To the First-time voters in 2022

f you’re voting for the first time in this coming May 2022 election, that means you just turned eighteen and you were born around 2004.

You did not live through Presidents Ferdinand Marcos, Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada.

Add 9 years to 2004, that means you reached the age of discernment in 2013. That means you don't even have to care who the president was until halfway through Benigno “PNoy”Aquino. It is only from that point onwards when you are expected to know and understand what’s going on in politics. That would be when you were in Grade 2 elementary.

That’s a mighty big load of things to think about, placed on such tiny shoulders. Yes, that sounds unfair.

So let’s move up to age 12, that’s when you reached the age that you can give sexual consent, or about 2016. That would be when you were in Grade 5. Were you interested already in national politics in Grade 5? Still too early?

Then let’s move up to age 15, when you reached the age of criminal responsibility, or around 2019—that is only TWO years ago.

You would have been a college freshman—certainly old enough and intelligent enough to know what is happening under ONE President: Rodrigo Duterte.

So you see, all this noise about politics past and present should not confuse you.

At your age, everything everybody tells you about life under ALL past presidents is hearsay. They are immaterial. You don’t have to believe any of it.

You must make one of your first big decisions in life—choosing the next President of the Philippines—based on what YOU like, what YOU think, and what YOU understand about the issues that YOU consider important.

But here’s a caveat: you get to decide ONLY if you invest time and effort to educate yourself.

You have the most at stake in this election. My generation—the generation of your parents—we have no business “teaching” you how to vote, or even how to evaluate candidates. If anything, what my generation should be doing is APOLOGIZING to your generation for all the bad things you don’t like about our country. We are the ones responsible for that.

There are days when just don’t want to watch the news. You’d rather do something else—surf the internet, watch videos on YouTube or Netflix, listen to your MP3 player, play computer games or just hang around with friends chilling. You say forget all that election crap, nothing’s going to change anyway. Everyone is “politically-motivated” and everybody lies. All these candidates, all these political parties they’re all the same. Walang mapili sa kanila.

That cynicism of yours, that skeptical attitude you have towards politics, I want you know that my generation is responsible for THAT, too.

You see, your generation is the biggest demographic group in the Philippines—young people voting for the first or even second time. But it’s so hard to reach out to you. You have your own language, your own music, your own fashion, your own pop culture, your own ethos—we sound ridiculous and phony when we try to imitate the way you talk. Sana “all” maintindihan ito.

What’s worse, because you are young you are not yet so corruptible. You only cheat on little things. You are so easily embarrassed that it’s quite risky to attempt to bribe you.

But your numbers can make the difference in the election results—unless you can be dissuaded from participating in it, or even being interested in politics. So keeping you disillusioned and cynical about politics is the central strategy of suppressing your vote.

The first thing you need to realize is that politics is necessary. You don't have to love it, but if you choose to hate it, some in my generation would love that.

People in my generation, they hope you stay that way. They hope you never wake up. They are so used to running everything in this country which YOU will inherit, but are not ready to pass on the baton.

They don’t want to pass on the baton, that’s why they file their candidacies even if they are already 70, 80 or even 90 years old. Yet they can barely adjust to new technology, which comes as second nature to you. They are too set in their ways to adapt to changes demanded by our dying planet, on things like climate change and environmental protection. But it's your life expectancy that they shorten with their wasteful and unhealthy policy ideas.

God forbid you wake up one day and realize you’re smarter than them, healthier than them, and more agile on your feet. Your energy is boundless. Yet, they still beat you at this politics game because you’re too lazy to learn the rules.

They can teach these rules—along with all the tricks in the book—to young people if they want, and they do. They teach them to their children, from the oldest down to the youngest. Then they line them up so they succeed one another in public office unless, of course, there’s an opportunity to put all of them in office simultaneously.

All of this while you’re busy playing Squidgame.

But don’t be discouraged. Things don’t have to stay this way. It’s okay to be cynical or skeptical—but CHANNEL that cynicism, that skepticism into constructive awareness, self-education, peer activation and “own-sphere” mobilization.

