ave you ever
wondered why we call money "pera"? Why not "di-nero" which is how most every
country which came under Hispanic rule calls money?
This is how it supposedly happened. The first minted coins
that came to the country during the Spanish period had the facsimile of
Isabella, Queen of Spain, on its face. Isabella was the "cara" on one side of
the coin, and the cross on the other side. Those who still remember "cara y cruz"
which is how betting on the toss of a coin used to be called, know whereof we
write.
When the Spanish soldiers who unloaded the crates of coins
opened one, and saw "la cara de Isabella", they exclaimed, "La perra!" Now
Isabella’s name in history has been elevated to reverence mainly because she and
her husband presided over the apex of Spain’s naval greatness, but she was also
Isabella la Catolica who allowed the infamous Inquisition. In her time, she was
the object of scorn because of her repressive actions. There were also a lot of
intrigues in her court.
This must be why those Spanish soldiers spat at the first
coins that came to these islands, and called her "perra".
Perra is Castillian for what one Jose Sarte Salceda, governor
of the province of Albay, former congressman of one district of that benighted
province where projects funded by the national government are always in a state
of disrepair, because of corruption so gross and so endemic, former boy genius
of the stock market, and former student in economics of one Gloria Macapagal
Arroyo whom he now calls, "la perra".
"Bitch", he calls his former teacher. But he qualifies – "the
luckiest bitch". How far will her luck go, and how short of luck will the
Filipino people she misrules illegitimately be?
***
My mailbox is full of mail criticizing the CBCP for its
latest "lame" statement on the moral crisis gripping the land.
I have read and re-read the statement, which Archbishop Oscar
Cruz and Deogracias Ińiguez tell us to be the crystallization of the collective
opinions and views of the nation’s Catholic bishops, arrived at, they aver, not
by majority vote, but by the hammering of consensus.
The bishops "condemn the continuing culture of corruption
from the top to the bottom of our social and political ladder." Note the word
"top." Clearly, no one is more "top" than Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in our social
and political ladder.
But in the succeeding paragraph, our lord bishops "urge the
President…to take the lead in combating corruption wherever it is found."
Hello? If the top is corrupt, or is part of the culture of
corruption, how do our lord bishops expect her to "take the lead in combating"
the evil of corruption? That’s like asking the mastermind to clean up the act.
What she will do, and what her acolytes in the branches of "her" government will
do, is to clean up the traces, erase the fingerprints.
But what an entire nation already sees, and has endured for
seven long years, starting from Impsa, to the attempted telecoms franchise
take-over, to Diosdado Macapagal Boulevard, to the "Bridges to Nowhere," to Jose
Pidal and los hermanos Arroyo, to Michael Tan Defensor’s abduction and
neutralization of witness Udong Mahusay, to Joc Joc Bolante and the fertilizer
scandal, and his own self-abduction to the US of A to escape having to tell the
truth, to Hello Garci and the Garci generals, to jueteng all over, and the
uncontrolled growth of the culture of gambling, both legal and illegal, the
Philhealth card mess, the wanton misuse of PCSO funds, smuggling all over, from
luxury cars to second-hand cars, from containers of canned goods to shiploads of
oil, to North Rail and South Rail, the CyberEd and the NBN, to bagfuls of money
shamelessly distributed to greedy congressmen and greedy governors in her
palace, and heaven knows whatever else, cannot possibly be lost upon the sight,
the ears and all the human senses of our "custodians" of morality. (That has to
be the longest sentence I have written. It would have been longer if I had the
resources to list down every major scandal of this "evil" administration
presided over by "la perra".)
Lord bishops of the Roman Catholic Church: "There are none so
blind as those who refuse to see".
***
Congress should pass legislation amending the Pagcor and PCSO
charters, removing whatever provisions pertaining to the appropriation of a
portion of their gross earnings into what is called the "President’s Social
Fund." For as long as these moneymakers exist, all their funds must accrue to
the National Treasury, to be disbursed only according to the approved General
Appropriations Act. Remove the discretion of the president over monies
contributed by the people for gambling and all games of chance. This amounts to
some 2 billion pesos a year, minimum. On top of discretionary, confidential and
intelligence funds appropriated by Congress, our president presides over a
personal pork barrel of close to 6 billion pesos each year. On top of her
authority to re-align savings from one department to another. On top of her
power to order her department secretaries to give projects to whoever she
pleases, such as these lord bishops of the Church, como Diosdado Talamayan de
Cagayan y Villena de Vizcaya, and Rosales of Manila and que lastima, our own
Juan de Dios Pueblos of Butuan.
Start at the top, indeed, not necessarily for a president who
shall soon fall, but for all succeeding presidents of this benighted land.
Remove her power, and their future power to "please" all bishops and all
pastors, with monies of the sovereign people.
In catechism class, they taught us to "reject sin" and to
"remove all occasions of sin," remember?
***
