What Now? [A Reaction]

WHAT NOW?

An Open Forum on

Resolving the Crisis in the Presidency

Opposition
Francis Escudero
Rolex Sulpico
Roilo Golez

Administration

Prospero Nograles

Rolando Andaya
Luis Villafuerte

Speakers

Friday, 15 July 2005

6.00 pm

Ateneo Professional Schools Auditorium

I knew i made the right decision when i attended the forum last night. WHen Koko told me about it last Friday, i couldnt help but be excited [the geekoid side of me i guess] 'coz i wouldnt miss the chance to see a forum with both sides well-represented. It was supposed to start at 6 but as expected, the forum began an hour late.

It startedwith the Opposition missing one "team member", Roilo Golez. The speakers were given the chance to give their opening messages within the one-minute time limit. The administration speakers' opening messages were more entertaining than informational, not that i mind. After all these debates, i must admit that i appreciate their effort to not make it a "dramatic" forum. When it was the time of the opposition, they (specifically, Cis Escudero) were more serious about it, i noticed that a lot of women are actually giggly so i asked Koko.. "Bakit kinikilig un mga tao?"

He nonchalantly replied, "Di mo ba alam na madaming may crush kay Cis?"

With a bewildered look i uttered, "Ah talaga.." The forum went on, with a lot of very witty remarks from both sides. If there's one thing that bothered me, it's the partial treatment of Dean Roy in handling the discussion. He may not be aware of it, but he was obviously favoring the side of the opposition. I didnt take it against the opposition for it's Dean Roy who should be accountable for his actions. I also noticed the "pikon side" of Roilo Golez whom i didnt really appreciate because of his "this is all about me and my achievements" attitude. I rolled my eyes when he actually read aloud a forwarded text message when it was not really related to the particular issue being discussed at that exact moment.

Now, let me talk about Francis Escudero. Besides the fact that a lot of women are apparently so into him, i think i must give credit to his always calm approach on things. Being a fellow UPian, i dont blame him for being so "aktibista" in his thinking, it's really nothing personal but i always find myself opposing the points that he raises. When he said that they will only accept Noli De Castro if his stand on the things that matter to them e.g EVAT will be in accordance to what they think is right, what crossed my mind was the understanding that this definitely will never end. Noli De Castro is (accdg to the constitution) our next president if GMA steps down. This is irregardless of his stand, his future decisions, or his credentials. What is alarming is the scenario that they will still make him step down if he doesnt succumb to their demands. He raised a point which i think it commendable. WHen Villafuerte said "... kung gusto nyo, ibigay na natin kay FPJ un lahat ng boto ng Mindanao, mananalo parin si FPJ, Assuming na nandaya siya sa Mindanao, edi sige ibigay na yan." Escudero pointed out that if someone cheated, may it be getting a few votes from it or a lot, IT IS STILL CHEATING. I agree with him. It is bad logic on the part of Villafuerte to assume that even if GMA cheated, if it didnt really affect the result of the elections then it doesnt matter anymore. I also agree with him when he said that it is our right to freely express our grievances, our opinions, he even quoted someone from "The American President" but what i think should also be pointed out is that every right is limited when it is exercised at the expense of other people's rights. I give it to them that they have the right to question the mandate of the president, but still, they have to be considerate of other people's lives. The implications of all these rallying and all these calls for resignation. It may look unfair that these people who are rallying are stopped by checkpoints. But come to think of it, it is but natural to be "on alert mode" if you know that something out of the ordinary is about to happen. Nonetheless, i salute Escudero for remaining in his "dignified" state, despite and inspite of. We may be different in our opinions but your opinions are always as good as mine. We all are speculating anyway.

My Personal Faves in the Points raised by the Administration:

1. The damage to the economy that these rallies are inflicting is too much for us to handle. - Villafuerte
2. I dont have anything against rallies if the people behind it only want to express themselves, their opinions, their beliefs. But what i oppose is the fact that some of those behind these rallies are doing these to make our economy collapse and in the end, blame the President for its destruction. - Andaya

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fun part... like starstruck fans we decided to take advantage of the Photo ops created by the event.


