It is the age old story of a woman bringing a seemingly omnipotent man into ruin. Delilah cut off Samson’s long locks while he was sleeping ultimately causing his demise. Such has been told and retold for centuries but still is applicable to the present. Or is it? This is an old issue that I have yet to write about though.

Eliot Spitzer, Harvard law school graduate, came from a very influential family, married to a very smart and very blonde attorney such as himself ( a fellow Harvard law school alumnus!) who gave up her lucrative career to support him in his political ambitions, is your modern day Samson. He was on top of the world, years of hard work and showing of candor and integrity in the job would do that. He was the tough-talking governor of New York, more of a statesman than your politician, who did not yield to anything or anybody, all for the common good.

Then, in a split second, everything that he toiled for for years, all crumbled down on him. News leaked about his February 13th romp with a certain long-haired, very young and very pretty brunette who swiped a Metrocard (similar to our MRT Card used to take the famed New York Subway transportation) towards his suite in Washington, in exchange for a couple of thousand dollars of American taxpayers’ money. The intense media scrutiny and pillory that followed finally caused him to resign. Lt. Gov. David Paterson took his place.

You would think that in the very liberal and secular America, where homosexuals are allowed by law to marry and abortion (in some States) is legal, such an act of his would not receive as much furor as compared to when such happens here in the Philippines, supposed to be a predominant and highly devout Catholic country. In reality, the opposite occurs. In the US, Spitzer’s prostitution scandal as prime example, the people acted vehemently, ousting him indirectly in the process. He erred and paid dearly for it. This came from a largely Protestant nation, with various religious beliefs. Can we say the same for the Philippines?

I recently spoke with my mother over dinner. My mother devours those Entertainment magazines like they were air, and she was marveling on how Lani Mercado stuck with Ramon “Bong” Revilla, a Filipino politician, throughout his years of womanizing, his roster having even included Gretchen Barretto ( a starlet in her heydays, one of the most beautiful women to grace the Filipino movie screen, some top showbiz directors grudgingly admit). I had a hazy recollection of such news, and thinking about it, it dawned to me on how, compared to their US counterparts as in Spitzer’s case, Filipino politicians’ exploits of women albeit their married state such as Bong Revilla, never garner the same kind of attention and insult as it did Spitzer, for example. Here, they even become President! (Joseph Estrada’s philandering ways were an open secret, still he was elected into office- they were later found sourced by taxpayers’ money such as the mansion he bought for one of his mistresses, but it took years before he was being prosecuted for it. And when a conviction of guilty was brought upon him, he is immediately pardoned after, to top it off, he is now carrying around wanting to be re-elected once more. ) Talk about nerve!

And to think that Filipinos were conservative, dogmatic Catholics who put morality over everything else. Why do abominable actions such as his do not get the proper feeling of resentment from the Filipino people as in did in the US in Spitzer’s case?

I think about the possible explanations. Maybe it is because of the Filipinos’ generally forgiving nature. Or perhaps the Split-level Christianity theory would explain thus. We have adopted the foreign religion, and we mix it with our own Filipino beliefs, thus, Catholicism practiced here becomes Filipinized. That causes the rift between practice and belief- though we Catholics abhor liaisons of married individuals, for example, in reality, it is accepted, for males, that is. This brings about another conception that our culture may still be suffering with the archaic double standard- that men are, by nature, prone to being unfaithful. It is but a normal occurrence. Sorry girls, you cannot do anything about it but to accept it.

I vote for the last reason being the reason for the discrepancy. Filipinos have also held on this belief that boys will be boys. Men and women alike subscribe to idea that on one point of a relationship, the males will stray. It will be inevitable. That does not mean there is no love. There is. It is just that they cannot control their urges. At least you are sure that your man is a real man, right?

That type of reasoning, I believe, had been invented by this macho chauvinist who wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Such a belief must be completely done away with, women and the children become victims in the end.

In the Philippines, the age old story of a woman bringing a man to ruin does not apply. Delilah has no power in this picture. Whatever she does, Samson will prevail. It is because people always consider Delilah as a non-entity. Only in the Pilipins… with our culture so messed up, even supposedly universal Biblical stories are irrelevant. We have our own twisted rules, that run contrary to what is collectively moral and good. That should be a great cause for concern, don’t you think?

The current trend of the government in addressing the multitude of problems besetting our nation is predictable, redundant and ultimately, highly ineffecicacious.

Take for example, the high cost of electricity rates ( we currently have the second highest power rates in Asia, next to Japan, which is a highly industrialized, First World country). To top it off, oil prices have been increasing at breakneck speed. What is the initial action of the people who decide for us? They propose amendments to the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Rep. Act 9136 or EPIRA). They deliberate on passing a law to reduce the VAT (value-added tax) on oil from 12% to 2%, even to scrap it altogether. Usually, when things head towards a downward spiral, our government officials feel that something must be wrong with the  laws and the system in itself. Thus, they change the rules.

That is their immediate reaction which I believe is hasty and at the same time, can do more harm than good. Before doing so, they must see the repercussions of such in the long term. It may alleviate the problem for a certain period, but attacking it head-on might not provide the lasting solution. Furthermore,  did it not occur to them that every problem is multi-faceted? I will make the explanation simpler through a metaphor. Supposing you have an oven toaster that is broken. First thing that comes to mind is that there might be a part that needs to be replaced, it is old and rusty anyway. Second would be that someone misused it. But then upon further examination, you found out that the connection wire had blown because the person who previously operated it in your home (who until now would not own up when you asked all your family members), unthinkingly, plugged it in a 110 voltage instead of the prescribed 220. Naturally, it got broken.

