To celebrate this year’s festival, various activities were lined up by the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño de Cebu and the Sinulog Foundation, as well as the local governments of Cebu City and Cebu Province.  Their respective themes are “Santo Niño: Hope of the Pilgrim Church” and “One Beat, One Dance, One Vision.” 

The estimated three million devotees, pilgrims, tourists and residents expected to join the celebration may take part in novena Masses in English and Cebuano, Masses including a Pontifical Mass on Fiesta Day, foot processions, “mananita” Masses, a fluvial parade, and the Sinulog grand parade and competitions. 

While these activities are intended for paying homage to the Santo Niño, they also serve to remember the events marking the birth of Christianity in the Philippines. 

The historic narrative is echoed in the choreography of most of the 43 Sinulog street-dance contingents performing in the 1.8-kilometer grand parade and showdown during Fiesta Day.

It is also told more directly during the Solemnity of Mass to Commemorate the First Mass, Baptism and Wedding in Cebu, which was held at the Basilica Pilgrim Center in Cebu early on Jan. 18, Visperas Day (or the eve of Fiesta Day). As the presiding priest at the Mass said, it is to continue to thank God for the gift of enduring faith with the help of the Santo Niño. 

Reenactment

As stated in the Facebook post of the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño de Cebu, the Mass includes a reenactment that “brings to life the historic moments that introduced Christianity to the Philippines—the planting of the cross, the first baptism, mass and wedding in Cebu.”  The reenactment held hours before the solemn foot procession also shows the presentation of the Santo Niño image.

The reenactment featuring a cast of hundreds showed the “live” Rajah Humabon, Hara Humamai, Princess Isabel and Don Andres de Calipata and a number of Cebuanos and Spaniards who came with Ferdinand Magellan, the explorer for Portugal and Spain who is known to have discovered or rediscovered the Philippines. 

The narrative in the reenactment told in Cebuano (aired live by the basilica on FB) quoted from the writings of Antonio Pigafetta, the chronicler of the Magellan-Elcano expedition: On the fourth day of Magellan’s arrival in Cebu on April 7, 1521, Humabon, the ruler of Cebu, was baptized as Carlos after the then king of Spain, and his wife Humamai (in some accounts, one of his wives) as Juana. 

The retelling also stated that the first wedding held in Christian rites was between Calipata, a member of the Legaspi expedition that arrived in Cebu, and Isabel, a niece of Rajah Tupas. Their wedding was held days after the finding of the Santo Niño image by Juan Camus on April 28, 1565

More details are provided in the FB post of the National Quincentennial Committee on the earliest recorded Christian baptism in the Philippines, which took place in Cebu. The post says it was held on a Sunday at the consecrated “piaza.” 

The ceremony took place four days after Humabon allowed the Spaniards to mount a Christian cross and bury two of their countrymen in the piaza. It was officiated by Fr. Pedro de Valderrama, chaplain of the Magellan-Elcano expedition; although intended only for Humabon, it was extended to include even the local officials and other men who were present. 

The National Quincentennial Committee post also says Humabon’s heir was renamed Fernando, after the brother of the Spanish king. Around 500 men were baptized during the morning ritual that was exclusive to officials and men.

Holy Child’s image

According to the account, the image of the Holy Child was shown to Humamai. She is said to have been delighted by the aesthetics and charm of the image of a “señora donna” (Virgin Mary) and “a very beautiful wooden bambino” (Holy Child), and a crucifix shown to her.

She is said to have been so touched on seeing the image of the Holy Child that she wept and repented for her sins and was convinced to be also baptized as Juana (after Joanna of Castile, Carlos’ mother).

Humamai and 40 other women, including the wife of Rajah Colambu, the ruler of Mazaua, were baptized after lunch also by Valderrama. In his account, Pigafetta said that in the same event Valderrama baptized 800 more people, regardless of gender, including children. 

After her baptism, Juana asked for the image of the Santo Niño as a gift. Pigafetta is remembered as the one who presented the image to her.

Magellan then ordered that a large cross be planted in the middle of the piaza for veneration and told the new converts to “burn all their idols and set up a cross in their place.” (Magellan’s Cross, near the Basilica of the Santo Niño, has become one of the famous historical landmarks of the arrival of Christianity in the Philippines.) 

Earlier, Magellan said he “would not cause any displeasure to those who wished to live according to their own law.” But Pigafetta noted that Magellan contradicted this statement as he later threatened Humabon’s allies who refused to be baptized that they would incur the wrath of Spain. Humabon’s allies, who were from various parts of Cebu, were intimidated into receiving the sacrament.

(The conversion can be said to be far from easy and smooth, but it was apparently not as violent as the later encounter between Magellan and Mactan’s King Lapu-lapu.)

An FB post of the National Quincentennial Committee says that contrary to popular belief, there were also non-Cebuanos among those first baptized as Christians.  They included the foreign Muslim merchant who served as Humabon’s Malay translator (baptized as Cristobal), and Colambu and his wife (baptized as Juan and Isabel, respectively). 

It also says “Fernando Malang Balagtas,” a former “lakan” or ruler of Tondo (now part of Manila) claimed in his last will and testament executed in 1589 that he was baptized in Cebu in 1521.

Common theme

Today, a version of the story of the first baptism and the gift of the Santo Niño and the encounter between Cebuano natives and Spanish missionaries is a common theme in the choreography of most Sinulog dance contingents. 

During the grand parade on Fiesta Day, it is common to see a dance contingent of 100 dancers featuring, in colorful costumes, “Spanish soldiers” (with helmets, swords and shields), “Spanish senoritas,” pretty “native lasses,” and able-bodied “native men” with bolos. The ending choreography is invariably by a beautiful lead female dancer holding aloft and giving homage to the image of the Santo Niño. (This is the basic choreography although the contingents may differ greatly in their props and creative dance movements.)

Four years ago, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines designated the 500th anniversary of the baptism in Cebu as the reckoning date of the 500 Years of Christianity in the Philippines on April 14, 2021.

Read more: Renewing faith and devotion to Our Lady of the Candles

The post The Sinulog is also a festival to recall Christianity’s birth in the Philippines appeared first on CoverStory.

Something about trombonist Jose Aris “Isla” Antinero immediately suggests a solidity of spirit that goes deep beyond the full smile and firm handshake. His is a restful presence; with remarkable economy of movement, he holds the serene, thoughtful gaze of an apsara while waiting for his turn on stage. Off stage, his laughter is genuine, as one prays his signature greeting/goodbye is, as well: “Pinakamagandang buhay (the best life)!”

It does seem like Isla is living his best life, having recently released an original single titled “Mirang (Pinakamagandang Buhay),” with Wendell Garcia (drums), Kakoy Legaspi (guitar), Francis De Veyra (bass), and his partner Tonette Asprer (vocals). Isla describes “Mirang” as an “uplifting anthem” that celebrates hope, love, and connection, and features a blend of reggae rhythms and smooth swing. 

He says that in Rizal province, particularly in the municipalities of Morong and Cardona, “mirang” serves as the superlative prefix, equivalent to “pinaka” in standard Filipino. (All of Isla’s responses in this interview are in the Tagalog that he’d grown up with in Talim Island, just off Binangonan, Rizal. I hope the translation loses none of his story’s homespun charm.) 

“‘Mirang’ is a labor of love,” says Isla. “I have been hearing this melody play over and over in my head—it’s a positive and uplifting song that evokes ‘pinakamagandang buhay’. I believe this song will also help people raise their vibration.”

Calm is a superpower

His talk of “higher vibration” is not just some trendy take on the self-care zeitgeist that’s been blowing scented smoke in most every consumer space on the heels of the pandemic. In March 2019, Isla and Tonette went to Nepal to complete a Tibetan Singing Bowl Therapy and Sound Healing Course under Grand Master Shree Krishna Shahi at the Kathmandu Center of Healing’s instruction & healing arts program. In short order, the couple, already experienced yoga and meditation practitioners, explored Reiki, a Japanese technique that complements sound and energy healing. 

This would forever change their lives and their relationship with music: Last year, they opened the doors to V432 Wellness—a safe space in Quezon City where people can “reconnect and rediscover empowerment through mindfulness practices.”

Isla says their sanctuary is so named because “432 Hz is known as a healing frequency.” Many frequency healers believe that 432 Hz vibrations can significantly enhance the body’s healing capabilities, as well as slow heart rate and decrease blood pressure, reduce anxiety and stress, and enhance sleep quality.

“At V432 we combine music, meditation, and energy healing to help people reclaim their calm and restore their balance in everyday life,” he says. 

But doesn’t Isla precisely need to pack the intense energy that fuels every jazz performance? That trombone can growl like J.J. Johnson’s and Curtis Fuller’s, or resonate with the earthy warmth of Frank Rosolino’s, shifting effortlessly from mellow to powerful with breathtaking lyrical fluidity. 

Turns out the best way to channel that deep reserve of fiery spontaneity is from a still, untroubled space that hones one’s reflexes to deal with the unexpected. “Meditation is integral to my being a musician,” Isla says. “It deepens my connection to my instrument, so that I understand it better and thus help me improve my performance. Every mindfulness practice brings me toward a lighter and more open sound. Through sound healing, I help myself return to a calm place every time.”

