes of an old and “weak” one.

There’s no argument in aspiring to build a new society, a strong republic, or even a new world. We should keep on dreaming and hoping. But still I can hardly comprehend whether or not Cha-cha through a Con-Ass can be the means to bring about what De Venecia calls “a new, and hopefully more liberating, political system.”

Another website, meanwhile, defines a confidence trick or game, which it says is con for short, as “an attempt to intentionally mislead a person or persons (known as the mark) usually with the goal of financial or other gain. The confidence trickster, con man, scam artist or con artist often works with an accomplice called the shill, who tries to encourage the mark by pretending to believe the trickster…”

Again I asked myself, “If Con-Ass is a confidence trick, who are the con men or the con artists? And who are the shills or accomplices who are trying to hoodwink us by believing the tricksters in this Con-Ass game?”

Adrenaline Rise and Salute to the Sun

Time flies so fast that before we know it it’s almost Christmas again. While many Filipinos, not only children, have been contemplating and excited about Christmas, some of us are not that excited for various reasons.

Before Christmas comes, which is just six days before 2007, many of us have to keep our adrenaline rising to beat some deadlines, if not complete some work backlogs. For us freelancers with some writing contracts, we have to finally finish what we have started and failed to complete in the past months. Otherwise, we miss the boat in getting new offers in the coming year.

Almost everybody in government or in private outfits also have to complete some annual reports from which plans for the next year will be based. In fact, some non-government organizations and other recipients of foreign donors had to complete their reports as early as October so their funding could be renewed.

The last quarter of the year is actually a high-tension period. With all the expected reports and deadlines to beat, who is excited about Christmas? Of course, working folk have one reason to be excited – their 13^th month pay and, if they are lucky, some bonus.

And as usual, local folk anticipate what the local media would name as the men or women of the year, both in a positive or in a notorious sense.

There’s also one thing more certain than Pacquiao’s recent victory over Morales. One more year will be added to our age, that is. While we, most especially women, try to defy aging by applying some oil or some paste over our faces, we cannot reverse the former thin lines in our faces that are eventually turning into grooves.

The same is true with our muscles and bones. The cavan of rice we used to lift with ease some years ago will soon appear heavier as time passes.

For those of us who kick as a way to keep fit, we will note that the round house or ax kick we used to deliver is not as lightning fast as our kicks before. There just are things the mind and spirit would like to do, but the flesh is just too weak to oblige.

So from taekwondo, we can shift to something friendlier to aging muscles and bones, like tai chi and shi bashi. Either that or we can still kick minus the fancy ones only Jet Li can deliver.

And we have to do away with some highly acrobatic hatha yoga limbering exercises we used to do. But we can still do the head stand and what I consider as one of the poetic hatha yoga exercises, which is “salute to the sun.”

Before I salute the rising sun, I also “embrace the mountains, push the waves of the sea, and offer a pear to a sage” (these are shibashi exercises). After these exercises, I close my eyes as I count every heart beat and feel the oxygen that enters my lungs while chirping birds and cicadas provide the background music.

On Retirement and Tending a Garden

Many working persons I know look forward to retirement. This is understandable especially if you have been teaching in a village public school or have been pushing and piling papers in some government office for 30 to 40 years.

As a public school teacher, you may want to take a break from inhaling all those chalk dust and all the tensions that go with the profession. Ditto with those engaged in both white- or blue-collar jobs. A clerk tinkering with photocopying machines day in and day out for years definitely needs a break lest he overexposes himself to too much radiation.

We all need a break from the drudgery of our jobs. That’s why we all look forward to that day when we are 60 or 65 so we can retire. So we contemplate ourselves relaxing on a hammock tied to two coconut trees while reading one of our favorite books and sipping buko (young coconut) juice.

We want to retire because we want to do what we have been wishing to do while we were tied up to our 8a.m-5p.m. jobs. Many of us look forward to tending a garden or catching up with some missed hobbies such as ballroom dancing, culturing bonsai trees, painting, or perhaps even writing our own biographies.

