column in www.abs-cbn.com, 2010 elections

the moment i have finished checking my students' final exams, i will start a new column at www.abs-cbn.com. the column will deal with education and culture, mostly. they also asked me to write about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. i wonder why.

my radio show with dzrh is still in the works. i think they want to have a full list of advertisers before we start. the show will run during prime time, and will reach the whole philippines. the thing to do is to be just patient, and wait. paying for a radio show costs millions every month; i am being offered one, for free. the least we can do is to wait.

mar roxas might be the choice of the middle classes. but they only constitute 10 percent of the voters. 90 percent of the voters are poor, belonging to the CDE; of this, 60 percent did not finish high school or even elementary school.

and yes, the four presidentiables will have to fill 12 names for their senatorial slates. That is why there will be a mad scramble for the top six names that have been cropping up in the senatorial surveys, coffeeshop talk, rumor mills. The buzz will be louder as we reach the middle of the year.

My fearless forecast is that every presidentiable will have at least two or three winning senators divided up among themselves like bibingka.

You need at least PhP 50 million to run a good campaign as a senator in the 2010 elections. This is because every TV ad costs P10,000 per second. A 30-second ad already costs P300,000. And you need constant ad repetition every day, during prime time!

The top six senatorial candidates in the surveys will definitely get offers ranging from a low of P5 million to a high of P35 million even before 2010 begins.

And why will they get that offer?

Because every top-ranking senatorial candidate can pull up a presidentiable's votes by at least ten percent.

And why do I know that?

Ask Abalos. He thought I was just a mere, stupid English teacher.

Hahahahaha! Now who is the loser? His family says that they cannot even sleep because the accusations of people hound them even in their sleep. The Greeks wrote of that earlier; Shakespeare, too.

Why cannot thou sleepest?

Weknow weknow weknow...

Five Poems by Danton Remoto

In the Graveyard Danton Remoto The walls round the graveyard Are ancient and cracked. The moss is too thick they look dark. The paint on my grandfather’s tomb Has the color of bone. Two yellow candles we lighted, Then we uttered our prayers. On my left, somebody’s skull Stares back at me: a black Nothingness in the eyes. The graveyard smells of dust Finer than the pore of one’s skin— Dust mixed with milk gone sour. We are about to depart When a black cat darts Across our path, quickly, With a rat still quivering In its mouth. * Immigration Border Crossing (From Sadao, Thailand to Bukit Changloon, Malaysia) Danton Remoto On their faces that betray No emotion You can read the unspoken Questions: Are you really A Filipino? Why is your skin Not the color of padi ? Your eyes, Why are they slanted Like the ones Who eat babi ? And your palms, Why are there no callouses Layered like th...

A mansion of many languages

BY DANTON REMOTO, abs-sbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak | 10/16/2008 1:00 AM REMOTE CONTROL In 1977, my mentor, the National Artist for Literature and Theater Rolando S. Tinio, said: “It is too simple-minded to suppose that enthusiasm for Filipino as lingua franca and national language of the country necessarily involves the elimination of English usage or training for it in schools. Proficiency in English provides us with all the advantages that champions of English say it does – access to the vast fund of culture expressed in it, mobility in various spheres of the international scene, especially those dominated by the English-speaking Americans, participation in a quality of modern life of which some features may be assimilated by us with great advantage. Linguistic nationalism does not imply cultural chauvinism. Nobody wants to go back to the mountains. The essential Filipino is not the center of an onion one gets at by peeling off layer after layer of vegetable skin. One’s experience with onio...

Taboan: Philippine Writers' Festival 2009

By John Iremil E. Teodoro, Contributor The Daily Tribune 02/26/2009 A happy and historical gathering of wordsmiths with phallocentric and Manila-centric overtones *** This is from my friend, the excellent poet and critic John Iremil Teodoro, who writes from the magical island of Panay. I wish I have his energy, his passion and his time to write. Writing needs necessary leisure. But this budding, bading politician has shifted his directions. On this day alone, I have to attend not one, not two, but three political meetings. And there goes that new poem out of the window. Sigh. *** According to Ricardo de Ungria, a poet of the first magnitude and the director of Taboan: The Philippine International Writers Festival 2009, “the original idea was for a simple get together of writers from all over the country who have been recipients, directly or indirectly, of grants and awards from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). What happened last Feb. 11 to 13 was far from being ...

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