What’s on the a la carte nowadays is not inviting. In fact, you may say items on the menu are kosher. The cuisine has never been so gross. What’s scribbled like strange grafitti on the table top comes straight from Paul’s letter to a young pastor Timothy. It warned all and sundry that the love of money, not money per se, is the root of all evil.
There had been a corporate killing of some 100 sabungeros, More is not mere potential. A whistle blower’s story says the cadavers were dropped like trash in the murky waters of a volcanic lake where a popular native fish is raised. Sale of the popular tawilis has dropped since.
Where not yet on the slipper slope though, according to a Kapampangan social expert and renowned national columnist. In fact, were not yet sliding, as it were. But he sees the precipice from where he stands or sits.
The noisiest critic of the government, who once declared herself as the surviving second highest official of the land, is thankful, sort of, were not there yet. The president, she has been telling the whole world, is not fit for the job. So the country is not moving forward, maybe wayward.
Ironically, it’s also a fitting description, thankfully, too, of her impeachment case. A former Supreme Court justice has calmed nervous souls that the trial has been delayed but not stopped entirely. The trial issue is still fraught. Danger is lurking somewhere in the so=called impeachment court and is coming from some senator=judges.
The unconstitutional mood has been that way from the get go, confirming what the British philosopher John Stuart Mills wrote that democracy breeds dumbs, Modern thinkers says it’s even worse today than in the days of the kings.
In our neck of the woods, the 64 dollar question is: are we being run by politicians or by gambling lords? This question is raised after a notorious gambling lord, who once accused another gambling lord of having a dwarf as a fairy, has been tagged as a suspect in the serial killings.
Money, or the love it, is all behind this, according to the secretary of justice. He says more money is coming from all directions to influence the media, the judiciary and just about everybody that makes their bets on cockpit gambling that used to rake in billions for the government.
It’s the low hanging fruit during the previous administration to ensure the flow of revenues from legal gambling, especially in the dark days of Covid when everything froze. It was soon stopped after its downside on society was established or cups were filled to the brim.
Apropos the earlier question, a former head in Clark once confided his own experience when politics was mixed with gambling. Both, he remembered, involved power which is said to be inherently corrupt, says Lord Acton, leading to its absolute peak.
Anyway,the Clark executive was asked by a tenant at the Palace for an emergency meeting. Upon his arrival at the former president’s office,he was surprised to see a gambling lord sitting next to the former president. The premier politician stood up and quickly proceeded with the business, err, meeting. He told the Clark visitor to listen to the gambling lord, wink, wink, and then declared the meeting over. The Clark head understood the wink, wink and concluded that the former president wanted a moro-moro. He then drove back to Clark and forthwith , a legal gobbledygook in the impeachment brouhaha, told his secretary not to entertain the gambling lord’s call.
Ignorance is bliss for the justice head, so he is now mapping how high and how far has the gambling lord and his ilk have wrought havoc in Philippine democracy? He says it’s been bragged that the gambling lord can influence even members of the judiciary, even the SC. They’re talking, the SC members and the justice people, who are not that thin-skin, the justice secretary reveal.
A Kapampangan lawyer and founder of a pro-Constitution group had admitted it takes more than rights to win a legal battle in the Philippines, You also need money, if only because good lawyers also charge huge acceptance fees, among other fees. A well-known politician from the Solid North has recently said the same exact thing. The justice secretary is right on the money why so much is flowing crazy in many places to “kill” the missing sabungero issue.
The late president John F. Kennedy once said that that the Bill of of Rights is not an ala carte menu. Unfortunately, that’s what’s happening in the US right now and has been long going on in the Phlippines with Donald Trump at the helm and a former Filipino president languishing for his release in the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. The government is also planning io make the same charge against those who are behind the murder of 100 or more sabungeros.
Gambling is in the blood of most Filipinos for a lot of reason, mainly economic, validating Paul’s warning to Timothy and putting a big asterisk to the bragging right that the Philippines is the first Christian nation in Asia. the asterisk can be placed before or after the word, in light of the current gambling tragedy.
When I was young boy growing up in Bulacan, my father used to take me along on Sunday , after a weeklong of back -breaking work as a limestone miner,to a nearby cockpit arena to pit his red rooster
against other gamers. Since children were not allowed inside, my father would leave me alone outside the arena and buy some snacks from vendors moving around, In a few minutes, my father would come out of the arena with his head bowed down, along with his red rooster with its head hanging down as if choreographed.
After a series of cockfighting loses, he turned to lottery tickets whose brand promised certain victory as the brand suggested. He lost the new hobby, after finding out one day that his ticket matched the winning numbers on one Sunday only to find out to his chagrin that he read an expired news paper. He never tried to become an instant millionaire the day he died.
Moral: gambling and politics can make people dumber and the smart ones richer.