Don’t feel like you have to be part of some movement to make a difference. Not when you’re trying to earn a living at the same time. But there’s a lot of things that you can do to empower yourself and your fellow youth without having to dedicate your whole life to the cause.

The practical reality is after the elections, regardless of its results, life will go on. But if you allowed your skepticism to keep things the way they are, you have no choice but to accept things the way they will remain.

No one is asking or expecting you--or anyone--to do too much. Just vote and vote wisely. Be selfish about this decision. Make it yours and yours alone to make. Then on election day, be unstoppable and make, sure you fill up a ballot. Sacrifice a whole day. Stand in line, no matter how long it is or how much time it takes. Don't treat voting like an errand you want to get rid of in one or two hours, and give up on if it takes any longer.

No one is seriously going to campaign among the youth. It's not cost-practical. It takes less money to just discourage them from showing up. And if the the last elections in 2016 is any indication--when 38 PERCENT OF VOTE-ELIGIBLE YOUTH DID NOT REGISTER OR VOTE--that strategy still works.

All the political parties know how the youth will vote--if they do choose to vote. So the name of the game for these old generation politicos is keeping you disgusted. So you'll skip voting. THAT is why they act the way they do--as juvenile as they know how.

So don't just be disdained by them. Don't sulk.

VOTE.

And if you're wondering what you can do to really bring about change--the real kind, not the kind all candidates are trying to trade for your votes--there is one thing can do.

Just explain what this article meant to you--to ONE other person. Just one.

Good luck, kiddo.

Banking sector in Baguio growing anxious over government overreach

he level of anxiety among businessmen in Baguio has gone so high just this last two months because of that horror story involving BENECO losing One Million Pesos to a withdrawal from its account in PNB Session Road Baguio branch, which it did not authorize.

If any person—or any government office—authorized it, BENECO will NOT dispute that. In fact, these people would do BENECO, a big favor if they would precisely come forward and boldly declare, “Yes! We are the ones who authorized it!” so that BENECO’s lawyers have less things to prove when this matter goes to court in a few weeks.

That is not even indispensable because it is really PNB that will have the burden of proving who authorized the withdrawal. This raises the spectre of PNB and some minor unelected government bureaucrat eventually pointing fingers at each other in a shouting match, “He made me do it!”

There’s going to be a lot of hairsplitting and legal acrobatics by those who need to rationalize their actions. But at the end of the day, the FACT remains that the OWNER of the account did not authorize the withdrawal.

From all indications, the withdrawal was made on the strength of some certification, communication or representation to the effect that NEA is calling the shots over at BENECO.

PNB believed that claim. How high a standard of credulity did PNB use?

If you’re a banker and you believe that someone who can’t even set foot in a house actually OWNS the house, you have my vote as the most naive and most gullible human being alive.

THAT is the cause of anxiety for many Baguio businessmen who keep their money in local banks.

If such a small government agency like NEA (which doesn’t even have regional offices) can gain access to a depositor’s money THAT easy—imagine what, say, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) can do.

It used to be that businessmen—and, boy, do these people tangle with BIR examiners and auditors all year long—could sleep well at night. “Due process” protects their deposits. It can never happen that anyone would just show up at the bank, flash an ID and a 1-or 2-page “Resolution” saying your deposit is fair game, and walk away with ONE MILLION PESOS, no sweat.

There are rules and the “rule of law” as enshrined in the VERY FIRST provision in the Bill of Rights guarantees that “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor shall any person be denied the equal protection of the laws.”

In other words, even assuming that NEA is 1,000% justified, it is STILL not exempt from giving BENECO a sporting chance to object. That is elementary due process.

Evidently, the Bill of Rights of the 1987 Constitution is undaunting to NEA—and NEA is not even the BIR (obviously). In fact, not even during the height of the recovery effort by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) was it ever THAT EASY to break open a private depositor’s account in Baguio.

Or just put it this way: have you ever heard of the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) garnishing a bank deposit account in Baguio?

Or what about the paramilitary Economic Intelligence and Investigation Bureau (EIIB) which stalks importers, and there are very many in Baguio--have you ever heard that elite unit storm into a bank manager’s office to siphon off ONE MILLION PESOS in anti-smuggling penalties on someone’s under-declared goods?

