I WAS with some old friends before Easter at the 80th birthday celebration of a dear friend and deeply admired public official, and after the usual pleasantries, the conversation turned completely political. An important Cabinet official responded with good humor to his polite question, "How are you?" I answered, "Not bad, just a little better than the country, perhaps." Thereafter, wherever I turned to, everyone else seemed to ask, "What's wrong with our country?" No one dared to volunteer, "What's right with it?"
The constitutional crisis involving the Duterte father and daughter and House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez seemed over-discussed; graft and corruption involving almost everybody else seemed to have overflooded the banks of polite discourse; stories of domestic violence involving personalities whom critics name after animals seemed to have spilled over into the main area of dynastic politics; the ubiquitous social media led by a US-based vlogger named Maharlika seemed to have taken over the role of the non-existent opposition; and one female senator seemed determined to turn the Senate inquiry in aid of legislation into an inquisitorial enterprise that could put Victor Hugo's legendary Inspector Javert into disrepute.
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