A Christmas song for Raymond

If I’d make a wish for Christmas Each day would be like Christmas night When we put aside our fighting Find the warmth that comes from giving When the rushing world slows down for once To share a song of joy Then the noise will fade Weary hearts will find themselves at ease Throughout the world, all men will learn To live in Christmas peace If I’d make a wish for Christmas Each man would be more like a child Hearts that marvel at the small things Love and laughter everlasting And a worldwide wonder as we raise our eyes To a million shining...

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Reclaiming public water

A water rate hike in Metro Manila is upon us and Ek Sonn Chan is on my mind. There is something that water managers, providers, consumers, conservationists, activists and worriers, etc. might need to read. It is “Reclaiming Public Water: Achievements, Struggles and Visions from Around the World.” It is about wide-ranging approaches in reforming urban public water systems that are being practiced in developing countries. It’s about vision and against-all-odds innovation. I don’t have the book but I have the abstract and lengthy discussion paper...

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Climate change, the bigger enemy

While the Philippines was reeling from its yearly dose of typhoons, the worst of which struck recently, something related was happening elsewhere. The Twelfth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Second Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol was taking place at the UN office in Nairobi, Kenya from Nov. 6 to 17. Kenya’s vice president Moody Awori told the delegates: “We are gathered this morning on behalf of humankind because we acknowledge that climate change is rapidly emerging as one of the...

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Puta man o santa man

Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times. From the prehistoric times to the present, rape has played a critical function. It is a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear. -Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will I used the above quote last year shortly after the rape of “Nicole” landed in the news and created a furor. I use it again now that a conviction has been made. Puta man o santa man…. Whore...

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The essential Scholastican

What fruits had we tasted? What pearls had we found? What seeds had been sown in our young lives, and have they grown into great trees? What did we get, what did we give? What food, what richness, what strengths did we take along when we set out into the wilderness? Did we discover the hidden wells and the orchards? Did we search for life among the ruins? Did we listen, did we speak? Did we laugh and did we weep? Did we hearken, did we heed? And as we journeyed on, who have we become—for ourselves, for others, for God? Much have been given us...

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Workers’ rights and garment labels

“Sr. Stella L.”, a 1984 multi-awarded Mike de Leon-Pete Lacaba film, was on cable TV a few nights ago. While watching it I recalled the hot afternoon we spent at a location where several strike scenes in that movie were shot. A bunch of us women journalists were there as extras shouting “Welga! Welga!” We did it for free. The shooting was in an old bodega-like place that was made to look like a cooking oil factory. It was quite an outing, what with an award-winning bunch there—Vilma Santos playing Sr. Stella L., the late Tony Santos as Dencio,...

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Cheap drugs from India a boon

India has gotten giant drug manufacturers worried. It has challenged the patents on some of the world’s biggest money-making drugs. It has gone into manufacturing of low-cost drugs that would benefit the world’s poor. While India has stumped the big brand-name players, it has given poor nations such as those in Africa with huge numbers of AIDS cases a reason to be thankful. Well, count the Philippines among the beneficiaries. But can’t the Philippines do the same? I have been interested in India’s in-your-face kind of upstartness in putting...

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Tabang Mindanaw study on Sulu

“The security situation in Sulu is COMPLEX and has to be understood in all its facets if a lasting solution is to be found.” This sums up the results of a recent survey that Tabang Mindanaw did on behalf of Pagtabangan BaSulTa. The Assisi Foundation was behind the endeavor. The report entitled “Developing a Culture of Peace for Sulu” is a review of the peace and order situation in Sulu based on a survey conducted in 18 towns of the province. The respondents were composed of religious leaders, traditional leaders, women, the youth and the economic...

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Limbo un-rocked

Today, Nov. 2, is All Souls Day, the day for our dear departed. But feast-loving Filipinos always do the feasting and remembering in advance as if there might be no more tomorrow. And so Nov. 1, All Saints Day, is what Filipinos consider araw ng mga patay. We Filipinos have a way of advancing the calendar to suit our festive mood. Well, All Souls Day is the harbinger of the Christmas season. Tomorrow the Christmas season “officially” begins in these islands. It will last for two months. But hold on awhile to the 11th month. We all have our early...

