That Animal Called Presidency
Presidents Trump and Duterte in Manila, Nov. 2017 [Photo, Daily Mail, UK]
by Popoy Del R. Cartanio
Minds fly to the sky
Brains scatter to the winds
Only to hit the ground with fire
Only to unscatter neurons and
weathered as rocks of reason. — Popoy
The Presidency of any country is an aqueous entity which can be turned into a solid concept along side higher titles like the Papacy, Philosopher or despot Kings, Prime Ministership, Commander-in-Chief, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Caesar, down to being a squad leader, etc. It is difficult, almost ridiculous to separate the person from the title. Because the person makes the title and the title makes the person. A sikyu uniform makes a person a Sikyu, stars pinned on a man or woman’s shoulder makes that person a leader. A hoodlum can make a robe dirty; a bikini can make a 60 year celebrity sexy.
‘To criticize a Presidency is to attack a President’ is mantra only to scatter-brains and to snoozers of noodle country. However, there’s a chance a person can wake up and unscatter his neurons in search for reasons. In The Society of Honor, that is possible, even probably already a reality.
The Pope need NOT take an oath, just wear white all the time when he is out of his bed. That’s not a difficulty if and when the Pope from youth his dress is as white as his conscience. The Papacy is the only leadership position off limits to women. In England there’s a very slim chance for a woman to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Kings and Kingdom Queens need only to be crowned.
Presidents in the free world have no choice but swear before the Bible to do as required and to abide by the Constitution. Unlike an accused before a court of law, the President (although he should be) is not asked like a prospective criminal to swear to tell the truth, NOTHING but the whole truth. An inadvertence may be in the presidential oath of Office.
With a little but long stretch, the Presidency by his mortal mandate from the constitution is, MAY BE, repeat MAY BE by virtue of his law-given role, the only person allowed to violate with impunity any or all of the Ten Commandments and get away with it while on earth. Think about it, the awesome expectations of the Presidency, not of the President. The Presidency perhaps allows only of any President up to 75% high achievement. Never above it by its awesomeness. Imagine the Presidency of billions of people, or 330 millions, or of a peanuts number of only 110 million.
To say, much more, to believe that the Presidency is an exalted powerful position which can be inspired, done by one man or woman, and can be micromanaged is to be …well to be kind and say the least, to cross the line of uncommon sense into nonsense.
For an incumbent not to grasp the hugeness and complexity of the Presidency as a VAST job, the Presidential Oath should be as LENGTHY as it should be to include comprehensive lines about health, education, social welfare, employment, national defense, trade and industry, injustice, foreign problems, and all the eche bucheche of the people’s deserved good life.
The Presidency, regardless of who occupies it, IS NOT about Paganda, paforma or papogi, or making speeches; it is not handing out relief goods, or kicking down badly beaten political foes, or visiting wakes of the fallen, or attending foreign conferences that results into photo ops and glowing press releases.
So? So What? Hello! Hello? The Presidency to a simpleton is MERELY doing one’s own job to make others DO THEIR JOBS they have been paid for even by the poor. Yes, to motivate, influence, persuade or coerce the entire public service system from the Vice-President (No. 2- with no specific job), the Senate President (No. 3), the Speaker of HOR (No.4), the Chief Justice (No.5), his NUMEROUS cabinet members (No. 6), Senators (No.7), HOR members (No. 8) down, down the line to the janitor in Timbuktu este Tobruk. They, morally, all of them, must earn their pay.
The Presidency is an office of a kibitser, over-the-shoulder pest of cabinet members, a common man’s ususero, a mediator between quarrelling political cats and dogs, a week-ends family man, an 8-5 public servant, a person without a price, a friendly, sincere and non-plastic person, and as a late Vanguard brod likes to profess: the Presidency is an office for a leader who is committed, resourceful, enthusiastic, statesman-like, and tenacious.
So? So what is the Presidency not about? Ano nga ba? That’s easy even for snoozers, just think of the opposite of those mentioned above and add a little more from observations and experience.
