The long and difficult journey of 'Mamasapano: Now It Can Be Told'

Edu Manzano and Aljur Abrenica in ‘Mamasapano: Now It Can Be Told.’ YOUTUBE SCREENSHOTS

By Christina Alpad, Manila Times

"It has been a long, hard battle."

This was how movie producer and lawyer Ferdinand Topacio described the journey of his new masterpiece, "Mamasapano: Now It Can Be Told."

The movie, an official entry to the 2022 Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), tells the story of the Mamasapano clash where 44 Special Action Force officers of the Philippine National Police (PNP) died on their mission.

poster   

Using both the PNP Board of Inquiry Report and the Senate Committee on Public Order Report, scriptwriter Eric Ramos ("Rainbow Sunset") and director Lester Dimaranan ("Nelia") presented the story from the point of view of then-PNP Deputy Chief of Operations Major General Benjamin Magalong, played in the movie Edu Manzano.

"It was the point of view ni Magalong as he was heading the investigation. Siya yung nagpapatakbo ng kwento. And then the scenarios in the field were told in flashbacks," scriptwriter Ramos said.

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"Pinanghahawakan namin yung paninindigan na ito ay base lahat sa katotohanan. Kung ano talaga yung laman ng imbestigasyon ng PNP Board of Inquiry, yun talaga yung naging gabay namin," Ramos added.

"Mamasapano" movie was three years in the making. Topacio's Borracho Films started working on the movie's script in late 2019, about the same time the production company was established. It would take five months to complete the script alone. Topacio was hoping that it would be his opening salvo in the filmmaking industry.

Unfortunately, that dream had to wait for several years.

The pandemic and consequent lockdowns derailed their taping schedules. Another conflict within the production team, which led to the replacement of the director and the entire production staff, further delayed the movie.

Still, Topacio — who served as counsel for the families of the 44 SAF officers — was bent on finishing and releasing the movie, as he promised the surviving family members of the fallen heroes.

"We hope to perpetuate yung memory ng mga tao. There's a saying, 'If you want to reach a person's mind, you write a book. If you want to reach a person's heart, you make a movie.' This is a movie that must reach the heart of every Filipino because this is the story of an ordinary Filipino. Itong mga ito [the SAF 44 officers] hindi ito mga sikat na tao," the lawyer-turned-producer said.

He also noted how they spared no expense to produce an accurate and true-to-life account of the events that led to the Mamasapano encounter — from hiring competent creatives to investing heavily on production and post-production needs of the film.

"The final product is well worth it. It exceeded all our expectations. Napakaganda talaga," the producer proudly said.

The movie was initially submitted for MMFF 2021 but was rejected. From there, they planned to release the movie on November 30 this year, in time for National Heroes' Day.

"But we decided why not give it a try again on MMFF," Topacio recalled.

He breathed a sigh of relief when it was announced that "Mamasapano" is an official entry to the 48th edition of MMFF.

In ending, Topacio said he is hoping the public will support the movie everyone worked hard for.

"If I am going to be remembered as a producer for just one movie, I want to be remembered for this movie," he finally said.

"Mamasapano: Now It Can Be Told" also stars Paolo Gumabao, Aljur Abrenica, Allan Paule, Rey Abellana, Ritz Azul, Myrtle Sarrosa, Claudine Barretto, Gerald Santos and Rez Cortez among many others. 

Applications now open for Miss Universe PH 2023

by Stephanie Bernardino, MB

“The most prestigious crown in the country can be yours for the taking.”

This is what the Miss Universe Philippines organization posted recently on its social media account.

“Bring out the queen in you as we open the application process for Miss Universe Philippines 2023,” it added. 

According to the organization, aspiring beauty queens could download and fill out their forms and send the accomplished copies to their e-mail address.

The application period closes on Jan. 29, 2023, 11:59 p.m.

As for the qualifications, candidates should be Filipino female citizens, regardless of civil status, and between 18 to 27 years old.

There’s no height requirement. 