Think about that for a moment: BIR, PCGG, EIIB—these are the deathly-scary acronyms that used to give businessmen harrowing nightmares. Then it turns out all these three are day-old kittens compared to the new bully on the block: NEA.

Yet, that is NOT the direct cause of anxiety for businessmen. After all, so long as you keep your nose clean, and your books even cleaner, you can’t expect to get a nocturnal raid of your house, or warehouse from these three acronyms.

But suppose you have an unpaid supplier, bigtime creditor, large-scale consignor, or just plain disgruntled business partner who shows up at your friendly bank manager’s office? He flashes an ID, a board resolution, an overdue waybill, an unpaid delivery receipt, an undischarged voucher, a crossed check with an unreadable squiggly marginal note written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, or even a plain excuse letter signed by his own mother—what assurance is there that the bank would not prove too soft and give in to the demand of your business partner with a menacing growl?

We can talk about secrecy of bank deposits, but how can you expect banks to protect your confidential banking data if it can’t even guard your confidential cash?

The local chamber of business came out strongly and decried that stupidity-inspired nocturnal raid of the BENECO headquarter last October 18, 2021. I read their statement and I can summarize it into “don’t disturb our peaceful community this way!” addressing the police action that puts the Raid on Entebe to shame.

That is all fine. But in reality, the chances that NEA would do the same thing to your business ranges from zero to none. NEA is a threat to the business operation only of BENECO. But the way by which NEA demonstrated it can bambozzle a Baguio bank—THAT is a threat to the whole system of dynamics of doing business in Baguio.

This time it is not NEA anymore that is solely accountable but the city’s banking sector. What it allowed NEA to do to BENECO is a betrayal of the business community’s delicate crystalline glass trust and confidence on their moneykeepers. Of course banks can play possum and hope this thing, too, comes to pass.

Unless, of course, the business chambers come out strongly again and speak with stern intonation against this betrayal. If nothing else just to say, “hey, the last time we spoke we were just sympathizing with the sense of threat and menace that BENECO feels. This time, we are feeling the threat is now against us and we feel the menace OURSELVES.”

Then let’s watch how PNB, BPI, LBP, Rang-ay Bank and the other members of the Baguio-Benguet Bankers Association react. If they slap sanctions, or at the very least rebuke a few reprobate member banks—declare one or two bank managers “personae de culpa”—persons who have erred, that would be a refreshing breath of confidence.

But if these bankers circle the wagons and invoke the fraternal creed of “my-fellow-banker-right-or-wrong” it’s time to check out the prices of a good caja de yero. 

I vote for Leni. No need to convince me.

ow would I decide who to vote for president?

By not choosing among the candidates running for president.

Leni Robredo is my president, but I didn’t select her from any field of candidates The truth is I made up my mind that she would be my president in the next election when she won as vice-president.

This is why I am stress-free today. I don’t follow the news about who ELSE is running for president. I already know who they are. Declaring their candidacy for president didn’t change them one bit. I wouldn’t even consider them then, why would I even bother to think about them now?

I’m not interested in their accomplishments. I don’t care about their pedigree.

No one has to campaign for Leni Robredo with me. You don’t have to tell about anything about her, I have watched her through the years myself.

What about the others? I hardly paid any attention to them—or to any of their juvenile antics. I was paying attention to Leni Robredo, allowing myself to be convinced that she would make a good president.

I am convinced, and if they cut the campaign period to one day, I wouldn’t be scrambling to find out as much as I can about her in so limited a time. I had all the time I needed to find out everything I wanted to know.

Leni Robredo is genuine.

But how would I know that?

Let me put it this way. There are countless samples of counterfeit money, each one impressive than the rest in one aspect. But you can always make out that they are counterfeit by one tell-tale sign or another. One counterfeit bill doesn’t have a clear watermark. Another has it but its tint is too bluish. One has no security thread. A really fine sample had those security threads but they are surface-bonded instead of sandwiched within the paper itself.

Counterfeit experts spend years and years studying every new counterfeit variant that comes out. They could barely keep up with counterfeiters who come up with newer, more sophisticated and more convincing forgeries every year, some years even more frequently than two or three times. It’s a cat-and-mouse game between counterfeiters and forgery detectives.