The Presidency is the number one office of “inclination and opportunity” in the whole public service system. Even the Papacy in the Vatican does not have that kind of heaven or hell choice on Earth. It is super. It is Mega. The Presidency is the place for those inclined for corruption that provides infinite opportunities. The opportunity abounds for the nuclear as well as the extended family who have the inclination. To mention specifics is to rub salt to the wounds of whoever.
Suffice to say for those studying Political Science, Law, Economics, Business or Public Administration, etc, doctoral dissertations may pursue surgery of only the first two years and the last two years of any Philippine Presidency to expose its contributions to social wellness or its role in the spread of political pathology to Philippine society.
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
Popoy, to me, is The Riddler, meant in a kind way, the way of poets or satirists, who tease the mind with meanings and contrary meanings, always leaving it to us to prove we are not snoozing among the noodles.
My meanings, extracted from this piece, are . . .
The presidency is that place of great expectation, where sin is not allowed whilst sin is often rampant, where rewards are of many kinds, gold or accomplishment. To some, the accomplishment is to manipulate the people because, well, that is what a president can do and get away with it. To others, it is to raise a nation up.
Pick your poison, or pick your president.
Speaking of the phony… 😆
Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) Tweeted:
Make China Great Again? https://t.co/JSX8qCL1lN https://twitter.com/RepSwalwell/status/995739900447199232?s=17
US penalties killed ZTE, which had shipped banned US goods to Iran in violation of sanctions. The penalties gutted ZTE’s business lines. Trump’s willingness to set the penalties aside to coddle favor with China while he is at the same time screaming about Iran’s adventurism is classic presidential hypocrisy . . . the basis for impunity replacing integrity.
I still remember that NBN scandal. Quite the karma payback.
The Philippine Presidency has powers patterned after his colonial predecessors in the riverside Palace. Meant to keep datus in place.
Cory reduced its powers and gave datus more. One she appointed by request of his mother, her friend, sits on her throne after 32 years.
Constitutions, oaths, laws were merely pomp, duck and circumstance to him from the South. And to many, barely loved eche-bucheche.
Now shall the realm implode or explode or take us every which way but loose, cook the goose?
Who has a plan, knows the road not to hell?
*******
1. I like the suggestion that presidents should swear to tell the truth on penalty of impeachment. If a president is proved to have lied before the election victory, he may be quo warranto-ed.
1.1. Note that the Constitution allows the president and vice president to be subject of a quo warranto.
1.2. The difficulty is no one will be qualified to be president. An artificially intelligent robot may qualify — and may make a better president than the incumbent.
2. And, yes, a president may be a delegator of responsibility. Duterte has delegated matters economic to his economic advisers. He has delegated the incarceration of De Lima to Aguirre. And he has delegated the EJKs to Bato.
2.1. But under the doctrine of command responsibility, the president is responsible. He is responsible for sinking the economy, responsible for the continuing detention of De Lima, and responsible for the 20,000 EJKs.
2.2. He may not be responsible for the “legal abomination” of Sereno’s ouster because the Judiciary is a separate branch. But isn’t Tijam, the sword, a Duterte appointee? And isn’t Calida, the executioner, Duterte’s solicitor general?
2.3. An AI Robot will simply have to say to every public servant, “Do your task as defined by your office.” And if everybody complied, conditions will become infinitely better.
3. Finally, yes, the presidency is a fountain of “infinite opportunities.” Marcos, Erap, and Gloria saw pecuniary opportunities and, boy, did they take advantage. Duterte sees opportunities of the coupling kind — sexual union and political union with China.
4. In the present regime, is the presidency or the President the animal? And if the latter, what kind?
*****
Looking at animals of all sorts, you have to look at their sources of food and power
1) President: national budget, power to appoint, power over police and army
2) House: pork barrel, approves national budget, Commission on Appointments
3) LGUs: IRAs, power via who they as dynasties support in national elections
where are the people in this equation? The trapos wheel and deal amongst themselves.