Feeling close conversation:
Jersee: we loved your arguments sir.
VIllafuerte: thank you. some people are pushing these things to the limit. they even are pretending that they represent everyone, even those in the provinces.
Jersee: i agree sir, the damage that it's causing us is too much.
VIllafuerte: this is the best time to buy stocks..
Jersee: if we hit rock bottom, there's no way but up.. right sir.


Andaya all the way:
Melody (to Andaya): Can we take your picture?
Andaya: SUre, sure.. this is rare coz usually they wanna take pictures of Cis (Escudero)
Jersee: We're a rare breed of women.


Text conversation with Koko Crunch:
Jersee: why dya leave? we're supposed to take pics of your dad with us. Go to starbucks now! hehe, just kiddin.
Koko: we're in oyster bar. daan daw kayo.
Jersee: Seriously?
Koko: yupyup, will wait for you here.
Jersee: were' coming.

May "Labnat"

Hoes does people know if you're blooming?
How does one evolve into a lovesick puppy?
How does a person acquire the infamous LABNAT?

Fr. Ferrer said something about students dropping out because of lovesickness. i have a totally different case. My symptoms are not in accordance with the symptoms of being lovesick. Mine's more tragic, much worse than the usual dreamy eyed, knees-wobbly manifestations and even more lethal than its complications. I am LOVESEEK.

Yep, guessed it right, i SEEK for love. [naks!] The misfortune brought upon me by certain past pseudo-relationships has unconsciously infected me with this common but not-given-that-much-attention ailment. One may ask what the symptoms are.. i say it varies with the personality, genetic makeup and even the people surrounding the victim In my case, i'm occasionally weakened by the now rampant attacks of depression made more rampant by certain catalysts like friends in relationships displaying their affection, the noticeable gaining of weight on my part as a result of acquiring 800 calories from my daily dose of Caramel Macchiato Grande and the emergence of the now returning pimple revolution caused by sleep deprivation, not to mention the cracks on my heels reminding me to go to the SPA every other week.

The manifestations of the symptoms mentioned above are signs of more disheartening complications coming my way. The next obvious inquiry would be, how does one treat "LOVESEEKNESS"? Its therapies and medication will subsequently vary because of the variations in the manifestations of the disease. Therefore, be strong. Love will come your way. [yuck] I should stop now, the bell's ringing (definitely not wedding bells).

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segue:

My John Marshall Contemplations

Favorite food: MARSHALLmallows
Fave Historical Term: MARSHALL law
Fave show: JOHN n MARSHALL
Fave cartoon character: Marvin the MARSHALL
Fave Movie: MARSHALL attacks
Actress: MARSHALL Soriano

NGII!

Sources of Joy Episode II

1. "Mr. Hotness" - for making me in heat every single time. [err, that didnt sound right] Itinatago ko sya sa pangalang Mr. Hotness dahil sa kanyang infamous weird-looking sando at di malaman kung bukas o hindi na polo. kahit ganyan ka, isa kang hottie para sa aking natitigang na lovelife.. You make me wanna Lala..

2. Yves - for her cute dog that looks like her; her damsel-in-distress bandaid-ed feet dilemma; and her very funny comments e.g "Moisturizer lang yan." (On Thing's transformation in Fantastic Four)

3. Koko [Crunch] - for his heavenly back massage, sa uulitim (moans...haha); for his attempt to make me smile by singing his "charming" (translation: funny-sounding) rendition of "Smile, though your heart is aching..." ; for his ~ i have a tattoo on my butt that says "One way" ~ story; for his "are you texting my brother? tipsy call" ...

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anyway i just had to say that TODAY i'm Miss Buzzer Beater. I was called in Criminal Law and in Legal Profession a few seconds before the bell.. but lookin at the brighter side, i was able to answer both questions! woohoo.. let's get it on.

