DLS Pineda on disquiet

DLS Pineda finished his undergrad and masters in UP Diliman. He plays bass and writes short commentaries for the Philippine Daily Inquirer. He teaches Literature and Creative Writing classes in two different schools in Agusan del Norte.
governance

2020 Ended at the Greenhills Hostage Crisis

January 26, 2021 by
2

I am writing this on the 1st of January, 2021, to be sure that the chaotic and fickle-minded 2020 had no more punches to throw. I have conjectured that while we had to trudge through 365 days last year, it had already ended on the 2nd of March, Monday, at Greenhills Shopping Center, when Archie Paray, 40, held his former employer’s office hostage. Afterwards, the gears that had been set in motion could no longer be stopped. That was our last train out of the pandemic, Duterte, his unsure men, and the lockdowns. We missed it.

This does not mean, in any way, that I am charging any more crimes to Paray and his employers than they are already accused of. Besides, the pattern for 2020 had already been set as early as January: when Taal Volcano spewed towers and towers of ash and COVID-19 entered our shores and the President couldn’t be found, when Bato’s US visa was cancelled and Teddy Boy Locsin Jr. made an ass of himself in front of protesters at the DFA, when the US under Trump almost declared war against Iran, when Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash.

But March 2 was a point of no return. By March 6, Friday, there was superspreader event, also in Greenhills, traced to a person making use of the prayer room on top of the parking lot of Unimart. Now with nine months of pandemic experience under our belts, we can imagine the butterfly effect that the event set into motion, and understand 2020 better.

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disquiet, governance

The Anti-Government SONA

August 4, 2020 by
T

In the absence of a feasible and laudable plan to re-open schools, I am imagining how homework for many students would be when they are asked: What did you take from the President’s State of the Nation Address?

This exercise is often perceived as perfunctory in civics classes but has the deeper purpose of completing the feedback loop, making sure that the population, especially the young, is aware of the State’s plans, at the very least. Knowingly or not, teachers assigning homework related to the SONA actively take part in the State’s project of “nation-building.”

The role of the annual SONA is no different from sales rallies where company executives show up for their salespersons on the ground to deliver a rousing speech, just to be sure everyone is on the same page. In not so many words, Erap’s best sales pitch was when he exited through Commonwealth Avenue after his speech and met with protesters in the pouring rain; GMA’s was her bringing of three kids onstage and the myth of the bangkang papel. These proved to be effective talking points for their respective administrations’ annual push forward.

This year’s SONA was special. Stripped of the usual trappings and the faux Hollywood vibe, we see the SONA now for what it is. We expected a masterplan for the coming months, formulated for both Legislative and Executive branches, to address the fatal and colossal pandemic. But we got no categorical answers from Duterte. With the twice-a-week feed of “Late Night with Rodrigo Duterte” and the illusion of micro-management it brings, it would have been great to hear a New Year’s resolution of sorts, upon which we could anchor the next three to six months. So while this show of incompetence is not new, it was still disappointing.

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public health, social / media

Navigating Through This Crisis: The Personal in Mass Testing #Covid19

April 11, 2020 by
N

My five siblings and I, including my two in-laws, keep a Viber group where we often exchange memes, artworks, and videos of our nieces, and in times like these, positions about things political and seemingly otherwise. I’m putting it lightly, considering that you can plot the eight of us neatly on a Cartesian plane and no two dots would be on the exact same point, no standpoint ever being in full agreement with another. There’s always a branching out, a curve, or a tone that each one of us bends the discussion to, as I presume it is in every family, rooted mostly in the different paths we have taken or are taking. Imagine, eight people stuck with each other with roughly 250 years of life between them.

Over the last weeks of March and the dawn of these lockdowns, the arguing was mostly between my older sister and I. She was (still is) at the frontlines in this COVID crisis and she hadn’t gone home to her husband and two daughters in more than two weeks, serving as one of the emergency room doctors in one of the leading private hospitals in Metro Manila. She was resolutely not in agreement with mass testing. On the left corner, I had been entertaining the thought of mass testing as the next, logical step we could take—led by government, of course—upon reading the World Health Organization’s (WHO) campaign for it and the supposed success it heralded in South Korea and other countries. The #MassTestingNow bloc was also the only pointed segment in civil society that was visible and moving.

I was taken by my political affinities when I campaigned, albeit briefly, on Twitter for #MassTestingNow. My sister, who is seldom online, saw it and immediately brought me to court in our Viber group, asking me what I thought it meant. I replied with what I thought mass testing entailed, optimistically citing the cases of South Korea and Wuhan, as talked about in an article by the New York Times, and the best-case scenario recommended by the WHO. I did not forget to include the statement prepared by a group called Scientists Unite Against COVID-19 which defines itself as a group of “concerned scientists, organizations and other citizens,” though there are no specific signatories in the statement.

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governance, public health

Grounding Government: Why Criticize Now During COVID-19?

March 18, 2020 by
G

I believe in government. Governments sprouted side-by-side with civilization to create order, as did belief, religion, and the study of natural sciences. The first “government officials” were those who displayed qualities of being ahead, for example, hunters of extraordinary prowess, priests, shamans, or those supposedly ordained by a god—pharaohs, emperors, prophets, etc. Ultimately, governments arose out of our need to make sense of life: social life had to lead somewhere, hopefully to a better end, or else, what’s the point of living with one another?

Government—coming in various forms—is human life’s answer to that. It is essentially an idea that a group of people, a “nationality” (an idea that sprouted much later), agrees upon and pools their time and resources (i.e. taxes) into so that, as a big(ger) group, they are able to surmise solutions to problems they could not solve as mere individuals. Simply put, big problems require big solutions.

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social / media

Media Madness on 2020’s First Month

February 1, 2020 by
M

Newsflash: Too many people felt that January was too long and that there was nothing new with the New Year. Many are petitioning for a restart of 2020 to this month, jokingly, of course, though they are not entirely silly, and their intentions are well-meaning. 2020 was supposed to be “the year of clarity” but its first 31 days was chaos, to say the least.

A quick rundown of the events which took place last month:

The assassination of Maj. General Qasem Soleimani, a “misfire” that caused a plane to crash, and the US, under Trump, almost declaring war with Iran; the massive bushfires in Australia, burning for the past six months, finally gaining global attention; the Taal Volcano suddenly steaming ash over parts of Luzon and the “imminent threat” of a magmatic eruption looming for weeks; in showbiz, a long-time loveteam denying an alleged break up, eventually breaking up for real, and the rumors that made a mess in between; the coronavirus, the scares and the helpless spectating as the President issued hardly a word, just as he did during the Taal crisis; and to close the month, less than 24 hours after LeBron James overtook his scoring record, basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others died in a helicopter crash on their way to Mamba Acadamy in Thousand Oaks, California. Lest I be accused of not giving airtime to how government responded to this month of crisis, let’s not forget Little Teddy Boy Locsin Jr. going full on WWE kayfabe right outside his office, the President being petty about Senator Bato’s visa cancellation, and the administration launching “The Duterte Legacy”—sheesh.

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