Supreme Court: the President appoints them, so he has them under his control, finally
barangays: MLQ3 has written that barangay elections are often postponed. The motive being that barangay captains are also a crucial factor in winning national elections.
So we can theorize all we want, as long as there is no effective leverage for the people to block any part of the system, it is self-sustaining and can ignore the people most of the time.
*******
So in the Philippines, the word “people” should be replaced by the term “trapos and their cronies” in the Lincolnesque definition of democracy?
Thus, Filipino democracy is a government
o Of the trapos and their cronies;
o By the trapos and their cronies; and
o For the trapos and their cronies
It fits well. The people are never in the equation, not even as the variable X, the unknown value, the value to solve for.
The people are the means to acquire and maintain power for the trapos and their cronies but ultimately, as individuals, they are expendable.
Marcos, more than anyone before him, solidified the idea and the use of cronies. Although Macapagal before him had Harry Stonehill, an American GI.
Duterte has taken a leaf from Macapagal but performed a pivot to the East, to Chinese cronies.
*****
The people are only in the equation a bit more in more progressive cities like Naga, Iloilo and Cagayan de Oro from what I have been looking at so far. More middle class there. Metro Manila and Cebu also have a lot of middle class, but big slum areas with trapo voters.
What did the USA consist of at the time of Mel Gibson’s “The Patriot”? Independent farmers in the countryside, tradesmen and craftsmen in the cities. People who did not need patrons.
Switzerland was founded in 3 valleys with independent farmers and craftsmen. Add to that that in the Alps, independent farmers usually had rifles and banded together in militia to defend their villages. This was a tradition even in Bavaria and Austria – 2nd amendment-like.
On the other hand, in areas like Thuringia you have the classic layout of a castle on a hill and a village below it – not much of a chance for the people there to be free of their lords. There is an old military truism that higher ground is always an advantage, whoever is there.
If everybody is on lower ground (Netherlands) then democracy can evolve out of a need to cooperate. Water boards to regulate common use of water, land protection and more were the root of Dutch democracy. Other democracies can develop out of a need to share loot – pirates in the Carribean had proto-democratic institutions in their island hideouts. Greek republics were basically pirate democracies and Troy was a merry looting of the mainland.
Philippine “democracy” was given by the USA, but the structures favored the existing rulers. As time went by, postwar, they pushed back, stepwise, the formal structures the US had left.
What’s in a name? Este what’s in a word or two. Filipino culture defines responsibility as to who is to be blamed, a kind of cultural negativity instead of the expectation of being the instrument of success. What is solution then? If command responsibility is culturally inadequate and dysfunctional, change the words in the constitution and common usage into COMMAND ACCOUNTABILITY to signify punishments or restitution of damages due COMMAND FAILURE to perform sworn duties.
Hello? Come again; Sorry? But how can that be made real and tangible in the public service; In a public servant’s oath of office, leadership is not even part of it, nor the word responsibility; how much more of ACCOUNTABILITY.
COMMAND ACCOUNTABILITY is not a concept that’s thinkable in any just and humane society. But it could be adapted as a solution to persistent and pernicious kind of the exercise of power.
And may be others viewing the concept from many other angles could shine some light on its dark crevices. If the people can’t hold a robot ACCOUNTABLE and punished for wrong doings
it can, it can to a homo sapien. JUST DO IT.
Popoy,
I can not find the words to comment(tongue tied yung fingers ko), so I will try here.
Pananagutan is the word used in tagalog in place of responsibildad.
When someone makes someone with child the father will say, ” Panagutan mo ang anak ko”
That church song pananagutan means do not be selfish and think only of your self, we have duties to fulfill with one another.
So responsibility is also a duty.
That is all, I hope it is not much ado about nothing.