It has taken Isla 41 years of playing, first the trumpet and clarinet in early boyhood, and then the trombone as a 10-year-old, to arrive at this clear-headed oasis. “My grandfather, father, and uncle all played the trombone,” he says. “My uncle played with the Philippine Navy Band. I played with the marching band and the school band where I fell in love with music—and the trombone, for its deep, warm sound that wraps around my heart, almost. It gives strength and body to the ensemble, rounding out the sound with depth and texture.” 

From ship to shore

Isla eventually attended the University of the Philippines College of Music, after which he played with Ugoy-Ugoy, the funk jazz-rock-R&B band, for 10 years, among other freelance gigs. “I think the ‘90s were the happiest and busiest days of live and recorded music in Manila,” he says. “Practically all genres were flourishing then—jazz, rock, funk, even fusion. The live music scene was bursting with life, hence the great many opportunities for musicians.”

In 2013, with gigs at home drying up, Isla signed up as a cruise ship musician. Initially, seeing the world while earning a living thrilled him. He recalls the early years of the 10 in total on cruise ships as being a true adventure, and learning from and playing with excellent musicians from all over the world was priceless.

But after a while the loneliness got real, with near and dear ones worlds away. “I felt my passion for playing falling off,” Isla recalls, “and playing a barely varying setlist did not help.” He adds with a laugh: “The day came when I felt I could run the ship backward and forward, and I knew it was time to come home.”  

He gradually reestablished his musical presence upon his return. Today, he plays with Brass Paspaspaspas, Route 70, AMP Big Band, Walotao, Dixie Sheikhs, 13th Boulevard, and Mabuhay Swingers. “These are my main groups now, but I also participate in other collaboration projects depending on my schedule,” he says.

Isla is also prioritizing his engagement with music education these days, particularly with youth programs in Eastern Rizal. Over the last couple of years, he and his fellow session artists, along with some college students and members of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, have been holding regular workshops to augment local youth music education. “This is the least we can do to help our talented youth go further on their musical journey,” he says.

He will never tire of reminding younger musicians already cutting their teeth on stages across the city of the need for flexibility (and discipline, one might add, such as making rehearsals on time and showing up prepared). “They need to be on top of emerging genres and trends without losing sight of their true roots, whatever these may be,” he says. “And, anyway, all of us should remain open to collaboration and experimentation.”

He enjoins all musicians that are able, to harness the power of social media and online platforms “to get their music across to their audiences, and keep the connection with their audiences at all times, live or online, as best they can.”

Easier said than done, to be sure, but at least the home shores are tuning up frequencies and tuning in to the music of our very own.

Read more: Portraits in Jazz: Tago is Nelson Gonzales’ happy madness

The post Portraits in Jazz: Isla Antinero tunes up with the best life appeared first on CoverStory.

A confessed assassin for the Davao Death Squad, he was the first to go public about the killings allegedly ordered by former President Rodrigo Duterte. Since 2014, when he was detained and brutally tortured by his former comrades, Matobato has been on the run. For ten years, an unlikely network kept him alive: Catholic clergy who believed in his redemption, former military mutineers who shielded him, and, at one point, the security detail of an outgoing president. Together, they helped him evade the powerful forces intent on silencing him.

Today, Matobato is out of the country in the company of two priests, a journalist, and a photographer from The New York Times. With his wife at his side, he assumed a new identity, slipped through airports under cover, and landed in an unnamed country. It is an indefinite stop on his way to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where Duterte may one day stand trial for crimes against humanity. 

His journey, from a recruit into a brutal profession to whistleblower to fugitive, is a remarkable tale that mirrors the country’s complex relationship with violence, power—and redemption. 

When I first met Matobato on a balmy Christmas morning in 2016, I couldn’t help but wonder how long an improvised, clandestine witness protection program could keep him safe. Only three months earlier, he had electrified the nation with his testimony before the Philippine Senate. On live television, Matobato confessed to serving as a hitman for the Davao Death Squad for 24 years. He detailed how, on Duterte’s alleged orders, he had killed suspected criminals and disposed of their bodies in horrific ways—dumped on streets, fed to crocodiles, or buried in a quarry.

Those were the early days of Duterte’s presidency. Each night, bloody corpses littered the streets of Manila. Empowered by the president’s rhetoric, the police killed with impunity, while hooded gunmen executed small-time drug dealers in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Until Matobato stepped forward, the shadowy world of death squads and contract killers was largely invisible to the public. His testimony ripped away that veil. He described, in chilling detail, how police and local officials organized, financed, and directed these squads. His revelations exposed a hidden ecosystem sustained by the brokenness of our country: its dysfunctional justice system, the desperation of the poor, and the unchecked hubris of powerful men who believe brute force is the cure for social ills.

How to become a hitman

I spoke with Matobato in a secluded Catholic compound, a haven of quiet far removed from the chaos of Manila. Fruit trees swayed in the breeze, birdsong filled the air, and a stream murmured softly through the grounds. Father Albert Alejo, a Jesuit priest and an old friend, had asked if I could drive him there to say Christmas Mass for the former hitman and his wife.

The couple lived in a modest cottage tucked away in the compound. They were under the care of a religious order and watched over by two men who kept a discreet but constant vigil. These men, I was told, were from Magdalo, a political party formed by soldiers who had staged mutinies in 2003 and 2007 to protest government and military corruption.

Matobato greeted us warmly. Short, stocky, and sturdily built, he wore checkered Bermuda shorts and a gray T-shirt. His voice was soft, his manner polite, even solicitous, not at all what you would expect of a hitman.

Lunch was ready when we arrived. Matobato had prepared humba, the Visayan version of pork adobo, the night before. It was too early to eat, so we sat on benches in the open air. I turned on my recorder and asked him to tell me his story.

“My name is Edgar Matobato,” he began in Tagalog. “I was born in Calinan, Tamayong, Davao City, on June 11, 1959. I am 57. I was a farmer in our barangay.”

It was around 1977, he said, when his father, a member of the Civilian Home Defense Force (CHDF), was killed by communist guerrillas. “They wanted his gun. My father told them, ‘If you need my gun, I will give it to you as long as you do not hurt my family.’”

But his father’s plea fell on deaf ears. “Four men held my father down and cut off his head,” Matobato said matter-of-factly. “Then they placed the head on a wooden stake, like a flagpole.” He watched as his father’s headless body staggered and fell to the ground.

Confirming Matobato’s account is difficult. A former communist cadre active in Davao during that time said government forces used beheadings as a form of psychological terror. The guerrillas retaliated with killings of their own, he said, but their methods were different—they typically used guns or knives to sever the jugular vein; they did not cut off heads.

Still, Matobato has told the story of his father’s beheading many times—not just to me, but to others who have sought to piece together the fragments of his life. Even when asked again through an intermediary, his account never wavered. Whether or not it can be independently verified, this is Matobato’s truth—the defining moment that, in his eyes, shaped the trajectory of his life.

Matobato was a teenager when his father was killed, the eldest of three siblings. School was a luxury he could scarcely afford. “I would go to school on Mondays, after that no more,” he said. “Because if I didn’t work, what would we eat?”

In 1982, Matobato joined the CHDF to protect his village from the same guerrillas who had killed his father. “Many of them were ‘natives,’” he said, referring to the indigenous Bagobo and Manobo people. The government paid him a small allowance of 70 pesos a month and provided him with a rifle. Later, he was assigned to an army battalion as part of a civilian auxiliary unit supporting counterinsurgency operations.

It was there that Matobato learned to kill. By 1988, when Rodrigo Duterte was elected mayor of Davao City, Matobato’s reputation as a fighter had reached the ears of a police officer close to the mayor. When they began forming a “liquidation squad” called the Lambada Boys—named after a popular Latin dance—Matobato was among the first recruits.

Why him? I asked. “They picked me because they knew I wasn’t afraid,” he said. He may have been unschooled, but he had proven his willingness to kill and his ability to follow orders without question.

Why him? I asked his wife, who had stayed by his side even after learning he was a contract killer. “I was mad at myself for falling in love with him,” she said, “He is a good man. I never thought of him as evil. They used him because he was ignorant. They took advantage of his anger that his father was beheaded and never got justice.”

The roots of violence

Matobato’s story is inseparable from the place he came from: Davao City, a bustling port surrounded by vast hinterland on the foothills of Mount Apo. Beyond the city’s urban core lie rural villages where Visayan settler families lived uneasily alongside indigenous tribes, logging concessions, and banana plantations.

His is also a story of a time—starting the late 1970s, at the height of martial law. Military operations, government projects, and corporate expansion disrupted Mindanao’s rural communities, leaving many indigenous peoples and settlers displaced. Some, like Matobato’s family, scraped by on small, upland farms. Others moved to shanties in lowland slums or sought work in plantations and logging concessions. Military abuses and the loss of livelihood drew many to the communist cause.

By the start of the 1980s, Davao had become the epicenter of both rebellion and counterinsurgency. The city was the Communist Party’s laboratory for new forms of both nonviolent protest and armed struggle, including urban warfare. To the military, it was the proving ground for counterinsurgency strategies like the infiltration of rebel ranks and in the late 1980s, the deployment of civilian “vigilantes.”

Communist guerrillas recruited heavily among the city’s displaced poor, while the constabulary and paramilitary groups hunted suspected rebels. Duterte, a little-known prosecutor at the time, emerged from this chaos as a tough, pragmatic politician. With support from the police, old-time politicos, and communist insurgents, he was elected mayor.

