An ‘act of God’

“Men must be governed by God, or they will be ruled by tyrants.”

—William Penn

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

MOST of us may not have noticed it, but the saying that God’s hands work in mysterious ways, or God works in mysterious ways, was manifested in brutal fashion in the recent chaos in the Philippine senate.

The phrase is a popular sentiment used to emphasize life's unexpected turns or hardships. While the exact wording isn't found in scripture, it reflects biblical themes of divine sovereignty.

The senate coup that toppled Tito Sotto had to happen, as well as the unmasking of traitors like perennial contrabida Loren Legarda.

The foiled bid by the NBI to arrest Bato dela Rosa, who was eventually allowed to escape amid bursts of “warning shots” by the trigger maniac sergeant at arms and his minions, had to develop.

The tumult, including Alan Pete Cayetano’s “the senate is and was under attack) saber rattling, needed to occur.

It was probably an “act of God” or a severe, unavoidable natural event—such as a hurricane, earthquake, or flood—that occurs without human intervention and could not have been reasonably prevented.

It serves as a defense to excuse parties from liability or contract performance in law and insurance.

 

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But the “act of God” the Filipinos, including some people around the world monitoring the embarrassing event, witnessed on May 11, 12, 13, 2026 was meant to awaken the Filipinos from deep slumber and remind them how important are the events that will unfold once the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio unwraps this week (barring unforeseen circumstances—and maneuvering by pro-Duterte SIN-nators).

The triple whammies (game of musical chairs for senate presidency, Houdini-like escape of Bato, Cayetano’s eruption) could be warnings in disguise.

A portent of things to come.

Warning that if Cayetano (granting he won’t be yanked out himself in another rumored coup set on May 18), et al won’t behave during the Duterte-Carpio impeachment trial, “there will be a prize to pay.”

Warning that if they dilly dally, they will incur the public wrath.

Warning that if they ignore the full weight of “overwhelming” evidence against the vice president and vote to acquit her, there will be a series of devastating political consequences.

 

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Because of the chaos and imminent threat of public censure, Cayetano, et al will now be careful in their moves to shield and rescue the embattled vice president even if the pieces of evidence will show her guilt in the following articles:

Article I: Culpable Violation of the Constitution and Betrayal of Public Trust (Misuse of P612.5 million in confidential and intelligence funds across the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education).

Article II: Betrayal of Public Trust and Unexplained Wealth (Discrepancies in her Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth and hidden assets).

Article III: Bribery, Graft, and Corruption (Alleged use of cash envelopes to influence and bribe DepEd officials).

Article IV: Culpable Violation of the Constitution, High Crimes, and Betrayal of Public Trust (Publicly threatening to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the First Lady, and the House Speaker, and inciting sedition).

 

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TOP 20 WOMEN, INFANTS AND CHILDREN FRUITS AND VEGETABLES: 1. Bananas, 2. Apples 3. Carrots 4. Tomatoes 5. Iceberg Lettuce 6. Oranges 7. Broccoli 8. Grapes 9. Winter Squash 10. Onions 11. Pears 12. Watermelon 13. Peaches 14. Spinach 15. Zucchini 16. Cauliflower 17. Strawberries 18. Cabbage 19. Cucumber 20. Cantaloupe. (Source: Produce Retailer)

LAST SEASONAL FRUITS. Fresh cherries are one of the few items in the produce department that don't have year-round availability. Imports start in November and run through January from Chile, then pick back up in May from California and end in late August or early September from the North-west and British Columbia. There can be as much as 5 to 6 months with no fresh cherry availability.

WHAT’S THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIFE? They are the ones in which we decide our problems are our own. We don't blame them on our parents and relatives, the ecology, the system, the voters, or the weather. When we realize that we mind our own business and control our own destiny.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines—Ed)

Not a good coach

"Coaches have to watch for what they don’t want to see and listen to what they don’t want to hear."

—John Madden

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

IF President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. were a National Basketball Association (NBA) coach, he wouldn’t win a championship even if he had the best team.

