WE WILL DEFEND OUR COUNTRY UNTIL OUR LAST BREATHE

When I open the FB Homepage this morning, I saw the title of the article “WILL DUTERTE SURVIVE VS. THE JESUIT, CIA AND COMMUNISTS?” If this is the case, then, we cannot do anything but rely on the wisdom of PRRD what drastic step he would take from this report. A good leader is judged on the ability to pull his Nation through the bad times and exploit the good to the maximum. But we must not be shaken up and moved to fear. Instead, we must step resolutely forward on our chosen path courageously confident that every step we take, should it remained undeflected in our purpose and undimmed in our vision, a fresh outpouring of Divine Grace will reinforce and guide our march on the high road of our destiny.

My take is that the Filipinos who support PRRD will remind the detractors and destabilizers that this is our land and the only one we have. We the citizens of this nation, laden with the test of the times must again summon to brace ourselves for another exertion, so fate-laden in its consequences stands too near the structure we are now rearing to visualize the dimensions of our task, appraise our values, and appreciate our future glory. Alive in our inherent capacity, conscious of our high responsibility, aware of the sacredness of our mission, emboldened by our sacred exploits, trusting fully in that reinforcing Power that guided and sustained us unfailingly in the past.

Our history reveals We had rebuffed different foreign dominations—Spain, Americans, and Japanese. We have weathered the storm despite all their advantages in all kinds of everything. Our offspring is now the product of evolving genes over the course of many generations from different foreigners who once upon a time controlled and/or visited our country, the Philippines. Therefore, a superior breed with inheritable traits that will stand out in countless ways. We are the best of the noughties. 

THE SPIRIT OF FIGHT BELONGS TO THE GENIUS OF LIFE

PRRD is driven by his instinct Filipinos ought to be handled in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling them to make sure he was there. It was like handling a fish that got out of the sea and he is returning it to the sea which is its paradise.

Humans and every living creature on the planet have their own survival instinct to help us protect our life so we can prevent our species from extinction. This survival instinct was developed in the early history of Homo sapiens in ancient times to avoid and escape from predators hunting them for food. Every creature during that time found out through actual discovery, through observations, and experimentation, things, feelings, smells, scent, premonitions, omens that were effective to warn them in advance and get their adrenaline rushing and escape from imminent dangers. This instinct had taught them also that plants will grow towards light and avoid darkness so that it can receive the sunlight that it needs in order to grow.

This survival instinct is now carried out and built inside us and called instinct of self-preservation. However, in our modern and complicated world, this instinct of self-preservation became a double edge sword because although it still helps us in some way, at the same time, it causes us our failures in life. In the world we are living right now, we are no longer threatened by predators such as tigers or lions and the like. In other words, our basic survival instinct is still in us even the dangers and risks upon which it was invented are gone. What I mean is that the instinct of survival has been applied indiscriminately to everything we are ignorant about or situations that are out of our comfort zone.

If we think more deeply, it is PRRD who instinctively cracked the combination of the safe where the secret to success is locked up. Look at what PRRD has been like 73 years ago, he was already showing the formula to the path of success, and that is facing the unknown; doing the things that are the antithesis of what is normally known; and his no fear attitude whether it will cause him his life, or he will go to jail, or to hell or purgatory.

This is what he is doing now as president that if you stand in his way to his commitment, his passion to make a change in our country for the best of us Filipinos, he doesn’t hesitate, not even a fraction of a second, whether you are a god, Pope, Archbishop, or whatever it might be, PRRD will always crash them and smash them into rubbles. He has engraved it in stone to every Tom, Dick, and Harry, he will stand to his creed he will stake his life, his honor, and his presidency to protect the Filipinos, the youth, and our nation. This is why I always follow his every step since he was a Mayor until now because for me he will either die as a curse or succeed as a Hero, only the event will teach us in its hour. 

BE GUIDED ACCORDINGLY

This is a well-known story I always treasured as a guide to how I will raise my children. In Iloilo, there was a hardworking couple who amassed immeasurable wealth that when both of them died, they left 1 billion peso cash to their only child, excluding properties, and that was 20 years ago and you can just imagine how big the amount was during that time. And because that child was spoiled, he knew nothing about the intricacies of life. So, he did not know what to do with his 1 billion plus daily income from the buildings and the haciendas. The child indulged in gambling and spending his money like it will become obsolete the next day. He is now sickly and he could not even buy medicine.