Recall that last year when the Miss Universe Philippines organization made history. For the first time in national pageantry, its minimum height requirement for candidates who wish to join the competition was removed.

However, at that time, it was only open to females who have never been married or had children.

Jobless rate falls to new record-low since pandemic

by Chino S. Leyco

The country’s unemployment rate fell to 5 percent in September this year, a new record low after the full reopening of the economy since the pandemic.

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported on Tuesday, Nov. 8, that the local labor market sustained its positive momentum with unemployment rate falling to five percent from 5.3 percent unemployment rate in August this year and 8.9 percent in September last year. 

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan said this translates to 2.5 million jobless Filipinos in September or 183,000 lower than the the 2.68 million with no jobs in the previous month. Balisacan also noted that the jobless level was largely at par with major Asian economies and is even lower compared to that of India, Indonesia, and China.

With the resumption of economic activities, an additional 2.2 million Filipinos joined the workforce, raising the country’s labor force participation rate to 65.2 percent in September from 63.3 percent year-on-year. 

With the decline in unemployment, employment rate improved to 95 percent, the highest recorded rate since January 2020.

The significant de-escalation of community quarantine restrictions translates to an employment creation of four million year-on-year, bringing the total employment to 47.6 million during the month.

“The recent survey results show the gains of the full reopening of our economy,” Balisacan said. 

“The government will leverage on this momentum by strengthening policy interventions and investing in innovation and technology systems geared toward generating higher-quality employment that provides adequate income for Filipino workers and their families,” he added.

Employment growth was observed across all sectors with the services sector accounting for 2.8 million more employed individuals, followed by the industry and agriculture sectors that registered an additional 682,000 and 461,000 additional employment, respectively.

However, the underemployment rate worsened to 15.4 percent from 14.2 percent in September, as more than 882,000 individuals sought to earn additional income with the spike in commodity prices due to inflation.

“Ensuring food security remains as our top priority. In the immediate term, government is providing targeted cash transfer as well as fuel and crop subsidies to help protect the purchasing power of Filipinos and reduce the incidence of invisible underemployment among low-income households,” Balisacan said.

In addition, Balisacan highlighted the need for effective implementation of emergency employment programs and other forms of assistance to immediately assist those who were hard-hit by the calamities.

“As we are expecting La Niña and near to above-normal rainfall conditions in the coming months, we need to boost our disaster resilience and climate adaptation measures,” he said.

Mastodon: What is the social network hailed as a Twitter alternative?

By

 Thomas Escritt via Reuters

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Twitter and Mastodon logos are seen in this illustration taken November 7, 2022. (Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Illustration)

BERLIN— With Twitter in disarray since the world’s richest person took control of it last week, Mastodon, a decentralized, open alternative from privacy-obsessed Germany, has seen a flood of new users.

“The bird is free,” tweeted Tesla TSLA.O mogul Elon Musk when he completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. But many free-speech advocates reacted with dismay to the prospect of the world’s “town square” being controlled by one person and started looking for other options.

For the most part, Mastodon – named after an extinct breed of mammoth – looks like Twitter, with hashtags, political back-and-forth and tech banter jostling for space with cat pictures.

But while Twitter and Facebook FB.O are controlled by one authority – a company – Mastodon is installed on thousands of computer servers, largely run by volunteer administrators who join their systems together in a federation. 

People swap posts and links with others on their own server – or Mastodon “instance” – and also, almost as easily, with users on other servers across the growing network.

The fruit of six years’ work by Eugen Rochko, a young German programmer, Mastodon was born of his desire to create a public sphere that was beyond the control of a single entity. That work is starting to pay off.

“We’ve hit 1,028,362 monthly active users across the network today,” Rochko tooted – Mastodon’s version of tweeting – on Monday. “That’s pretty cool.”

That is still tiny compared with his established rivals. Twitter reported 238 million daily active users who had seen an advert as of the second quarter of 2022. Facebook said it had 1.98 billion daily active users as of the third quarter.

But the jump in Mastodon users in a matter of days has still been startling.

