Our plane ride was scheduled to leave at 9:00 a.m. By 8:30, as scheduled, we started to board the plane. Then seamlessly, the plane taxied from tarmac to runway, and I was waiting for the crew to announce what number we were on line for takeoff. Meantime, I started reading the newspaper.
Mirabile dictu! We were taking off so soon. I glanced at my watch, and it was a minute before 9. Wow…is this for real?
I have been on and off a plane almost every week since the year began. And I could swear, this was the first time I boarded a domestic flight that took off on time. Finally!
P….. i.., Secretary Art Tugade of the Department of Transportation! This is truly marvelous! Congratulations are in order. And that cuss word from a satisfied constituent is a term of endearment to Secretary Art. Mas malutong siyang magmura kesa kay Presidente. Sana tuloy-tuloy na itong on-time take-offs (He curses with even more gusto than the President does. I hope this on-time takeoffs continue).
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Finally too, our cinema geniuses are getting recognition abroad. We take our hats off to director Lav Diaz for winning the coveted Golden Lion award the other day at the Venice Film Festival, for his “Ang Babaeng Humayo.”
Months before, movie dame Jaclyn Jose won the best actress award for Brillante Mendoza’s “Ma Rosa” in Cannes.
The beauty of all these achievements is that they were done through the plodding initiatives and perseverance of the small, independent producers and not the big-time commercial film-makers and networks. And they had very little, if any, support from the government.
Now what more if government assists our filmmakers, artists, musicians, and everyone who could promote Filipino culture abroad?
Many have been making their mark abroad, with little attention from a seemingly disinterested government. Lea Salonga and many others decades back started it at the West End. The UP Madrigal Singers. Even the small band players, the pianists and other musicians who pour their hearts out in almost every capital of the globe. Kenneth Cobonpue’s furniture-art being lapped up by celebrities from Hollywood and Europe. Our fashion designers making their mark all over.
Hooray…may their tribe increase tenfold.
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I was in Davao in the wee hours of Saturday when our President arrived from Jakarta after a one-day state visit following the controversial Asean Summit in Vientiane. I was enthralled by what he said in his arrival statement:
“We will observe, and I must insist, I repeat, I must insist on the time-honored principles of sovereign equality, non-interference, and commitment to peaceful settlements,” he stated.
Answering a follow-up question in an impromptu press conference where the media person worried about the international ruckus his remarks were painted as making, Duterte declared: “I am the President of the Republic of the Philippines, not the republic of the international community.”
How refreshing to see and hear a Filipino president, on his first foreign trip, declare for all the world to hear, that our country will pursue an “independent foreign policy.”
The President reiterated that he never wanted to pick a fight with any nation or body of nations over human rights. Many in the Western media and even official circles keep taking him to task over human rights in the current merciless war against drugs.
“I only want to be at peace with everybody, doing business with everybody and no quarrels,” making an allusion even to the thorny West Philippine Sea issue over which the previous leadership went into legal contention before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague against the People’s Republic of China.
This president does not care if he sounds wrong to our powerful allies who have been treating this sovereign nation like a vassal state through all these years, or whether his words were music to the ears of China at all. What he is doing is simply advancing Philippine interest and the welfare of his fellow Filipinos. That is all.
Stressing the need for a peaceful resolution of conflicts, he “assured everybody that there are only two options there: we fight, which we cannot afford, or we talk.”
I recall how previous presidents would be ever so wary of displeasing our “benevolent” ally, under whose “benign tutelage” we shall work in the community of nations, or how some of them would suffer the indignity of being lectured upon by visiting officials sent by foreign leaders.
Finally, in President Duterte, we have someone who will dare stand up for our sovereign interests, and would say what he wishes to convey in furtherance of that independence and sovereign equality. Finally.