The one that propels most parents to work hard beyond limits and restraint is to ensure their children have something to inherit and they would not find themselves struggling to survive as they hurdle all the hazards of life they can’t outrun. However, this is a blunder if that is the kind of mindset we have for our children. We all have things that we've learned: skills, talents, life experiences, wisdom. You have a wealth of knowledge that God has entrusted you with, they are the ones we should pass on to our children. In other words, the best legacy is not what we leave for our children. It's what we leave in our children.

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BEFORE THEY WERE RARE BUT NOW THEY ARE WIDESPREAD

On July 2, 2018, a tragic incident occurred in the morning; Mayor Antonio Halili, Batangas Town Mayor was shot dead, and on July 3, 2018, Nueva Ecija Town Mayor Ferdinand Bote, was riddled with bullets and killed.

I remember vividly when I was third-year high school and that was on February 20, 1967, Mayor James Gordon, the father of Sen. Richard Gordon, while talking to a constituent on the first floor of city hall, he was gunned down by a lone assassin and to confuse about his real identity, he purposely let the undersized small hat he was wearing to fall down as he escaped from the crime scene. The killer was Nonito Alincastre,, an escaped inmate of the National Penitentiary.

Also, I was then grade 7 at Xavier University, and a breaking news one morning in the radio was that in that certain evening, in one of the stores at Divisoria, Cagayan de Oro City, a man stabbed to death the male Chinese owner in a robbery attempt. During that time, the incident caught the entire people of Cagayan de Oro and the Province of Misamis Oriental in tremendous fear and panic with our safety and security.

I am somewhat intimidated by the thought of giving any advice to anyone on anything. Nevertheless, after 41 years as a lawyer, and almost 30 yrs in the public service, I have run across disappointments and a number of life and death situations that there may be something I can offer. Anyhow, PRRD as I sized him up every day, he is a person who saw opportunity in every challenge and who dared greatly in hopes of great victories. So let’s allow him to think through in every complex problem and to succeed where others might have failed. My only advice is:

We have to be always prepared for any eventuality which could happen anytime. As a voice of experience, no matter what situation you have, don’t give up your will to live. You Have to Improvise, Adapt and Overcome however the situation and circumstance you are facing.

As the poem by Dylan Thomas goes, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” In this connection, you have to be mentally prepared for possible violent confrontation. If you are shot or injured, that does not necessarily mean that you are going to die.  If you give up, if you lay down to die, then that’s exactly what will happen, you will die. If you give up the will to live, your spirit would dissipate, will disappear. If you lay down to die, most probably the subject that got you in the first place is going to come around the corner, come around the car whatever, and he’s going to shoot you at point blank range and you will die. So if you lay down to die, the message is you will die. You have got to maintain the will to live. 

PART 4- THE LAST OF THE SERIES OF MY 2-CENTS WORTH

Whether we are not, in time, to have here a swarm of official locusts yet, that will bear a corresponding proportion that could eventually darken and devour our nation, may depend upon the action taken now and then. This sentiment being expressed is but the grain of mustard seed, the least of all seeds, but when it is grown, it will be a large tree, overspreading the land with its boughs, so that the fowls of the air, the birds of prey, will come and lodge in the branches thereof.

The reality is that corruption and dishonesty are going on in every nook and corner of society. If you live your life according to the rules, you will be branded as the villain by everybody as you will be the exception and they are the general rule because of their numbers. Here is the real scenario. For a `never heard’ person who suddenly became “big shot” with his appointment to a high position in government, he will strive to live up to his new identity and experience what I call an elitist status shock— one who succumbs to the DESTRUCTIVE ideology of “what are we in power for” euphemism. To ensure their hold to their position, they began pandering their subordinates’ vices, catering to their wishes taking the place of kings where people gathered themselves together to crouch down and lick their hands which feed them.