Reason: he appears to be not a good coach.

When the president let go of vastly popular and very effective enforcer of the law, General Nicolas Torre III, last year in favor of DILG chief Junvic Remulla, who rotted for General Jose Melencio Nartatez, it was like letting go a star player for a nondescript cager.

It was like releasing Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic, widely regarded as the best player in the NBA today, for Cleveland Cavalier’s Anthony Bennett, one of the the league history’s draft busts, in the middle of a championship game.

Also, President Marcos Jr.’s dilly-dallying attitude in sacking inefficient and overrated Remulla despite the latter’s lackluster performance is lending credence to criticism that he is a weak leader.

Despite popular calls from people angered by the recent political circuses in the Philippines, including the Bato dela Rosa arrest fiasco, for the president to give Remulla the boot and appoint either former senator Antonio Trillanes IV or former Surigao congressman Robert Ace Barbers, Mr. Marcos Jr. or BBM still hasn’t made a drastic move.

Doesn’t he know how to read the handwriting on the wall?

 

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Leadership, according to Uncoverie, is the ability to guide a group toward a shared goal by creating direction, alignment and commitment.

In practice, this means helping people understand where they are going, how they will get there and why the effort matters.

Many effective leaders operate without positional authority, purely because they demonstrate leadership qualities.

Their influence comes from consistency and judgment built on trust. This is why leadership and characteristics are closely linked: leadership is expressed through behavior over time.

Leadership involves decision-making under uncertainty and communication during change.

It requires judgment and emotional awareness alongside the ability to maintain focus when priorities compete.

 

People look to leaders for steadiness and clarity, especially when conditions are demanding.

 

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Life is always being badgered by a mind-boggling mystery. Our friends today are our enemies tomorrow. Our allies today are our tormentors tomorrow.

Those who heap praises on us to high heavens today will tear to shreds our reputation in hell tomorrow. We can't step on the same river twice, according to Heraclitus.

We kill the goose that lays the golden egg. We bite the hands that feed us. We are adamant to give credit where credit is due. We offend the wrong people.

We have no love lost for the losers. We are in mad scramble queuing to the doorsteps of the winners. We mistake our friends' generosity and humility for their weaknesses.

We kick and spit at people already down on all four. We look at life backwards and refuse to live it forward. We never learned from our mistakes.

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND. The reason why a seesaw was made for two persons is that when you go down, there would always be someone there to lift you up again!

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)

I know of some ‘legit journs’ who are equally corrupt

“Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.”

—Karl Kraus

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

IT’S understandable for some of our media colleagues to jump the gun on the five bogus Manila journalists (the four only actually acted as “bagmen”) led by a social media madcap, Franco Mabanta, for “shaming” the media profession after being arrested by the NBI in a sting operation for alleged extortion on May 6.

The venal and mercenaries weren’t even legitimate members of the working press, but many online platforms, newspapers and TV networks identified 43-year-old Mabanta as “media executive” and his cohorts—including the Peanut Gallery Media Network (PGMN) charlatans—as “(digital) media commentators.”

The word “media” was a slammer.

For many ordinary people, Mabanta and his ilk were real journalists or dyed-in-the-wool news/commentary anchors.

Normal news listeners and readers, after all, don’t (have time to) distinguish between mainstream professional reporters and social media influencers who act as political paid hacks. All colors agree in the dark.

 

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Thus, the revulsion from the ranks of the mainstream press what with the breathtaking NBI entrapment operation turning into a swashbuckling nationwide blockbuster event.

The holier-than-thou among us naturally cried foul: “We (the legitimate press) worked hard and protected our reputation over the years only to be destroyed in scandalous degree by the likes of Mabanta, et al?”

For a while, it became a sweeping black eye on the media industry as a whole—until legitimate journalists started to quickly correct the “false” impression Mabanta, et al and the real working press are one and the same.

The striking narrative is, “you’re not one of us, of course, that’s why you are corrupt, or that’s why you are capable of doing extortion activity.”