Unfortunately, despite all the years of training and research, forgery detectives occasionally miss one. The best forgery detective can still get fooled.

But not bank tellers. And their training lasts only a few weeks. You can never pass a counterfeit bill past a bank teller. Why is that?

For weeks, these bank tellers study the features of GENUINE bank notes. They waste no time studying fakes. But they get so good at recognizing genuine money that they can spot a fake in seconds..and in high heels.

I only studied Leni Robredo. I know all her presidential qualities. I did not waste time studying the other clowns.

So, I take one look at some singing, dancing, fake-crying, baby-kissing, clenched-fist-raising, thumbs-up flashing, moon-and-stars-promising, bombastic declaiming, flagwaving, selfie-taking, autograph-signing, money-giving, gun-toting, corny joking, celebrity name-dropping, endorsement bragging and phenomenally-boring speaking “anointed presidential candidate”---and I can spot that motherhood-speaking FAKE in one second flat.

What we should have really copied from US-style democracy

here is one good feature of American-style democracy which we did NOT copy. I don’t know why—nangopya na rin lang tayo sana nilubos lubos na—but, no.

In a US election, they don’t count the votes for vice-president. That’s because there are no votes cast for vice-president. A vote for president is a vote for him AND his vice-presidential runningmate, whose name is not on the ballot.

When a US presidential candidate wins, his VP automatically wins too. But he does not carry his VP-runningmate with him to the Whitehouse. Instead, this VP drives farther down Pennsylvania Avenue, to the US Senate building where he sits as the Senate President.

In other words, when Americans go to the polls to choose the top two officials of the federal government, it's “BUY ONE, TAKE ONE.”

So while Democrat Joe Biden sits as United States federal president, fellow Democrat Kamala Harris is vice-president but sits as Senate President. However she cannot vote, except to break a tie.

Every US president is second-fiddled by a vice-president belonging to his own party. He sleeps well at night because, naturally, his party will not plot his downfall. His VP will not sabotage his policies from within, or try to upstage him in public relations projections.

In contrast, here in the Philippines, we have split-voting for president and vice-vice president. Fernando Lopez was the last vice-president to belong to the same party as his president Ferdinand Marcos in the pre-EDSA era.

Post-EDSA, only VP Noli de Castro belonged to the same LAKAS party as his president Gloria Macapal Arroyo in 2004. In all other elections, it was always a chopsuey combination:

FVR (Lakas) had Erap (PMP) as his VP in 1992;

Erap (PMP) had GMA (Lakas) as his VP in 1998;

PNoy (LP) had Jejomar Binay (PMP) as his VP in 2010;

Duterte (PDP-Laban) had Leni Robredo (LP) as his VP in 2016.

It’s easy to see why historically most Philippine presidents are allergic to their vice-presidents, as evidenced by how much love there is between Duterte and Leni.

This split-voting arrangement was tailor-fit for the Pinoy culture strongly-influenced by the political tradition of the balimbing. Most “polite” Filipinos can’t say “NO” without batting an eyelash. You have to give the Pinoy voter some wiggle room. That way when he is approached by two kumpadres campaigning for opposing parties, he can say, “Alright, Kumpadre-A, I will vote for your president but I hope you don’t mind I will vote for the vice-president of my Kumpadre-B”

What’s wrong with this picture? What is missing? Why—political maturity, of course!

If you mix black and white, you don’t end up with black or white. You end up with 50 shades of grey—a government that is ambivalent on every policy issue, and a national leadership that cannot build consensus because higher in their agenda is destroying one another first.

It’s the formula for disaster because stymied intentions will not be denied. It will look for a way to penetrate institutional barriers and guard rails meant to serve as “checks and balance” of the whole democratic system. What supplants it is a system of brokered alliances.

Instead, the president grooms his own kennel of loyal senators and congressmen who don’t have the least scrupples about preserving institutional independence. Why? Because there's an umbilical cord connecting the Office of the President with both the House Speaker and the Senate President who can be replaced anytime by the handpicked choice of the President.

