CHRISTMAS MOOD LIFTERS: A NATION ON EDGE, A BABY IN A MANGER

 Some mornings, you don’t even have to look for trouble—it finds you.

You casually scroll through the day’s headlines and stumble upon one from Yahoo News Singapore: “Critics ‘Horrified’ by Trump’s 3 Words About Brown University.” The three words? “Things can happen.”

The backlash was swift and savage. Social media exploded. Midday India’s YouTube banner screamed: “Sociopath’ Trump Faces Backlash…”

Imagine that — “sociopath” casually attached to the most powerful man in the world.

And just like that, memory kicks in.

A few years back, we heard the local spitting image of that same moral shrug: “Shit happens.” Those were the now-infamous words of Senator Rogelio “Bato” dela Rosa, reacting to the death of a child during police operations:

Fast forward to today, Rappler raises a million-peso question: “Where are you, Bato?" Then Politiko answers it with another headline: “Hiding In Plain Sight? Bato Dela Rosa Reportedly Cruising Around on a Big Bike”

As if that weren’t enough, another grim report flashes on screen—this time from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “Bondi gunmen underwent ‘military-style training’ in Philippines.”

You pause. You wonder—half-joking, half-dreading—whether Trump might be tempted to add us to his old list of "shithole" countries.

Enough. You shut the browser. You call it a day.

If you’re a music fan like me, your mind drifts to that old disco hit from the 70s: “What a difference a day makes—twenty-four little hours.”

But today? What a difference a headline makes.

Amid these heart-wrenching, blood-pressure-raising stories—political pandemonium here, moral decay there—we instinctively look for something to steady the soul. With Christmas inching closer each day, we search for mood lifters, small mercies, anything that reminds us we’re still human.

So I turned to my little home library. An old book caught my eye—Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence. Leafing through it, I found several simple but powerful ways to lift one’s mood. Allow me to borrow—and localize—them.

First: Crying

One theory says crying is nature’s way of flushing out brain chemicals that prime distress.

Thinking about it, I asked myself: what public crying scene was more arresting than Senator Bato shedding tears—claiming he was “hurt”—during the Senate inquiry into extrajudicial killings?

That spectacle, however, belongs to the past.

Today, amid a flood control scandal, another kind of tearjerker confronts us. The Inquirer editorial titled “Duterte World Tour” reports:

“Without a word of excuse… the lawmaker emphasized that he is flying at his own expense… asked the House of Representatives to allow him to attend sessions virtually—from where, only he would know: a ritzy airport lounge, a swanky hotel room, a cozy café?”

What a charmed life indeed.

While Duterte Diehard Supporters (DDS) in 16 countries enjoy the tour vicariously, one suspects the DDH—Deeply Dis-Heartened— are left wiping tears, especially families worrying about what noche buena they can still prepare out of P500 amid soaring prices.

Second: Engineering a Small Triumph

Here’s a more constructive mood-lifter—celebrating a small win.

Politically speaking, what could be more uplifting than this headline: “’Abangan,’ says Palace on Marcos’ pre-Christmas arrest promise.”

The President assures the public that those involved in the anomalous flood-control projects could be jailed before Christmas. “Just wait,” we’re told.

Fair enough—but history urges caution.

Broken promises are dangerous. They boomerang.

Who could forget this classic “budol” line?

“Give me about three to six months, I will get rid of corruption, drugs and criminality.” – Rodrigo Duterte

Or this more recent one: rice at P20 per kilo, promised nationwide. So far, it exists—selectively—like a limited-edition miracle in a few Kadiwa stores only.

Hope lifts the mood, yes. But hope repeatedly betrayed—turns toxic.

Third: Seeing Things Differently

Goleman calls it “cognitive reframing”—one of the most potent antidotes to despair. 

Think The Simpsons. Homer steps on a rake—whack! —and instead of learning, he steps again—another whack! Funny on TV. Painful in real life.

Take heartbreak, for instance. Are you among those dreading Christmas because love didn’t last, humming along to the song:

Pause. Step back.

What if the relationship wasn’t so great after all? What if you were simply mismatched. Suddenly, loneliness feels lighter than daily misery.

It reminds me of that old saying: some complain about having no new shoes—until they remember those who have no feet at all.

By the same token, when you see viral photos of stolen cash piled high on tables, it oddly comforts to realize: you are not them. You may struggle—but you won’t spend Christmas behind bars. Fingers crossed.

Fourth: Helping Others in Need

Many years ago, a few days after Christmas, someone knocked on our gate.

A boy who used to do odd jobs around the house asked if I had work for him. There was really nothing urgent, so I told him to clear tall bushes in a vacant lot nearby.

