"@AyyTangaLangDre: Sabi ng comelec "VOTE WISELY" Teka sino si wisely"

04.30.2013 11:35 pm via Mobile Web (M5)ReplyRetweetFavorite

@ItsYourJasmine

♥ JASiliciousFTW

Medyo corny, as these jokes go, but that’s a pretty fair question. Sino nga ba si wisely?

With the caveat that you should consider these words to be a starting point for your own decision making, let’s go!

Wisely is a candidates who is Willful, who has Integrity and Sincerity, who is Empowering, who can Laugh, and who is Youthful. See what I did there? W-I-S-E-L-Y.

Why do I want a Willful person? I know that willful is considered a synonym for stubborn, and that stubbornness has had a bad rep ever since our parents started complaining about us not doing as we’re told.But see the thing about stubbornness is that it is an accusation usually made by the people whose advise hasn’t been heeded. Seriously. Give it a try. Have someone give you advice and if you do what they say, they’ll call you reasonable. Go the other direction and you’re hard-headed.

But willfulness, stripped of its unfair reputation, really only means that a person makes his decisions independently. Like a good prince, he weighs the opinions of his advisers, but makes up his own mind. Here’s the thing: everyone who gives advice must believe in his own advice, obviously. But it is advice that is informed only by one point of view, that of the giver. A true leader, however, cannot be bound by one point of view alone. So, necessarily, a leader must seek other opinions – even conflicting ones – so he can get the benefit of as many points of view as possible. A leader then evaluates all these various points of view and weighs them against his own unique take on the matter – a POV that is unique because he must consider also the long term benefits and risks for all of his constituents, not just himself or his preferences. That is always a hard place to be in, and the final decision will not always be the right one. But the decisiveness that arises from willfulness will ultimately redound to the benefit of the governed.

WISELY must also be a candidate with both Integrity and Sincerity. Define integrity as dedication to core values; the determination not to compromise principles for convenience or expediency; define sincerity as freedom from deceit, hypocrisy, or duplicity. I consider these two to be interlocking traits – virtues even – that should be considered indispensable in anyone who aspires to be a leader of men. A candidate with integrity will set out a  vision for his constituencies that will define his time in office, and then make sure that all his actions contribute to a net progress towards achieving that vision. Sincerity, on the other hand, defines his sense of accountability to those he governs. A sincere official will not balk at admitting shortcomings or flaws and will be forthright about his plans to address those problems – while they are still manageable. No one expects perfection, but everyone should demand that they be informed of problems, whether looming or at hand.

In contrast, an insincere official may for a time, through cleverness or media-savvy, convince the governed that everything is going as planned, but in the end, the underlying untruthfulness will inevitably be revealed when his claims are tested. By then, the damage to his constituencies will have been done and may well be irreparable.

WISELY must also be Empowering. There are many would-be leaders who are come across excellently, scoring high on decisiveness, integrity, and sincerity and all that, but eventually turn out to be not so spectacular at pulling up others around him. A truly good leader must not just be an exemplary person, his excellence must be infectious as well. He must be willing and able to raise others up to be better versions of themselves, even to the point that they become better than him. Remember that being an elected official does not mean that you should then endeavor to always be top-dog. That’s how dictators, despots, and dynasties are born. Rather, an elected official should see his office as a temporary trust laid on his shoulders, with the implicit understanding that he will, at some point, have to lay the burden on someone else’s shoulders.

Thus, a good leader is one who must invest in mechanisms and structures that will ensure the emergence of other potential leaders. It is an elected official’s responsibility to ensure that the public he governs will never run out of choices for leaders. It is his duty to guarantee the people that he won’t keep the power to himself or his descendants or his proteges. He must, therefore empower others.

And we’re not just talking about future princes either. Even ordinary people around him – staff, for instance – must become better through their association with him, because these people he surrounds himself with, these are the people that the general public will most come into contact with during his term. If his influence upon these people is negative – if he makes them surly or despondent or arrogant – his service to the public that elected him will certainly deteriorate. That can’t be good for any of the governed.