The president has to dip his fingers in the affairs of a supposedly "co-equal" branch of Government because he has no assurance that the Senate president is his permanent ally. In the American model, US senators do not aspire to become Senate president because there is no way to ascend to the position. Here, the president controls the dynamics of this chamber's leadership contest so openly that he can even broker “term-sharing” agreements in a “win-win-everybody-happy” arrangement.

The president is not only a virtual king, he is also the sole kingmaker. Therefore, to curry favor with him, all must affiliate with his “ruling party.” So our error of not copying the “buy one, take one” setup also spelled the death knell of any meaningful “multi-party system.”

Instead what we ended up having is a “multi-system party” with everyone competing for the President’s blessing by any manner that can catch his attention.

My skin crawls everytime I hear a senator refer to the president as “Mahal na Pangulo.” The only other country in the WHOLE WORLD where you hear terms of endearment being applied to the highest official like that is North Korea, whose brainwashed citizenry call Kim Jong Il “Our Dear Leader.”

It is only in the Philippines where you find the specter of two senators running for president jockeying for position of who will "slide down" to the VP race so that an outgoing president's daughter can raise her sights higher and gun for the presidency.

In the American model, you can't have a fake presidential candidate (pati ba naman presidente napepeke na rin?) because you cannot "slide down" to the VP lane. That slot is filled up automatically by the presidential candidate who cannot have as his VP runningmate another presidential candidate.

Such a long explanation, but I can shortcut it for you. In the US election, there is no substitution of candidates, period.

That's why you can't see a US senator sucking up to a US president, unlike here.

It’s totally disgraceful when you see a senator--let alone TWO--behave in so subservient a manner you’d think the Senate was an attached agency of Malacañan. If he could only find the right doctor, one senator would lose no time having his lips permanently sewn to Duterte’s behind.

Two senators in diapers (I'll use that term again!) running for President? Now both of them taking turns crying a river on national TV over the prospect of having to "give way" to Inday Sara?

Yeah, right.

Either senator running for president was never true for one second.

Baguio's clean energy future is being decided today

n the land of the blind, the one-eyed is king.

What this old adage means, to me, is that men obtain power because they see what others cannot.

A more cynical expression of this is men obtain power by preventing others from seeing.

In practical terms, when somebody is trying to acquire anything of great value, his first agenda is to keep people unaware of that value. Succeeding in that, he meets little resistance to the rest of his agenda.

Reading some of the comments to my posts about BENECO, it greatly saddens me to read feedback like, “I am neutral on this BENECO issue. All I care about is that their service remains efficient.”

I hear this not from ordinary people. I hear it from public officials and leaders in the private sector.

Somebody is succeeding famously in keeping many Baguio and Benguet residents blissfully unaware, indeed.

This rich Davao business group heavily invested in the fossil fuel industry wants to acquire BENECO. They can see something Baguio-Benguet residents cannot see—and are working to make sure they never see it.

They see the inevitable demise of fossil fuel. Taking its place they see the ELECTRIC FUTURE.

At the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Climate Change Conference this week in Glasgow, Scotland the future of the planet was laid bare. Unless we eliminate—not just reduce—fossil fuels to achieve net-zero hydrocarbon emissions by 2035, our planet will enter the next global climate epoch called the “Self-Destructive Phase.”

It will happen in geologic time scale, of course, not in our lifetime but in the lifetime of our children, and their children and so on. But when it does, NOTHING we do can stop the downspiralling death throes of our home, Earth, and the extinction of our human race ultimately.

Am I trying to scare you? I certainly hope so, but I don’t need to. We are all living through the evidence of the effects of climate change. Typhoons are getting more severe, melting glaciers are raising the sea level. Many coastal barangays in Cavite, Navotas, Malabon and even as far up north as Dagupan, Pangasinan are now permanently under water.

Hotter air makes forest fires commonplace and droughts epic. And yet when it pours, even places in La Trinidad, Benguet that have never known flooding in the past have to get used to it now.

The only way to dial weather extremes back to tamer proportions is to REVERSE global warming. The only way to achieve that is to eliminate fossil fuels by retooling the entire human industrial civilization to power up using clean energy.