Salamat Karl, saksakan ng lawak ng talakayan kaya masasabi ko para tayong nasa siliid aralan walang isang tamang sagot; walang rin isang sagot na mali. yan ang mantra ng Harvard case analysis. Meron din magandang parte, tulad ng joke ko sa kabilang blog tungkol sa lahi ng mga pulis, kusinero ,mekaniko, at kalaguyo sa langit at sa impiyerno. Ang galing ng mga dagdag, ang dagdag na opinion dito sa TSoH.
Tungkol sa Pinay siyota na natisbon, ang responsibilidad o pananagutan ng toro ay simple at maigsing salita lang PIKOT, or sa mga hillbillies sa Merika “shotgun wedding” naman. Ang solusyon diyan sa mga tatay na handang pumatay na walang malay sa regla ng anak ay TANAN or elopement. Teka, TEKA muna mukhang nailayo ko ang usapan sa Pangulohan, eh. Iyan ang kagandahan ng mag-eche bucheche dito sa TSoH.
In the public service, it is a sweet thing if you have impregnated yourself with looting and thievery. There is no worry of a future father-in-law threatening you with a shotgun on your head because of self gratification. .
Or getting out the bolo, like in this classic Amorsolo painting..
One of the greatest must have for a president is the ability to inspire. He must provide inspiration for a nation to move in a desired direction. Churchill provided the inspiration that made a whole nation grit their teeth and say ‘no surrender’ to a powerful Hitler’s Germany.
Inspiration is often found in well-crafted words. And Popoy knows it best. When we look at great leaders of the past, we find a treasure trove of great inspiration. Long may they be gone, but their gift to us in words remain eternal.
Take for example JFK – a short life and a short presidency, but full of inspiration. Here’s one to the sycophants that support the Southerner, to the politically dis-interested, and to the business elites : :
“Conformity is the jailer of Freedom and the enemy of growth”.
Alas we all know, infamous quotes form the one from the south all starts with the letter “P”.
But that is inspiring to the downtrodden masses. Rising prices, on the other hand, is not.
I was just starting high school when I waited like the multitudes from 8 pm to 2:30 am for a guy who looks like a tough stevedore, to see him and shake his hand. Before that radio jingles dominated the neighborhood. with Mambo Mambo Magsaysay. Those were the days when the polity was young and hearty. A liter of Gasoline costs 25 centavos and a kilo of pork was 4 pesos and chicken was 4 pesos and 50 centavos. Dancing with beautiful bellas in Santa Ana Cabaret was 20 centavos per dance.
Auto mechanic Magsaysay has married an uncrowned beauty queen in looks and manners. To young and old Filipinos — who were sick of petty (orinola) thievery in the Presidency — was truly inspired by Ramon Magsaysay . In one swift raid DND Sec Monching caught all the leadership of the Reds while holding a secret conference in Manila.
Over the years, how inspiration micronized into wakawakwaks and how petty thievery was MACRONIZED into plunder is also a tragicomedy of the Filipino soul : is a book yet to be written by a modern Rizal. No, Noooo, No. The book should not be about a confession of a political call boy, but about political callboying.
In the Galleries of Filipino presidents, Magsaysay is the first to wear a barong, not a suit.
Did he introduce that new, more native dress code among Filipino politicians?
The ‘beautiful bellas’ were also at Culi-Culi, I heard… (hussh);
***
The beauteous Luz Banzon was Penelope to Ramon’s Ulysses, I remember.
Your sardonicism is as acidic as it gets.
Getting lots of practice these days . . .
Chomping at the bit, a little bit we are, Joe? 🙂
A REPHRASING
To me — and in line with Joe’s thought about Popoy’s riddle-making posts — Popoy’s blog article makes more sense in the context of our current situation if it is titled, “That Animal, the Presidency.” The rephrasing is also apt in the current case of the US.
Then by so rephrasing, extrapolation can do wonders and hit the mark. For one, make the thought sharper or specific by substituting for the word, the specific animal [your choice]. And by variation, President for Presidency.
My post is intended to be a riddle but I admit not of the quality of Popoy’s riddles. (I am still learning here at TSH.)
