"If the efforts haven't necessarily completely disinfected our towns and country, at the very least they've caused a lot of cockroaches to panic and scamper, effectively enough to have some of them in turn get crushed by the public."

My contemporary and fellow journalist Roby Alampay's comments on the previous blog post deserve a post on their own, pasted below. Roby is executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) based in Bangkok, a press freedom advocacy group in the region.

How can a country with press freedom be considered among the most corrupt in the world? Isn't sunlight supposed to be the best disinfectant?

I arrived in Vienna last night to speak at a UN conference on corruption about the Philippines' history of removing corrupt leaders (and, of course, a recent history of failure too). I'm not sure how replicable our experience is for the other countries represented here, mostly from Africa. People power as practiced on EDSA seems to have been a uniquely Pinoy phenomenon. But I do want to highlight the importance of media asserting its powers to investigate and agitate, so that leaders are made to account.

The World Bank Institute produced a graph plotting several dozen countries according to their rankings in corruption perception and press freedom, and found a correlation between the two: in general, the greater press freedom, the less corruption. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.



There are significant exceptions to the rule, and one of them is... the Philippines. We are counted among those countries with press freedom, yet we are considered in Transparency International's rankings as among the most corrupt in the world.

Critics, myself included, could question the definition of "press freedom" used for the graph, a media that is generally autonomous of the state. That would strike many as rather narrow, for what kind of freedom could there be if there are more journalists being killed in the Philippines than anywhere outside of Iraq?

Nevertheless, there was enough freedom for enterprising journalists to nail the goods on Joseph Estrada so that we all saw him go to jail. That's justice, with no small role for media even with its tenuous room to maneuver.

The only good so far that I've seen come out of the farcical Bolante hearings at the Senate was the picture above in the Manila Times, where the deported fugitive was forced to confront the ghost of Marlene Esperat, an agriculture department whistle blower who first exposed the fertilizer fund scam that now obsesses the media and political class. Esperat was later killed in front of her family in Tacurong City, Sultan Kudarat in Mindanao, presumably for her role in spilling rotten beans whose stink could yet be traced to the Office of the President.

It may be some consolation for her family to know that her cause did not die with her, it just took a while to come home to roost.

A fond tribute written by a couple of former PCIJ colleagues a few days after the death of our own version of Erin Brockovich:

Coming on the heels of what may well be the worst American presidency in history, Barack Obama has become the repository of so many of the world's hopes and probably impossible expectations. That's the cleverness of the caricature above depicting Obama as the image of Adam from the glorious ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted by Michaelangleo. That's God fist-bumping not only the first black American president-elect, but the US president, black or white, with the sweetest jump shot, as b-ball fanatic Krip Yuson makes sure to remind us. (O also boasted during the campaign that he was a better dancer than McCain)



That's the original Adam by Michaelangelo above, about to touch God's hand. We know what happened to Adam. Obama will be facing his own snakes too offering a bite of toxic apples, including concentrated executive powers bequeathed by the power-drunk Bush administration. So soon after election night, it was reported that Obama wants Bush to bail out the US auto industry, giving the outgoing his own leverage for some exit-eve horse-trading. We believers trust that Obama will be extracting his own concessions from the auto industry, a big cog of the US climate-changing machine, such as a new focus on developing and selling electric cars, and vast improvements in gas mileage.

From her professorial perch at Columbia University in New York, my former colleague Sheila Coronel emailed a day after Obama won: "Was in Harlem last night. What an election! It reminded me of Manila 1986."

Indeed. Some corners of the world may still remember that 22 years before Obama, there was one leader who spread the same kind of excitement around the globe about the latent nobility of politics: Cory Aquino.

After a dive, a frightful experience.



I am often asked by viewers how we find our stories. Sometimes, I reply, from viewers themselves! That was how I found out about the mystery island behind me in the picture above and its trouble-in-paradise story.

I got an email from a traveller who had visited it recently and told me about its irresistible dilemma, an almost perfect microcosm of the complex, often messy choices between nature and people that our country is confronting in many places.

I won't spoil it for you by revealing the details or even the name of the island weeks before the doc airs on November 24. But I will say that we made an effort to shoot underwater video that would do justice to the island's awesome marine life, including a memorable night shoot of fearless local fishermen who plunge like seals into the depths to hunt sleeping food fish with spear guns, without the benefit of the kind of gear we were wearing.



I dove with one of the most experienced videographers of marine life in the country, Ding "Johnny" Cabreira, left, and Xavier University marine biologist Fra Quimpo, who helped me understand what we were seeing. As our dive master, Fra also kept me safe in a sea environment of total darkness, except for our flashlights and those of the graceful men aiming their beams and spears at rock crevices.



The rest of my intrepid team above, from left to right: cameraman Egay Navarro, his assistant Jessie Bernardo, researcher and field producer Cris Sto. Domingo, and director and second cam Jazel Kristin Villamarin.



A day after my night dive, I suffered a paralysis of the right side of my face (so a smile became a smirk). I discovered it while alone on a boat back to the mainland, filling me with fright that I was having a stroke with only strangers around me (I left my team early to make it back to Manila for a family reunion).

Then I feared it was the bends, decompression sickness caused by surfacing too rapidly during a dive. That too could cause permanent paralysis, even death.