In short, faster than you think, soon anything that has moving parts must be powered by electricity.

Rich Arab oil sheiks will soon be a thing of the past. They will be replaced by electricity tycoons. Those future electricity tycoons are just average, mediocre businessmen today but not for long.

At the rate Baguio-Benguet residents are being manipulated right now into giving up their electric cooperative—the hub of all power-related development in the future—they will soon ignorantly hand it over to this Davao business group for a song. All their moves are well camouflaged that the average Baguio-Benguet resident thinks this whole “BENECO-NEA war” is just one of those things involving people who are “politically-motivated.”

If religion is the opiate of the masses, that lazy term “politically-motivated” is the placebo of the masses. You hear people hurling that phrase around everywhere. When some issue is too challenging to understand, many find refuge in dismissing the whole affair as “politically motivated.” It saves time and effort analyzing things, and yet makes the most ignorant person sound profound—“politically motivated lang yan.”

That’s how people with 20/20 stereoscopic vision gouge their own eyes, to be the blind subjects of the one-eyed.

How would life be like for Baguio-Benguet residents when all aspects of their economic life is under the thumb of an electric tycoon?

Ask the happy citizens of Saudi Arabia what a wonderful life it is to have oil sheiks owning everything, only condescendingly allowing a few morsels to trickle down to the general community, from time to time.

Decades from now, when electric vehicles of all kinds, including some that might actually hover in the air as casually as anything, are lining up at electric charging stations, these “neutral” people will fight back tears as they wistfully remember the BENECO of old and tell their grandchildren, “you know, apo, I used to be an OWNER of that enviable electric company…”

“What happened, Lolo?”

My best friend, the newborn troll

did say you should never pick a fight with a troll but a friend of mine is struggling with following that advise.

“That bastard posted another nasty message about me again,” he said to me in a chat, “and I’m sorry to say, Joel, I can’t take it anymore! I’m not following your advise! I am not going to stay silent!"

“So what are you going to do?” I asked.

“I am going to fight fire with fire I am going to post an anti-troll message!”

“What if he answers back and posts a message countering your message?” I asked again.

“You mean what if that sanamagan posts an anti-‘anti-troll’ message? Subukan nya! I’m going to answer his answer to me!”

“You mean you’ll post an anti-anti-‘anti-troll’ message?”

“You bet! I will answer his answer to my answer to his answer!”

“What if he answers your answer with a counter-answer to your anti-anti-anti-‘anti-troll’ message?” I said.

“Then I have no choice but to counter his counter-counter-answer to my answer to his answer to my anti-anti-anti-‘anti-troll’ message!”

“In other words you’re going to post a counter-counter-counter-anti- anti-anti-anti-‘anti-troll’ message?” I asked.

“Of course! I will not let him get away with me not answering his answer to my answer to his answer to my answer to his counter-counter-counter-answer to my anti-anti-anti-anti-anti-anti-troll message! No way! ”

“I see. Wouldn’t it be difficult to write a counter-counter-counter-counter-anti-anti-anti-anti-anti-‘anti-troll’ message?”

“No problem for me. I’m just going to answer his answer to my answer to his answer to my answer to his answer to my answer to ny counter-counter-counter-counter-counter-anti-anti-anti-anti-anti-anti-troll message! I can do this all day, I swear!”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just unfriend him or block him? That way you won’t receive any notifications about any posts he makes about you?”

“Yeah, but how will I know what nasty things that idiot is going to say about about me if I can’t read his posts?!”

“Well, you can make a fake account and search for his page, then you can post nasty things about him, too.” I suggested.

“You know what, I think I’ll do that. I’m going to give him a dose of his own medicine!”

“There you go,

congratulations

!” I said, “you just became a troll.”

Masada: The ultimate triumph of the outnumbered defenders

he siege of Masada was one of the final events in the First Jewish–Roman War which raged from 73 to 74 A.D.

On a high plateau above the plains of modern-day Israel, a small community of about 900 Hasmonean Jews took their last stand against a formidable Roman army that was overwhelmingly poised to dispossess them of their last foothold on the Holy Land.

