going to the dogs
Manila, 29 September—Senator Trillanes, who was ordered arrested on Tuesday after the government voided his amnesty, is now home. With his dog, a cute Chow Chow named Bruno.
This PR masterstroke is a fitting ending to this exhausting week, and I admit I’m a bit biased because dog. It’s brilliant. When I saw the dog on social media this morning, I laughed out loud, thinking: Wow. The government has found its match. It’s the terrific weekend spin to cap an entire week full of will he-won’t he be jailed? tension, and the revival of talk about Trillanes’ participation in the 2003 Oakwood Mutiny and the 2007 Peninsula Siege.
Of course, I think it’s PR, but at least it’s PR that makes sense: Trillanes, going home after the second Makati RTC judge deferred its resolution on the DOJ’s request for an arrest warrant, his dog rushing into his arms. Of course.
At this point, Trillanes’ PR guys are miles ahead of the Palace’s spokespersons, who can’t even agree on how to explain away the President’s latest pronouncements which has him saying directly that his only sin are the extrajudicial killings in this country—a statement seen as an admission that could bolster further the case against him at the International Criminal Court.
The deflections ranged from ‘he was not serious/joking/being playful’ to ‘he was misunderstood’ to ‘he was merely highlighting his corruption-free image.’ The mental gymnastics needed to come up with these various responses must have been strenuous, because the amount of spin present here can already power a small barangay.
Meanwhile, times like these we also should remember the first senator and critic that the Duterte administration sent to jail, Sen. Leila de Lima. It’s been close to 600 days since her imprisonment—I admit I haven’t been thinking about her that much these days because there’s so much to think about/going on but today, she was talking about that policy that Serendra recently issued vs feeding stray cats.
De Lima, who attributed her “strong objections” re: the circular to having befriended stray cats at the PNP Custodial Center during her 583-day stay so far, had this to say:
The entire thread has more of De Lima talking about the PNP cats, and it was… very human. To be in search for any sort of connection. This afternoon, we passed by the newly opened Pet Express in SM Makati, shopping for cat food, even if we don’t have cats, not technically. It’s just that we spend a lot of time walking around the neighborhood and we keep running into the neighborhood cats and most times they meow at us hungrily.
So here we are. Sen de Lima mentioned that natural human instinct to care for other creatures who need it; I’m perhaps not the first person you think of when you think of kindness, but I really felt that. (We’re currently feeding five neighborhood cats, including a cat we call Pat because we pat him a lot.)
Anyway, speaking of things I saw on the internet that gave me hope, there’s this thread for when you’re exhausted of the world in general. I’m bookmarking this here.
One last reco: A former colleague wrote a personal essay about growing up in a house full of Marcos supporters. It was a hard but necessary read: A martial law childhood spent among Marcos loyalists.