Many young people today also want to accelerate their careers because they want to retire young or to take second or even third careers.

But in life, there is actually no retirement. Either you shift to another career or another activity or choose to do nothing but sleep and eat. But the latter option can only hasten your permanent retirement, which is death.

At 65, or even in our 40s, we may already feel that our knees are weakening. But we can still do something worthwhile. We can still be active in some endeavors, which can give our Supreme Life-giver more reason to extend our lives on this planet. Some people I know are taking advantage of their retirement as an opportunity to serve others. After working for themselves and for their families, these retirees, who never consider themselves retired, now want to give back or share with others all the abundance of life they have enjoyed.

Retiree friends, who serve as my elders and mentors, say that they have come to realize that there’s more to life than earning money and spending, if not accumulating, it. So they engage in civic programs and charity work. One retiree I have just met, for example, is now helping give legal advice to some indigenous folk in Kalinga province, who have sought to manage and explore their own mineral resources through a new community-organized corporation. It’s time that indigenous folk themselves, he says, manage and utilize their resources primarily for their own communities.

Another retiree friend, who has not retired, still practices his medical profession, catering mostly to poor Cordillera folk, often times giving out his services for free. Apart from this, he is engaged in helping develop a grassroots-based sports program for the youth. That’s not all. He is among the key persons in helping mobilize local historians, educators, and other professionals to finally write their own history. Our history has always been written from the colonizers’ viewpoint. So he says it’s time we write history from our own perspective.

Since they are busy with still plenty of unfinished businesses, these un-retired and untiring retiree friends are showing no signs of aging. If ever they are aging, they are so in the same way that aging wine becomes tastier as it ages. This is why they are aging gracefully as they are growing in wisdom.

Feedback from Canada and Making Choices

Since last May I have begun compiling my columns for Cordillera Today in a personal blog named after this corner. For me the blog merely serves as a personal virtual notebook or folder for my columns. The blog, however, contains only my columns since last May. If I have the time, I will retrieve the rest and compile them in just one virtual package.

As a personal virtual folder, the blog, I thought, could not be viewed by others. So I didn’t expect feedback or comments about what I have been compiling in my lemongrass tea blog. But Google has a way of showing and sharing the blog with others so some of my pieces got a few comments.

Somebody from Canada, for example, reacted to a column last August, “On Leaving and Staying.” In that column, I said, among other things, that I would not give up on this country, despite all the misfortune in governance we all face. I also said some were pushing me to find work overseas but I declined, saying I could not imagine myself working in some sweatshop there and that I could not stand being lonely and away from my family.

I also said I turned down some suggestion for me and my family to migrate overseas because I could not afford to cut off my cultural and family roots, among other reasons.

Let me reprint this feedback from a Filipino migrant in Canada who, except for giving a website address which I have yet to access, did not identify himself or herself. Thus:

“Just to give you some comfort. Over here in Canada, a lot of new immigrants do not end up in sweat shops. At least here in North America, for as long as you work hard, you can attain anything.

“I came here as a nanny in 1988 and abandoned my accounting career in the Philippines and never looked back. I left the country just after having obtained my Philippine CPA (Certified Public Accountancy) designation for a better future here in Canada.

“After working for two years as a nanny, the Canadian government granted me an immigrant status and was given the opportunity to work in any field I wanted, sky was the limit. I decided to pursue an accounting career and was able to purchase my own home. I was able to sponsor my parents who are currently living a very satisfactory life.

“But most of all, apart from material possessions, I found peace and security (politically and economically). I recently went home to the Philippines to attend my grandmother's funeral and after seeing the current Philippine situation, the more I felt strongly about my decision to have left the country.”

In that last column, I also said that those who leave have their own reasons and that I didn’t and wouldn’t fault them for leaving.

In this age, as long as we have some skill or expertise in whatever field, we can make choices. We can opt to stay put in this archipelago of 7,100 islands, come high or low tide, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions or super typhoons. Or we can choose to go overseas and reinvent ourselves there.

But the key is education – real education, which can help equip us with the necessary skill, maturity, the right attitude, and the character to be able to work and relate with other people in whatever environment.

