By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net
A FORMER and a current Filipino journalist have created a blog countdown that aims to gather the sentiments of Filipinos who are impatiently waiting for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to step down in 2010.
“It’s certainly not inspired by (Antonio) Trillanes IV. I’m not a fan. But yes, the Manila Peninsula incident did just happen to bring up the point again. Whether you believe in coups or not, everybody agrees that 2010 is a long way away,” said Bangkok-based journalist Roby Alampay in an interview, as he introduced the Ang Tagal Naman blog.
“Ang Tagal Naman” is a Filipino phrase that roughly translates to “This is taking too long.”
Unlike Senator Antonio Trillanes IV and his supporters who led a siege at a hotel in Makati to ask for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s resignation, Alampay and co-founder Data Tolentino-Canlas, a former TV journalist who now runs a multimedia production company with her husband, said the objective of the blog is simple.
“I just think it expresses the least common denominator of how people feel: Ang tagal. Yun lang (It’s taking too long. That’s all). Whether that lulls people into counting sheep or its spurs them to reflect on what they could be doing until then, is entirely up to them. But we all agree, don’t we all, that 2010 is a long way away. Depending on how you look at the countdown, the very thought that Gloria will still be here for two and a half more years either moves you or it paralyzes you. Either way, it’s exhausting. This is a just an expression of how I think a lot of us feel,” he said.
Alampay is also the executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance, a non-government organization based in Bangkok, Thailand.
The blog countdown, hosted in Blogspot, also looks simple. It features a Flash animation countdown with a background of two bouncing pink creatures with yellow, flapping wings. Alampay said a downloadable widget of the countdown will be made available soon.
“This widget can be placed by people in their own desktops and they can depress themselves even offline,” the Bangkok-based journalist quipped.
The blog has also been left open for comments.
So far, the blog has reported more than 2,000 hits.
2 Feedbacks on "Filipinos launch blog countdown to 2010"
clipmaster
from ang tagal naman blog:
the ‘wala na bang iba?’ manifesto
People who want change: hear us.
• We scoff at the actions of Trillanes and other stupid politicians, celebrities, church figures et al BUT we are not necessarily pro-GMA.
• You are making a big mistake if you assume so.
• We are also frustrated at how things are going but doubly so thanks to your bumbling idiocy. To the various oppositionists we say– hello? Can you see how funny you appear to us? Do you even know and hear us? Do you know that we just want to live a peaceful life here?
• By criticizing those who dont care, you fail to win us over.
• Making stupid Trillanic and Guingonic moves doesn’t help either.
• It also doesn’t help that there are too many opposition leaders but all with the collective IQ of a door knob. At least yung door knob may silbi.
• The more you squabble and bungle, the more GMA looks smarter than you. You don’t deserve to lead us if you can’t even lead yourselves.
• Ano pa nga ba ang pwede naming gawin? Sino mang ipapalit nyo ngayon all look puny compared to how GMA has handled the crisis you’ve been trying to stir since day one. Nung una, okay lang. Pero you guys have all proven your incompetence.
• What really miffs us is every time you disturb the peace, di naman kayo ang immediately affected eh. KAMI!
• So please– we won’t even ask you to get your act together. We’ll just wait. We advice na tumahimik din kayo at baka sakaling may lalabas na better leaders than all you selfish brats.
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i agree, 100%………..
Bert
When the Cha-Cha push starts to heat up, we will find that this blog ‘Ang Tagal Naman’ is a spin to dessipate the impatience of the Filipino people. And then we will wake up one morning to the truth that 2010 is not a year of stepping down but a year of perpetual rule.
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