Laughter is the trait of WISELY that I am fondest of. A good elected official must have an equally good sense of humor. Not the mean kind that finds amusement in the misfortune, discomfort or embarrassment of others, but the kind that laughs at himself and which helps others not to despair even in desperate times.

And of course, WISELY must be Youthful. Not young necessarily, but exhibiting the qualities of youth such as idealism, exuberance, and creativity. The last thing we need are elected officials who are cynical,unenthusiastic about public service, and – let’s face it – boring. Of course, with this last one, we have to be careful because running off half-cocked, immaturity, and being emo are also considered youthful traits, and certainly we don’t want to see any of that in our elected officials. But there is much to be said about youthfulness in public servants, especially in this age of rapid technological advancements. We want someone who can surf the leading edge of technology and find new and creative means to use that knowledge for good governance.

So there you go. Vote WISELY and make your country proud.

Imagine my surprise [inexcusable in hindsight] and utter dismay.

Rest assured, I am completely humbled by this turn of events.

I offer my sincerest apologies to everyone I have ever badgered to register, but I take nothing back. Registration as a voter is the indispensable first step to joining the political conversation that will ultimately determine the continued democratic health of the country. It is every citizen’s duty and responsibility to take the necessary steps to ensure that he is empowered as a voter. The fact that I have failed to exercise this responsibility myself does not make me wrong about any of that. Although admittedly, it makes me all kinds of stupid.

I offer my sincerest apologies to everyone who has worked long and hard to convince everyone else not to treat their right of suffrage so casually. Again, while I am deeply sorry for my error, I believe that the righteousness of our advocacy will not be diminished by the fault of one campaigner among so many.

And I offer my sincerest apologies to those who, as I did, assumed that I was an active voter. I will rectify this situation at the first opportunity.

Fuming from the unfairness of it all, Arkady stormed out of the house,with tears streaming from his eyes and the collar and leash gripped tightly in his fists. Behind him, he could hear his mother calling after him, as though nothing had happened – as though no promise had been broken. Well, a promise HAD been broken, and he would make them see that that was important.

In the early morning light, the snow on the ground glowed softly, but Arkady hardly noticed. In fact, his eyes could have been shut tight and it still wouldnt have mattered. He knew these woods behind their home like the back of his hand. When the snow wasn’t too bad, he spent countless hours here, exploring every hollow and every clearing. This was his kingdom!

There, just past that tree stump were the stables where he kept his war horses, fierce and massive creatures standing seventeen hands each. Here, on the shoulder of the dirt path stood the Marjorie Tree, grown from a branch of Yggdrasil that had splintered off after it was struck by Woden. And beyond the rise were the soaring birches where the skushno birds nested, bringing peace and prosperity to the land where Arkady was King.

But today, none of that distracted Arkady from his tears. So he made straight for the clearing, sheltered on the wind side by a massive outcropping of rock, where -in more pleasant days – he woud sit on his throne and make kingly decisions all afternoon. Today, there were no kingly decisions. Just tears coming in ragged sobs as he thought about how little he was loved.

Eventually,all the crying exhausted Arkady. Curling up into a ball, Arkady was soon fast asleep. He awoke with a start when a loud noise exploded in the wood behind the rising rock which he slept against. He rubbed his eyes to clear them, realizing, when the fog wouldn’t lift from his vision, that the entire clearing was enshrouded in gray smoke, which could mean only one thing … FIRE!

Living so close to the forest, Arkady had been taught well about the dangers of fire in the wood. Without a second thought, he dropped to his knees and elbows and began crawling out of his hollow. He had been crawling for a while, in the direction that he hoped would take him back home, when he started hearing noises in the shadows. Afraid that he might miss rescuers, while wondering how they could possibly have known to look for him, he stopped crawling and listened intently.

It was only then that he realized that he wasn’t hearing any of the noises that normally accompanied a raging fire. No crackling, no whooshing, nothing. Except that in that silence, he could hear murmurs. Then, “Arkady!”

It was not a voice that he recognized, but it was his name and he immediately stood up and yelled “HERE!”

