Author: Oriah Satria

Prof. Alex Magno calls the State of the Nation Address of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo a grand fantasy production, what with all the props in place.

Unlike the past SONAs of PGMA, I was utterly amused and entertained listening to this year’s address. It’s like when you’re watching all these fantasy stuff on television today like Majika or Captain Barbell. You know the characters aren’t real but you’re hooked anyway. You turn off the t.v. and ask yourself what’s the whole point anyway? You just wasted a good solid hour watching trash.

In the political economic perspective, PGMA’s SONA is a vision, a wish list for our country. Infrastructures are seen as the key to country-wide development—delivering the goods on time and for a cheap price, thereby lessening production and transactions costs for investors who will then have more means to employ more people.

Good news: PGMA is leaving the country for Spain by the end of June.

Bad news: She will negotiate with the Spanish authorities for a new labor market here. In other words, pimping our skilled workers to earn dollars.

Good news: PGMA says there could be around 400,000 available jobs for Filipinos in Canada because of its oil potential.

Bad news: Still no jobs in the Philippines.

Good news: PGMA says our workers could earn dollars by working in Australia and Taiwan.

Bad news: Still no jobs here.

Migrant workers issues have always been close to my heart, thus, the reason for me voting for Migrante in my first national elections. My father worked in Saudi Arabia for four years. For a time we lived comfortably but within our means but as the usual OFW story goes, we didn’t invest on anything except for education. He returned home almost totally blind from a strange disease we all think he got from there. My father who’s 62 now is already retired and is receiving a measly P1,000 from his monthly SSS pension.

My eldest brother went to Kuwait with a dream of sending his four kids to private schools. He went home four months after for reasons too heartbreaking to talk about here. He’s waiting for another chance to leave this country and to work overseas.

This week, 179 OFWS who were detained in Saudi Arabia returned home after being detained for crimes, mostly petty, they allegedly committed. Mrs. Arroyo is of course readily taking credit for this but should she?

Amidst the calls for charter change, PGMA’s apparent effort to lure the Catholic Church into dancing with her and her cohorts through the commutation of death sentence, our justice system gets another blow from no other than the justice secretary himself.

Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez today downgraded the case filed against three of the four suspects in the Subic rape case, namely SSgt. Chad Carpentier, Lance Cpl. Dominic Duplantis and Lance Cpl. Keith Silkwood. After reviewing the case, the DOJ decided to make them “accessories to the crime” instead of considering them as prime suspects since he says, there is not enough evidence to prove that they conspired to commit the crime.

A day after returning from vacation, news of a woman raped by six US servicemen in Subic tipped the desk.

There is nothing more infuriating than a woman being raped and then tagged as a prostitute by bestial beings; like that American who made a scene in front of the US embassy.

I’ve grown up in a place where prostitution is a way of life, where kids who graduate from sixth grade continue their life’s course to selling their own flesh.

The red light district of Angeles City is owned, controlled and operated by Australians, Koreans and Americans who prostitute our women in our own country.

During the US bases, much was said about prostitution and now under the Visiting Forces Agreement, with the Balikatan military exercises around, nothing much has changed.

There’s too much tragedy and irony in this country. Too much that it makes me puke.

Just the other day, we passed by this considerably sized poster of boxing champ Manny Pacquiao near EDSA. It was one of those trapos put up, supposedly to honor someone but is actually propaganda for their own gain. Anyway, Julian and I got to talk about how a boxing match can take the people’s minds off politics and the looming fear of additional taxes. But more than that, I thought, this big hoopla over Pacquiao only affirms this unshakably scary truth about our society. This Messiahnic complex we have.

We’ve been looking for person/s we could look up to and who would change our rotten lives. We’ve been looking for the one for too long that it’s gotten tired already. Because in the rational scheme of things, the one does not exist.

Maybe it’s just me but I’m not waiting for Pacquiao to run for president.

PCIJ reports that Coca Cola has joined the bandwagon of private entities who are helping the Department of Education (DepEd) in their task to bring the textbooks to students from far-flung areas.

Coke trucks are not only dropping off bottles of their sugary products but are doing the good deed by helping the DepEd improve the textbook-to-student ratio in the country.

One could only hope that this project would push thru and continue even with an impending change in leadership in the department.