Senator Grace Poe has made no secret of her friendship with President Noynoy Aquino, whose recent birthday bash she attended, even if she is running for president against Aquino’s own chosen candidate, Mar Roxas. But sometimes I think Poe is taking this friendship thing a bit too far.
Poe has declared that she is considering giving Aquino an important role in her government, if she is elected in May. The senator said she was thinking about giving Aquino an advisory role in the area of fighting corruption, “because he has also done good work in that regard.”
I don’t think this is such a good idea. Even if no one—so far— has directly linked Aquino to any corrupt act, I think even Poe will admit that he has allowed and enabled his closest advisers and officials to engage in activities that will surely lead to the filing of corruption charges against them as soon as Aquino steps down.
And there certainly will be no shortage of cases involving anomalous transactions, programs and deals that will be brought before anti-corruption bodies like the Ombudsman after Aquino’s term ends. I’d give you a list, but there’s not enough space for it in just one column.
Aquino should be allowed to revert to his old lifestyle after he steps down, I think. If he’s allowed to pursue his interests in jail, of course.
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What do the radical left, the liquefied petroleum gas distributors and the people in Manny Pacquiao’s Sarangani province have that the Philippines’ gay community doesn’t? Representation in Congress, that’s what.
It’s pretty obvious that the Philippine LGBT community has visibility, clout and resources to become a major player in mainstream politics, if it can follow the lead of the leftists and the LPG distributors, to name just two sectors who have decided to change the system from within. And if the backlash that quickly followed Pacquiao’s “worse than animals” remark has proven anything, it’s that the gay community has no shortage of powerful and vocal advocates who can work for its rights, if that’s what it really wants.
But the only party-list that has been put up to push a pro-gay rights agenda, Ang Ladlad (founded by Ateneo English professor and media personality Danton Remoto) has not exactly made any headway in securing the representation that the law provides. Ang Ladlad was disqualified from the 2016 elections for its poor showing in the 2013, when it received only 0.37 percent of the vote.
The party-list’s 2010 showing was even lower than in the last election, when it garnered only 0.38 percent of the vote. The law mandates that Ang Ladlad and other such groups can secure a seat in Congress only if gets a minimum of two percent of all the votes cast for party-lists; and Remoto founded his party in 2003 expressly for the purpose of joining the political mainstream through sectoral representation in the House.
While most people believe that the dominant Catholic Church has a lot to do with the suppressing of gay rights in this country, it cannot be disputed that homosexuals are a permanent feature of popular media. Some of the most high-profile and highest-paid entertainers and artists here don’t even bother to hide their homosexual preferences—when the singer/actress Aiza Seguerra, for instance, married her girlfriend abroad, nobody even raised a stir.
Most gender advocates cite the so-called “10 percent rule,” an interpretation of a 1948 Kinsey Report that supposedly pegged the number of homosexuals in the US at that percentage of the population. In May last year, The Standard Poll found that eight percent of all the survey respondents said that their first sexual experience was homosexual in nature, which gives an idea of the prevalence of same-sex encounters hereabouts, as well.
But the sad truth is that the LGBT community has failed to fight for its own rights where it matters—in Congress, for instance, where it can push for pet legislation and secure a bully pulpit for its agenda.
As Senator Juan Ponce Enrile said recently, “if you cannot defend yourself, you do not deserve to be on this planet.” Enrile was talking about securing the Philippines from the depredations of an expansionist China, but he might as well have been talking about the LGBT community.
Of course, the poster boys for joining the system and beating it from the inside is still the radical left, which has seven party-list representatives in the current 16th Congress, from five party-list groups. While a lot of people believe that Philippine Communism has long been marginalized and made irrelevant, the congressmen of Bayan Muna, Gabriela, Kabataan, ACT and Anakpawis, collectively known as the Makabayan bloc, have become a major force to reckon with in this and previous Congresses.
And so, while I sympathize with the LGBT celebrities and advocates who have been denouncing Pacquiao for his insensitive remarks, I also believe that the local gay community has dropped the ball as far as pushing for equality, non-discrimination and other important matters that it should really pursue through the political mainstream. Remoto has the right idea—but he isn’t getting any support from his “pink” colleagues, especially those who are so quick to take offense when someone like Pacquiao riles them with politically incorrect observations.
If the Philippine gay community can’t even be roused to defend itself, then it shouldn’t expect others to defend it. It’s that simple—and maybe that complicated.