From that we could see that when something goes wrong, there are three things to consider as the root cause of it: One, maybe there is a flaw in the system or design in itself from the onset, the manufacturer may be to blame, taking the example above. Second, instructions on the usage was not followed correctly, causing its defect. Final and most important is that misuse of the object might be the cause the problem in the system. The first two takes design flaw and misuse separately, while the third shows that a link between these two caused the problem, ultimately showing that for an issue not to surface, system and its implementation must both be effective and carried out in harmony.

Applying this in our current situation, our lawmakers always go with theory one, which is that there is a problem with the laws and the system in itself, which is we have been experiencing increasing electricity costs and oil prices. Thus, they push for a change in the laws as what is happening right now. But, this move has largely been opposed by the Joint Foreign Commerce Chamber of the Philippines (JFCCP), citing the probability of a decrease in investor faith in the stability of our government policies, which we are in desperate need right now considering the hard times. They called for a looking into the ineffectual implementation of the law as the cause.

I agree with JFCCP on the point that the implementation of the law must be scrutinized. But unlike them who believe that the EPIRA must remain untouched, for me, that is a case yet to be determined. Effectivity of the implementation of the law also stems from the beauty of how it is crafted. Take for example, CARP. The law in  itself was enacted for the great purpose of helping many of our Filipino brothers in the agricultural sector. But its implementation was not done properly due to not only the corruption in our government, but a design flaw in the law itself, that the big-time San Miguel Corporation had availed of to wrest control of parcels of land in Mindanao for many years. This is the same case as with the EPIRA and the VAT on oil issues. They have not served their purpose due to a wrong implementation that was given way due to a flaw in the law in itself. As in the above illustration, the wrong use of the toaster effected a defect in the system. In the same manner, the wrong implementation or use of the laws such as the EPIRA and the VAT, causing the surge in electricity and oil prices, caused the deficiencies of such enactments. Perhaps if these laws are properly enacted in their essence, then the laws would be considered sufficient and effective.

In every issue, one must not only look into the laws or rules that are  included or their implementation to find out the causes of problems. These two must be scrutinized hand in hand. The government always thinks whenever anything goes wrong, the rules must be changed to suit the players and the playing field. That is a lazy and unwarranted move that can do more harm than good. New problems would enter the picture if this be continued to be done in such a manner. Nothing has changed,  you might have solved some issues, still the problems are there. Either way, Filipinos would continue to suffer. I believe, it is time to change that cycle, don’t you agree?

The Titans are these huge gods, powerfully built, fit and strong, clad with only a piece of cloth wrapped around their toned waists, their skin a golden brown, vibrant and glistened to perfection… well, at least, that is how I picture them to be. They are playing around with what seemed to look like a frisbee, no… it is actually planet Earth and it is the Milky Way that they are treading on, playfully tossing it around, laughing from time to time. That is how I have them in my mind, I think I actually got that visual from a movie that I saw some time ago. The Titans are these gods who lord over and play around with our lives, all of us just this minuscle atom-sized almost nothing, subject to their whims and caprices, helpless and insignificant.

I liken the Lopezes to the way I depicted the Titans above, by the way they are acting now. They recently called on a stockholder’s meeting, which ran contrary to a cease and desist order by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Committee), the agency that had jurisdiction to rule on such matters. They did so contending that the said order is void because it did not follow the proper procedural requirements.

In my mind, if the TRO or the temporary restraining order was issued improperly, it still had the force of law. Though they later on may question the validity of the said order because of the defects that they were pointing out, for as long as it has been issued, it must be followed until nullified by the proper Courts. Who were they to think that they could be the judge of the validity of the order, when they themselves are party to the issue? Furthermore, as Senator Enrile pointed out, what was the use of the SEC then, the government in that matter, as the authority, when private parties such as the Lopezes, could ignore their orders and carry on as they liked? What they did was not just a disobedience but an utter defiance of the law.

The Lopezes have been one of the more powerful and richer families in the country. They own the biggest broadcasting corporation in the country, ABS-CBN, among all the other big companies that dominate various industries affecting our national economy. They have exercised a huge political clout, having backed up, even the highest official of the land at a certain time in our nation’s history, President Marcos. (Ironically, during the Martial Law Era, that power of theirs which helped Marcos in his ascendancy to the topmost position, was also the same reason behind Marcos’s shutting them out. In A Conjugal Dictatorship by Primitivo Mijares, a journalist who wrote about his experiences of the anomalies in the Marcos regime, he tells the story on how the Lopez family’s power was cutoff by Marcos, notably closing the broadcasting company they owned at that time, derailing one of the family’s strongholds in Philippine society.) But after the People Power Revolution, the family regained their footing, and until now, is as strong as ever.

Yes, that is probably how they felt that they could behave as they did. Not any average family could do what they did. They probably felt like the Titans, so incredibly strong and powerful, like the gods who played around with everything and everyone, and no one can do anything but to yield and be tossed around in the palm of their hands. Or just in their minds, at least. If GSIS head, Winston Garcia has anything to say about it (which he does-a lot) they won’t be on top of the universe as they thought all along.