Yesterday, the first victim of Proclamation No. 1017 was Prof. Randy David.

Nasampolan ulit (made an example again). Earlier today, the offices of The Daily Tribune were raided, and copies of today’s issue confiscated. ABS-CBNNews.com coverage here, and INQ7.net’s article here.

The Daily Tribune is a known anti-GMA paper.

What or who will be next?

Bloggers have been very busy today, covering the unfolding story. MLQ3 is out of the picture, since he is involved in the activities for today, though he muses if the middle faces extinction. The best analysis (though too extreme for comfort) is by Dean Jorge Bocobo, here, here, and here.

For a description of how’s things in the Malacañang Fortress, Jove Francisco has the goods.

Blawggers are not left behind. Punzi’s Corner Blog asks a very good question: if the coup has been quashed already, why declare a state of emergency? La Vida Lawyer comments on Proclamation 1017 here and here.

ANC’s Ricky Carandang made some observations here, and he describes Fort Bonifacio at 3AM today here.

Inside PCIJ posts the US Embassy’s statement on today’s news. It also has the full text for the fast-becoming infamous Proclamation No. 1017, and the follow-up General Order No. 5.

Nasampolan? (Sampled?) Noted UP professor and Inquirer columnist Randy David arrested, together with Atty. Argee Guevarra. I saw the arrest on TV, the persons arresting them are in plain clothes, and they were brought to an unmarked, obviously-not-official, car. They were released later in the day, and they were charged with inciting to sedition. This “inciting to sedition” is fast becoming a blanket charge against rallyists, I think.

Also, ABS-CBN has a continuing coverage of the events (though I am not sure if it continues to do so; when I left home at 5PM, they are still showing images from Ayala Avenue) in Channel 2 and in ANC. GMA7 stopped covering the events at around 2:30PM; I don’t know if they resumed coverage, though John Marzan noted that they did, though in Flash Reports only.

It was an interesting day. Much as I like to comment on this, I have nothing further to add. Though I believe that Proclamation No. 1017 is imposed to prevent mass actions slated today and tomorrow. Effective? Let history be the judge.

This is to echo Manolo Quezon’s call: if you have the resources, please donate a portion of them to the Philippine National Red Cross.

Let’s help the hapless victims of the Landslide of February 17, 2006.

Citizenship as defined in Wikipedia:

Citizenship is membership in a political community (originally a city but now usually a state) and carries with it rights to political participation;….

Citizenship often also implies working towards the betterment of one’s community through participation, volunteer work, and efforts to improve life for all citizens.

Citizenship entails duties, rights, and privileges. The rights of Filipino citizens are guaranteed in the 1987 Constitution, and the duties of citizens are not stated in the Charter. Rather, the drafters of the Charter thought that citizens know their duties, and that exercise of such duties come from the citizen’s sense of obligation because of the rights given to him. The drafters trusted that the Filipino citizen would be driven by such sense.

The Abueva Constitutional Commission thought otherwise. Its draft Constitution has a Bill of Duties, “to inculcate in citizens the responsible use of their rights”, to quote PCIJ. You may download the PCIJ’s matrix of comparison between the Abueva draft and the current Charter here.

I do not agree that the Charter needs an overhaul; I admit some passages need revision, but a new Charter is not needed. But a Bill of Duties appeals to me, due to the Filipino tendency to ignore his duties as a citizen, which I think is due to laziness (though this is debatable).

One of the evidence of the Filipino’s disregard for his duties as a citizen is an exhortation by a contributor to Inq7.net’s Viewpoints section:

Let’s forget the politics and leave it to the politicians in whom we entrusted our votes.

That is precisely the problem we are in deep sh*t nowadays. We only practice our political duty during elections. It’s like elect and forget. This is terribly wrong.

The people’s disdain on politics is understandable but unfortunate. The common notion that politics is dirty is fallacious (fallacy of composition for starters). But the disdain should not discourage people from exercising their duties as citizens of this country. The Kennedy cliche is tiring to hear, but it is too true, even for these times.

Some of us opted “take a vacation from being a Filipino.” Why don’t they just resign from being a Filipino? While I don’t take it against them – surrender is an option, after all – it is an escapist attitude that is too Filipino, in my mind. Many Filipinos would rather leave the country. Yet, when settled in a foreign land, they still consider themselves Filipinos – even if they carry a new, non-Philippine passport. They have the rights of the Filipinos as guaranteed by the 1987 Charter through the Dual Citizenship Law (a law that I do not agree with), and without the attendant duties thereof. Which sucks, of course.

Anyway, back to the topic. You want clean politics? You have to be involved. Leaving things to politicians is ignoring your duties as citizen of this country. So, if the Abueva Charter is approved, beware of Article Five – The Bill of Duties. When it’s passed (which is a long shot), you will be liable for culpable violation of the Constitution.

Leave politics to politicians, and you might just as well shut up if your congressman steals millions from his pork barrel or the sitting prexy spends government money for his reelection.

Please do your part. Elect only those whose heart is into service. Elect those who you think is capable and honest. Come election time, perform election education campaigns. Support anti-political dynasty bills currently in the pipeline. There are so many things you can do, and leaving politics to operators is not one of them. (Sure it is, but to your peril – and ours, too.)

Requiescat in Pace

To those who died in the Leyte Landslide of February 17, 2006.

There is a difference between what you have observed and what you have experienced.

In an ideal world, you detach yourself from the experience if you want to get a valid and rational observation. The scientific method insists on this. Why? Because you have to get all sides of the story; you have to get all empirical data that will prove the theory. This is specially true with the social sciences. Historians and sociologists don’t present their experiences; they observe people, they ask questions, they present their observations. You have to be detached so that your observations will be free from the taint of irrationality that an experience may bring.

I hate the detachment. It reduces humanity into quantifiable variables and unrealistic generalizations. It refuses to acknowledge the human dimension of the problem at hand.

Ironically, by detaching oneself from the experience, you are making an incomplete observation. True, there will be no true completeness; comprehensiveness is the best term. I believe that to present a comprehensive observation, you should immerse yourself in the experience.

True, there are times you have to really be detached, because you wouldn’t want to experience such. That’s why I don’t comment on things that I can only observe from a distance – stealing, perhaps, or kidnapping, or murder. I can comment about lying, because I was dishonest in some points of my life.
***
Poverty as a root cause of social problems has been reduced to theoretical discussions, turning the concrete into abstract. Employing tools from sociology to psychology to history, poverty is now just a subject to be discussed, debated, and quizzed. The poor are now lab rats, subject to experiments on how they behave; they are just statistic that no one bothers to understand. In the end, nothing is produced; in the end, it will be all words and rhetoric. Simple: poverty has been observed, and is being observed, with detachment.

If you believe in the totality of things, then you must be ready to accept fault for things that you are a part of; if you are part of a system, and that system has problems, then you must accept the fact that you contribute to the problems (even if you think you don’t). That’s why I am tired of reading treatises on poverty that pins the blame on anybody. Poverty is a problem of the society as a system; I am part of that system, ergo I contribute to that problem. Hence I am at fault. Denying that you are not part of the problem is observing with detachment. And definitely you are not part of the solution, either.
***
We live in a world of denial. People dismiss poverty as a cause of problems because people feel powerless about it. Some of us even deny it exists – how many times have we seen beggars and pretended we did not see them?

It’s not good to give alms. But have you done anything that will contribute to alleviating the effects of the problem? Unfortunately, sitting in ivory towers, blaming, and living in denial are not solutions.