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The scent of coconuts

One should indulge in life’s little pleasures even while the world goes berserk and the ugly side of politics is constantly spoiling the landscape of our lives. Food is comfort and we look to so-called comfort food, the food that brings back pleasant memories and feelings, when things go awry. It was good to savor the flavors and scents of the food of Bicolandia last Monday at the EDSA Shangri-la where the two-week (Oct. 23 to Nov. 3) Gayon Food Feast is now going on. This is being co-promoted by the Department of Tourism’s Bicol Regional Division...

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Yunus: ‘Poor women are good credit risk’

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) is on Cloud 9 because 1984 Awardee for Community Leadership, Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, is this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner. The RMAF was 22 years ahead of the Nobel in recognizing Yunus’ work among the poor. The Dalai Lama received his RM Award (Asia’s Nobel, so-called) in 1959, 30 years before his Nobel in 1989. Mother Teresa got her RM Award in 1962, 17 years earlier than her Nobel. This means that Asia, the RMAF of the Philippines in particular, is not behind, it is in fact way ahead, in...

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Sikat

The Catholic Church in the Philippines sets aside the second Sunday of October as Indigenous People’s Sunday and October might as well IP month. An NGO that has been working for almost 10 years for the education of IPs is Sikat or Schools of Indigenous Knowledge and Tradition or Silungan ng Katututbong Kaalaman at Tradisyon. The Filipino word sikat means shine and when the accent is placed on the second syllable, it means celebrity, a person of note and achievement. Sikat is a non-church, non-profit, non-stock movement that aims to make the IPs...

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Billboards from hell(2)

There’s a (2) up there because I used the same title last year when the Anti-Billboard Coalition (ABC) whipped up a storm. Many storms have come and gone since that time and billboards have continued to collapse on highways, vehicles, transport systems, structures and human beings except on those who put them up. Someone suggested I use the title “Death by billboard”. The man who instantly died after he was hit by a falling billboard was probably still being embalmed when this outdoor advertising executive said on national TV something like this:...

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Where to take your electronic junk

The good news is that we (from Metro Manila and other major cities) no longer have to search far for an “electronic junkyard” where our unwanted stuff could be consigned to, sorted properly for reuse or recycled. There is a way to prevent the rise of Payatas-like wastelands made up of toxic and harmful non-biodegradables such as computers, cellphones, microwaves ovens, electronic toys and gadgets, batteries and the like. Wall-size TVs, and tiny MP3 players and digital cameras will soon join the march to these junkyards. Walk through the Jurassic...

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The Pope’s language

A marine scientist, upon seeing the damage of the recent oil spill on Guimaras, is likely to say to his fellow scientists, “The biota exhibited a 100 percent mortality response.” We journalists would write, “All the fish died.” It thunders in its simplicity and you couldn’t get more dramatic than that. Author Kurt Vonnegut says that his favorite line among James Joyce’s stories is from the short story “Eveline”. The sentence: “She was tired.” At that point, Vonnegut says, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words...

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Surging like ‘The Oceanides’

Helsinki--After days of Nordic food, bottomless coffee, workshops, talk shops, civil society networking and so-called “open space” discussions (throw in a few films), the 450 participants of Asia-Europe People’s Forum 6 (AEPF 6) held in Helsinki called it a day. There was no evidence of rice and spice deprivation withdrawal among the Asians as they were very vocal, as victims and potential victims of neo-liberalism should be. Asians and Europeans of the G&D (grim and determined) grassroots variety have, once again, found their collective voice....

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Asian-European sounds in Helsinki

HELSINKI—Here in the land of revered Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) Asian and European peoples’ voices are being aired loudly. Here is a symphony of sounds, so to speak, rising, blowing with the cold Baltic wind that is getting colder by the day. The event is the Asia-Europe Peoples’ Forum 6 (AEPF 6) for NGOs and civil society organizations (CVO) that are non-state and non-corporate. The theme is “People’s Vision: Building Solidarity Across Asia and Europe”. What better way to start than with a short ferry boat ride and an informal...

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Arvind Kejriwal’s battle against corruption

So young and so brave. The opposite of that now-famous line that once aptly described a Filipino bureaucrat-turned politician: So young and so corrupt. Arvind Kejrawal of India is this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Emergent Leadership. Only 38 years old, Kejrawal has spent six years now fighting corruption that is so ingrained in India’s bureaucracy. It has not been a desperate, useless battle though. His efforts have yielded results and benefited the simple and the lowly whose concerns might not have merited the attention of the high and...