NH, Sir, your riddle is a needle which hurts every time it draws blood. Who says being naughty is a quality found only among young boys.
Oh yes, young boy Popoy; and old naughty boy NH can still learn a trick or two. 🙂
O what two letters a difference make. Leave it to Popoy to make it waka-something. 🙂
May we turn quo warranto into wakaronto?
Holy wakamole.
*******
It’s funny but we run the risk of communicating in a private language.
*****
The pH value (acidity or alkalinity) of my eche bucheche has been permeated by Hollywood films. The Confessions genre starred by Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman) and Richard Gere. The former was call girl, the latter patron. Then Richard machismo also featured in another film as a Call Boy. Then there were a few international films about call boys and call girls. Classic film was Irma La Douce with Shirley Maclaine and Jack Lemmon, then another French film about Belle de Jour about a Physician’s wife man eating in the afternoon. . A pimp repeat PIMP in Tagalog is called Quekong. Nice uncommon name.
If you habituate in Santa Ana Cabaret, the belle de baille gives you tigas T2 In Culi-culi the women hard workers gives you tulo or garapata. What ever they do, it is for their survival in a harsh world NOT to bring harm to other people who are careful. Pimping, call girling or call boying can be corrupted by copying and buy and sell practice in politics. The practice is rarely done in politics by candidates, or done en mass by the electorate. What’s next then to being TRAPO? Call girlling or call boying?
as what is this classified: Monte Carlo or Monte Casino or wakamountain on Boracay?
the world of hot and spicy, or possibly even sweet and sour eche bucheche is so varied.
As someone said, the country is being turned into a Disneyland for the rich Chinese.
Just kibitzing: Disneyland or King Solomon’s mine?
Both. For business (natural resources) and leisure (all those resorts and casinos).
A trapo is not needed when using lactic acid to maintain ph levels of the area most intimate.
On sweet and sour- you use honey in case you feel bile on your throat.
If no honey is around we can buy halls honey-lemon for the sweet sour taste for only 2 pesos per 3 candies.
But would that help if honey has acid too?
It is in the balancing and mixing.
I never noticed that American Gigolo starred Richad Gere, because I thought he was an Officer and a Gentleman.
But was he a gigolo too when he played King David?
Notwithsatanding the #multi-flavored eche- bucheches and #wakainsertintheblanks, I am thinking of ways to make this off topic comment on topic.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-sells-future-powered-your-personal-data-n870501
Face probably won it for Putin, propably Trump and probably Duterte.
Now if FB is in the hot seat, why is google not in the hot seat, they mine more data than FB?
I mispelled my email address, thus my avatar changed.
It ended with .con instead of .com
Ack, I did it twice.
Not my day.
I exceeded my error threshold.
While we are on the subject of “animal,” here is Agot Isidro responding to a netizen’s spiteful message:
Netizen: “Mamatay ka na pls agot. Pati mga anak mo imassacre sana ng mga addict. Typical crab mentality, millions of people voted for Duterte. Deal with it. Pls sana i massacare and marape anak mo pls.”
Agpt: “Such class. Happy Mother’s Day to your Mom!”
Agot indeed has CLASS.
Finally, he must have decided to live up to the joke he made, except by a “show of force” in the place where the Chinese aren’t present.
That’s a gem, madlanglupa: [Duterte’s] “show of force” in the place [Benham Rise] where the Chinese aren’t present.
On the other hand, he wants to make a statement, the equivalent of Mao swimming across the Yangtze.
Here is an Orwellian World we may become, since we are virtually a Chinese Province, courtesy of our leaders: Chinese communists forced into our homes as guests to teach the glories of China, as is being done with the Chinese Uyghurs who are forced to welcome Communist Party into their homes:
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/14/asia/china-xinjiang-home-stays-intl/index.html
“Political education” = brainwashing is what the Chinese Communists are experts at. They had the last Manchu Emperor Pu Yi singing praises of the Communist Party after his release. Who knows if in the Philippines they already tried it on.. Alan Cayetano?