After more than three hours, he returned—sweating, gasping, visibly exhausted. I paid him, then served him a snack: Christmas leftovers—a big slice of cake, an apple, a native delicacy, and a glass of pineapple juice.

He looked at the food and said quietly:

“Di pa ko gutom. Pwede dal-on ra nako.”

(I’m not yet hungry. May I take this home?)

And just like that, he was gone.

I stood there, pierced by the realization: he was hungry. Yet his first thought was to share what little he had with his family.

That moment reshaped my view of poverty more than any statistic ever could.

Perhaps that’s one reason we prepare an abundant Christmas table—not just to eat well, but to have more to give to those who knock.

Finally: Prayers.

And when all else fails—when headlines weigh heavy, promises ring hollow, and the noise of the world grows too loud—there is prayer.

Prayer does not erase reality; it steadies us within it. It quiets the anger, softens the cynicism, and gently reminds us that beyond the clamor of politics and power, there is something higher calling us back to our better selves.

A quiet rebuke to arrogance. A gentle reminder that true power does not shout; it loves, it serves, it endures.

In prayer, we pause. We breathe. We remember who we are—and who we are meant to be. And somehow, the mood lifts.

This reflection brings me to a personal pause as well. This will be my last ATABAY piece for the year. I look forward to meeting you again in my first article of 2026, hopefully with clearer eyes, lighter hearts, and renewed hope.

For now, I wish you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas—may the spirit of the baby Jesus dwell in your homes—and a Happy New Year, filled with grace, courage, and quiet joy.

God willing, until next year.

Content & editing put together in collaboration with ChatGPT

Head collage photos courtesy of Cathopic, GMA News, SunStar, & Getty Images; art design by Canva

Still photos courtesy of Manila Bulletin, YouTube, Shutterstock, Facebook, Getty Images, 365 Green Pinoy Stuff, Cathopic, 123RF

JEKYLL & HYDE: TWO FACES OF GUANZON & FUTURE WE MISSED

What’s happened to Rowena Guanzon?

Did you know she nearly made Leni Robredo our president today?

The first is a question of our moment—asked not out of idle curiosity, but out of quiet unease. The second question is poised not as fantasy, but as a reminder of a missed turning point, now buried beneath the guilt of lost opportunity.

There was a time when the name Guanzon evoked restraint, principle, and an unflinching respect for the rule of law. Today, it provokes debate, division, even disbelief. Somewhere between then and now, a once-familiar figure appears transformed—and in that transformation lies a story larger than any one person.

Not every symbol is self-made. Some are thrust into meaning by events beyond their control. Rowena Guanzon is such a figure. Her public journey—marked by acts of moral clarity and moments of combustible confrontation—now mirrors the country’s uneasy slide into a politics where anger masquerades as courage, spectacle eclipses substance, and divisions harden by the day.

In that sense, Guanzon has become our political Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—not as a caricature, but as caution: a portrait of what happens when a nation’s values are pulled violently, in opposite directions.

THEN: Guanzon the Jekyll—A Vote for a Future That Never Came

A single vote, even when overruled, can expose the path a nation chose not to take. Commissioner Rowena Ganzon’s dissent in the case against Ferdinand Marcos Jr. marked that unrealized future.

It was not merely a legal opinion. It was a declaration of values.

I remember this clearly because, just weeks before the 2022 presidential election, I wrote an ATABAY piece titled Comelec Commissioner Guanzon: The Referee Who Blew The Whistle. In that article, I drew attention to the plain but thunderous sentence at the heart of her 24-page decision—a crucial line that left little room for ambiguity:

“I vote to GRANT the Petitions for Disqualification and declare Respondent FERDINAND R. MARCOS II DISQUALIFIED from running for the position of the President of the Philippines.”

Guanzon made that dissenting call while fully aware of the terrain before her. She stood against the gravitational pull of a political machinery flush with resources, lawyers, and historical insulation. She made it not at the beginning of her career, when ambition still clouds judgment, but at its twilight—when reputation is fragile, retaliation is real, and the road beyond public office is uncertain.

That is what made her dissent so bracing. So unsettling. So admirable.

In that lonely sound of dissent, one hears not just a legal argument, but the echo of a future we almost chose.

While majority treated the issue of repeated failure to file income tax returns as a technical lapse, Guanzon refused to look away from its moral gravity. Taxes, she argued, are not paperwork—they are civic obligation made flesh. To evade them is to deprive the nation of classrooms, roads, and dignity. In her 24-page dissent, she called it what it was: moral turpitude, a breach serious enough to disqualify anyone seeking the presidency.

That vote mattered precisely because it lost.

Had it prevailed, the trajectory of Philippine politics might have bent—if not radically, then decisively—in another direction. Perhaps the systematic revision of the nation’s history would have met firmer resistance. Perhaps public trust in institutions would not feel so eroded. Perhaps accountability would not sound like an old word—odd, optional, negotiable.