“I’ve gotten more new followers on Mastodon in the last week than I have in the previous five years,” Ethan Zuckerman, a social media expert at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, wrote last week.

Before Musk completed the Twitter acquisition on Oct. 27, Mastodon’s growth averaged 60-80 new users an hour, according to the widely-cited Mastodon Users account. It showed 3,568 new registrations in one hour on Monday morning.

Rochko started Mastodon in 2016, when rumours were spreading that PayPal founder and Musk ally Peter Thiel wanted to buy Twitter.

“A right-wing billionaire was going to buy a de facto public utility that isn’t public,” Rochko told Reuters earlier this year. “It’s really important to have this global communications platform where you can learn what’s happening in the world and chat to your friends. Why is that controlled by one company?”

‘Toots’ and ‘Instances’

There is no shortage of other social networks ready to welcome any Twitter exodus, from Bytedance’s Tiktok to Discord, a chat app now popular far beyond its original constituency of gamers.

Mastodon’s advocates say its decentralised approach makes it fundamentally different: rather than go to Twitter’s centrally-provided service, every user can choose their own provider, or even run their own Mastodon instance, much as users can e-mail from Gmail or an employer-provided account or run their own e-mail server.

No single company or person, can impose their will on the whole system or shut it all down, the platform’s advocates say. If an extremist voice emerged with their own server, they say, it would be easy enough for other servers to cut ties with it, leaving the account to talk to its own shrinking band of followers and users on the isolated server.

The federated approach has downsides: It is harder to find people to follow in Mastodon’s anarchic sprawl then on the neatly ordered town square that centrally administered Twitter or Facebook can offer.

But its growing group of supporters say those are outweighed by the advantages of its architecture.

Fast growth has led to overload and server glitches. Seeing economist Paul Krugman struggling to get his Mastodon account running, Musk on Monday mocked the upstart network.

“If you don’t like Twitter any more there is awesome site called Masterbatedone,” he wrote in a swiftly deleted tweet above a screenshot of Krugman’s misfired toots.

Rochko, whose Mastodon foundation runs on a shoestring crowdfunded budget topped up with a modest grant from the European Commission, has found a particularly receptive audience among privacy-conscious European regulators.

Germany’s data protection commissioner Ulrich Kelber is waging a campaign to get government bodies to close their Facebook pages, since, he says, there is no way of hosting a page there that conforms to European privacy laws.

Authorities should move to the federal government’s own Mastodon instance, he says. The European Commission also maintains a server for European Union bodies to toot from.

“No exclusive information should be sent over a legally questionable platform,” Kelber said earlier this year.

While Mastodon is busier than ever before, it still has few of the big names from politics and showbiz that have made Twitter an addictive online home for journalists in particular. Few know comic Jan Boehmermann – Germany’s answer to John Oliver – outside his country, but climate activist Greta Thunberg is globally known.

For Rochko, the project’s only full-time employee, programming at his home in a small town in eastern Germany for a modest 2,400 euro ($2,394.96) monthly salary, the work continues.

“Would you believe me if I told you I’m extremely tired?” he tooted on Sunday.

—Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Aurora Ellis

Gratuitous and generous self-giving

By Fr. Roy Cimagala *

THAT’S how our self-giving should be. It should be both gratuitous and generous, without expecting any reward nor counting the cost. We should just give and give, knowing that God can never be outdone in generosity. He gives himself completely to us. We should learn to give ourselves to him completely as well.

We are reminded of this condition in our life in that gospel where Christ talked about the unprofitable servant. (cfr. Lk 17,7-10) “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do,’” he said. (Lk 17,10)

This should be the attitude in our self-giving. We should not worry about anything, because God knows everything and gives us everything that we need. The more we give of ourselves, the more he will reward us.

We just have to do our self-giving very freely. As Christ himself told his apostles, “Freely you have received, freely give.” (Mt 10,8) And the first one to live by this principle is Christ himself. He gave himself freely to us, including his own life. He did not mind the sacrifices, the insults and mistreatment he underwent.