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247

Just before I sat down to write this piece yesterday, I was reading the Inquirer banner story about another killing, that of peasant leader Hermilito Marqueza in Tandag, Surigao del Sur last Sunday. The lead paragraph said this happened hours after Pres. Arroyo announced the creation of an independent commission that would investigate the wave of politically linked killings. Marqueza was the 247th victim of this “type” of killing since 2001 when Pres. Arroyo became president. If one goes by the victims listed in Amnesty International’s (AI) report...

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Tyre and Sidon

Tyre and Sidon. The names of these two ancient biblical cities have been floating in my head since the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah began a month ago. These two coastal cities in Lebanon are always shown on the war maps on TV, being among the places threatened by Israeli fire. These cities are mentioned in the bible 14 times, always as a pair (like Sodom and Gomorrah) and in significant situations that they have a way of remaining in one’s subconscious. In mine, at least. But since I’m no bible scholar, I couldn’t easily find where...

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Accidental heroes, reluctant exiles

The armed conflict going on between Israel and the Hezbollan in Lebanon that is forcing thousands of terrified overseas Filipino workers (OFW) to go home, the stories and the images one reads, hears and sees are the stuff OFW nightmares are made of. I couldn’t help thinking of the many past crises in that part of the world that OFWs have had to bear. And I thought, if we were to put together the feature stories on the overseas Filipino workers that came out in the Inquirer, the human interest stories particularly, and the photos too, they would...

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Environmental group sounds an alarm

What is wrong with this piece of news? What is wrong with this picture? Not so long ago the Manila Bulletin came out with a story that said that The Fuhua Group of China has broken ground in Silang, Cavite. It launched the “first of 500 technology demonstration and industrial processing sites that will be put up in the Philippines over the next five years.” The industrial site will run under the Philippine Fuhua Sterling Agricultural Corp. (PFSAC) and is part of what is called a programmed production from a corn-sorghum facility from which will...

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‘u.g.’

Just out of the presses is “u.g.: An Underground Tale” by Benjamin Pimentel which is about “the journey of Edgar Jopson and the First Quarter Storm Generation.” More than 15 years ago, Pimentel came out with a book on Jopson, the young leftist leader in the underground movement who was shot and killed while being chased by the military. Two editions have since been printed but Pimentel, feeling that more needed to be told, recently came out with a more complete story. And so “u.g.”, the book, emerged from the underground, so to speak. For total...

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DNA on soiled panties and condoms

In the news these past days were the items related to the alleged rape case that involved Filipino complainant-victim “Nicole” and the four accused US Marines. Forensic analyst Dr. Francisco Supe Jr. of the PNP Crime Laboratory told the court that DNA was indeed present in the two pieces of evidence that he had examined. The panty yielded male and female DNA samples, with the female DNA sample matching Nicole’s. Strangely, the condom did not yield a male DNA profile. The male DNA found on the panty has yet to be matched with those of the accused,...

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How much for a drink of urine?

How much would it be for Wildredo Quijano who was made to drink urine (“I don't know whose urine it was,” he said) and who spent his 17th birthday and nine birthdays after that in prison? How much should Paula Romero, a former seamstress, receive for her missing son Henry, a newspaperman at the time of his disappearance? How much for the 34-year-old woman in Mindanao who woke up one night to find her house being set on fire by some 15 armed men who then stabbed her husband who died in front of her? How much for her own 10 stab wounds? This woman...

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Bishops treated as hacks?

If it is true that someone had been distributing money envelopes, supposedly from Malacanang, to members of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) during their retreat and plenary assembly I hold the bishops partly to blame. How could this have happened? According to an Inquirer news report yesterday by Christian V. Esguerra, a bishop (described as “soft-spoken” and “low-key”) admitted having been handed an envelope by a “casual-looking” man who had introduced himself as a messenger “from Malacanang.” How could the bishops...