There is also a harder, more concrete perhaps that is often conveniently set aside.

As former Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban has explained, had Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s certificate of candidacy (COC) been cancelled, he could not have been substituted. In law, cancellation means the COC is void from the very beginning—deemed never to have existed.

The votes cast for him would have been considered stray and therefore not counted. The presidency would have gone to the candidate who received the highest number of valid votes.

In that scenario, Leni Robredo would have been president of the Philippines.

This is not political fantasy. It is constitutional arithmetic—an outcome anchored not in emotion, but in law. And it sharpens the weight of Guanzon’s dissent all the more: her lost vote did not merely challenge a candidacy. It pointed to a radically different future—one that slipped past us, not by accident, but by choice.

It was, in every sense, a hope that never was.

NOW: Guanzon the Hyde—A Familiar Face of Dutertismo

Fast forward to the present, and the image could not be more jarring.

The viral mall altercation involving Guanzon was not merely a personal incident. It became a cultural Rorschach test—revealing how deeply Dutertismo has seeped into our political bloodstream.

Here was a former elections commissioner, once the voice of restraint and legality, now widely perceived as embodying the Duterte Diehard Supporter (DDS) ethos: combative, unapologetic, quick to strike back, convinced that outrage is synonymous with righteousness.

The reaction was predictably polarized. Supporters framed her as a senior citizen defending dignity against disrespect. Critics saw intemperance, entitlement, and the casual normalization of aggression. Social media, as always, chose sides—with little room for nuance.

But the real story was not Guanzon’s temper.

It was how familiar her outburst felt.

Dutertismo thrives on confrontation. It celebrates anger as authenticity. It treats civility as weakness and restraint as elitism. Sharp tongues are mistaken for courage; volume replaces argument. The mall scene—petty on the surface—was a distilled version of our national discourse.

A cough became a provocation. A remark became an insult. An encounter became a viral battlefield.

In that moment, Guanzon ceased to be merely herself. She became a microcosm—a living exhibit of how a political style, once confined to podiums and press conferences, has migrated into everyday life.

The Parable of the Mall—and the Nation

This is where the Jekyll-and-Hyde metaphor finds its full meaning.

The transformation is not about hypocrisy. It is about contagion.

What began as a populist performance of toughness has evolved into a cultural habit. Defensiveness replaces dialogue. Identity eclipses reason. Every disagreement becomes a proxy war between political camps. Pro-Guanzon versus anti-Guanzon mirrors pro-Duterte versus Anti-Duterte—endless, exhausting, unresolved.

The tragedy is not that people get angry. Anger is human. The tragedy is that anger has become our dominant political language and pastime.

In this sense, Guanzon’s mall altercation is a parable of our times: a small spark igniting a familiar fire. A reminder that when politics abandons restraint, it does not stay confined to institutions. It spills into malls, jeepneys, comment sections, and family dinners.

A Nation at the Crossroads

Guanzon’s story—then principled, now polarizing—is unsettling because it forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: this is not simply her transformation. It is ours.

We risk being trapped in this divided nation, where a cough can trigger combat and a disagreement hardens into identity.

Guanzon’s vote once stood as a symbol of what we might have become as a nation. Her viral mall moment mirrors the country we are fast turning into.

Between Jekyll and Hyde, the choice remains ours.

Content & editing put together in collaboration with ChatGPT

Head collage photos courtesy of PGMN; art design by Canva

Still photos courtesy of Kobo, Adobe Stock, Shutter Stock, iStock, IMT, YouTube, GMA Network, Getty Images, & Philstar

BUILT ON SAND: WHAT POLITICS, BRIDGES, AND SURVEYS HAVE IN COMMON

 

Three headlines. Three different worlds. One unsettling thread.

“With Singson Out, Erice Says ICI ‘Is Now Dead’” — Manila Bulletin

“Bridge In Kalinga Collapses After Days of Rain” — GMA News

“VP Sara Duterte Top Contender for President In 2028: WR Numero Survey” — One News

What ties these stories together?

One word: foundation—or the lack of it.

Whether in institutions, infrastructure, or public trust, everything eventually rises or falls on what lies beneath. And in the Philippines today, what’s beneath is starting to show.

Let’s walk through these three cases—not as isolated news bits, but as symptoms of one national condition.

Weak Institutional Foundations: The ICI That Couldn’t Bite

Former ICI Commissioner Rogelio Singson’s resignation said it plainly: 

“ICI, as it is today, does not have enough powers to execute as quickly as we can what we need to do.”

That single line is a full autopsy report. A watchdog with no teeth cannot protect anything.