This is what true love is. It is a total self-giving. But the mysterious part of it is that it actually generates more love and self-giving in others. It inspires others to give themselves in the way of true love. That is why true love has its own reward. It has the dynamic of being repaid also with love.

We should always be encouraged to give ourselves to others gratuitously without strings attached, without conditions. Even if instead of being reciprocated properly and requited, our love is misunderstood and rejected, we just have to go on loving. The only reason for loving is because that is what true love is. It is this love that is the real essence of God, of whom we are his image and likeness.

Loving in this way can only mean giving all the glory to God. We have to be careful because we always have the tendency to give glory to ourselves, if not totally then at least partially. Our motto should be “Deo omnis gloria,” all the glory to God.

We should not worry about our own glorification because God will take care of it. This is what St. Paul said in this regard: “For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…And those he predestined he also called. Those he called he also justified. Those he justified he also glorified…If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8,29-31)

And we should be generous in our self-giving, because the more generous we are with God and with others, the more generous God will be with us. This is just a simple law of ‘we reap what we sow.’ We usually sow just a seed, but with the generosity with which we take care of that seed, we are bound to get a lot of fruit later on.

We have been repeatedly assured that if we are generous with God and with others, we will also be the object of a greater generosity from God and from others as well.

Christ said so. “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return and will inherit eternal life.” (Mt 19,29) Yes, God cannot be outdone in generosity.

* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com

The last word

The last word is the best news of all. A happy ending after all? Really?

"The Last Word" is an offbeat romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Geoffrey Haley. It stars Winona Ryder and Wes Bentley. It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and it had a wider release in 2008.

We sense it at rare moments. We see the good, the beauty in new crops, in flowers, in sunshine, and even in rain. Last night's thunderstorm in Davao City scarred me a lot. Lightning, flood… wow.

This world may be full of pollution, war, crime, and hate. But inside us, all of us, linger remnants that remind us of what the world could be like – of what we could be like.

The Old Testament prophets dreamed of “that day”, when creation would be made new. And those sensations, following a dismal monotone of predicted catastrophes, burst out of the last few chapters of Revelation. That perfect world is not merely a dream. Yes, I am pretty sure, it will come true.

I really enjoy reading Revelation again and again. Revelation shows us a new world at last. There will be no more tears then nor pain.

Revelation ends on a note of great triumph. Somehow, out of all the bad news augured here, good news emerges-spectacular Good News. I remember my radio show hosting on a Good News Radio FM-station in Davao City more than 20 years ago. Yes, good news.

To those who believe, Revelation becomes a book not of fear, but of hope. God will prevail. All will be made new.

The Bible began, remember, back in Genesis, with a tragic defeat, when humanity, made in the image of God, rebelled. It ends with a reunion – a marriage, Revelation calls it. A happy ending after all…

A perfect world? How could you design it? What would it look like? I am really waiting for your comments and suggestions.

Learning from the lessons of ‘Yolanda’

by Manila Bulletin

Super Typhoon Yolanda, with international name Haiyan, is one that we, as a nation, will never forget. When it made landfall on Nov. 8, 2013 in Eastern Visayas, it affected the lives of millions of people, plunged towns in darkness, and destroyed much of the structures in its path, with Tacloban City “wiped off” the face of the earth. It didn’t spare anyone, carrying with it devastating winds, a destructive storm surge, and massive flooding.

Aside from the gargantuan damages wrought to property, infrastructure, and roads by this Category 5 storm, lives of at least 6,000-plus Filipinos were cut short, making this tally one of the deadliest ever in the history of typhoon casualties in the world. It was a humanitarian nightmare, one that overwhelmed the government and LGUs, shocked Filipinos, and stunned the world.

Until today, Nov. 8, 2022, when the nation marks the 9th anniversary of the storm, mere mention of “Yolanda” sends shivers down the spine. More recent typhoons were always benchmarked against “Yolanda,” with government agencies stepping up their game to avoid another similar tragedy. Lessons were learned from “Yolanda,” and terms such as disaster mitigation, early warning system, climate change, typhoon resiliency, etc. entered the lexicon of the Filipino nation. 