The word was hardly out of his mouth when he heard the noise of someone crashing through twigs and fallen leaves, coming at him. “He’s here! He’s here!” someone yelled. Still, it was a voice that Arkady knew, but at the precise moment, he hardly notice. All he could hear was the distinct tattoo of hooves hitting the ground. Horses? But before he had time to puzzle that out, a face appeared from the gray smoke and Arkady fell back onto the ground.

There, in the midst of the swirling smoke was a face he had never seen before but which was intimately familiar at the same time. Made from what appeared to be rough marble, craggy, with moss hanging like a beard from its square jaws, and deep green eyes which at that moment seemed filled with a mix of fear and relief, the face belonged to a man Arkady knew for certain couldn’t exist.

“Lesovik,” Arkady whispered in awe.

“My lord,” the man replied, bowing low – which for a man that height seemed to involve him folding nearly in two at the waist.

Arkady felt his head spinning. “How…”

“A fire fell from the sky, Lord. And sundered the Marjorie Tree,” Lesovik replied, his voice grave and filled with sadness. Around him, emerging one by one from the mist, came the riderless war horses, their noses flaring at the smoke and their hooves impatiently stamping.

“Me? My mother …” Arkady stammered, his eyes wide and staring at the magnificent animals.

“The fire, my Lord,” Lesovik said. “has made it nearly impossible for us to find anyone. The skushno birds have flown and not even Baba Yaga can find them though we have made sure that she tried.” Tears spilled out of Arkady’s eyes as the import of that statement sunk in.

“Some say it is Koschei returned. But we do not know for sure,” Lesovik continued, averting his eyes.

“Then we must find him, Lesovik, ” Arkady said, in between drawing ragged breaths. The tall man held the boy’s hand as he stood up, brushing dirt from his clothes. “You know that he has my mother.”

“Yes, my lord.”

At that, Lesovik drew himself up to his full height. Looking around, he slowly raised the gigantic club that had been hanging at his side. Then, in a voice that sounded like gravel being poured on a tin roof, he bellowed: “We search for Vasilisa!”

——–

Moscow (CNN) — A meteor streaked through the skies above Russia’s Urals region Friday morning before exploding with a flash and boom that shattered glass in buildings and left about 1,000 people hurt, authorities said.

Described by NASA as a “tiny asteroid,” the meteor’s explosion created a blast in central Russia equivalent to 300,000 tons of TNT, the space agency’s officials said Friday, adding that the incident was a once-in-100-years event.

The injured included more than 200 children.

I admit it. I am sentimental for that old Christmas spirit. Nostalgic. What of it?

And no, no I have NOT forgotten that Christ is the reason for the season. But seriously, Christmas has evolved beyond being a religious observance into something a lot more universal – more catholic, in the strictest sense of the word, than Catholicism. And a good thing that it has too. The world needs the celebration of joyful generosity, I think,  much more than it needs to greet the Deity a happy birthday – especially when the definition of deity has been one of the most divisive concepts in the history of humanity.

This belief has led me to avoid flinging my religiosity in the face of others, while respectfully tolerating those who do exactly that. Nothing wrong with proselytising, of course, it’s just not my style. Just as it isn’t my style to struggle to re-contain Christmas after it has effectively escaped the confines of religious event. Instead, I prefer to see it as an occasion for happy-ness, regardless of where that comes from. If such glee arises for you from consumerism, what is it to me? I wouldn’t appreciate it if you were to take me to task for whistling show tunes, so why should I bitch about you doing something I disapprove of?

No it isn’t that I think people are “missing the point,” or that “Christmas has been commercialized.” its just that I think in focusing too much on this or that about Christmas, we’ve actually turned it into something far removed from what it used to be: a time to step back from the frantic pace of life, and and to reconnect with each other -  not just family and friends – but with the whole mass of humanity swirling around us.

Instead, we have come to see Christmas – again, personal warm-and-fuzzies are not at issue here – as just another holiday, as ordinary and pedestrian as a long weekend. Only perhaps more expensive.