Yes, he does sing praises, doesn’t he — not to mention others. So my news is old hat, sorry.
Not old hat to most, I am sure. Many are not aware of how brainwashing was perfected by the Chinese Communists, while the Russians stayed at the Gulag level. What the Russians have improved is what was called agitprop in pre-Internet days, now called trolling.
George Orwell of course predicted all of this. After all, Winston Smith ends up loving the regime also. One wonders what remains of free will, maybe Edgar has an answer.
Offtopic: what was talked about for sometime has become reality — PCGG to be put on the chopping block.
Offtopic: GAP kowtows to the People’s Republic.
If I may Madlanglupa
Words have meanings
and Meanings are in people.
Madla is public
The public is the people
Lupa is soil and
Soil is earth in prose and poetry
Madlanglupa therefore is
People of the earth or
Earth’s people
There you go so
TSoH can spin and go from there.
———–
14 lines, a sonnet by accident?
So far as many can chew here in TSoH
your comments are truly straight voices
from madlang people.
THE PRESIDENCY HAS SCIENCE
IN ITS SOUL
Is there Science in the Malls of Riddles?
Let’s attempt an incision to the Presidency
using the scalpel of psychology.
The Presidency is just a ROLE;
The role is the dynamic aspect of STATUS;
Status is the natural or sworn duties
and accountability, as a Father is to his family;
To put status into EFFECT is to play a role.
The role comes naturally to creatures of nature
Not so like in politics as mere creation of concoction.
The world is a stage so sings Elvis the pelvis
where actors excel and bungle their roles
Politics is a rainforest where animals’ roles
fight for their herbs and meat, jungles’ spoils.
———————————
Because the above have fourteen lines,
such mastication could be a fake sonnet.
WHEN THE PRESIDENCY
IS SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
High IQs and lowlifes could do good
or harm to the Presidency when it
walks the talk of a group constructing like a team
or deconstructing like a wrecking ball in full steam.
Social psychology operates the dynamics of a group
built as a team to walk the talk of teamwork.
The Cabinet in a Presidency is a colony
of clustered groups of ants or termites working, moving
as MULTI-DISCIPLINARY solid or scattered mass.
Side-by-side like branches of marching armies
they can’t win the war fought by the Presidency
unless guerrilla-like in little teams fighting
ignorance, poverty, crimes and corruption
a Cabinet of 40 turned into 500 INTERDISCIPINARY TEAMS.
——————–
Count the lines, could be, may be, another fake political sonnet
as ever will ever be fakery can’t be poetry. .
Duterte: Xi said China won’t allow my ouster
President Rodrigo Duterte said Tuesday his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, promised to protect him from any ouster attempts.
“The assurances of Xi Jinping were very encouraging… ‘We will not allow you to be taken out from your office, and we will not allow the Philippines to go to the dogs,'” Duterte said in a speech during the send off ceremony off Aurora province for Filipino scientists who will conduct research in the Philippine Rise.
“Siguro kasi freely elected leader naman ako, it could be a very justified statement,” he added.
Duterte and Xi met last month at the Boao Forum for Asia in the southern province of Hainan, where the two leaders affirmed the warming relationship between the Philippines and China amid a maritime dispute in the South China Sea.
“Naisip isip ko wala man tayo magawa dito sa China might as well make friends with them,” the President said.
The United Nations-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration delivered in July 2016 a sweeping victory to the Philippines on the case it filed against China during the term of then-President Benigno Aquino III, declaring as illegal China’s claim over nearly the entire South China Sea.
It also declared that Beijing violated the rights of Filipinos, who were blocked by Chinese Coast Guard from fishing in the disputed Scarborough Shoal off Zambales.
Duterte, however, temporarily set aside the ruling to avoid confrontation with China, but vowed to raise it at the right time during his presidency.
