Educating Arturo Lomibao

It is most unlikely that PNP Chief Arturo Lomibao will make good his empty threat of having media follow his "standard". He has not even revealed what it is up to now.

And I am confident even if he has one, I believe, both Charles Calima and Pete Merced can not implement it, even if threatened by sanctions. They are more reasonable than Lomibao.

But granting he will make good his threat, he will find a problem, no one will follow his "standard". I would like to believe many would rather close operations than comply with it.

I can figure out radio and television will play funeral marches like a swan song and newspapers will put big black bands to show mourning in their final edition.

Me? I would rather stop writing. Journalism is an art. And art is life. It is a part of one's self like dancing, singing, and painting to mention a few.

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Art is free. It belongs to an individual. Nobody can teach how it is to be done. Otherwise, it is stifled. And art cannot be stifled.

Art is life. Was it not Longfellow in his "Psalm of Life" who taught us that "Art is long and time is fleeting,/ And our hearts though stout and brave,/ Like muffled drums are beating,/ Funeral marches to the grave." Art is inborn to a person and will be with him up to his grave.

Writing, as an art, is an aesthetic emotion. Wrote Remy de Gourment "Art is the accomplice of love. Take away love and there is no longer art."

Wrote Dobson, "All passes, Art alone,/Enduring stays with us;/ The bust outlasts the throne,/ The coin outlasted Tiberius."

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Art is eternal. Emerson says it better when he wrote art is a jealous mistress. And Joseph Story added, "Art is a jealous mistress and requires a long and constant courtship. It is not even by trifling favors but by lavish homage."

Lomibao must know that writing, aside from being a profession, is an art. He should have known how to treat writers.

Novelist William Faulkner in a lecture in Harvard about writing and writers said, "Really the writer doesn't want success."

"He knows he has a short span of life that the day will come when he must pass through the wall of oblivion and he wants to leave a scratch of that wall - Kilroy was here - that somebody a hundred or a thousand years later will see." I hope General Lomibao must be humble enough to accept his need of getting educated on art in the life of writers.

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The exploits of Marine Col. Ariel Querubin, as published yesterday in the national papers, are really impressive.

I knew of these last Sunday yet during breakfast at McDonald's. Retired Commodore Marianing Tuvilla who used to be head of the Western Command in Palawan brought a picture of Col. Querubin who is the nephew of lawyer Pompeii Querubin.

Marianing said, Ariel was once under him and gushed over the leadership and bravery of Queubin while under him in the Western Command. He also showed us the picture where Querubin was being pinned the Medal of Valor by then President Marcos.

Of course, because of the achievement of Querubin and others while under him, Tuvilla also got a Medal of Valor. I cannot tell the details of the exploits.

It's good AFP and the President understand Ariel Querubin. You don't fool around with brave, heroic people like Querubin. They are not afraid to die.

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I talked the other day with NFA General Manager here Gil Ibarra and the San Carlos NFA Manager Ed Medina. I inquired about that information I got that NFA trucks carrying NFA rice went to San Carlos and came back to sell to Bacolod rice traders.

The two said, it is very unlikely. The price of rice in San Carlos is higher than in Bacolod. So, if there is really foolishness there it is logically difficult. The rice is already in San Carlos where the price is high. Bringing it back to Bacolod with additional cost will just mean loss because of the cheaper price here.

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As long as the President follows the law without doing shortcuts my own impression is that she is being supported by the people who have long hungered for strong leaders.

I don't see problems in the people they are arresting as long as they are within the law. Even with media people, I am not against their filing court cases if they find proof and evidence that can stand in court. And due processes are observed.

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Government has also cracked down on the communist insurgents and their supporters in Congress.

If government also has grounds and evidences, let them.

The failure of the opposition to fight the President was its tactical alliance with the Left. People are more afraid of the Left than Arroyo. And it's good Arroyo acts. Otherwise, it will give the military the justification to have a military junta take over.*

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