In summary, the COMELEC’s concerns revolve around two things: first, the instructions to the PCOS; and second, how the various political parties will configure their slates.

To explain:

Instructions to PCOS, not changes to the ballot.

Ordinarily, the PCOS will be instructed to search for 12 or less votes for the Senatorial race. If you vote for less than 12, the PCOS will record the number of votes you indicated and the rest will be recorded as abstentions. This is called an under-vote. But if you vote for more than twelve, then all your votes for Senator will be considered stray, and therefore will not be credited to anyone. This is called an OVER-VOTE.

So, if the Senate does declare a vacancy – in the event of Senator Santiago leaving to serve on the ICC – it is essential that the COMELEC give the PCOS specific instructions to search for 13 or less votes for the Senatorial race. If the COMELEC does not do this, then any ballot that has thirteen votes in the senator box will have those votes considered stray.

Just as a clarification, there is no adjustment necessary to the ballot itself – except perhaps for the printed instruction to “Vote for 13 Senators.”

Slates

The other thing the COMELEC is concerned about is how many candidates for Senate the various political parties will be fielding. If it isn’t clear by the period for filing Certificates of Candidacy how many positions are being contested, then some political parties might actually file just 12 COCs when they could be filing 13.

Obviously, the number of Senatorial hopefuls is entirely up to the political parties. However, it is in the interest of the orderly administration of elections that all parties – whether or not they intend to field 13 – are aware of how many Senatorial slots are up for election.

Even worse, when I got to college, I had to go through all that again. It didn’t help that my Rizal teacher deconstructed the tinola story by saying that the friar who got wings and chicken feet in his bowl was being subtly told that if he didn’t “fly away” immediately, he would be “strangled.”

However, as I was forced by course work to go further into the life of Rizal, I realized that the deeper I went, the less external compulsion I felt. Somewhere between sneering at the stupidity of a girl going into a nunnery to escape the friar who had the run of the nunnery and attempting to translate the Mi Ultimo Adios to Hiligaynon, I stopped and began to understand exactly why we needed to learn about the man.

My mistake, I realized, was in looking at Rizal’s life as a narrative of events, when I should have been seeing it as a kind of allegory.

Jose Rizal speaking 22 foreign languages ceased to be just a factoid for me, and transformed into a revelation that being a Filipino didn’t mean having to be provincial. The world is a huge place and, while there might be some charm to leading a bucolic existence unto death, it would be a terrible waste of life if we were not to at least strive to understand the different peoples of that world on their own terms.

I understood too that education cannot and should not be pursued simply for the sake of acquiring it. There are few forms of selfishness, I learned, more despicable than amassing knowledge without any intention of using it for some greater good. We can’t all be doctors healing our mothers, but all of us can – and should – use whatever we know for the betterment of those around us.

And let’s not forget those biscuits. Nowadays, people are likely to call that delayed gratification, as though all that mattered was the heightening of the satisfaction you deliberately denied yourself. Thankfully, I learned to call it discipline.

Beyond just learning from the events of Jose Rizal’s life, it also dawned on me that Rizal wasn’t writing to entertain but to dissect. That I came to this realization rather late in life – I was already a freshman in college for fq’s sake – will probably be an eternal source of mortification.

The Noli and the Fili, which I had panned as being so-so examples of story-telling (before you hate, remember that Rizal himself was disappointed with the Fili. Look it up.), became more accessible to me in light of my changing views of the author. Instead of approaching the works from a strictly literary point-of-view, I started to empathize with the characters and when I did that, some parts became almost too painful to read. Which was the probably the point. I imagine Rizal wanted all of his contemporaries to see through Ibarra’s eyes – eyes that had been opened by the world, only to see the cesspool his homeland had become. And he had that because even now, centuries later, those of us living in painful circumstances still eventually learn to be content with the constant ache simply because confronting the reality of what causes our hurt scares the shit out of us.