He also blamed the United States and Aquino for not confronting China’s excessive claims and buildup of military facilities on the artificial islands in the strategic waterway. —NB, GMA News
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/653477/duterte-xi-said-china-won-t-allow-my-ouster/story/?just_in
A pretty clear statement about who is his backer, and might even intervene just in case.
A mutual friend has said enough: he is a paper tiger.
THE HEIGHTS
Have we as a people and our Leader come to this very sorry state — no iota of shame left? Surely if a deranged mob attacks President Duterte, the Police, AFP and the people will come in defense, not only his diehard DDS. But if we have the case of a legal ouster — better than what was done in the SC ouster of Sereno — then certainly it is ridiculous to expect that Xi will come and invade the Philippines to prevent the ouster. Will Xi do to PH what Putin did to the Crimea of Ukraine? We are not yet a legal province of China are we — although it virtually seems so. For Duterte to make that statement is the heights. Furthermore, Xi may be many things but stupidity is not one of those.
Popoy can you kindly use your master wordsmithing on this scenario.
If we believe what is being peddled then our minds may be as twisted as the picture below:
Crimea style is a distinct possibility… especially if these and other reports are true (there are many all over the country now, and if one remembers the Japanese “gardeners” before WW2, then a lot of things are possible)
Are 45,000+ Chinese Troops in the Philippines? We now have about 25 people saying there is a recent influx of hundreds of military-age Chinese male nationals into the Philippines.
One says there are over 45,000 of them nationwide. Another says as many as 200,000 Chinese nationals work in the Philippines (one would hope mostly legal immigrants). This number was also reported in Bloomberg.
Another says that Chinese nationals have easy access to Clark Air Force Base, ordered from the top. Yet another says that there are killings and a news blackout at a Chinese-owned banana plantation in Mindanao. Boracay Island is being shut to tourists and strong measures taken to control the local population, in association with Chinese casino construction, as reported in the New York Times.
One source says 500-600 Chinese nationals are in his own neighborhood, housed in bunk-beds up to 8 to a room, ferried around by fleets of a dozen vans to work every day in a casino, and that they typically wear k-pop style. Others say they see them in tourist clothes but are far too fit and without their families, so cannot be tourists.
Some supposedly work in call centers or “illegal businesses like the online gambling and fraud through credit cards and bank ATMs”. Another says they have entire floors in office buildings, or work in offices in malls.
One says that Chinese fishing boats illegally fish giant clams and smuggle Chinese nationals into the Philippines via Palawan, Barocay, and Laoag City, along with cheap Chinese goods. Yet another says many have red dragon tattoos on their right hands between their index finger and thumb, and that at the Double Dragon casino/mall there are Chinese guarding the entrance. Two note that female Chinese nationals are also prevalent, including some female Chinese teens that are employed in Kings Court and are escorted with security and ferried around by vans with Philippine National Police (PNP) commemorative plates.
Has anyone heard of this type of activity? How many of the legitimate Chinese migrant workers are legal, and how many illegal?
Note: Some photos are for illustration of transportation and style only (similar to those reported on Facebook). The maps are the approximate locations of reports. Map link is below.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-Fzib35FHDnNpNP4slhuw5fLLXqO947y&usp=sharing
As a media person used to say, “Dios ko day!” Thanks, Irineo for the perspective.
I can’t write right now since I have to finish cleaning up my accumulated waste doing my
eche bucheches. .
Suffice to say that the US military buddy system works mighty only among soldiers in the same foxholes; not among generals at their own headquarters. A country will know its true buddy only in times of sound and fury.
Search history for similarities: a Nazi can’t be a buddy of a Fascist;
A commie with a genius for opportunities, and so on . . .
.
The world is full of global citizens who live in productive harmony
Bombs and Missiles is not that scary as when citizens in many countries
engaged in bloodbath against each other. World leaders should know how
their ethnics are admired, perceived, welcomed and appreciated in
in their new countries. Count the numbers to find that NUMBERS COUNT.
How many are out and where are they? Numbers no longer count when
the dam breaks into mayhem.
*******
He’s loco. No presidential demeanor.
*****