It took 48 days before the broader public finally grasped what I wrote earlier in A Tale of Two Investigations: Why ICI Must Go & Ombudsman Must Lead. I argued then:

“If ICI can’t inspire fear—or even respect—then it’s not a watchdog. It’s a lapdog.”

And true enough, the headline that followed stripped the pretense bare: 

“Paolo Duterte Won’t Appear Before ICI: No Jurisdiction Over Me.” — Inquirer

How can truth prevail if power can simply say, “You can’t touch me”?

In that same piece, I wrote:

“Let’s stop pretending it’s working. Let’s stop pouring hope into a vessel that leaks… The public isn’t just angry. We’re exhausted. We want thunder. We want truth. We want justice that doesn’t flinch.”

When the foundation of accountability is weak, corruption doesn’t tremble—it thrives.

Weak Structural Foundations: Bridges That Fall Like Metaphors

Foundation failure is not just a governance metaphor; it’s literally breaking our bridges.

The Makilo Bailey Bridge in Kalinga collapsed after days of rain—cutting off a lifeline between Kalinga and Bontoc. The usual suspect? Hydraulic scour: erosion around the bridge’s base. In short: the foundation was eaten away.

It hits close to home for me. As a civil engineering student, I nearly failed my Foundations class—something I still joke about with my wife, my college sweetheart then. She always rolls her eyes and says, “Oy, don’t blame me.”

But the recent collapses are no joke:

• The P1.225B Cabagan-Sta. Maria Bridge in Isabela lasted only 26 days.
• The Pittagan Bridge in Cagayan also gave way.
• Records show six more bridges collapsed between 2022 and 2024.

DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon has since ordered stricter monitoring—but monitoring cannot fix what corruption has already hollowed out.

Collapsed Cabagan-Sta. Maria bridge in Isabela

As I wrote in Elephant In The Room: Corruption And Isabela Bridge Collapse, Baguio City Mayor Magalong revealed the brutal math:

When as much as 70% of government project funds are siphoned away before a single work is laid, only a meager 30% remains for the actual bridge. And with such a frail portion left to bear the weight, what kind of foundation and structure could ever hope to stand? The consequences are predictable:

1. Substandard construction

2. Inflated costs

3. Delays and dangerous shortcuts

And so, bridges fall—not only from rain, but from rot.

Weak Democratic Foundations: Surveys Built On Sand

Then come the political headlines that shot across social media:

“VP Sara Duterte Top Contender For President In 2028 — WR Numero”

“Marcos Satisfaction Rating Falls To Its Lowest Since Taking Office — WR Numero”

Published on the same day. By the same outfit. A perfect pair—too perfect, some say. But the deeper question: Do surveys themselves have solid foundations?

In my piece Kalye Surveys: Here They Come, I pointed out a hard truth:

“The dirty little secret of surveys is that many are junk science—designed more to sell a story than tell the truth. Statistical methods are often misused giving flawed results an air of scientific legitimacy.” (From Surveys and the Dirty Little Secret: Hidden Distortion, Bias, Illusion of Scientific Validity)

With polling’s global black eye—including the misses of the 2016 and 2020 U.S. elections—some critics now say bluntly:

• modern polling is broken, and

• pollsters and surveys sellers should simply be ignored.

In the U.S., RealClearPolitics cushions the damage by averaging the top ten surveys from a crowded field of pollsters.

Here in the Philippines, we throw all our eggs into the tiny basket of a handful of kalye survey outfits. No wonder filmmaker Darryl Yap could only shrug and say, “We are just stupid… I don’t care, I don’t get offended when people say, ‘O, nabudol ka.’”

Rigoberto Tiglao minced no words in his column: 

“Our pollsters have become cheap, shameful propagandists… They ask questions people don’t fully understand, crafted in ways that lead to the answers they want.”

A democracy built on manipulated perception is like a house built on sand. It may look sturdy—until the storm comes.

The Storm Test That Never Lies

Early one morning, as I sat in quiet reflection on Matthew 7:24-26, a vivid image appeared on my laptop: two houses weathering a storm, each standing upon a different foundation.

One built on rock. One built on sand. Only one survived.

It reminded me that nations are no different 

A house is only as strong as what lies beneath.

So is a bridge.

So is a survey.

So is a government.

So is a democracy.

So is the Philippines

And unless we fix our foundations—our institutions, our accountability systems, our public works, our truth-telling mechanisms—storms will keep coming, and collapses will keep repeating.

At the end of the day:

A nation, like a home, is only as strong—or as weak—as its foundation.

Content and editing put together in collaboration with ChatGPT

Head photo courtesy of Adobe Stock & Canva

Still photos courtesy of Bing image creator, Philstar, & Adobe Stock