As if all legitimate journalists are pristine and immaculate as Caesar’s wife while all pseudo-journalists like Mabanta, et al are filthy like manholes.  

 

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The bad news is Mabanta, et al don’t have the monopoly of infamy they had brought themselves into.

There are also scoundrels in the ranks of active or regular media, and they’re as guilty as the ones they dread calling “our colleagues” like the embattled PGMN dregs.

Based on personal knowledge and experience, we know a lot of broadcast and print media thugs who operated (and are still operating) worse than Mabanta, et al.

The only difference is the amount involved in larceny. But whether the ripoff amounted to P300 million or P3,000, it’s still plain and simple extortion.

This identity crisis, or the sweeping generalization of the legit and fake ones, is what we have been worrying about ever since media technology evolved over the years and morphed into a giant octopus with mind-boggling tentacles. Confusing and unstoppable.

The assertion that some legitimate journalists are as corrupt as "bogus" or unethical journalists, meanwhile, is a subjective, heavily debated statement that cannot be classified simply as correct or incorrect.

It is a matter of perspective on media ethics.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)

 

 

Iloilo’s foiled NBI dragnet and the lousy ‘extortionists’

“Using coercion to drive charity is like using kidnapping to create love.”

―Stefan Molyneux

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

ILOILO’s Atong (not the fugitive cockfighting aficionado involved in the missing sabungeros) proved himself to be more savvy and clever compared to the alleged extortionists of former Speaker and Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez.

Although he failed to pick up the P30,000 cash intended as extortion payoff (it was a windfall in 1994 when the exchange rate was subtly $1 to P27) inside Tavern, a popular Iloilo City restaurant in the 90s, Atong’s crime had been swept under the rug for 32 years now.

In cahoots with the real mastermind, Benhur (not his real name), Atong was tasked to collect the loot inside the restaurant but changed his mind when alerted by the physician, the victim of an extortion attempt who was waiting with several National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agents inside the crime scene.

The physician, known as “Arthur,” then the director of a state-owned medical center, had been embroiled in a corruption scandal and this was uncovered by Benhur, a “blocktime” radio talent (meaning he wasn’t employed in the station as a regular broadcaster).

To make the long story short, Benhur demanded from Arthur P30,000 cash in exchange for not tackling the issue in his radio program. Sounds familiar, huh.

 

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Arthur, who was in retirement age, agreed to pay the largesse, but did not have any idea it was his “friend” Atong who was asked by Benhur to pick up the cash.

In fact, Arthur didn’t know Atong, who visited his office regularly asking for “donations” in relation to Atong’s own monkey businesses, was associated with the notorious Benhur.

Arthur thought Benhur was acting alone until Atong entered the picture during the aborted payoff.

Although he received instructions from Benhur, Atong admitted later he had no idea it was Arthur who was the subject of Benhur’s felonious activity.

Benhur described to Arthur over the phone the profile of the person who would pick up the cash at around one o’clock in that afternoon. When Arthur saw Atong, he quickly called him to “back off.”

Atong, a born hustler, was quick-witted and smart, thus he backtracked, and speedily darted to the opposite street and avoided the NBI dragnet.

“Diutik lang gid ko bilay sing. Wala gid ko idea nga si Doc (real name) to gali,” Atong swore. “Tuod man. Cross my heart.” (It was a close call. I swear I had no idea it was my doctor friend who was involved. Cross my heart.)

Since the foiled caper, Atong severed his friendship with Benhur. They never spoke again until Benhur’s death years later.

 

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Romualdez’s five alleged extortionists (including those in their spurious online media outlet) led by Franco Mabanta weren’t cagey and wise enough when they allegedly committed the extortion.

They must have falsely imagined themselves belonging to gigantic networks like BBC and CNN that they believed any Tom, Dick, and Harry would easily succumb to their atrocious and incredible “extortion demands” that reached P300 million.

Based on their stature and social standing, they aren’t even worth P1 million.

The truth is, they were peanuts. To begin with, they weren’t even legitimate members of the press—or they weren’t even employed in reputed media organizations; the legitimacy of their claims as “investigative journalists” isn’t backed by any competent and empirical evidence.

