(SONSHINE: It’s Sonshine Sports Management, not Son of God, which had a successful project launch in Davao City earlier in the week. The correction was made by sportsman Manny Piñol. “I am the CEO, while Pastor Apollo Quiboloy is the heart and mind behind the project,” said the former Governor of North Cotabato. Piñol said Pastor Quiboloy would like to protect Filipino boxers, especially those from the South, from exploitation. The group also aims to discover and develop new talents, while boosting grassroots sports upgrade in both Davao and Cebu.)
* * *
THE day after the Supreme Court ruled that the Development Acceleration Program (DAP) was unconstitutional, President Noynoy Aquino got likened to a reckless neophyte boxer.
Mr. Aquino, according to one veteran sports editor, was a blind slugger who kept going for broke while leaving his flanks open, uncovered.
This crudeness, the same editor noted, has cruelly dented the President’s image as a fearless anti-corruption warrior.
* * *
Anyway, in the same boiling sidewalk vendors’ hub where President Noynoy got initially hailed as God-sent—hulog ng langit—early in his term, there rose a suggestion that the embattled Chief Executive be enlisted in a school fraternity.
“Bakit? Eh, di para ma-hazing din siya,” cried a limp-wristed male fruit seller with curly dyed hair.
No, mere hazing would not do, retorted the vendor in the next stall, an overweight, overworked mother with a toothy smirk.
She cried she wanted the President jailed.
“Kailangan kulong din ’yan,” she insisted, explaining P-Noy had himself proven to be a national nuisance, just like the other politicians he had accused of corruption in government.
* * *
This was on Friday, Fourth of July, close to the Quinta Market edge of Villalobos street which leads directly to the Church of the Blessed Black Nazarene in Quiapo District.
While the old Plaza Miranda in front of the church used to be a national stage where people’s woes were regularly ventilated (before its tragic bombing in the early ’70s), the many vendor’s nooks off Villalobos now also serve as informal listening post wherein national temper could be gauged.
There are times, mainly on devotion day Friday, when issues are discussed with gusto, as though faceless debaters are performing live onstage.
* * *
Maybe these characters do it to amuse themselves, although they often look and sound as though their poor wretched lives depend on the day’s hot topic, while the blind beggar in fatigue with a guitar in the middle of the cluttered street does an Eddie Peregrina number for small change.
This Friday, Fourth of July, everybody was predictably behind Nora Aunor in the National Artist snub perpetrated by Malacañang.
“Bakit, ano ba nagawa niya kumpara kay Nora,” fired the male vendor with dyed hair.
Yes, what has the President done, compared to Ms Aunor?
Nothing but bring woes, a curse onto his own people, the poor embittered vendor said, answering his own question.
Enrollment in a school fraternity is just right for hopeless neophytes, but jail is a must for someone who must urgently be saved from himself.