The Jews, on the other hand, were determined to stop the invincible Roman war machine from taking away something they had painstakingly built. If they must lose their land, then they shall lose their lives. They will be overcome and annihilated, but they will not be conquered.

The Romans outnumbered them in both men and beasts. There were more horses and chariots in the Roman garrison than there were households atop the hill of Masada.

In truth, the Romans could wipe out Masada in a matter of hours by simply pounding it with huge boulders hurled from catapults. But they wanted to make the Jews suffer first, tantalizing them with offers to surrender, to capitulate and end their suffering by agreeing to be enslaved. The Jews held firm as the Romans ratcheted up the long siege.

The Romans began to literally squeeze the life out of Masada bit by painful bit, poisoning their water supply, cutting off food lines. Even when it rained, the Romans would build huge fires to fill the skies with floating ash so all the Jews could gather in stone jars was acid rain. Then for three months, Roman soldiers built a ramp across which they would drive a wheeled battering ram to break open Masada’s gates. They even bore a hole on the wall behind which the Jews had stored some grain. As the grain spilled out over the cliffsides, well-fed Roman centurions celebrated the instant famine they were able to inflict on the Jews.

Finally, emaciated, thirsty and hungry, the Jews grew too weak to even lift their swords—except for one last time: to thrust these swords right through their hearts. But not before they had first thrust them into the hearts of their wives and children, as they all hugged one another and, as one courageous people, prayed and drew their last breaths together.

When the Romans finally breached Masada’s walls, and prepared to slaughter everybody, they found not one single Jew to kill. In anguished remorse and shaking awe at the undying spirit of their vanquished foe, one Roman general cried, “Why have you done this? Why have you destroyed yourselves?”

But the next general said, “They destroyed nothing. They built a legacy. And now we can destroy nothing. We shall all be forgotten, relegated to infamy. But they—they shall live forever in faultless memory.”

Blitzkriegs are thwarted easy. But a siege is far greater cruelty, and its cruelty mostly happens out of sight. Just like what is happening in BENECO. NEA is slowly squeezing the life out of this cooperative, but out of sight of the public eye mostly.

While magnanimously projecting an image of a long-suffering regulator, ostensibly with the temperance of a spurned authority, it actually never let up on its vicious assault. It has goaded the police “to bodily drag away” anyone who resists, it had been putting pressure on banks to freeze the coop’s accounts—but not before helping itself to one million pesos in unliquidated withdrawal. It is working in earnest to set up a shadow parallel collection system. Already it is succeeding in ramping up delinquency by confusing consumers, or giving them cause to delay paying their bills.

Eventually, it will succeed in depleting the coop’s cash reserves while impairing its ability to replenish. Somebody in Manila knows that if soon the coop fails to make the payroll, many employees would have no means to feed their own families.

Does it hope that eventually, this will break the spirit of even the most zealous defender and demoralize the most committed MCO? Meanwhile, troops are kept on the ready for any sign that the besieged is growing faint.

The original contention was that this much interference from NEA would only be legally tenable if BENECO was failing. Evidently NEA was quick to pick up that logic. The best way to take over BENECO is to simply make it fail.

Still the lot of the people are in blissful stupor. Many still monitor what’s happening in BENECO by flicking a switch. So long as the power still comes on, the valiant “Masadans” will continue to fight this lonely hidden battle as hard as they can, for as long as they can, by the sheer strength of their will and the unyielding endurance of their faith.

Hopefully, the people would elect a new president w

BENECO Consumers: biggest unrecognized bailiwick

his is an interesting number to ponder: 138,000.

That’s the number of member-consumer-owners (MCO’s) of BENECO as of the end of September 2021.

Baguio City has 164,125 registered voters. In other words, there are only 26,125 more registered Baguio voters than BENECO members.

If you were running for a seat in the City Council and were foolish enough to antagonize all the BENECO MCO’s, don’t count on this 26,125 non-antagonized differential saving your ambition. Based on the final tally for the City Council race in the 2019 election, that number is only good enough to carry you to EIGHTEENTH place—well outside the Magic 12.