In their frenzied attempt to get instant rich through their skullduggery, they ended up being manacled, jailed and humiliated.

They are lousy “extortionists” and should be dismissed as plain and simple hooligans masquerading as media workers.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)

 

 

Respect the ex-VP’s decision

“You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.”

—Thomas Wolfe

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

SINCE the presidency of any nation, they say, is “a gift from God,” we suggest leaving Naga City Mayor Leni Robredo alone now that she has expressed no appetite to participate in the national election other than running for reelection in her current position.

If she believes the highest elective position in the country isn’t her gift from God, there’s nothing those who admire her can do now unless she changes her mind in the eleventh hour.

There’s a proverb that says, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Meaning we can provide the likes of Mayor Robredo with an opportunity or resource, but can’t force them to take advantage of it.

Even perspectives on the issue that “the presidency is a gift from God” vary widely since whether only those with “a gift from God" can become president is a matter of intense theological and political debate, not a legal requirement.

While not a legal requirement, Dr. Miranda Zapor Cruz once said it is practically difficult for an outspoken atheist to win the presidency due to the religious demographics of the voting population.

 

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There have been calls for Mayor Robredo to reconsider her decision after announcing recently she wasn’t interested to run for Philippine president in 2028.

"I am sure for myself that I won't (take part) in the national (elections)," the former vice president declared two weeks ago, stating she intended to focus on local governance in Naga City.

Her supporters and the Liberal Party continued to woo her even after she has already expressed desire to seek a second term as mayor of Naga City, aiming to complete projects within her "2028 Finish Lines" roadmap.

Robredo, who lost to President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr in the 2022 presidential race, indicated she prefers a "new face" to step forward and that running for a national position is not aligned with her current desire for local community work.

Many Filipinos believe only Robredo can prevent the return of another Duterte in Malacanang now that Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio has been leading in the surveys for president despite facing an impeachment case that threatens to oust her from office and the presidential race.

Robredo’s number in the surveys has been consistently showing some positive signs even if she hasn’t declared her intention to run.

 

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Below is a petition from Robredo’s supporters being circulated online and in many communities in a hope to convince her to run for president in 2028:

The Kakampink movement fought hard for Vice President Leni Robredo. Against all odds, it stood firm and still managed to win nearly half of the national vote in the 2022 elections, despite the massive gap in machinery, resources, and funding. We were heartbroken by the loss, but many of us believe it happened for a reason. The people were able to witness firsthand the consequences of their choice. Through all of this, one truth remains unmistakably clear: Leni Robredo was the right choice, the perfect choice—TOTGA, 'The One That Got Away'—that this country still needs.

Since her term as Vice President of the Philippines, Leni Robredo has shown relentless dedication, integrity, and compassion. Known for her unyielding devotion to grassroots movements and inclusive politics, she has always represented hope for a nation yearning for genuine change. Her leadership is not only a beacon for the Filipino people but also a bastion of democracy and equity.

Our nation faces many challenges: economic instability, social inequality, and an eroded trust in leadership. Now more than ever, we need a leader who embodies transparency, empathy, and fortitude. Robredo's track record for public service and her profound connection with the people's struggles make her the leader we need to steer us toward a brighter future.

By urging Leni Robredo to consider a presidential run in 2028, we are taking a step toward rebuilding our nation. Her vision for a transparent, accountable, and compassionate government offers the promise of progress and healing our beloved country needs.

Join us in calling on Leni Robredo to accept the challenge and run for the presidency in 2028. By doing so, we can stop the collapse we are witnessing and work together toward revitalizing our nation. Sign this petition to make your voice heard and encourage Robredo to take on the mantle of leadership once more.

 

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NO MAN IS AN ISLAND. The reason why a seesaw was made for two persons is that when you go down, there would always be someone there to lift you up again!

Happiness doesn't come in brightly colored packages as gifts from others. It comes when we uncover the gifts within us and use them to serve others.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)