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Of saints and martyrs

A few days ago, First Gentleman Mike Arroyo said that a canonized saint—Saint Teresa of Avila no less!—and two future possible ones belong to the Arroyo-Tuason-Pidal family tree. Mr. Arroyo made the claim while aboard the flight that took the First Couple to the Vatican for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. He revealed this even as the Arroyo administration is being accused of committing a variety of unsaintly acts. This makes one review and reflect on what really makes a saint, particularly a martyr, canonized or not, in this day and age. The...

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A college for indigenous peoples

I wrote in the future tense then, I write in the present tense now. I had some doubts then, I don’t have those doubts now. Late last year I wrote about Pamulaan, a special tertiary school or college for indigenous peoples (IP) that was being built in Mindanao. The target date for its opening was the opening of classes this June. The dream has come true. Pamulaan recently opened with 47 IP students (from 19 tribes from all over the Philippines) enrolled in the college program. Pamulaan means seedbed. The college aims to strengthen the potentials...

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Fake drugs could kill

The Inquirer is one of the institutions behind the current campaign against fake drugs. It is not every day that this paper joins a campaign. We’re quite choosy, you see. Counterfeit drugs could kill. This was the title of the first part of the three-part series I wrote some years ago. At that time the Philippines landed on the list of proliferators of fake drugs released by the Drug Information Association that was meeting in Canada. Another concern at that time was adverse drug reaction (ADR). For while even genuine drugs could cause ADR, how...

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Letter from East Timor

It wasn’t so long ago (2002) when I wept while I watched on television East Timor’s declaration of independence after being under the Portuguese for 400 years and Indonesia for almost 30 years and Xanana Gusmao taking his oath as the first president. I was in East Timor so very briefly in 1995 for the Ahi Naklakan Solidarity Tour (Ahi Naklakan is Tetum for light) with human rights activists. After several days we were found out and promptly rounded up by the Indonesian military and brought to the airport. When independence was nigh in 1999 violence...

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Breathless in Yogya

I was in Indonesia for nine days last week for a vacation with close relatives. We spent six days in Jakarta and three in Yogyakarta (Yogya or Jogja for short) which was among the areas in Central Java hit by the killer earthquake in the early morning of May 27. Yogya, an ancient capital city, is the cultural center of Java. It isn’t anything like Bali but it has its own charm and cultural richness. The quake that killed some 5,000 people missed us by 38 hours. I do not want to imagine what it would have been like for us had we chosen a later...

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Culion: the nuns’ story (2)

This month and year, Culion Island in Palawan marks its 100th anniversary as a place where lepers of yore were shipped and confined for most of their lives. Culion, once the biggest leper colony in the world, is a leper colony no more. It is now a thriving island municipality. The new generation no longer bears the marks of the dreaded disease that medical science has finally licked. The scars are still there, but the place and its people have long begun the journey toward healing. I was one of those who helped write the handsome coffeetable...

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Culion: The nuns’ story (1)

This month and year, Culion Island in Palawan marks its 100th anniversary as a place where lepers of yore were shipped and confined for most of their lives. Culion, once the biggest leper colony in the world, is a leper colony no more. It is now a thriving island municipality. The new generation no longer bears the marks of the dreaded disease that medical science has finally licked. The scars are still there, no doubt, but the place and its people have long begun the journey toward healing. I was one of those who helped write the handsome coffeetable...

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Incredible mistake re Sally Bulatao

This is one case that tempts me to tell good persons planning to serve in government to please don’t. It has nothing to do with the monetary compensation. It is because despite the hard work you put in you might end up tarred and feathered, with your name irreparably tarnished. Sure, one could be removed from an appointive position any time and for any number of reasons, loss of confidence among them, but to be given walking papers and accused of wrongdoing without due process is another matter. Something terrible has been done to Salvacion Bulatao,...

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Feedback on “Everest”

Here are some reactions on last week’s column piece “Surfing Everest” that was partly about the efforts to conquer the killer peak by a team and an individual supported respectively by TV network giants ABS-CBN and GMA7. (The rest was about one adventurer’s Himalayan spiritual adventure.) I had expressed my concern about the “race”, what with two competing networks doing a continuing coverage of their respective climbers. And I dread seeing one making it and the other not making it. Or worse… From Maloli K. Espinosa, vice president of ABS-CBN’s...

