Three days of the week, I teach English at the Ateneo, telling my students sematary should be cemetery, high school is spelled two words, and that even if I wrote an erotic poem in their Filipino textbook Hulagpos, I was not, am not, and will never be the persona sitting on another man’s lap in that scandalous poem. Twice a week, I am taking my last two subjects for my Ph.D. in English Studies at the University of the Philippines. And once a week, I have my political meetings. It is on a day like this, on a fine Saturday afternoon, that I am going to the Manila Yacht Club for my next political meeting. When Ang Ladlad, our lesbian-gay-transgender-bisexual (LGBT) political party filed our papers for accreditation in the Congress party-list elections of May 14, 2007, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) blanched and said, No, you didn’t have enough people for a national constituency.
To paraphrase the Pussycats, And don cha! Don cha say that without checking, too, the membership roster-with real names and addresses-of the many other party lists of dubious provenance that were allowed to run in the last, super-messy elections. My reading was that the powers-that-be were threatened by Ang Ladlad. They must have thought that if we got at least two seats-and surveys said we would-that would be two seats against the administration. But how did they know that? We only had two political statements arrived at through a consensus: 1) No to Charter change and yes to a Constitutional Convention of duly elected members and 2) A stop to political killings of activists and journalists. Nothing about impeachment, resignation, and such for the sitting President.
0 kommentar(er)