The business of killing

At first, Matobato earned a few thousand pesos per hit. He and his team operated out of a safehouse in a low-income neighborhood called Exodus, in Davao’s Bankerohan district, waiting for orders. Their targets were mostly criminals—accused rapists, thieves, kidnappers. They struck in crowded places: malls, markets, busy streets. The designated hitman would approach the target, shoot, and walk calmly to a waiting vehicle.

“In one day, there were sometimes seven killings, sometimes four,” 

Matobato said. “We never had a day with zero. And we were never caught—we were with the police. Once a uniformed cop saw us, he’d just walk away. One of them would just signal this was ours.”

By the 1980s, Davao City had become a chaotic battleground. Communist guerrillas from the New People’s Army (NPA) ruled slums like Agdao, imposing curfews and organizing nightly patrols. Known as “sparrows,” NPA assassins gunned down policemen and other “enemies of the people” in broad daylight. They maintained order by eliminating informants, rogue cops, and thieves, earning the support of many poor Davaoeños who viewed them as protectors against an abusive state.

Meanwhile, counterinsurgency efforts ramped up. Paramilitary groups, soldiers, and local authorities targeted suspected communists. Criminality ran rampant as no one seemed in charge. The city was steeped in bloodshed, with violence begetting violence.

As mayor, Rodrigo Duterte stepped into this cauldron of fear and retribution. He consolidated power by employing methods borrowed from both military and guerrilla tactics.

“In the beginning, I thought we were helping people by getting rid of the bad guys,” Matobato said. “Later, we were told to kill innocent people. You could tell because innocent people act differently from criminals. But you couldn’t refuse because the police officers would not allow it. Those officers were of a different sort. They were ruthless, men without souls.”

By the 1990s, former communist rebels had joined the liquidation squad. Alongside Matobato and other hitmen, they became part of what would be called the Davao Death Squad. Officially, Matobato and his comrades were allegedly listed on the city payroll as “Auxiliary Service Workers,” and Matobato still keeps the ID card that proves it. According to him, they carried out assassinations, now targeting not just criminals but also political rivals, suspected terrorists, and those on Duterte’s personal hit list, he said. These hits were carried out in secret, the victims’ bodies buried or drowned in the sea.

(Matobato’s account has been corroborated by Arturo Lascañas, a former police officer and death squad member, who was also the hitman’s handler. Lascañas has given testimony to both the Senate and the ICC.)

As the killings escalated, Matobato’s conscience began to gnaw at him. “At times, I would secretly ask my victims for forgiveness, muttering to myself before killing them, ‘Please forgive me, I am just following orders.’”

His wife recalled nights after work when the hitman sat alone at home, drinking. At one point, she said, he pointed a gun at his head, saying he wanted to kill himself.

Davaoeños largely accepted Duterte’s brand of frontier justice. They saw the killings as the price of safety. Between 1998 and 2015, a human rights group documented more than 1,400 death squad murders. Duterte, for his part, proudly boasted that his city was the safest in the country. For many Davaoeños, that claim was enough. They reelected him again and again, keeping him in power for 22 years.

A killer’s remorse

That Christmas morning, Matobato recounted story after story of murder, his voice flat, emotionless, as though ticking off items on a grocery list. He told me about “exhibition” killings: A victim would be shot, then stabbed in the chest to make sure he was dead. His hands would be tied together and his face swaddled in packing tape before his  corpse was dumped on the street, sometimes with a cardboard sign that said, “Pusher” or “ Holdupper.”

He learned to kill this way from the police, he said. The intent was to sow fear. From the cops he also learned how to dismember a victim’s corpse so that “if you killed three people, you need only dig one small grave.”

All of this was unnerving.  Matobato looked far away, rarely at me. Yet when he wasn’t speaking about his crimes, he smiled, walked around to check on others, and seemed at ease.

“This man is a confessed murderer, he’s killed so many, he cannot give an exact count, he said maybe about 50,” I wrote in my notes that evening. “He said they must have buried 300 people in the Ma-a quarry since 1988. He said he had regretted his ways but because his face was inert and bereft of affect, it was hard to see whether there’s real remorse … Something has died in this man’s soul.”

Despite being a lapsed Catholic, I wondered about the state of Matobato’s soul. I thought Father Alejo might have answers. For a quarter-century, the hitman was a cog in a brutal machine that ran on fear and blood. Sure, he had stepped out of the shadows to bear witness. But are you not consorting with a serial assassin? I asked Father Alejo on our drive back to Manila. Can a man who has killed so many ever find redemption?

Exiting a death squad

In 2013, Matobato wanted out. The killings were taking their toll, particularly one assignment involving three young women. He was told they were drug dealers, but he suspected they were innocent. Their deaths haunted him. Sleepless nights piled up, and Matobato, then in his fifties, told his superiors he was too old for the job.

When he stopped reporting for work, he knew it was only a matter of time before the squad leaders would come for him. In June 2014, his fears came true. Three police officers took him to the station, where, for a week, they beat him relentlessly—sometimes with their fists, other times with a chair or the butt of a rifle.

They wanted him to confess to the killing of Richard King, a wealthy Cebuano businessman who had recently been shot in a Davao office building. Matobato believed the killing was orchestrated by the police and death squad working together, and he was to be their fall guy.

The beatings were brutal. Matobato lost hearing in his right ear and suffered a fractured chest bone. One evening, a rifle barrel was thrust into his buttocks; he was hit so hard he nearly passed out. He was released the next day on the intercession of his uncle, a retired police officer.

Fearing for his life, Matobato fled Davao with his wife. With money from relatives, they moved between Cebu, Leyte, and Samar. In desperation, he wrote to then Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, claiming he had been tortured and wanted to file a complaint. When no response came, he traveled to Manila, hoping broadcaster Ted Failon, a fellow Waray, would hear him out. He couldn’t get an audience. Back in Tacloban, he sought help from the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), but the regional office, still reeling from the damage caused by Typhoon “Yolanda,” said they couldn’t protect him.

CHR staff advised him to go to the justice department in Manila. He did, telling the security guard at the entrance, “Sir, I am a member of the Davao Death Squad and I want to surrender.”

He was brought to a lawyer who referred him to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). In September 2014, the NBI placed him in a government safehouse under the witness protection program.

NBI investigators corroborated Matobato’s story, and in August 2015, recommended filing arbitrary detention and torture charges against five Davao City police officers.  De Lima, the justice secretary, knew about Matobato’s torture case but told me she was then unaware of the depth of his death squad involvement.

As chair of the CHR in 2009, De Lima had held hearings in Davao, vowing to end vigilante-style killings. She and her team began exhuming bodies buried in the Laud quarry but could not proceed because a Davao judge denied them a search warrant. (Years later, Matobato would testify that Duterte had ordered her assassination if she proceeded.)

Over the years, efforts to hold Duterte accountable had been derailed by bureaucratic dysfunction and disinterest. Moreover, national politicians turned a blind eye to Davao’s carnage, preferring to rely on Duterte to deliver votes from his vote-rich city. Others thought the Davao killings were localized and not a threat to the nation.

Meanwhile, although safe under witness protection, Matobato could still not go public with his truth.

Sanctuary and salvation

Duterte declared his candidacy for president in November 2015. Not seen as a top contender, he was rapidly gaining support and by April 2016, it looked like he was going to win. Matobato feared for his life. On his lawyer’s advice, he left witness protection on May 4, less than a week before the election.

On the same day, men in barong escorted the couple to the justice department and then a hotel in Manila. Days later, armed men spirited them away to what they believed was their execution. Instead, they were taken to a large house in Bulacan province. The men, members of the Presidential Security Guard, assured them they were safe. Matobato did not know they had been sent at the behest of President Aquino. The president kept this operation secret even from his inner circle but later shared it with then Senator Antonio Trillanes IV.

As Duterte’s inauguration loomed, the guards escorted Matobato and his wife to the office of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines in Intramuros. The staff were stunned but the clergy hurriedly made arrangements to bring the couple to a church compound in the city. From there, they were moved from one church facility to another.

The decision to shelter them wasn’t without controversy. The Catholic Church has a long tradition of providing sanctuary, especially during martial law. But Matobato was no political dissident—he was a confessed assassin. Some clergy supported Duterte’s antidrug campaign and worried they were coddling a criminal.

Priests met with Motobato to discern his sincerity. Father Alejo was convinced. Over and over, Matobato had told him, “I have sinned so many times. I have killed so many. Never mind if I go to prison, or get killed, or sent to the electric chair. Before I die, I want to be able to say what I know.”

Some clergy members supported the hitman’s desire to go public. They worried, however, that their actions would be seen as political, especially as two opposition senators, de Lima and Magdalo co-founder Trillanes, wanted Matobato to testify in a Senate hearing.

Father Alejo was certain Matobato had a mission. He recalled Paul of Tarsus, persecutor of Christians, converted on the road to Damascus. Longinus, the Roman soldier who pierced Jesus’s side with a spear during his crucifixion, eventually became a monk and a martyr of the faith.

Redemption is possible, Father Alejo told me as we drove on traffic-choked streets and headed back to Manila.