The ignoble end of Maria Clara became particularly poignant for me. It is truly the height of stupidity to seek shelter in the very house of the abuser you crave protection from, but what choice did Maria Clara have? She was the colony, conditioned into thinking irrationally, and locked into an abusive relationship with a rapacious master that, ironically, held the very key to what she felt was her salvation. ”Salvame,” you can imagine her crying into the unresponsive darkness, clutching her beads, only to have the door to her cell opened by Salvi.

Reading the Noli and the Fili opened my eyes to the power of fictionized accounts – as opposed to straight fiction – as a means of addressing subjects that are too awkward to approach directly, and that realization has been of much use to me as a communicator. If there were no other reasons available, that epiphany alone would justify my admiration for Rizal.

Well, that and his way with the ladies.

Now if the majority agree with the ponente’s draft, then that’ll be promulgated as the main decision on the case. If that’s the case, then the Court’s spokesman – assuming they will persist in MM’s practice of announcing the decision first and only later on releasing the actual hard copy – will have some very interesting news to deliver.

If, on the other hand, the majority dissented, then one of the dissenters will be chosen to write the new main decision, in which case, the spokesman will probably NOT announce anything other than the date on which the main decision will be released.

In either case, I hope the decision – good or bad – gets announced tomorrow. If favorable, then great. If not, then its a good thing for it to be announced early so we can immediately re-tool.

Personally, and primarily because it’ll make educating people easier and thus, drastically reduce the incidence of voter error to a minimum, I hope the decision will be favorable.

Arranged in a semi-circle around me and looking down on me, were seven of the most unlikely faces I had ever seen. Don’t get me wrong. None of them were hideous or ugly or monstrous, or any of those adjectives one who has lived around these parts would attach to anything even vaguely related to the Wood. And that was precisely the unlikelihood of them: they were all just boys.

I suppose if they had been beasts it would have been easy for me to start begging for my life or weeping or saying whatever needed to be said to gain time and not be eaten. But because these were normal faces that I opened my eyes to, in a place where I was not expecting anything normal at all, I have to admit I was at a loss for words. So, instead of some eloquent plea for mercy, or some regal demand to be released, I sputtered out the shallowest thing I possibly could.

“I’m a princess.”

After I said that, I felt my ears burning with shame. Of all the things I could have said, I had to blurt out the one thing my father would’ve disapproved of. But then, one of the boys suddenly looked out the window and I could’ve sworn that I saw his ears twitch. I looked and saw die Sonne rising up behind the Sudeten mountains. Were they afraid of the sun, I thought. Could I have stumbled onto a coven of vampires?

Stories from the Court came rushing back to mind. Stories of monsters that stole babies from their mother’s breasts and drained them of blood, leaving only hollowed out husks. These beasts fled before dawn, the stories said, for they could not abide the burning touch of the light.

As these thoughts were running riot through my head, the boy who looked out the window uttered something unintelligible, to which all the others responded with grunts and nods of assent before suddenly scattering to the four corners of the shack we were in. Amid the ruckus of these boys picking up various things from amongst the clutter, I noticed the plump one – the one who had given me such a fright before – standing in front of me, looking like he was having trouble breathing. Since he was obviously trying to say something of some importance – and since he was just a boy after all – I looked at him intently, hoping that I could at least divine his intent before he exploded.

“Ganzenland comes,” he finally said, with an explosive wheeze. He spoke words in the Vulgate which I, of course, had to learn when I was but a toddler. But even for common speech, his accent was so different from the one my nannies had that I could barely understand him. Seeing my confusion, he gestured impatiently out the window and made a tooting noise, like -

Horns!

Suddenly I heard them and realized that the Queen’s men were almost upon us. I scrambled to my feet just as the last of the other boys disappeared through a doorway in the back of the shack. In front of me, the plump boy quivered like he was itching to be off but could not leave until I was ready to move.

So, I dove in through the back door, much to his delight, and found myself in a dark earthen tunnel. Behind me, I heard him grunt and heave as he pulled on a rope that I had not seen as I passed. When the rope finally came free, a blast of musty air hit me from behind and I knew that he had caused that part of the cave to collapse. With any sort of luck, if the Queen’s men did find the shack and the back door, they would see nothing but dirt.