The Wiz Show [A Schizo Law Stude's Contemplation]

Join the Wiz Show...
"Sure."
It's not a show if you're not acting.
Does it have to be entertaining?

Join the Wiz Show...
"Sure?"
Why exactly are you blinking?
Are you contemplating on crying?

Join the Wiz Show...
"Sure!"
What hinders you from just watching?
It's a Wiz show, dont stop thinking.

Join the Wiz Show.
"Sure..."
It's the Wiz Show, are you joining?
It's just starting, are you quitting?

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inspired by the publicity material posted in our room.

I Cannot believe i wrote this...

I dunno if i'm looking for love, im not even sure if i know what love really has in store for a romantic cynic like me. I love conversations and the first thing that will make me interested is intellectual orgasm. A lot of my friends see me as the "life of the party" so i would wanna find someone who can actually make me shut up and just gaze at him in an agonizingly sweet surrender. I'm not the sweetest person in the world but when i want to, i can do a lot of really surprising stuff, we need to be able to complement each other. I need someone who knows what he wants, is willing to debate with me but at the same time can handle my out of this world opinions. He should be confident and in touch with his spirituality. He should be able to make me laugh and forget my inhibitions.

My Stand While Sitting Down...

(another piece written during my Philo “Kapihan sa 309” Class)

A lot of people’ll agree with me when I say that for the past weeks, my life revolved around law school. It’s saddening on my part to come into a realization that up until now, I have yet to come up with an entry regarding my stand on the multifarious issues that our country is currently trying (desperately if I may add) to face. One good thing about my staying in Starbucks every night is that I am able to converse, argue, debate and laugh with a lot of very opinionated people. In a way, I continued to learn and to understand the different sides and even depth of the issues or should I say, controversies.

Since this is my blog, let me indulge a little by looking back at what for me triggered all these. I believe it all started in EDSA 2. It is given that for a lot of people (even for me) EDSA 2 was a demonstration of the victory of the people. It was a culmination of a long standing doubt pointed at the incompetence of a “bearded” President (“wag jan, may kiliti ako jan..”). But I think, what a lot of us forgot to take into consideration was the losing of that “MAGIC” that was once EDSA Revolution. It was the initiation of this whole mockery of the democracy that we have long abused.

By putting GMA to office through an extra-constitutional means, we have also invited the establishment of a shaky mandate of the President. The elections came and after the SMOG (smoke’s too cliché) has been cleared, the LITTLE PRINCESS was announced by both COMELEC and NAMFREL as the new president. The next thing was inevitable, she was accused of having cheated. It is in our nature to doubt, so we assumed that she cheated. Let me stretch this by saying that I am certain of the fact that if FPJ or Ping or Eddie Gil (… puking) won, they would eventually find pieces of evidence that whoever won cheated. Tradisyon eh.

What am I driving at? I think it’s but appropriate to quote Ping Lacson when he announced his acceptance of the success of GMA, let me paraphrase it because I’m only writing it according to my recollection, “Assuming that someone cheated, the candidates who failed to protect the votes entrusted to them by those who believe in them doesn’t even for a second deserve the votes of those who believed in them." It’s but pertinent to point out that I am definitely not PRO-cheating, but life is unfair in itself, and if our own apathy or tolerance brought us GLORIA in a rusty platter, then we have to stand by what the consequences of our actions are, that’s what we deserve. Granted that she cheated, does this mean we have to be stuck in this pseudo reality? I DON’T THINK SO.