Testimony at the Senate

The night before his testimony, Matobato was moved to a hotel suite near the Senate. In the morning, he knelt to pray with his wife and Father Alejo, clutching an image of the Virgin Mary.

Raised without religious instruction, Matobato had avoided church most of his life. “I was afraid to go to Mass,” he said. “I would kill again afterward, so what’s the point?” His greatest fear, he said, more than death itself, was dying before speaking out.

The clergy believed there were real threats to Matobato’s life. The Church alone could not protect him. The Magdalo party stepped in, providing security and safehouses. A doctor treated the internal bleeding caused by his torture. Lawyers volunteered legal advice. Others helped with safehouses and other support.

Somehow, that ragtag band of clergy, dissident soldiers, and civilians managed to keep the couple safe and alive as they were bundled from one refuge to another. They have done so for the past eight years.

Those early months, however, were the most fraught. The body count in Duterte’s drug war was escalating and the president was polling a high 80 percent approval rating. Even the renowned novelist F. Sionil Jose hailed “Mr. Duterte’s assault on the rotten status quo, which has begun with the war on drugs.” Many in the Left praised the president’s attacks on oligarchs and imperial America.

A  Church activist told me that in a Mass held for drug war victims, many churchgoers had refused to light candles for the dead. In the communities hard hit by the war, he said, “some even held parties to celebrate the killing of those they considered salot, a social plague. These places have been neglected for so long, they have not been given justice, and the killings are a form of justice for them.”

Resistance in the shadows

In the face of popular support for the killings, nuns, priests, and pastors improvised ways to respond beyond the usual blessings and condolences. They paid for funeral expenses of drug war victims, supported widowed mothers, and provided scholarships for orphans. They sheltered terrorized families in seminaries, rectories, schools, and orphanages. Some worked to convince police and local governments to spare those in the Church’s care, setting up rehabilitation programs on the fly.

In 2018, I spoke with Sister Crescencia Lucero, a gentle, soft-spoken nun who had spent decades quietly aiding victims of state violence. At the time, she was sheltering dozens of families and was part of a clandestine network of nuns who provided sanctuary. They moved the families between convents, seminaries, and schools, ensuring they were never in one place for long. At one point, they had to evacuate quickly when Duterte’s scheduled visit nearby drew heightened security and the prying eyes of his advance team.

I asked Sister Cres how long she had been doing this kind of work. “Since 1969,” she said—the year she took her vows.

Beyond the Church, resistance took many forms. Just as death squads operated through hidden networks, a parallel ecosystem of empathy and defiance emerged. Lawyers provided legal aid. Doctors treated survivors of torture and assassination attempts. Social workers, artists, and musicians counseled grieving families and preserved their stories. Academics, journalists, and photographers documented the carnage.

On a sweltering July afternoon in 2017, I watched members of a dance company conduct a workshop for drug sellers, many of whom had lost loved ones to the drug war. They had fled their neighborhoods and were sheltering in a church building.The dancers told them to hold each other, to feel the connection, the weight, the touch. There was silence, and then tears.

The University of the Philippines social work school began tracking such efforts, finding 74 groups actively countering the government’s campaign. A 2019 report noted, “Far from a picture of acceptance or helplessness, there is pushback.” These groups ranged from church ministries to human rights advocates, environmentalists, educators, and feminist organizations.

Their work seemed small compared to the state’s vast machinery of violence. But I realized that, just as a clandestine ecosystem of death squads is deeply embedded in the underbelly of society, so is a parallel world of resistance—connected, rooted, and quietly defying the brokenness that surrounds them.

Eight years later

When Matobato first testified, holding Duterte accountable seemed impossible. Eight years later, the ICC is investigating, and Congress is probing the carnage. Other witnesses, including police officers and former death squad members, have come forward.

Still, impunity looms. Drug-related killings continue. The Duterte family remains powerful, and large parts of the country still support them. In many ways, ours is still a broken country where the mighty enjoy impunity for corruption and human rights abuse.

Individual redemption, as in Matobato’s case, is possible. But what will it take to redeem an entire nation?

The post The making of Edgar Matobato appeared first on CoverStory.

As early as January last year, Sen. Imee Marcos already aired 271 TV and radio ad spots worth P21 million based on published rate cards or before discounts.

Every month after, President Marcos Jr.’s sister appeared on Filipino voters’ TV screens and spoke in radios across the country. She gradually increased the number of her advertisements until she reached 1,145 ad spots worth P303 million in September alone.

Her political ads from January to September 2024 amounted to P1 billion based on rate cards, according to data obtained by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) from Nielsen Ad Intel.

The amount is staggering, Jean Encinas Franco, an associate professor at the University of the Philippines’ Department of Political Science, told PCIJ. 

“It gives me a sense they are already using their own money,” she said. “Candidates cannot use their own money. When you have a stake in election spending, all the more you will be corrupt.”

Campaigns have traditionally relied on donors, usually businesses, to fund election activities. Increasingly, however, the country has seen candidates using personal funds or relying on family members for support.

“It’s because the candidates are businessmen themselves,” said former Commission on Elections commissioner Luie Guia.

Marcos was first elected to the Senate in 2019, and is now seeking a second term. She is the third in the family to occupy a seat in the chamber, following her father, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and her brother President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. 

The Marcos clan continues to dominate politics in their home province of Ilocos Norte. 

Breaching P1B 

Marcos is one of two senatorial candidates who aired ads worth P1 billion over the nine-month period before the filing of certificates of candidacy (CoCs) in October 2024. 

The other is Las Piñas Rep. Camille Villar, the youngest and only daughter of billionaire real estate mogul Manuel Villar Jr., the country’s richest man, according to Forbes Magazine. He is a former senator and had served as Senate president. 

Unlike Marcos, Villar did not start advertising in January. She had ads worth P100,000 in March but that was it, until August or two months before the CoC filing.

All of a sudden, she flooded TV and radio stations across the country with her ads. She had ads worth P598 million in August and P477 million in September. 

The ads of Marcos and Villar accounted for about 50% of the total P4.1 billion worth of  political advertisements ahead of the CoC filing.  These amounts do not include the cost of producing the advertisements, their separate social media campaigns, the maintenance of campaign offices, and salaries of staff, among other regular expenses.

As of December 2024, Villar was already the top spender on Facebook, the most popular social media platform in the country. She recorded paying Meta P13 million to boost her posts.

Villar is the fourth in her family to seek a seat in the Senate, following her father, her mother Cynthia and her brother Mark, all of whom also recorded heavy ad spending during their campaigns.

Both Cynthia and Mark reported spending personal funds to run their campaigns.

In 2013, the year Cynthia succeeded her husband in the Senate, she reported spending P133.9 million. Out of this amount, P131.6 million was drawn from her personal funds and only P2.6 million from other donors.

Markm who joined her mother in the Senate in 2022, declared spending P131.8 million during his campaign based on his statement of contributions and expenditures (SOCE). He received zero contributions and paid the entire amount out of his personal funds.

Awareness, conversion and survey cliffhangers

There could be several motivations behind candidates’ heavy ad spending, according to experts interviewed by PCIJ. 

Marcos may not be satisfied with her survey position in the second half of the winning circle, said Arjan Aguirre, assistant professor at Ateneo de Manila University. 

“The closer you are in the 12th place, the smaller the margin there is that separates you from the 13th placer. No one wants to be in that place in a Philippine senatorial election,” Aguirre said.

He said her ads are intended to increase her “awareness” among voters so that she can later convert them to support her.

“For Villar, it is safe to say here that they just want her to win by raising her awareness level and later close the gap between that and the voting preference level,” he said.

Awareness and conversion are jargons in product advertising, which recognized the importance of brand recall when consumers are making decisions about products they buy. In election campaigns, candidates become the products and name recall is the goal. 

Competing against media celebs

In a race packed by media celebrities who have the advantage of name recall, Marcos and Villar are not the only scions of political clans who ramped up ad spending ahead of October’s CoC filing. 

Makati Mayor Abigail Binay, reelectionist Sen. Francis Tolentino and former interior secretary Benhur Abalos aired ads worth P300 million to P500 million.

These clan members are competing against former news broadcasters Erwin and his brother Ben Tulfo; TV hosts and comedians Vicente “Tito” Sotto II, a former Senate president, and Willie Revillame; boxing champion Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao; and actors Bong Revilla and Lito Lapid. 

In comparison, these media celebrities record little to zero ad spending during the nine-month period. 

A similar pattern can be seen in the candidates’ spending on Facebook, the country’s most popular social media platform. 

Imee’s higher ambition?

There’s another possible motivation that Senator Marcos might have, said Aguirre. 

“Imee might be preparing for 2028. Midterms are usually for those people who are eyeing for higher positions like president or vice president, since they use the Senate election to allow them to gauge their ability to generate votes at the national level,” he said. 

Pre-election surveys conducted after the CoC filing, however, show that the two top ad spenders in the May 2025 senatorial elections remain in vulnerable survey positions, hanging by a thread in the “Magic 12” winning circle. 

They ranked 12th to 14th in the December 2024 Social Weather Stations surveys, with 21% voter preference. 

Marcos and Villar were also statistically tied in the November 2024 Pulse Asia survey, ranking 10th to 15th, with 37.5% and 36.5% voter preference, respectively. 

In the next four months before the May 12 midterm elections, Guia said other candidates are expected to attempt to match the heavy ad spending of their rivals, setting the stage for another expensive election.