In 2019, Philian Weygan-Allan needed 32,158 votes to secure the last berth in the 12-seat Council race.

Before I get deeper into these hypothetical metrics, I have to acknowledge of course that NOT all the 138,000 MCO’s are Baguio residents or Baguio voters. BENECO’s franchise area covers all 13 municipalities of Benguet, plus Baguio City.

Consumption-wise, Baguio City draws almost 70% of BENECO’s total service load. Since there’s a direct co-relation between consumption and CONSUMER, any campaign strategist would be prudent to assume that at least 70% too, or 96,000 of these 138,000 MCO’s vote in Baguio. You can argue with me about that till the cows come home. But if you fancy yourself as a campaign strategist advising a candidate, take my advice: don’t traffic in self-soothing optimism; instead do the math using the worst assumptions.

That said, it would be a spine-chilling eye-opener for many candidates if I tell them that the “best individual performer” in the 2019 elections—the one candidate who got the most votes for any position across the ballot—was Nacionalista Party Congressional candidate Mark Go. And he only tallied 58,409 votes.

Even No. 1 Councilor Joel Alangsab (PDP-Laban) only tallied 51,062 votes in 2019

Even more astounding is the fact that NPC dark horse candidate Benjie Magalong topped the mayoralty race by just bagging 41,207 votes.

Mark Go and Benjie Magalong were buoyed up mainly by the fact that people did not see them as traditional politicians (although personally I never believed there was any other kind). Still, the common fact of the absence of any scandal to stain their names meant that the voter support profile of these two men was identical. Those who voted for Magalong most likely voted for Mark Go, too. The reason Go has more votes is because he had a three-year headstart in grassroots cultivation, being a second termer and he wasn’t running head-to-head against Magalong who was sprinting on a separate lane.

But if you add Mark Go’s 58,409 votes to Magalong’s 41,207 you come up with 99,616 which is tantalizingly close to that 96,000 number of BENECO MCO’s likely voting in Baguio.

The point is, there are enough postulates to support a theory that the silent unassuming BENECO MCO community packs a voting wallop few political parties realize. On any other uneventful year when affairs at BENECO are boring and unengaging, this silent bailiwick is too loosely coalesced to be a force to reckon with, true that. But in 2021 the threat of disenfranchisement has given these MCO’s a unifying cause, heat-bonding them to resist a common enemy. Suddenly this long-underrated demographic group—the Empowered Consumers--can jell overnight and deliver a 96,000-vote block if it is minded to. Doubters and skeptics will frown but these political smart alecks full of themselves can only ignore the potency of this community at their own peril.

In this slowly-heating season of campaigns, there will be powerbrokers left and right. Every manner, shape and form of “Iglesia” will boast of their “solid 30,000” or their “committed 50,000” yada yada.

In all cases, of course, it will be a blind leap of faith. One church of jumping worshippers says they have 15,000 members who sing, clap AND vote in unison. But you take one look at their temple’s floor area and you can’t figure out how 15,000 can squeeze inside a space no bigger than a basketball court—unless they have double- or triple-decker pews.

That’s the problem with statistics. It’s just like the string bikini which reveals the suggestive by concealing the vital. More often than not, the true ability of a bailiwick to deliver votes is inversely proportional to the loudness of its boasting.

Not so in the case of these 96,000 Baguio-voting MCO’s. How do you verify that number? Just stand somewhere high enough where you have a panoramic view of the city at night (SM’s Skygarden would be ideal). Now imagine that living in every one of those lighted houses is at least ONE BENECO MCO and—there you go—you have visual confirmation.

The COVID19 pandemic has changed the dynamics of campagning in this coming election, too. Do you think the decreasing COVID19 infection rate is really what informed the government’s decision to start relaxing quarantine restrictions almost overnight?

I wasn't born yesterday. I happen to think it’s the response to urgent concerns by political parties for the Interagency Coordinating Task Force to start loosening the restraints on public gatherings. This is to allow political candidates to return to their natural habitat during campaign periods—the so-called “KBL” triple occasion of KASAL, BINYAG and LIBING.

But if politicos wisen up in time, that middle letter “B” in that habitat acronym will start standing for “BENECO vigils.”