Case #1

I AM angry that I am writing in English this time. I am taking leave from my usual cultural commentaries to give way to something public must know, something too undignified that I think Bikol must not be desecrated by using it in retelling my fury. I know this won’t be the last; in fact, this is the first among things that I know I will be a lot keener about. I was challenged, thus, I will be from now on at guard. My name was unjustly used, and thus, I will insist on my principles.
Here is the tale. My mother telephoned me one evening two weeks ago, outrageous over the stupidity of a staff of Amigo Foundation in Tambo, Pamplona. Her annoyance was intensified with the staff mentioning my name in an mocking manner. As we all know, Amigo Foundation is the dole-out arm-in-the-guise-of-an-NGO of Dato Arroyo, unfortunately now the congressman of the first district of Camarines Sur. It is where Arroyo’s pork barrel is expected to go to. It is also where requests and solicitations for everything are generously accepted: from medals to trophies, from waiting sheds to barangay halls, from multicabs to ambulances—all of course, in the great political tradition of labeling ‘donations,’ must bear the name of the donor-politician.
The teachers in the public high school my mother heads decided to solicit some trophies and medals for their intramurals from Arroyo through the foundation. When one of the teachers made a follow up on the solicitation, the Amigo staff, by the name of certain Bong Alindogan, queried, “Who is this Nierva in your school?” The teacher clarified that the Nierva—my mother—being questioned is their school head. Alindogan, in utter idiocy and arrogance furthered, in Bikol, “ah, this Nierva is with Abang’s camp,” referring to Mayor Sabas Mabulo whom Arroyo defeated in the last election. Then he mentioned my name, “I had an argument with her son before because he was insisting on Abang. We should be practical these times.”