Guia said voters should ask: “Why are the candidates spending huge sums to win elections? The burden of explaining should be on the candidate.The public should demand it.”

Read more: Candidates aired P4B worth of TV, radio ads before filing

The post Are candidates funding their own campaigns? appeared first on CoverStory.

Politicians have been enjoying greater leeway in selecting beneficiaries and determining amounts of aid due to the massive realignments in the national budget under the Marcos administration, Abad said in a forum at the Ateneo de Manila University last Monday, Jan. 13.

He observed that from 2023 to 2025, Congress diverted a total of P1 trillion from the President’s budget, or the National Expenditure Program (NEP), showing a shift in priorities from social services to cash assistance doles. 

Congress slashed P219 billion from NEP projects in the 2023 national budget, P449.5 billion in the 2024 budget, and P373 billion in this year’s budget, or a total of P1.041 trillion, Abad said in a PowerPoint presentation. 

President Marcos Jr. vetoed P194 billion worth of projects from the P6.326-trillion 2025 national budget. However, Abad noted, only P26 billion of the vetoed items had funding and the remaining P168 billion had “unprogrammed appropriations,” meaning they had no source of funding yet and were thus “inconsequential.” 

“Where is the P1 trillion of pork and patronage funds?” Abad said at the forum, “Patronage politics: The hidden hand behind the 2025 budget,” that was held at the Ateneo School of Governance and aired live over Zoom. 

“What is the status of the utilization of more than a trillion pesos of public funds taken from the first three national expenditure programs of the current administration?” added Abad, who was budget chief during the administration of President Benigno Aquino III.

Historically, the NEP is approved by Congress without major changes, except during the 1990s financial crisis, the budget reenactments from 2001 to 2010 under President Gloria Arroyo’s administration, and the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022, according to Abad.\

The NEP is the budget prepared by Malacañang and submitted to Congress. Like any regular bill, it goes through the legislative mill and takes the final form of the General Appropriations Bill once approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate. 

Scrutiny and criticism 

The 2025 national budget has been roundly criticized for the bloated budgets of the House (P33.67 billion from the proposed P16.3 billion) and the Senate (P13.93 billion from P12.83 billion).

Much scrutiny has been devoted to its huge allocation for doles to the poor—P44.74 billion for the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation (AICS), P41.16 billion for the Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (MAIP), P26.15 billion for the Ayuda Para sa Kapos Ang Kita Program (Akap), and P18.289 billion for the Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/ Displaced Workers Program (Tupad).

The Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) single highest allocation of P1.034 trillion, which surpasses the Department of Education’s (DepEd) P737 billion, has also worried teachers and the private sector. The education sector is constitutionally mandated to receive the highest annual appropriation.

“When I was looking at the 2025 budget, I was surprised. There were huge cuts, not the usual cuts,” Abad said at the forum. He described the cuts in this year’s national outlay as well as in the 2024 and 2023 budgets “unprecedented.”

He wondered if, 2025 being an election year, the national budget would show similar realignments in 2028, when the next presidential election will take place.

Abad observed that the cuts and realignments in the administration’s first three budgets showed a shift from programs for empowerment, self-reliance and community engagement—such as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps)—to cash doles such as Akap, AICS, MAIP and Tupad. 

Seizing budgets from social service agencies to fund cash doles and letting politicians distribute them “deepen the culture of patronage, the very conditions that perpetuate poverty and political dynasties,” he said. 

High court’s ruling

Later commenting on a video of Speaker Romualdez distributing “ayuda” to Akap beneficiaries at a Quezon City mall last November, Abad said this violated the Supreme Court’s ruling on the lawmakers’ priority development assistance fund (PDAF), or pork barrel.

This, he said, smacked of legislators intervening in the execution of the national budget, an act that the high court cited as unconstitutional when it ruled on the PDAF. 

Abad said the cuts and realignments also showed a departure from transport, infrastructure, and agri-based investments toward “graft-prone” projects such as flood control and drainage systems, and hyper-micro local projects like roads, bridges, and multipurpose halls.

In the end, these undermine the role of the executive branch in setting development priorities, and weaken the check and balance system in a democracy, he said.

Abad said the DPWH’s budget surpassing the DepEd’s allotment in the 2025 budget raises legal questions, as does the reduction to zero of the proposed P74.4-billion subsidy from “sin taxes” to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth).

“How can flood control projects be more important than addressing the 160,000-classroom backlog and the dilapidated condition of 70% of existing classrooms?” he said.

Earlier, Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman maintained that the education sector has the highest allocation in the 2025 budget with P1.055 trillion, which includes allotments for nonbasic educational institutions such as military and police academies.

Abad also pointed out that the Sin Tax Reform Act mandates that 80% of revenues from tobacco products and soda be allocated to PhilHealth’s universal health care.

“Can a general law, like a General Appropriations Act, amend specific laws, like the Excise Tax Reform Act? The latter declares the legislative intent more clearly than the former,” he said.

Is there anything the people can do? Abad said: “People should express outrage at what’s happening.”

This appears to be the plan of the group Clergy & Citizenry for Good Governance, which has issued an invitation to the public to an “indignation concert and rally” at the Edsa Shrine on Jan. 31 at 3-7 p.m. “The gathering [will show] our dissatisfaction with the 2025 General Appropriation Act, considered as [an] election budget and the worst budget in Philippine history,” the group said in its announcement. “Let us unite against this dangerous development and demand better responsibility, transparency, and good governance in resource management.”

‘Unclear goals and guidelines’   

In his own talk, economist JC Punongbayan dwelt on problems involving “ayuda.”

Punongbayan noted that while the allocation for 4Ps had dipped from the 2024 budget to the 2025 budget, the allotment for AICS had increased.

He said conditional cash transfers had been sidelined despite empirical evidence that 4Ps has worked to improve the education and health of poor children.

He also pointed out that “ayuda” programs tended to be duplicated due to “unclear goals and guidelines,” and cited the DPWH’s Assistance to Youth and Unemployed for Development and Advancement Program that was discontinued because it overlapped with Tupad.  

Punongbayan said Speaker Romualdez has his own “ayuda” projects such as Start-up Investment Business and Livelihood Program (Sibol), Cash Assistance and Rice Distribution (CARD) and Integrated Scholarships and Incentives Program for the Youth (Isip)—all components of AICS—as well as Farmers’ Assistance for Recovery and Modernization (FARM) under Tupad/AICS. 

“‘Ayuda’ has ballooned in the runup to the 2025 midterm elections,” Punongbayan said. “It will pave the way for legalized vote-buying.” 

To break the cycle of poverty, it would be better to rely on conditional cash transfers by implementing a “properly-budgeted” 4Ps program, Punongbayan said.

He said that if short-term “ayuda” must be distributed, it must be based on a “vetted” master list of poor households, or on the national ID.

By focusing on short-term “ayuda” instead of the “more sensible” 4Ps, the administration is “sabotaging its own long-term development goals, like poverty reduction,” he added.

Read more: The crisis in Philippine education began 120 years ago

The post Patronage funds, bloated allocations mark 2025 nat’l budget, says ex-DBM chief appeared first on CoverStory.

Ads worth more than P4 billion have already aired on TV and radio stations across the Philippines even before candidates filed their certificates of candidacy (CoCs) last October.

Close to a hundred candidates for senator, party-list and district representatives, other local positions, as well as political parties,  had TV spots worth P3.7 billion and radio spots worth P342 million from January to September last year, based on published rate cards. 

The data was obtained by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) from Nielsen Ad Intel, which monitors candidates’ spending. The amounts are based on published rate cards or before discounts may have been given to the candidates’ teams.

A Nielsen report shows that TV remains to be an important medium to reach voters. Digital platforms widen the reach, it said. 

The candidates also had billboards all over the country worth P70 million and ads on print media worth P18 million.

Two senatorial candidates, scions of the country’s biggest and most influential political clans, account for half of the total advertisements. 

Las Piñas Rep. Camille Villar and Sen. Imee Marcos each had ads worth P1 billion before the CoC filing, based on published rate cards. It is not known if they received—and how much—discounts from media organizations that provided space for their advertisements. 

“The amounts are staggering. It tells you that [campaign spending] will go up as we move forward in the 2025 elections,” Jean Encinas Franco, associate professor at the University of the Philippines’ Department of Political Science, told PCIJ. 

The amounts do not include candidates’ spending on social media, which Franco believed is already significant, and the cost of producing the advertisements, the maintenance of campaign offices, and salaries of campaign staff, among other regular expenses.

It shows how candidates have ignored legal timelines, said former Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner Luie Guia. “Candidates have recognized that they have to really project themselves earlier on as serious contenders. Unfortunately, that means spending so much money to have a more effective reach,”  he told PCIJ. 

Guia said the other candidates are expected to attempt to match the heavy ad spending of their rivals, setting the stage for another expensive election. 

Attempts to “even the playing field” during elections have been undermined, he said. “Well-resourced candidates still would have much leeway despite what the law says.” 

Stronger laws regulating premature campaigning and campaign donations are needed, said Arjan Aguirre, assistant professor at the Ateneo de Manila University.

It’s not only advertising that needs better regulation. 