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Surfing Everest

The two giant Philippine television networks and their respective Mount Everest climbers are racing to get to the peak and hoping to plant a flag of conquest and beam to the world their triumph over height, cold, snow, ice, wind, fatigue. It is not easy for those involved to admit that it is a race to the top. And it is not a question of who gets there first but whether anyone among the hopeful Filipinos there right now could get to the peak at all and come back in one piece. One hears the usual cliché about conquest of self, that is, the Himalayas...

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Elpidio de la Victoria, Earth Day martyr

Things were beginning to grind to a halt on Wednesday of Holy Week when the murderer struck. He chose the time when media coverage would be minimal, government offices would be closed and most people would be in their homes and in church or away somewhere. In fact, news about the murder didn’t come out in the national print media until four days later on Easter Sunday. The Cebu media gave it major treatment though. The Inquirer had a brief account on page 20, part of which read: ``One of the city’s leading crusaders against illegal fishing died...

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Psalm 69 for our times

For this Holy Thursday, here is a variation on the theme of Psalm 69 that I had written for Holy Week in 1992. With a few changes here and there, it still applies 14 years later. Save me, O God, for their diarrhea of words has come up to my chin. I am drowning in their slimy saliva and I slip everywhere I step. Into this depths I have been pushed and I am engulfed by the torrent of true lies and half-truths. I am weary from pleading that they shut up for a while and give my ears a rest. My throat is hoarse and dry. More than the hair in their...

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From aviation to nursing

The previous column piece ``Mayday! Mayday! for the aviation industry’’ tried to bring to the fore the brain drain problem in the aviation industry which is becoming more acute because of foreign recruiters’ poaching expedition in the country. It is so easy for the foreign poachers to entice our highly trained aviation experts with high pay because the foreign aviation industry did not have to invest in long and expensive training. That is what the locals are complaining about. It takes 10 years and more than P10 million in training investment...

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Mayday! Mayday! for the aviation industry

The local aviation industry could crash if the exodus of aviation experts does not slow down. The industry is composed of two sectors: the airlines and the service providers. ``Poaching at the highest level’’ was how a Filipino airline executive called the aggressive recruitment by foreign airlines. These ``poachers’’ have been reportedly coming to make choice pickings from the Philippines’ pool of highly trained experts. They could offer higher pay because they had not spent money and time to train their own. More than 100 hundred Filipino...

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Rest for the Visayan Sea

While politicians are talking about restiveness, restlessness and unrest in the political front, those concerned about the environment are talking rest. A group that calls itself the Visayan Sea Squadron is asking the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to give the Visayan Sea a rest, declare a closed season and determine areas available only for certain types of fishing. Mayors have also petitioned the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources to declare the entire area closed to commercial fishing vessels (three tons and...

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PCIJ under siege

At the senate hearing last Tuesday Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) executive director Sheila Coronel and Daily Tribune editor Ninez Cacho Olivarez gave testimonies on harassment and curtailment of media freedom that media organizations have experienced in the past days. Sen. Arroyo, woefully paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin, said, ``Those who want to destroy the freedom of nations will have to start with the freedom of the press.’’ Clashing with the generals during the martial law years wasn’t so bad after all, I said to Sheila...

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OFW: From belly of the ship to top deck

Philippine Daily Inquirer/FEATURES/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo FROM BOILER room to ballroom, from stage to spa, from poolside to pantry, from bar to fine dining. From the belly of the luxury ship to the topmost deck where one could see forever and behold the azure sea and sky of the Mediterranean. Overseas Filipino workers (OFW) rule the roost, so to speak, aboard the cruise ship Brilliance of the Seas because of their sheer number and also because of...

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The media fights back

Because of the recent political events the government has raised its iron hand and directed it toward the media as well. Are we the enemy? As I write this, media groups and individuals are in court making a petition for certiorari, prohibition and declaratory relief. Time constraints prevented me from signing the petition but one of the media groups I am affiliated with signed as one of the petitioners. The decision to file a petition was made after two meetings between the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) and media practitioners. The contents...

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When media women fought back

The present government that is tinkering with media freedom should learn a few lessons from the 1983 case of women journalists versus military officers filed before the Supreme Court. The military’s dreaded and intimidating moves at that time against seven women journalists, including myself, may have created a temporary chilling effect but it did not prevent us from making bold moves to make sure it was not going to be done ever again to us or to anyone. On Feb. 1, 1983, braving martial rule, 23 of us women writers and six male colleagues filed...