Then, automatically, by common understanding, the mutual covenant between and among the superior and the subordinates start like, if you do something for me that I cannot do for myself, I will do something for you that you cannot do for yourself, and you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours; and whosoever shall keep it may prosper, but whosoever that shall break shall die. For the strength of one is the other and vice versa. With this kind of relationship, all of them began to rise from nobody to over everybody by making money squeezing every last drop they can out from their fellow countrymen and the government budget for them.

Who can stop them? Nobody can stop them because no one had the courage. If ever any victim will attempt to complain, that case will just be a waste of money, waste of time, and your effort will just end up in futility and in vain. First of all, you do not even know where to file it: in the Ombudsman, in the Civil Service Commission, or in the Central Office of that Government Agency, or to the Office of the President. Either any of them, you will need a lawyer; the case will last forever and you will have sleepless nights, mental anguish forever; and you will be earmarked for retaliation, and every personnel in that agency will get back at you in every opportunity.  

How then can we solve this vicious cycle? It’s easy, in the sense that all kinds of problems that come to us have already been solved by people who came before us; therefore, the solution is just around the corner if you know how and where to look for them.

PART 3 - IF I MAY BE ALLOWED TO GIVE MY TWO CENTS WORTH

We have PRRD who has the policies that embrace and advocate our sentiments and beliefs. But we still have a lot of remnants of the previous administration going on holding key positions in the various government agencies that really like to cause pain and hardships, perdition and curse to our countrymen. Even the toughness of PRRD doesn’t prevent the swamp creatures from trying to pull fast ones under the assumption they’ll get away with it as they have in years past. They take great pride in their false belief as a smart aleck that they thought they are honest because they have not been caught. We can’t be naïve about them that they incite dissonance and disharmony and their presence spark contamination like bad apple mixed with fresh appointees and look what happens as they quickly ruined them.

It is a cardinal principle in the Constitution that a government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. But these remnants of Pnoy administration still in the helm of power, we see no change in how they attend and respond to the needs of the people, even just to be friendly and amiable to them. Instead, in the state of things, what these shenanigans are doing is contrary to the genius and fundamental principles of our Republican system. Of all schemes of policy we can conceive, that which proposes a distinction between the public officials and the people—one acting like a King, and the other, treated without any respect as if a slave—such a system of discrimination is, to our mind, of all others, the most injurious and revolting in principle, the most heartless in character, and the most despotic in its tendencies.  

Our history tells so much about how the public officials and employees treat the people who they are supposed to serve, and they have a lot to be apologetic about by perceiving their fellow Filipinos as Milking Cow. We should better make more use of the analogous thinking based on an extension of the golden rule.

PART 2-- SEQUEL TO WHAT I POSTED YESTERDAY

Things have been broken in this nation of ours for far too long and we need to look at things based on what makes sense. 

We had been waging wars left and right, front and back, up and down on land, mountains, skies, rivers, and seas against robbers, Isis, NPAs, Drug Lords, corruptors, swindlers, calamities, conflagration, global warming, etcetera. With these circumstances, tension-filled emotions of alertness and readiness to kill or be killed keeps lingering in all of us. What is the root cause of this sordid scenario? The public officials in general involved in reckless, irresponsible and illegal behavior in the way they treat poor and middle class Filipinos in their disposition of official function which led to the great crash of our economy, peace and order, unemployment; and the rise of drugs and criminality all of these combine, caused our country and the Filipinos devastating pain.  

If only these public officials can figure this out, everybody wants to have things done as quickly as possible because there are so many things next in line to get done. These public officials have not even a minutest of imagination that the people who come to their office left their homes just to get something very important in that office, and by doing so, sacrificing the equally important house chores, properties, infants, minors, and precious things left open to all kinds of dangers. If these public officials will dilly-dally in acting on them, you can just imagine what mindset they have that is opposite or contrary to the nature of their function and obligation, which is public service. If you have no patience as long as the ocean and as wide as the Sahara Desert, you will always be in raged, and the things that an in rage person does are not always good but worse.

We live in a world where more people can do unto you farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before; and we can also do the same thing to them. We are standing in a moral intersection where one person can kill all of us and at the same time, where all of us could actually fix everything. When we put these two together, it means, what every person thinks, feels, and believes really matters.