“We can see so much campaign activities or political operations going on a year before an electoral cycle,” Aguirre said, citing heavy government spending in localities for “ayuda,” which electoral reform groups said has been abused by incumbent politicians to curry favor with voters.  

He said amendments to the country’s Omnibus Election Code are needed to give the Comelec the powers and resources to monitor the flow of funding to parties.

TV get 90% of budget for traditional media

Television received the lion’s share or about 90% of the candidates’ advertising budget for traditional media, based on Nielsen Ad Intel’s monitoring. 

Radio, billboards, and print media received the remaining 10% of the budget. 

“Television remains to reach around 8 out of 10 Filipinos, with duration spent watching television not lower than one hour per day. Compared to other countries, the Philippines has one of the highest reach in terms of platform,” Nielsen reported. 

Villar and Marcos recorded the biggest spending on TV and radio.

Agri party-list Rep. Wilbert Lee, also a senatorial candidate, recorded the biggest spending on outdoor media.

Lee, among the biggest spenders on social media, did not air ads on TV and radio during the nine-month period. He had print ads worth less than P250,000. 

Las Piñas congressional candidate Sen. Cynthia Villar (P2.6 million) and Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez (P1.3 million) recorded the biggest spending in print ads, followed by EduAksyon party-list group (P1.2 million). 

Personality politics 

The rising cost of running for elections in the Philippines underscores the weakness of political parties, according to experts interviewed by PCIJ.

“Political parties are becoming less capable of doing their work during campaigns since they are now being replaced by personalities from ad hoc campaign teams composed of market practitioners and PR firms,” said Aguirre.

The substance of campaigns has suffered as a result, he said. Instead of discussing issues, candidates have focused on what is appealing and sellable to people.

“Political parties and PR firms should complement each other,” said Aguirre, proposing that the latter works to enhance the work of the former. 

He said the national discussion should be about “how we should understand a problem that plagues that society, what policy we expect to emerge in the next Congress, and priority initiatives to address a problem.”

If political parties managed campaigns, Franco said stricter standards and rules would also be implemented, including adherence to reform policies.

She said political parties can exact accountability among candidates and facilitate more transparency in political financing, reducing risks of donors’ influence on winning candidates.

Even in the party-list elections, designed by law to fill the House of Representatives with issue-based members, personalities dominate.

A PCIJ report showed that political dynasties have swarmed the party-list elections in the last decade. In this election cycle, several senators have immediate relatives running for party-list seats.

Others have advertised using popular celebrities such as Piolo Pascual and Joshua Garcia. 

Vendors’ group is top ad spender in party-list race

The Vendors party-list group is the top ad spender among party-list groups from January to September 2024. The group aired TV ads worth P12.25 million, a big chunk of its P14.8 million advertising budget for the period. ‘

The group has enjoyed a wide media coverage through Deo Balbuena, who is popular online as “Diwata.” Balbuena is the group’s fourth nominee. (Party-list groups may only have a maximum of three seats.)

More party-list groups advertised on outdoor media. Ten had billboards worth P1 million to a little over P13 million across the country over the nine-month period. 

Talino at Galing Pinoy, the second biggest ad spender in the race so far, poured its budget on billboards. Its exposure was worth over P13 million nationwide, or almost the entirety of its P14 million total budget for traditional media. 

Its top nominee, incumbent Rep. Jose Teves, is the father of Mayor Paolo Teves of Baras town in Catanduanes.  

Party-list groups collect votes nationwide, like the senators. In the previous 2022 elections, the ACT-CIS party-list group of former broadcaster Erwin Tulfo topped the race with over 2 million votes. It was given two seats.

The last party-list seat was given to Akbayan. It received 236,226 votes.

Camarines Sur, Pangasinan races

Franco is also concerned that the candidates are already using their own money to fund their campaigns. 

“It gives me a sense they are already using their own money. Candidates cannot use their own money. When you have a stake in elections pending, all the more, you will be corrupt,” she said. 

Some local races are also increasingly becoming more expensive. 

Camarines Sur gubernatorial candidate LRay Villafuerte was the biggest spender among local candidates before the CoC filing in October based on the data from Nielsen Ad Intel. He aired TV ads worth P355.7 million, higher than the budget of many senatorial candidates. 

Other local candidates spent their advertising budget on radio spots and print ads, which are cheaper than TV spots. 

Pangasinan politicians are among the biggest spenders on radio. 

Bad laws

Comelec has attempted but failed to ban premature campaigning and limit campaign spending.  It previously lost Supreme Court cases that would have banned campaigning before the official campaign period and would have set a limit on TV and radio advertising minutes allowed per candidate.

The Supreme Court ruling in Penera vs Comelec has placed a heavy constraint on the Comelec. The high court upheld that a person becomes a candidate only upon the start of the campaign period—which in this election season starts on Feb. 12 for national candidates and March 28 for local candidates. 

“A candidate is liable for election offenses only upon the start of the campaign period,” the ruling said. 

It means all expenditures before the campaign period would not be counted against the allowable spending of candidates.

“The problem is the law itself. The Supreme Court decision is a correct interpretation of a bad law,” said Guia. 

Laws need to be amended, including the Omnibus Election Code, said Guia and Aguirre. But Congress has sat down on proposed amendments to the 1985 law, which is two years older than the Philippine Constitution.

Politicians have not shown an appetite to change the status quo that benefits them, said Guia. “It works perfectly well for those who benefit under the current system. Why would they change it?”

Read more: Political dynasties also swarm the party-list elections

The post Candidates aired P4B worth of TV, radio ads before filing appeared first on CoverStory.

Although from not so recent movies, a few such quiet scenes come to mind. 

One is that scene in “Cross of Iron” where Sergeant Steiner (James Coburn), the archetypal grizzled noncom on whose leadership smarts and survival skills all armies in the world rely, but this time with a rebellious antiwar mindset (“I hate this uniform and all that it represents…”), decides to free the Russian child soldier taken prisoner by his recon unit. He takes the boy beyond the wire and tells him: “It’s all an accident. An accident of hands: mine, others’, all without mind. One extreme to another. And neither works, nor will ever! And we stand in the middle, in no man’s land you and I…” The scene is all the more heartrending because as the boy turns toward his lines, he is cut down by his compatriots’ bullets who happen to be at that very moment launching a counterattack against the German invaders.

Another example is something more mundane, something that happens every day, such as on a very busy Tokyo sidewalk, the final parting scene in “Lost in Translation” of ageing actor Bob (Bill Murray) and lonely wife Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson). They hug for the last time and this time there are no words, no sound, as Bob whispers into her ear. It is absolutely quiet, absolutely still, even as the world turns and people busily walk by as only busy people on a busy street in Tokyo can. 

“Lost in Translation” is a mostly quiet movie, with the turmoil inside the characters, about a love you cannot have, an elusive feeling of ennui, of disconnection, of being adrift in the very moment when the timelessness of infinity echoes in the chanting of monks in a monastery.

But there it is, that moment of heart-piercing quiet, in that parting scene. Whatever else may have been lost in translation, now in this climactic moment, there is nothing to translate. It is pure, quiet, and lost forever. 

Action and dramatic movies are actually the best vehicles to elucidate the need for quiet, to look inward and take the time to wonder: In the end, what does it matter? This is best exemplified in the oft-performed monologue of Macbeth when he is told that his wife, the queen, is dead. Here, my favorite version is Michael Fassbender’s (closely followed by Jon Finch’s) maybe because there is no attempt at dramatic delivery, just a quiet, bitter, melancholic reverie: 

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

Even pure, cathartic action can have a core of quiet, as encapsulated in David Morrell’s “First Blood” which launched the “Rambo” movie franchise, having a taciturn, stoic Vietnam vet as the titular character: “The native allies in the war had called it the way of Zen, the journey to arrive at the pure and frozen moment, achieved only after long arduous training and concentration and determination to be perfect. A part of movement when movement itself ceased. Their words had no exact English translation, and they said that even if there were, the moment could not be explained. The emotion was timeless, could not be described in time…” 

Of all the Rambo movies, the goriest one, Rambo IV directed by Sylvester Stallone, is the best. Maybe because after all the shredded bodies and eviscerations, one just feels completely spent and just as skeptical as ever that peace will ever come to our planet.

The world and the movies to which we escape being what they are, we must in our daily lives seek those moments of quiet and keep balanced in our center, in our inner no man’s land, unfazed and unafraid.

The post Finding the quiet appeared first on CoverStory.

The catchy song ranked No. 1 in music streaming platforms such as iTunes, Apple Music, and Spotify. It also achieved an “all-kill,” a term that refers to a song reaching the top spot on all major real-time and daily music charts in South Korea.

“APT” is a song by South Korean singer and Blackpink member Rosé and American singer-songwriter Bruno Mars. It is also Rosé’s first solo single since 2021. If you happen to have lived under a rock these past few years, Blackpink is a South Korean girl group and considered the “biggest girl group in the world.” Rosé is one of its four members; the others are Jisoo, Jennie, and Lisa.

The song has taken the world by storm with its fresh beat, simple lyrics, and playful rhythm, complemented with catchy choreography and pink-colored music video. Fans of 1980s music will find the beat similar to the 1982 hit song “Mickey.” Its songwriters and record producers Michael Donald Chapman and Nicholas Barry Chinn are given writing credits for the interpolation of “Mickey” with “APT.”