For what seemed the longest time, I ran forward blindly. My shoulders rubbed against the walls of the tunnel and all sorts of clammy soft things squished between toes. As I ran, I found my mind wandering back to the day I tried to catch up with my father’s horse as he rode off to the war. He had forgotten his gloves and I was deathly afraid that without them he wouldn’t be able to fight as well as he should. And as I ran, I felt tears streaming down my cheeks.

===========

It was a great day like every other day has been great since we started living in the Wood. In the morning, we raced each other to the rapids and had a lot of fun teasing Gob for being the last to get there. We weren’t being mean or anything, and Nob knows that he’s the slowest of us. Of course, he’s also the smartest and if it weren’t for him and his fishing rig, well, we would never have lasted a day. So Nob takes the ribbing in stride mainly because he knows its all in fun.

For lunch, Alf cooked the rabbits that Dog shot with his bow. Unfortunately, he burnt one because Cob kept us all laughing with his attempts to turn a somersault. Cob isn’t what you would call agile, I suppose, but he’s handy with knots. His da’ was a sailor and taught him all those tricks with ropes and whatnot before the war came and took him away. He keeps a length of rope knotted around his wrist, Cob does. He says it’ll be how his father will recognize him after the war.

After lunch, we finally made our way into the old abandoned mine. Ban is the only one who likes it there, truth be told. He likes rooting around in the dirt looking for shiny stones. The rest of us don’t really care for those stones, but apparently, some people do. When we’ve washed them and polished them, I have to admit, some of them look nice enough, but really, they’re just stones. Can’t eat them, can’t do much of anything with them except sell them to people who think they’re worth something. That’s Eon’s job. He’s the tallest of us and he talks as smooth as anything. He takes the stones we find and once a week, he takes them to the village to sell.

No one wonders about Eon. He’s sold them all on the lie that he works the mine with his da’. At least that’s what he thinks. Myself, I think the townspeople just don’t care. None of them have, these past three years. If they did, then we wouldn’t still be here, would we? Deep in the Wood, living off the land, and doing all sorts of things children aren’t supposed to do.

Not that I’m complaining. The Wood is a great place and having no grown-ups to tell you what to do is even better. And it would have stayed a good place if only she didn’t come wandering into it.

Like I said, it was a great day. After picking through the rubble in the mine for about an hour or so, we had collected a good number of rocks and decided to head back home. Home being the shack that I, Fig, had built for us from wooden planks and nails that we’d traded rocks for. I came from a family of carpenters, see? And, altho I didn’t really like the craft, some of it did rub off on me.

Anyway, when we got home, there was this girl lying on the doorstep looking for all the world that she’d died there. All of us quickly retreated into the wood, wondering what was going on. All of us, that is, except Gob. He handed his sack to me and quietly crept up to the girl. Now Gob isn’t the stealthiest creature in the wood, so he made a lot of noise trying to sneak up on the girl. Still, he managed to get close enough to poke at her foot with a stick.

The girl yelped and sat up bolt upright and when she saw Nob – at this point filthy with mine-dirt by the way – screamed her head off. It was hilarious. Gob turned tail and waddled back to us, just as we were slowly coming out of the brush. There was no way this girl could pose any danger to us if she took fright at Gob’s mug. But I suppose she did get addled out of her wits a little and the sight of six dirty ruffians coming at her didn’t help things at all.

The next morning, I suppose she would’ve fainted at the sight of us again if she weren’t soaking wet. After waiting all night for her to come out of her faint, Dog got impatient, as Dog often does, so he took a bucket of water and doused her with it. Her eyes flew wide open and her mouth made a big circle out of which no sound came since she was busy sucking in air. It was almost winter after all, and the water was icy cold.

For a long moment, she stared at each one of us in turn. Then, in a small voice, she said: “I’m a princess.” Outside, the sun broke over the ridge of the Rim and I heard for the first time the blowing of the horns of Ganzenland. I knew, right then and there, that we were in for a great heap of trouble.