When the GLORIAGATE SCANDAL emerged without warning but also without anything new, our economy (which by the way was actually improving in its own microscopic way) is once again bombarded with hesitation and even fear on the part of the investors. The president for a time maintained her silence (which I thought was the right thing to do) until she came up with a “Maalaala Mo Kaya”-inspired statement charged with an obviously fake begging for sympathy aggravated by the choreographed tilting of head, teary-eyed routine. My family was laughing while watching her statement because it was an ill-decided scheme. If she was trying to assure the masses, I think it’s to no avail because they will not be swayed by a non-actress (pun intended). If she was trying to fool the middle and upper class, she should’ve guessed that we wouldn’t dig a Nora Aunor rendition of apology. If she was trying to assure the investors / the business community, she should’ve stuck with her usual firm, straight to the point, all business façade. It was a mistake on her part to come up with the “Drama, drama, drama…”

Meanwhile, the opposition is livelier than ever. They are persistent in questioning the validity of the government and prying into the littlest of loophole that they get their already owl-like eyes on. Under normal circumstances, it’s tolerable. But at present, the opposition, to my opinion, has been diminished to a power-hungry group of people whose only goal is to be on top again. I don’t blame them; it is now that they are actually seeing a teeny-weenie twinge of light at the end of a quite long, time-consuming, exhausting, spelunking-on-the-cave that is the Philippine political system.

I’m to my bones appalled at the rate things are going now. The call for forced resignation will only start another trend that I’m sure we will not be able to handle in the long run. If GMA resigns, will there be an assurance that Noli de Castro will not be called upon in the future to resign? We are all living in fear that the next president will not be good enough. I am one of those guilty of moving on because I don’t see anyone who can actually step up to lead this country. At this time, a significant number of people from the President’s side already resigned and withdrew their support for her. The scenarios are unfolding right before our eyes. I say we shouldn’t all be caught up in a supernova of emotions. We should once and for all try to THINK. 

Won’t it be more comforting for us to know that we have exhausted all means to find out if she did cheat? We cannot be ruled by our own emotions, we should be able to decide after the LEGAL PROCESSES, that were meant to resolve these kinds of disputes, are put into practice. After all, they aren’t called processes for nothing. One of my friends asked me, “ERAP wasn’t given the benefit of the doubt, we all were eager to let him resign.” That was a good point, but to say that he was totally deprived of these processes is absurd. We tried to give him the chance to prove his claim through impeachment proceedings but the senators on his side didn’t want whatever was in the envelope to be presented. Even Marcos was given the chance to redeem himself through the Snap Elections, but he decided to cheat again. Why not give GMA that option to redeem herself too?

This is my stand. Let us all follow what should be followed. If emotions and free-judgment will rule over the law, then it will only prove how disrespectful we are of the LAW that we, in the first place, created to protect us.

Announcement: "O NGAYON, PANO NA?"

O NGAYON, PANO NA?

Public Forum on the Current Political Crisis
8 July 2005, Friday, 1 - 4 pm
Pulungang Claro M. Recto, Bulwagang Rizal (Faculty Center)

SPEAKERS:

JOEY SALCEDA
Representative,3rd District,Albay

JOVITO SALONGA
CHairperson Emeritus, Kilosbayan

MATIAS DEFENSOR JR.
Representative,3rd District,Quezon City

Benjamin Tolosa Jr.
Chairperson, Pol Sci Dep't, Ateneo

GABRIEL CLAUDIO
Presidential Adviser on Political Affairs

Joel Rocamora
National President, Sanlakas


REACTORS:
Felipe Miranda
Ma. Serena Diokno
Marvic Leonen

A Scheme of Ordered Liberties

My Doctrine of Transformation

the life that i used to live will now be repealed by the path that im beginning follow. Future habits will only be acquired if my actions will not in any way endanger my chances of survival in lawschool.

My Bill of Rights:

1. Right to Expression of Boredom
2. Right to take my shoes off while studying in Starbucks.
3. Right to make paper airplanes out of my constitutional law readings.
4. Right to be in invicible mode in YM and to use the power vested upon me by YM's stealth settings.
5. The right to leave the receipts given to me at the counter to prevent myself from accumulating more trash (
6. The right to put the volume of my MP3 player to its maximum to keep myself from rolling my eyes at stupid comments which i unintentionallly / involuntary hear while im studyin in Starbucks.

So ordered.