The word “APT” comes from the Korean loanword 아파트 (pronounced apateu), which means apartment. It is a popular Korean drinking game that starts with everyone chanting apateu in unison (the beat is the one heard at the beginning of the song). When the leader calls out a number (let’s say 5), the players stack their hands atop one another. Whoever owns the fifth hand on top loses and has to take a shot. 

Jeremiah Estela Magoncia, a faculty member at Ateneo de Manila University’s Korean Studies Program, said the song effectively utilizes a tried-and-tested formula for commercial success—an addictive melody, simple yet engaging lyrics, and an easy-to-follow structure. “These are the hallmarks of many K-Pop songs, which are designed to stay in listeners’ heads,” he said. “Its popularity was further amplified by social media platforms like TikTok, where dance challenges and trends encouraged mass participation, spreading the song across different demographics and cultures.”

Love it or loathe it

According to Christine Estabillo, songwriter and member of the Filipino Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, Filipinos in general love songs that they can dance to. “Remember ‘Otso-Otso?’ The lyrics don’t make sense but it’s danceable, so it became a huge hit,” she said. “When it comes to the verses of ‘APT,’ there’s not much depth in it but it’s easy to memorize.”

Magoncia asserted that while the song is based on a popular Korean drinking game, many Filipinos may be fascinated with an element of Korean culture that is both fresh and familiar. “Filipinos can relate to the idea of drinking games and local traditions,” he said.

Asked if the use of English and Korean contributed to the song’s global appeal, Dr. Kyung Min Bae, director of the University of the Philippines’ Korea Research Center and assistant professorial fellow at the Department of Linguistics, said one relevant point can be found in the discussions that arose when BTS launched most of their songs in English, and if their songs could still be classified as K-Pop. But this can be a limited perspective because artists in various countries have incorporated English into their music; hence, it’s not just “K-Pop and English.” 

The key lies in examining the context behind the language choice. Bae said one can understand it by asking if the artist and the production team created and produced songs in English to reach a wider global audience. “The context of how songs were created, in the case of K-Pop in particular, can be looked at,” she said. “Remember Wonder Girls’ ‘Nobody,’ which was sung in Korean? The chorus was in English, which appealed to the global audience. It even made Michelle Obama dance. Then later, its English version became also famous.”

It goes without saying that Filipinos’ love for K-Pop songs goes a long way back. A TikTok video (@juwonee) reposted by Korea Tourism Organization Manila in 2022 showed that the first K-Pop song that trended in the Philippines was 전화받아 (“Answer the Phone”) by South Korean singer-dancer Mina. 

In 2008, Wonder Girls released “Nobody,” which quickly became popular in the Philippines and a staple song to dance to during office Christmas parties. The song that perhaps solidified Filipinos’ love for K-Pop songs was “Gangnam Style” by singer-rapper Psy in 2012. Its catchy melody, amusing dance steps, and funny music video have cemented K-Pop’s global impact and popularity in the Philippines. To date, the “Gangnam Style” video has earned 5.4 billion views on Psy’s YouTube channel.

Has “APT” peaked? With nearly a billion views and ubiquitous TikTok presence, has the song become more annoying than enjoyable?

Monica B., a 36-year-old mom to two girls, is a confessed K-Pop fan and Blink (a Blackpink fan). She admitted that Lisa is her original bias (a term that refers to fans’ favorite K-Pop group member) but said that with the launch of “APT,” her bias has now become Rosé. “I like the song because it’s catchy and danceable,” she said. “I danced it during a gathering with friends, and my kids performed it during family Christmas parties.” 

Karla S., entrepreneur and mom to teenage girls, shares the appreciation for the song. Although not a Blink, she became interested in the group after watching the Netflix documentary on it. She particularly loved the mashup of “APT” and the UP chant. “It’s one of those songs that I don’t mind hearing even if it’s on repeat on many different Reels,” she said.

Candy V., however, believes that the song’s popularity has become excessive. Despite being a K-Pop fan who regularly attends concerts, she feels the overwhelming number of dance covers on social media has diminished the song’s appeal. ‘Seeing all these dance videos on my social media feed has become annoying,’ she said.

Common practice

Magoncia said the collaboration of two major artists with massive fan bases is common practice, not just in South Korea or the global scene but also in the Philippine music industry. In the past few years, fans have seen the trend of Korean idols working closely with Western acts. British rock band Coldplay and Korean boy group 방탄소년단 or BTS released the song “My Universe” in 2021, followed by BTS member Jin’s debut single “The Astronaut,” which was co-written with Coldplay. 

The success of “APT” offers insights for the music industry and artists. Although this strategy increases a song’s chances of being a hit, it is never a guarantee. “There are other important factors beyond star appeal, such as song quality, relatability, and how well it connects with the audiences’ emotions or experiences,” Magoncia said.

He also said the K-Pop scene can inspire Filipino artists to draw from our culture and traditions to create music or content. “Much like how ‘Squid Game’ showcased traditional Korean children’s games, sparking global curiosity about Korean culture, ‘APT’ introduces audiences to yet another aspect of everyday Korean life,” he said. 

Rochelle Leonor is a digital marketing professional and a graduate student of MA Asian Studies (Northeast Asia-Korea) of the University of the Philippines. She may be reached at [email protected].

Read more: A deeper look into ‘Squid Game’ (Season 2)

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While the average inflation of 3.2% in 2024 was almost half compared to 2023, it continued to erode the purchasing power of wages. Relatively higher food prices also disproportionately hurt minimum wage earners and informal workers with 4.3% inflation for the bottom 30% of the income households. Thus, the demand for another round of minimum wage increases in 2024 was a recurring theme for organized labor. The campaign for a wage hike was two-pronged, with wage bills for a P150 increase filed in Congress and in the regional wage boards. 

The Senate approved a P100 increase in the minimum wage in February 2024. This advance was a result of organized labor’s successful leveraging of the rift between the two chambers of Congress over the latest move to amend the Constitution. The Senate stood pat against charter change and instead enacted the salary increase, but the reverse was the case in the House of Representatives. Despite conducting hearings on pending wage hike bills, the House committee on labor sat on the proposal and basically killed it. 

In contrast with this inaction on the workers’ demand for a wage adjustment, the House was fast and furious with the quad committee’s inquiry into the connections among the war on drugs and extrajudicial killings during President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration as well as the illegal offshore gambling hubs and the blue ribbon committee’s investigation of the confidential funds of the Office of Vice President Sara Duterte and the Department of Education during her tenure as its chief.

The year ended with no legislated wage hike but with wage orders for several regions. Still, minimum wages in all the regions—including those which had an increase, like Metro Manila, Calabarzon, Cebu and Central Luzon—remained below the official poverty line even if the threshold was assailed for being too low, as the controversy over the P64 daily food budget revealed. With the wage boards perpetuating a system of poverty wages, calls for the abolition of provincial rates became popular.

Philhealth funds

On another front, organized labor and civil society allies fought a defensive war to keep Philhealth funds devoted to improving benefits to members and providing services for indigents, as mandated by the Universal Health Care Act. As much as P60 billion of Philhealth funds were transferred by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to fund unprogrammed items in the national budget before the Supreme Court in October stopped the last tranche of P29.9 billion. The labor coalition Nagkaisa was an intervenor in the Supreme Court case to oppose the transfer of P90 billion of Philhealth funds to the national treasury.

Another battle erupted in December when the congressional bicameral conference committee removed the subsidy for Philhealth along with cuts in other social services. Nagkaisa led protests in Metro Manila and Cebu—including a big rally on Mendiola—to call for the restoration of the Philhealth subsidy and the budget for social services. 

But President Marcos Jr. did not heed the popular clamor as he signed the 2025 national budget by yearend with the much-assailed budget insertions for “ayuda” kept intact. Among these was the P26 billion unprogrammed budget for Akap, or the Ayuda para sa Kapos sa Kita Program, which has been criticized as funding for electoral patronage and tagged as the brainchild of House Speaker Martin Romualdez. This means that formal and informal workers will now have to beg politicians for assistance for medical and other emergencies instead of getting health insurance as a right. 

As if on cue, the Commission on Elections allowed the distribution of “ayuda” even during the midterm elections in May, breaking with the long-established prohibition on disbursement of public money during the campaign period—a ban based on the fact that doles are easily exploited as a means for vote buying. 

Prospects for 2025

The start of the new year greets workers with a higher social security contribution of 5% to be deducted from their wages. This will result in lower take-home pay for private-sector laborers. To keep the Social Security System afloat while easing the burden on workers, the government should subsidize the employee share. This is a tough task as the Marcos Jr. administration would rather have workers and the poor solicit “ayuda” from politicians. It promises to be another plank of organized labor’s demand for quality public services and universal social protection.

Even as demands for higher pay, lower prices, more jobs and decent work remain very popular issues during the election period, the chances of positive outcomes for workers are bleak because political dynasties, which are evolving from fat to obese, dominate the landscape. Workers have no allies either in the two main political dynasties—dubbed the “House of Polvoron” and the “House of Fentanyl,” which will be fighting for supremacy in May.

Continuing recent trends, many labor-based groups have been eased out of the party list system as it has been swamped by electoral vehicles for politicians who cannot compete in district polls. The party list system has warped into  another pathway for members of obese dynasties to enter the House through the backdoor.