Canada and other countries in the developed world no doubt offer better opportunities for people who have skills and brains. Compared to the Philippines, these countries definitely give more just compensation to well-invested efforts and talents. As a result, people in these countries are motivated to excel.

There was this Filipina who, after not being able to find work here after finishing a mass communications degree, got a job as a nanny in Singapore. Since she had writing skills, she wrote a bestseller, which was aptly titled, “Maid in Singapore.” She eventually moved to Canada where she now works as a writer and filmmaker. She is Crisanta Sampang, one of overseas Filipino workers whose writing talent – besides hard work and perseverance – brought her to greater heights.

So again, the key is education. If well-educated, Filipinos applying as nannies or factory workers need not become nannies or sweatshop workers forever. Like Crisanta Sampang and that person who gave a feedback to one of our columns, they can metamorphose into more accomplished persons. They can even transcend the current government’s program to produce “super-maids.” They can prove to the world that they can also write prose or poetry other than just changing diapers and cleaning bedpans.

In Praise of Mountains

Typhoon Paeng (international name, Cimaron) came, left a trail of destruction, and departed after 24 hours.

Each time shortly before the year ends, Benguet folk and other peoples of the Cordilleras in northern Philippines since time immemorial had been noting a one-day-one-night strong typhoon they named after a migratory bird locally called kiling. The last typhoon must have been the same as the one our elders had learned to live with when there was no weather bureau yet to inform and warn us about thunderstorms and tropical depressions.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) had warned that Paeng was a super-typhoon packing sustained winds of 195 kilometers per hour. Such strength could have been more devastating than the reported destruction and lives lost. But thanks to the Sierra Madre, a series of mountain ranges in the island of Luzon, the strength of the typhoon, according to Pagasa, was reduced to 125 to 130 kph.

Besides the Sierra Madre, the Cordillera mountain ranges must have helped parry the deadly blows of Paeng before it left towards the South China Sea.

That mountains help protect people from the beatings of typhoons must have been one reason why most indigenous folk highly regard these elevated land formations as highly important, if not sacred. In my hometown of Kibungan, the center of town is well- secured and surrounded by mountains, which have long protected us from the wrath of typhoons exiting towards the South China Sea.

In Benguet, some peaks regarded as holy grounds include Mount Pulag in Kabayan and Mount Kabunian in Bakun.

The Aetas also consider their mountains, including Mount Pinatubo, as sacred. Southern Tagalog folk likewise have Mounts Makiling and Banahaw, a Mecca of some sort for some local pilgrims. Lumad folk in southern Philippines also count Mounts Apo in Davao and Kitanglad in Bukidnon as among their sacred sites.

Other peoples elsewhere in the world also regard their peaks as hallowed ground. The Himalayas, for example, has a special place for Buddhist monks and pilgrims. Those who have climbed and “conquered” the Himalayas swear that they have experienced some kind of spiritual awakenings.

The role and importance of mountains cannot be underestimated. Besides serving as windbreakers, mountains are where we can find certain plant species with medicinal values. No wonder, Mount Pulag’s mountain yew has caught the interests of bio-pirates because of the plant’s reported anti-cancer potentials.

Mountain ranges also serve as the headwaters of lowland communities. Northern Philippines’ Cordillera region, for example, has seven major river systems, which serve as the cradle of agriculture for many lowland communities.

Formed after a series of volcanic eruptions ages ago, mountains are often regarded as metaphors for challenges. The Chinese, for example, say that a person is successful in life if he has climbed mountains, fathered a son, planted trees, and wrote a book. In this regard, climbing mountains is not necessarily climbing and conquering the Himalayas as Romy Garduce and company did. Climbing mountains, according to the Chinese, also means being able to overcome challenges and difficulties in life and coming out a better person.

After typhoon Paeng came and was gone, we are thankful that the Sierra Madre and the Cordillera mountain range stood their ground, protecting us from our vulnerabilities. These mountains also continue to teach us about how to stand our ground on things we are passionate about.