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Howard Dee, man for peace

``Today the flames of Edsa are flickering, peaceful reform is dying on the vine and our democracy is threatened again.’’ Thus spoke a humble and spiritual man of action whose quest for peace and progress for the poor has been unceasing. Howard Q. Dee, peacemaker, social development worker, friend of the poor and indigenous communities, former ambassador to the Vatican and businessman, was honored last Monday in simple rites as the sole recipient of the 2006 Aurora Aragon Quezon Peace Award. Persons from both sides of the political, ideological...

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Caricature

My fertile imagination went full throttle and couldn’t help conjuring up a World War III scenario being sparked by print journalism in a small European country of a few million people. Straight out of a futuristic novel? The possibility is there if we go by the extreme rage that resulted from a few pen and ink strokes. Much has been written about the Islamic outrage across the world that resulted from newspaper cartoons depicting Islam, one of which shows the prophet Muhammad with a turban shaped like a bomb. This was supposed to portray those...

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``Wowowee’’ Pied Piper-ed the poor

Here are some of the quotes I remember well in the aftermath of the ABS-CBN ``Wowowee’’ stampede last Saturday that killed more than 70 persons and injured hundreds. ``I was not even aware that ``Wowowee’’ was having its first anniversary.’’-Gina Lopez, head of ABS-CBN’s Bantay Bata Foundation, speaking as guest at ABS-CBN’s ``Straight Talk with Cito Beltran’’ ``Ayan, namatayan ako ng anak.’’ (There, now I have lost a child.) –a father, after finding out that his young only daughter whom his wife insisted on taking along, was crushed to death ``Nagkanya-kanya,...

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Like the wrath of God

Here is something that could serve as a historical footnote to the latest statement of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) on the current political situation issued a few days ago. As we prepare for the 20th anniversary of the EDSA Revolt three weeks from now, I thought I should do a rewind and see parallels between the bishops’ move now and the bishops’ move 20 years ago. I dug up the long feature story I wrote on the CBCP statement on the fraudulent 1986 snap elections shortly before the EDSA uprising. (``Like the Wrath...

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Pacquiao, Onyok, Ali and life

I am not a boxing fan but I did wait with bated breath for Manny Pacquiao’s Sunday confrontation with Mexican legend Eric Morales. And I did let out some expletives with some punches from either side. The closest I have been to boxing is in our weekly taebo sessions at the Inquirer. When our trainer John Q yells ``Attack!’’ we demolish imaginary foes and when it is ``Defense!’’ we duck under our fists. You have to be fully focused and cannot allow the mind to wander otherwise you’d get lost in the footwork. It is during the post-taebo crunches...

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Santo Ninos, rapture and tragedies

Another religion-related tragedy has claimed the lives of at least 20, the majority of them innocents who, when they set off, had no idea that their foolhardy elders were taking them to their watery graves. Last Sunday, the feast of the Holy Infant Jesus or the Santo Nino, a boat overloaded with devotees and their children capsized in the waters off San Ricardo town on Panaon Island in Southern Leyte. The boat named ML Jun Jay was part of a fluvial procession, a festive display that often highlights religious feasts in places that are near bodies...

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Female feticide

How would those who champion women’s rights to choose (what they want to do with their bodies and the babies in their wombs) handle this mutilation of future women? If there is an issue that makes the pro-choice advocacy in the women’s rights movement stand on its head this is it. I am not twitting, I am saying that this issue is important for the pro-choice advocates to address. In the Reuters news two days ago, and which the Inquirer carried, was the recent published research on fertility figures that showed that about 10 million female fetuses...

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Justice Cecilia Munoz-Palma: Beloved ``ingrata’’

To honor Justice Cecilia Munoz-Palma (a fellow Scholastican) who passed away at 92 two days ago, I re-edited the piece I wrote in 2001 when she launched her book ``The Mirror of My Soul’’. Here it is. Ingrata. That was how Munoz-Palma had been harshly called by a high government official. Ingrate. Ungrateful. The Spanish word reeks of contempt and condescension. You do not bite the hand that fed you. It sounds even harsher in Filipino. Walang utang na loob. A person who receives help or is accorded honors, even if she deserves them, is presumed...

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