Nonetheless, groups such as Partido Manggagawa (PM) are engaging with local candidates for the establishment of public laundromats and whole-day childcare centers to ease the care burdens of employed and unemployed women. Along with such low-hanging fruits, PM is also campaigning for the passage of the Prevention of Adolescent Pregnancy bill in response to the crisis level of teenage mothers. Against the tide of sleek TV and FB ads of national candidates, PM is conducting information dissemination in working-class communities for four imperatives, or what it calls “Apat na Dapat”: wage hike, regular jobs, social services and national sovereignty.

Workers will have to endure worse economic difficulties as political infighting heightens in 2025 and the remaining years of the Marcos Jr. administration. But this situation also motivates organized labor to engage with public outrage over wanton government corruption and dynastic political dominance. A big multisectoral rally in January promises to jumpstart a robust movement for good governance, in which workers’ demands should be embedded and integral.

Judy Ann Miranda is secretary general of Partido Manggagawa and a labor feminist. This piece is an expanded version of a letter to the editor that appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer and The Daily Guardian in Iloilo in the first week of January.

Read more: In 2022, crisis in incomes and jobs pummeled labor sector

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I can still remember the title of Ka Dodong’s paper: “The millenarian-populist aspects of Filipino Marxism.” I was amazed that we would be reading such a radical tract in an undergraduate class at Ateneo de Manila. I was so fascinated with it that I kept the copy. There were no PDFs then, and photocopies were expensive. Instead, we had mimeographed hard copies on cheap and coarse paper. But that copy is still in my archive of documents that I have accumulated through the years.

So, in my first encounters with Ka Dodong, he was either required or optional reading. I was already a “natdem” activist when I read, at my own risk, the vision document of Bisig, or the Bukluran sa Ikauunlad ng Sosyalistang Isip at Gawa, which he headed. 

UP president

Many years later I met Ka Dodong in person. He was then president of the University of the Philippines and I was a labor activist. It was my first time to be at the UP president’s office at the top of Quezon Hall, which has a commanding view of the sprawling campus. Being there must have changed Ka Dodong’s perspective in terms of, not shifting his pro-people and pro-student moorings, but what can be done to improve the university using the levers of power. I remember him saying he got flak from student activists then for his proposal to use UP’s idle land for commercial purposes to raise funds for advancing the quality of education.

It would be some time before I saw Ka Dodong again, at the so-called democratic left conference of representatives of political blocs and progressive individuals. The participants later established the original Laban ng Masa. I do not recall having a conversation with him then, but we all spoke at the conference about our different takes on the political situation and what was to be done. 

Such formal settings comprised the “second stage” of my encounters with Ka Dodong.

I envied my wife Mich who, as part of the Laban ng Masa secretariat during the tumultuous campaign for a transitional revolutionary government to replace Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, became close to Ka Dodong and his wife Princess. Mich told me of accompanying Ka Dodong to a bookstore to look for a volume, and of having coffee with the Nemenzos and talking about and dreaming of overhauling a broken system, not just ousting a corrupt president.

Informal meetings 

It was well after the heady years of Edsa Dos, Edsa Tres and Oust GMA that I had informal meetings with Ka Dodong. Several times during Noynoy Aquino’s administration, Ka Dodong asked to meet with Partido Manggagawa (PM) comrades for conversations. I guess he also did the same for leaders of other political groups. We usually met in a restaurant at UP Diliman to exchange notes on the political landscape.

He was still in the pink of health as he drove us around campus in his car. He was very interested in knowing about our practical work and the prospects of forging collaboration among various groups. But the changed political geography afforded few opportunities as the mass movement declined and “Edsa fatigue” deepened.

Still, Ka Dodong’s hopes for radical change did not falter. At the height of the labor dispute at Philippine Airlines (PAL) in the early 2010s, he invited a union leader to deliver a lecture to his undergraduate political science class. He asked me for an advance copy of the presentation as he did not want the class discussion to descend to sloganeering. The slide presentation did pass his exacting standards: He said Marx’s theory of surplus value and capitalist exploitation was appropriately explained through the real-life experience of the workers at PAL.

During Rodrigo Duterte’s term, comrades from some political groups gathered a few times at Ka Dodong’s house for late-night conversations. Among those present at the gatherings were PM leaders Rene Magtubo and Wilson Fortaleza. Nothing conspiratorial was hatched in those drinking sessions-cum-informal meetings; the only things we planned to topple were whiskey bottles. A striking aspect I remember was the gender imbalance in those meetings: Princess was the only female participant, but she more than held her ground. 

Up to that time, I did not consider my encounters with Ka Dodong as up close and personal. We were always in the company of other colleagues, and the topic of discussions was mostly political.

Personal conversations

Covid-19 was a game-changer in many ways, even if indirectly in my relationship with Ka Dodong. When face-to-face interactions resumed after the pandemic, he somehow learned that I was teaching at UP Diliman’s School of Labor and Industrial Relations and was also co-convenor of Ed Tadem’s Program on Alternative Development at UP’s Center for Integrative and Development Studies; he wanted to get together with me for one-on-one conversations. I think it must have been because I had one foot in the academe and the other in the activist movement. As others have said in their tributes to Ka Dodong, he thought well of activists who pursued their studies while continuing their advocacies. A public intellectual, he sought advocates who were grounded in both activism and scholarship. My wife Mich recounted that in one of their frank conversations over coffee, Ka Dodong said as much. 

Of course, I was honored to have a chance at private conversations with Ka Dodong, and also privileged to have some of those discussions with Princess who provided her own take on things. It is not surprising that while the Nemenzos shared much, especially socialist convictions, they had their own distinct opinions on certain issues. At times, I invited colleagues to join our meetings. Ka Dodong was very enthusiastic when I showed up accompanied by some young PM members.

In that “last stage” of my encounters with Ka Dodong, we covered a full spectrum of topics, from the life of a UP faculty member to the situation of the world. We talked about, for example, Joma Sison and Popoy Lagman, two revolutionaries that he deeply respected although in varying contexts, both having contributed to the theory and practice of waging revolution in the Philippines. Joma and Popoy remain the only two Filipinos whose works are in the Marxists Internet Archive. One day, I hope to see Ka Dodong’s name as the third Filipino in that authoritative online repository of works by renowned leftists.

I asked Ka Dodong about how it was during his younger days, especially when he and others were laying the ground for the eventual rise of the student movement in the late 1960s and the momentous task of rebuilding the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) after the Huk rebellion was put down in the mid-1950s. He told a lot of stories, some of them I already knew, but remarkably, many were new to me. I now regret not taking notes.

In their tributes to Ka Dodong, both Ed Tadem and Jojo Abinales mentioned Joma as recruiting Ka Dodong into the PKP. That may be so. But I distinctly recall Ka Dodong saying that the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI), then the third largest communist party in the world, had sent one comrade to the Philippines with the mission of revitalizing the moribund PKP. I have forgotten his name, so I think of him as Tan Malaka 2.0. Ka Dodong was among this person’s first contacts at UP. But then, Ka Dodong forwarded Joma as the new contact person for the PKI to relate to, as he and Princess were on their way to Britain for graduate studies. Hopefully, historians will one day sort out the complete story.

Too few, too late

In our one-on-one conversations, Ka Dodong gave me a choice of coffee or whiskey. In the first few meetings, I modestly accepted coffee and told him it was too early to drink whiskey. I soon overcame my shyness and we drank whiskey even if the mid-afternoon sun was still shining brightly. 

I religiously brought food to our meetings. Ed Tadem had told me that Ka Dodong’s favorite was siopao from Ma Mon Luk. But it was too far away and I was able to get siopao only from a convenience store on campus. 

Eventually I would proceed to the Nemenzos’ house even empty-handed. They welcomed me anyway and graciously shared their food. On one occasion, I learned that another of Ka Dodong’s favorites was French onion soup; I gained from him how to differentiate the authentic soup from the wannabe. 

At times our discussions ended late at night and Ka Dodong would offer to lend me their car. I politely refused because I did not know how to drive. I did borrow an umbrella once when it was raining by the time I was ready to leave. Indeed, Ka Dodong and Princess, kind and thoughtful persons, offered help when needed.

I fondly remember those personal meetings with Ka Dodong. Looking back, I realize that they were too few and too late. When his health took a turn for the worse, I was able to visit him twice while he was confined at the Philippine General Hospital in the last quarter of 2024. It was heartbreaking to see him in ill health and unable to share his thoughts.

So, I prefer to recall the times when Ka Dodong was up and about and in the thick of things as a scholar-activist: at the one-on-one conversations and late-night meetings when his mind was sharp and focused; in the historic moments when he headed Laban ng Masa’s mass actions; on campus when he led movements for academic freedom and democratic governance (I saw the pictures at the All UP Workers Union office).

The last time I saw Ka Dodong in action was at a meeting where the publication of a book of his writings was discussed. I look forward to that project’s completion. Current and future generations will benefit from learning from his body of work. No doubt they will be fired by the same interest that gripped me when I first encountered him in one of his papers. 

In their engagement with his writings, Ka Dodong will remain alive.

Benjamin Velasco is an assistant professor at the School of Labor and Industrial Relations of UP Diliman. This piece is an expanded and translated version of a speech he delivered on Dec. 30, the last day of tributes for Francisco Nemenzo who passed on Dec. 19.

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