People then realized that super typhoons such as “Yolanda” will not be the last of its kind. Various studies published after the tragedy indicate that there is a correlation between super typhoons and climate change. A study from the World Meteorological Organization’s Task Team on Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change, said, “Warming of the surface ocean from anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change is likely fueling more powerful tropical cyclones. The destructive power of individual tropical cyclones through flooding is amplified by rising sea level, which very likely has a substantial contribution at the global scale from anthropogenic climate change. In addition, tropical cyclone precipitation rates are projected to increase due to enhanced atmospheric moisture associated with anthropogenic global warming.”

This study is revealed in the behavior of recent super typhoons, when they underwent “rapid intensification,” gaining immediate, rapid strength after just a short time.  “With global warming, some regions will experience increases in rapid intensification, and slowing of the forward motion of tropical cyclones,” the study added.

Considering this information, we have to call on the government to be ready, resilient, and responsive to climate change. The Marcos administration has made several steps in the right direction, with the President acknowledging the need for climate-resilient policies and highlighting the importance of sustainability and green energy.

Today’s commemoration will be solemn and dignified.  The local governments of Tacloban, Palo, San Isidro, and Carigara in Leyte, and Marabut in Samar have suspended classes on all levels and work in government offices today, with Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez saying: “The commemoration is a way to recognize the lessons that ought to be learned from the experiences and pay homage to the people who suffered and those who survived the catastrophe, as well as to highlight the resilience of the people.” 

We join everyone in prayer as we remember the victims of Super Typhoon Yolanda. May we also continue to learn from the lessons that have emerged from the tragedy — to combat climate change in our own ways, to strive for a greener lifestyle, and to call for a sustainable future.

Not paying child support? This solon will send you to jail via his bill

Published November 8, 2022, 11:13 AM

by Ellson Quismorio, MB

Parents who deliberately and repeatedly neglect their obligation of providing child support should be sent to jail. 

(Ye Jinghan/ Unsplash)

Thus, said Davao City 1st district Rep. Paolo Duterte, author of House Bill (HB) No.4807.

Under the measure, parents with recurring offenses of failing to send financial support to their child or children will be punished with imprisonment of two to four years, depending on the discretion of the courts.

These “deadbeat” parents will also be made to pay a fine ranging from P100,000 to P300,000.

“Solo parents already have the responsibility of taking care of their kids on their own. They should not be burdened with the problem of compelling their irresponsible and negligent ex-partners to pay child support,” Duterte said.

“This proposed law aims to ensure that their kids have sufficient support for their subsistence and other essential needs,” added the Mindanaoan.

Noting that most negligent parents withholding child support are men, Duterte said these deadbeat fathers should be made to own up to their responsibilities by imposing stringent penalties on them.

The amount of child support under HB 4807 shall not be lower than P6,000 a month, which is equivalent to P200 a day. The combined monthly net incomes of both parents shall be used in determining the amount of child support, which shall be divided proportionately between the two based on their respective net incomes.

First-time offenders may be granted probation under the measure.

Benguet lone district Rep. Eric Yap and ACT-CIS Party-list Reps. Edvic Yap and Jeffrey Soriano are Duterte’s co-authors.

PH named head of ASEAN judiciaries to review, propose guidelines on video conferencing in courts

Published November 8, 2022, 10:00 AM

by Rey Panaligan, MB

Supreme Court Justices led by Chief Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo during the Council of ASEAN Chief Justices in Malaysia, Nov. 5, 2022. 

The Supreme Court (SC) of the Philippines has been named by the Council of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Chief Justices (CACJ) as head of a working group on the adoption of common principles and guidelines on the conduct of video conference hearings (VCH) in judicial cases within the region.