Vocab Mula sa Hikab...

due to my lethal boredom, i wrote this article while pretending to listen to my prof in one of my classes today...
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1] happenings - a combi of happy + happen + penny in the present progressive form. It is the pursuit of satisfaction which will only be achieved if the three requisites mentioned are attendant.

2] chillax - combi of the uber cool word "CHILL" and that uber calming word "RELAX". It is used to connote that leisurely moment of forgettin all the things that are stressful.

3] impossible cry - from the legal concept impossible crime which pertains to crimes which are inherently impossible to accomplish. It is the moment where someone cries due to a nonexistent cause or an undeserving cause [in the case of MEN who are always "not there"]

4] malicious miss cheap - a totally murder-worthy whore who exudes malice and succumbs to extremely cheap ways.

5] democrushy - the act of demonstrating one's admiration for a crush. It's usually spontaneous and exercised with lack of discernment.

6] Lovey-dovey - a relationship between people who have plans of not staying in the relationship permanently. It's also synonymous to having "prescription / expiration dates". It's when one or both parties are planning to "fly" away from the other.

7] ballyntine - "akala mo it's enough, pero hindi! hindi! hindi!"

STAMP ART

Life's one big mail with no "return address" and an unknown destination. Its value is in a way quantified through its stamp. The stamp's a label of how much the sender spent [effort exerted] to jumpstart the mail's journey. The "stamp" gets licked or in a more civilized way, is wet by a sponge capable of absorbing the moisture that could make a number of stamps stick. What's that tongue's /sponge's counterpart in life? I say it's experience. Life reaps value through the stamps that gets stuck to every experience we battle to survive. If you get stamped, you are forever labeled. You may try to conceal a stamp that you aren't too proud of, but its existence never ceases to haunt you. It's unseen but it's felt. WE ALL ARE STAMPED!

Deep.. Deep.. Deep..

art by: a UP CAL stude

mister : it's war, jersee.kill the evil. see, i believe there is a happy counterpart of angsty.
Jersee: i will. and i'll see you on the other side.. after the smoke has been cleared aight?.
mister : speaking of which...wahahahahahahaha!! maybe after the smoke is DITCHED. hehehe
Jersee: right, right.. i miss really chattin w/ u. not the "hi hello to everyone fun fun fun" chat.
mister : that's the "me" i miss...i shut it up.for a long time
Jersee: may i ask y?
mister : it got dangerous to my personal priorities.
Jersee: uhmm,im not sure i totally understand but yeah, it's quite a valid reason. how did it "endanger" ur priorities? [tell me if i have to stop.haha]
mister : i honestly never thought radio would put me on a "celebrity" status. and there are harmful people who attach themselves to those pegged as "celebrities". these people are called "stalkers".i never wanted groupies, nor fuckmates, nor admirers. all i wanted was her admiration. and her admiration became complicated becasue of my status.
Jersee: we all have that one thing we want.. that's hardest to get.
mister : which i feel is a big deception, because i am still a nobody. just a loud dj. and that's it.
Jersee: unintended consequences, unforeseen results. sources of complications.
mister : an oily face would be a source of complications too... jsut felt like asying that, because my face is currently oily. how deep.
Jersee: and im laughin. thanks. i always find myself thankin people who make me smile or laugh. im forgettin it these past few weeks. and im tryin to find again that part of me who always feels thankful for the simplest things.
mister : forgetting is different from forsaking. i'm guilty of forsaking.damn.
Jersee: yeah, good point. i have to be more precise in my language too.hehe. forsakin... we all are guilty of this. the good news is, you KNOW and acknowledge it.
mister : the moment you realize it was your doing, you realize you can do something about it.
Jersee: exactly. but you have to make a decision first. it's easy to realize something and disregard it for convenience.
mister : better point.
Jersee: see, this is what i love about conversations. real ones. it's easy to talk... it's easy to ask for group hugs. but it's hard to establish a conversation that's worth rememberin.
mister : i love lightness.
Jersee: hmm, i dunno if i love lightness. there are times when i feel iv been laugin at life long enough. that it's time for me to keep my acts straight.