WHEN I shared some of my opinions with Carlos Conde, I didn’t know what John was going to post in his Thursday entry. So without knowing it, there you have it: John’s views and my views concerning the significance of the coming elections. Add Amando Doronila’s analysis, stir, and serve.

As a short aside, there’s an interesting analysis of the first debate between the leading Democratic party contenders for the presidency. The article has some links to articles in Pollster.com, which features two professional pollsters, Mark Blumenthal and Charles Franklin. I wish our own pollsters would do something similar.

For those skeptical of, or unsure when it comes to interpreting, surveys and survey firms, a recent speech by Mahar Mangahas of Social Weather Stations makes for interesting reading. He explains what all these things are.

(Click above to download the speech).

Sooner or later, the debate on the national language policy of our country crops up in the papers -and in the courts. I just thought I’d point out three interesting links: read about language policy in Malaysia; and language policy in India and the debates that crop up.

Spoke before a group of business professionals in Makati City today, on the political situation. I saw my role as provoking a spirited Q&A; to that end I proposed three hypotheses about the May 14 elections.

First: The elections remain one way to resolve President Arroyo’s crisis of legitimacy. (See, for instance, what I wrote on August 1, 2005.) One Voice’s forceful and articulate position, that the mid-terms ought to be considered a referendum on the President, is not only borne of a deep faith in democratic practice; it is also faithful to much of our election history.  

Second: The elections are the opposition’s to lose. The SWS survey conducted from February 24 to 27 clearly showed that the public mood is anti-incumbent: A plurality of 36 percent of registered voters said they preferred an opposition candidate for congressman; a plurality of 28 percent said they preferred an opposition candidate for governor; a plurality of 35 percent said they preferred an opposition candidate for mayor.

Third: The opposition will lose the elections, in all aggregates except the most high-profile one, the race for the Senate. This result is an indictment of the opposition — especially its lack of preparation, its state of disorganization. Except for some high-visibility exceptions, such as Sabas Mabulo’s candidacy against Dato Arroyo in Camarines Sur, many of the local races are uncontested by opposition candidates.

Some extenuating circumstances explain the opposition’s lack of preparation: Many oppositionists were forced to spend the last months of 2006 playing defense, against the people’s initiative, against the constituent assembly, against the specter of assassination at the local or community level. Still: It needed more leaders like, say, Noynoy Aquino, who said the other week that planning for the 2010 presidential election (he is, of course,  supporting party-mate Mar Roxas) must start now. Planning for the 2007 mid-terms should have started in mid-2005, when it became clear that the President had a counter-plan against impeachment.

I think the political opposition today, understood as broadly as possible, is in the same stage as the Democrats in the United States in 2004. The question for political junkies is: Does it have its Chuck Schumer, its Rahm Emanuel?

THE Nepales Report, the blog written by the Inquirer’s Man in Hollywood (and a real A Lister he is, indeed, I’ve been told) goes from strength to strength. Whether its people unwilling to acknowledge their Filipino ancestry, or the Filipino-American obsession with racking up awards (a home-grown phenomenon, originally, of course), or his latest, the vicarious joy Filipinos get from celebs mentioning fondness for our country or our people  -what Nepales calls, in a freshly-minted acronym, “FC” (”Filipino Connection” -and isn’t the acronym another of those things we so adore?)- there’s something not only charming, and entertaining, but oh-so-enjoyable-because-so-true in what he writes.

There are never enough Hollywood movies about or at least set in, the Philippines, though from before the war to during World War II, there was, perhaps, more of a reason for Americans to do so (see this Time Magazine article from 1939 concerning Sam Goldywn having to delete some scenes from a film about the American-Moro Wars). You can even find the Philippines and the war effort in terms of Hollywood, mentioned in academic literature. Most were well-meaning but, like They Were Expendable and its scene with John Wayne and friends singing “The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga,” offensive to us today.

Most of the time, we’re reduced to looking for Filipinos who feature as extras in American movies or TV shows. Everyone has their favorite examples. Apparently, though it’s an ole time habit. I remember watching TV in Los Angeles with my dad late one night in the early 1980s, and there was an ancient film about the Japanese invasion of China. A group of Japanese soldiers corner the hero and one of them barks, “Sumunod ka sa amin!”

Naturally, hilarity ensued: and then my father remarked, “you know, it’s as funny to you as it was to me the first time I saw this movie in 1939…” I only wish I could recall the title of the film. Ditto that TV series about Edsa featuring fantastic performances by Filipino actors but which ended, I seem to remember it being said, with People Power undertaken by Sri Lankans who, seeing Laurice Guillen playing Cory Aquino, made the Laban sign and shouted, “Curry, Curry!”

A show that has mentioned Filipinos is House MD, just the other week:

KEO: Sir, are you all right?

HOUSE: He’s drunk.