A working group on VCH was set up by the ASEAN chief justices at the conclusion of the two-day CACJ meeting last Nov. 5 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The adoption of VCH in the ASEAN judiciaries was proposed by Chief Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo as he cited the gains achieved by the Philippines’ judiciary in the use of technology-based system and infrastructure at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In his message last Nov. 4 to CACJ delegates and other participants, Chief Justice Gesmundo said “in the interest of consistency, efficiency, and mutual protection, therefore, a CACJ ASEAN protocol on the conduct of video conference hearings would be ideal.” 

He said the Philippine judiciary “has successfully adopted the VCH modality for all our courts, including the Supreme Court (SC).”

“Aptly dubbed ‘a child of necessity,’ we issued Guidelines for the VCH to ensure the uninterrupted and timely delivery of our court services despite the continuing threat of the Covid-19 virus,” he also said.

He pointed out that “due to this high success rate, the Supreme Court is presently updating its Guidelines on VCH to transition the use of the rule to a post-pandemic world, making it a permanent device and option in every Filipino judge’s trial toolkit, especially for the best interests of child witnesses, for enhanced victim protection and prevention of re-victimization, for easier access to counsel and even family for detained witnesses and parties; and, in general, for greater time and cost efficiency.”

The use of VCH, which will be further enhanced in the Supreme Court’s (SC) five-year Strategic Plan for Judicial Innovations (SPJI), has resulted in the release of 132,916 persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) with 2,120 of them children in conflict with the law.

In its meeting with the Philippines’ justice system stakeholders in Davao City last Oct. 24, SC Associate Justice Midas P. Marquez said as of Oct. 13, 2022 there had been 1,139,720 VCHs conducted by the courts nationwide with a success rate of 89.27 per cent.

VCH was pilot tested by the SC in 2019 and utilized during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 so as not to disrupt court operations nationwide. 

Toughness amid unavoidable scandals

By Fr. Roy Cimagala *

YES, we have to be tough, with the toughness of charity, amid the unavoidable scandals in the world. Christ already warned us about this. “Things that cause sin will inevitably occur,” he said. (Lk 17,1) We should just be prepared for this condition in our life.

While those who cause scandals in others would be severely punished—"It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.” (Lk 17,2)—we should avoid reacting to these unavoidable scandals by falling into a lack of charity.

If we have the charity that Christ commands us to live, we would know how to deal with these eventualities, willing to suffer and be patient while thinking of how we can help those who cause these scandals and those who are victimized by them.

As St. Paul said, true charity “does not rejoice over iniquity, but rejoices in truth. Charity suffers all, believes all, hopes all, endures all.” (1 Cor 13,7) It’s indeed a big challenge to live by that charity, but with God’s grace which we should always ask, we know that we can hack it.

What we should always do is to be most mindful of our words and deeds, because no matter how insignificant they may seem, we may already cause a scandal in others. And we also have to strengthen our defenses against scandals, so that instead of thinking badly, for example, of someone due to what we have seen or heard, we are ready to understand and help.

And scandal need not be in the sexual department only which is already a grave sin. It may only be a matter of gossip of any kind, as long as we cause another person to sin by thinking badly of someone or by leading him to have some critical thoughts, mental reservations, rash judgments, etc.

Of course, we have to distinguish between the temptation of scandal and the sin of scandal itself. Temptation is only temptation and is not yet a sin because we have not yet consented to it, though we may already be attracted to it. The sin of scandal is when we consent to the temptation and, worse, when we enjoy it and spread it around.

What we should always realize is we have a duty, as Christians, to always give good examples to others. Not that we have to flaunt whatever good thing we have or do, doing some kind of virtue signalling, for Christ clearly said also that we should not show off our good deeds before men, to be seen by them, lest we lose our reward in heaven. (cfr. Mt 6,1)

We have to be aware that we always have to give good examples to others for the sole purpose of leading others to God. It is to edify others, to encourage them to be holy and to pursue the path of sanctity in an abiding way.

This duty, therefore, should be carried out deliberately. It should somehow be planned and aimed at. It should not just be something incidental or something optional. Of course, this duty should not be done out of pride or vanity, but out of obedience to the will of God who wants to save all men. (cfr. 1 Tim 2,4)

* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com