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Juan Mercado 09/30/2014

“Chiz, your “Heart” is not in the right place.” Phil  Cruz emailed that in reaction to the  “Macabre Joke” column the  Inquirer published  on September 27 which  discussed    Senator Francisco Escudero’s proposal to bury   the embalmed remains…

Macabre joke

Juan Mercado 09/27/2014

Inter the embalmed body of former President Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, Senator Francis “Chiz”  Escudero suggested, of all  days, on  the 42nd anniversary of the impostion of martial law. Sure. The  3,257  extrajudicial …

Other prisms

Juan Mercado 09/23/2014

A different prism on martial law came over the weekend from a Filipino who grew up in Argentina. To mark the 42nd anniversary of Marcos saving “democracy by bayonets,” Bino A. Realuyo wrote about “my belated awakening”…

Speak memory

Juan Mercado 09/20/2014

Awakening of consciousness is a series of spaced splashes… until bright blocks of perception are formed… affording memory a slippery hold,” novelist Valdimir Nabokov wrote  in his book “Speak Memory.” That aptly sums up  the 42nd  anniversary…

Standing room only?

Juan Mercado 09/16/2014

What do you do when all seats are taken? The Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia control real islands in the South China sea. “China came very late to this party and missed out on all the good…

Relentless master

Juan Mercado 09/13/2014

Next-door Malaysia dashed into the future this September by back-peddaling into the past. Kuala Lumpur clamped back the 1948 Anti Sedition Law. This is “the broadest crackdown… since the era of strongman leader Mahathir Mohamad”, now 89.…

Austere laurels

Juan Mercado 09/09/2014

The kind of ancestors we’ve had is not as important as the kind of descendants our ancestors have. This axiom is apt for the 135th birthday of President Sergio Osmeña this September 9. Today’s rites in his…

Rain and bamboo shoots

Juan Mercado 09/06/2014

The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain”, the cockney flower  girl  Eliza Doolittte  sings in the 1964  Broadway musical “ My Fair Lady.”   She’d  been taught to speak “proper English” by  phonetics professor, Henry Higgins…

Vulnerability window

Juan Mercado 08/30/2014

Talk does not cook rice.” That  does not  refer to Vice President Jejomar Binay twisting in the wind for the overpriced Makati buildings. The proverb is tailor-fit for  Senator Cynthia Villar, who chairs  the committee on agriculture.…

Embedded impunity

Juan Mercado 08/26/2014

The immediate often blurs the significant. Pope Francis’ press conference aboard the plane returning from his South Korea visit is an example. He made “a chopping gesture and a whistling sound as if to say death comes…

Contrasts

Juan Mercado 08/23/2014

Lights are stronger in the contrast”.  Charles Dickens’ line  came to mind when TV footage showed Vice-President Jejomar Binay, clad in starched barong, flinging instructions at  aides, trying  to look, well, presidential.  He did not differ from …

Amnesia antidote

Juan Mercado 08/19/2014

National amnesia causes us to forget who and what we are. Is that the fix we’re in when the country marks, this Thursday, the 31st anniversary of Senator Benigno Aquino Jr.’s airport tarmac murder? The most concise…

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