[Peng starts to make gagging sounds, with his mouth still closed. Keo, an experienced flight attendant, quickly moves to get him an air-sickness bag. Too late! He lurches forward and throws up multiple times on his food tray. House closes his eyes in irritation and disgust. Other passengers, including a businessman and businesswoman react the same. A sweaty Peng gags a couple of times and falls against his backrest, fatigued.]

KEO: [in Tagalog] Nilalagnat ka ba? [Are you sick?]

PENG: [Korean, strangled] [untranslated]

KEO: [urgently] Does anyone speak Korean?

[Peng lurches forward and coughs out some more puke.]

KEO: Is anyone a doctor?

[House looks around, hopefully. Nope! He rolls his eyes.]

HOUSE: Yes!

My favorite American tribute to the Filipino still has to be Steve Martin’s marvelous essay, In Search of the Wily Filipino: actually, I first heard it, in the audio book compilation of his essays, Pure Drivel.

I see that an old friend of the Philippines is up to his “old tricks” again —- and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Archbishop Antonio Franco, now the papal nuncio to Israel (and Cyprus), has figured in another religious/political controversy.

John Allen writes:

Archbishop Antonio Franco, the Vatican’s nuncio in Israel, has announced that he will attend the annual Holocaust Memorial day event at Yad Vashem, Israel’s main Holocaust museum, after the museum indicated it is willing to reconsider a caption of Pope Pius XII that Franco found offensive.

Avner Shalev, President of Yad Vashem, sent a letter to Franco late in the week stating that the museum will “reconsider the way in which Pius XII is presented.” In response, Franco indicated that he will be present for the events Sunday evening.

Apparently, Franco did not only find the caption offensive; he backed it up with one of the more potent weapons in diplomacy’s limited armory: he threatened to stage a boycott.

Filipinos may remember Franco, who served in the Philippines for over six years, as the man who allegedly gave the Philippine bishops a tongue-lashing in July 2005 —- a warning against politicized action that allegedly led to the bishops’ tempered statement on the Garcillano crisis.

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David Halberstam died in a car crash today; he was 73.

He wrote essential books: The Best and the Brightest is possibly the best introduction to the Vietnam War, The Powers That Be possibly the best single volume on the rise of the modern media.

I can still remember the way he started Best and the Brightest, painting the contrast between the old Robert Lovett and the young JFK, one cold day in December 1960.

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IN his column today, Amando Doronila asks if the country isn’t headed towards joining the global list of basket-case countries:

The Philippines came up recently under intensified international scrutiny questioning whether it was moving into the category of a failed state in the wake of the incapacity of the country’s avowedly democratic regime to halt the wave of extrajudicial killings since 2001.

Doronila makes elaborate use of Noam Chomsky’s own interpretation of the failed state idea. But the debate on whether or not the country is is a failed state is something I took note of in my blog back in August, 2005.

At the time, I pointed to an entry in Global Guerrillas which explains the concept, and I think it still makes relevant reading today (more extensive readings can be found in Global Policy Forum). Back in 2005, the Failed State Index for 2005 had just been launched. In it, the Philippines came out No. 56. In the Failed State Index for 2006, the Philippines came out No. 68, between Israel and Peru. Since the lower your number, the closer you are to being a failed state, the 2006 rankings reflect a substantial improvement for the country.

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Blogger Beer is an American blogger whose been keeping tabs on the Michael Ray Aquino and Leandro Aragoncillo security leak cases. He remarks that the latest news indicates Michael Ray Aquino has a good lawyer (and wonders whose paying the fees) and in one of his old entries calls the case, “in US terms a small story.” Nevertheless, it’s one that’s received significant local media attention.

The Center for Advanced Counterintelligence, Counterterrorism and Security Training has a thorough online dossier on the two, with links to documents and news stories.

THE dictionary defines Holocaust as follows:

holocaust |ˈhäləˌkôst; ˈhōlə-| noun 1 destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, esp. caused by fire or nuclear war : a nuclear holocaust | the threat of imminent holocaust. • ( the Holocaust) the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime during the period 1941–45. More than 6 million European Jews, as well as members of other persecuted groups, such as gypsies and homosexuals, were murdered at concentration camps such as Auschwitz. 2 historical a Jewish sacrificial offering that is burned completely on an altar. ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French holocauste, via late Latin from Greek holokauston, from holos ‘whole’ + kaustos ‘burned’ (from kaiein ‘burn’ ).

The mass murder of students at Virginia Tech in the USA was subsequently reported by two Filipino students (hat tip to Philippine Politics 04). Filipino-American blogger goodboi points out two eyewitness accounts of what happened at icantread01 and ntcoolfool and that media left comments on their blogs, requesting interviews. Also, another blogger was apparently the victim of a rumor that he was the killer, to the extent that,

apparently to him all the attention was all fun and games until he started getting angry phone calls and e-mails - death threats too. Michelle Malkin and the Drudge Report have written stuff about him.

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