(and a sudden recollection of African-American soldiers fighting with Aguinaldo)

Just the appearance of a black man as president of a mostly white superpower can have an impact down to the smallest village in Mindanao with a television. Can an intelligent and patriotic Muslim-Filipino boy (or girl) now dream of becoming president of a mostly Christian nation? No? That's what was once said about a black man leading America!

For once, a commentator recently said, the most famous American black is not dribbling a basketball or holding a microphone. It will also benefit Filipinos to know that our acquaintance with American blacks long precedes Michael Jordan or Norman Black.

Among the first African-Americans to reach our shores were soldiers fighting with American invasion forces at the turn of the 19th century. But not all were happy with the killing of islanders whom white US troops would also refer to as "niggers".

According to an account on a web site about the Presidio military camp in San Francisco, from where US troops sailed to the Philippines:

Within the Black community in the United States there was considerable opposition to intervention in the Philippines. Many Black newspaper articles and leaders supported the idea of Filipino independence and felt that it was wrong for the United States to subjugate non-whites in the development of what was perceived to be the beginnings of a colonial empire. Bishop Henry M. Turner characterized the venture in the Philippines as "an unholy war of conquest;" but it was also felt by most African Americans that a good military showing by Black troops in the Philippines would reflect favorably and enhance their cause in the United States.

Black troops in the Philippines were called "buffalo soldiers" and more than a few felt sympathy towards Filipinos defending their homeland and fighting for independence:

As the war progressed many African American soldiers increasingly felt they were being used in an unjust racial war. The Filipino insurgents subjected Black soldiers to psychological warfare, using propaganda encouraging them to desert. Posters and leaflets addressed to "The Colored American Soldier" described the lynching and discrimination against Blacks in the United States and discouraged them from being the instrument of their white masters' ambitions to oppress another "people of color." Blacks who deserted to the Filipino nationalist cause would be welcomed and given positions of responsibility.

During the war in the Philippines, fifteen U.S. soldiers, six of them Black, would defect to Aguinaldo. One of the Black deserters, Private David Fagen became notorious as a "Insurecto Captain," and was apparently so successful fighting American soldiers that a price of $600 was placed on his head. The bounty was collected by a Filipino defector who brought in Fagen's decomposed head. A Black newspaper, the Indianapolis Freeman, editorialized in December, 1901, "Fagen was a traitor and died a traitor's death, but he was a man no doubt prompted by honest motives to help a weakened side, and one he felt allied by bonds that bind."

The sentiments of most Black soldiers in the Philippines would be summed up by Commissary Sergeant Middleton W. Saddler of the 25th Infantry, who wrote, "We are now arrayed to meet a common foe, men of our own hue and color. Whether it is right to reduce these people to submission is not a question for soldiers to decide. Our oaths of allegiance know neither race, color, nor nation."

Lucky to be in New York during last February's Super Tuesday primaries, I shot this partisan standing still like a human-statue performance artist on a street corner in a part of the city called Hell's Kitchen. I asked his permission to shoot, and he nodded ever so slightly.

In closely following the political trajectory of a black man for the past year, I have thought about all the black friends I have had through the years: a ten year old like myself named Renault Washington who played on the same Boys Club football team while growing up in Silver Spring, Maryland; Robert Moultrie, an orphan from New York who was smart enough to get a full college scholarship and became my roommate in our freshman year at Tufts University; Bertie Jean Martin, a perky dormmate who invited me to her Scarsdale home for Thanksgiving one year and took me to visit her boy friend Mickey living in Harlem, where I seemed to be the only non-black; and Momo, our driver in Kenya when my I-Witness team shot a wildlife documentary there but learned just as much about African culture and pride through the loquacious man behind the wheel.

I never felt sympathy for these well-adjusted individuals, but empathy. I too was made conscious of my skin color, and even the slant of my eyes, at an early age while growing up in a mostly white neighborhood and going to school in an all-white school. I was made to feel I had a built-in disadvantage and thus had to strive harder than my classmates to have a chance at competing in anything. I like to think that I too am well-adjusted, but I feel that like my black friends, I earned it through a childhood struggle with racism, both subtle and overt.

Anyone who's ever been an underdog must feel at least a tinge of wonder and even poetic justice at this black man's rise, and yes especially any Filipinos who have ever been singled out at airports, sniped at in embassies, and basically been judged by how we look and where we're from.

That is probably why I haven't felt this strongly about politics since Cory Aquino's campaign against Marcos in 1985-86.

On a busy, traffic-choked day, remembering our dead loved ones might even be more meaningful as a virtual event, such as uploading a vintage picture like the one above that can be shared across time zones. So maybe my absence at their graves will be forgiven by their spirits.

Three of the old folks in the picture have passed on. On the extreme left is my great grandmother Lola Margot, who seemed to always wear a saya. Sitting next to Lola Margot is her daughter and my grandmother Lola Trining. On the extreme right is my lola's husband and my grandfather, Lolo Dolfo.

Lola Margot lived to her 90s and my grandparents lived to their 80s. They were wonderful peeps, with serene, loving personalities. And they hopefully passed on longevity genes. By the way, that's me as a six year old in the center sitting between my father's knees. We were at the airport in Manila about to depart for Washington DC where my father Rodolfo Jr., a diplomat like his father, would be posted for six years on his first foreign assignment. My mother and brother are sitting to my father's right. The Imeldific big hair was still the trendy look in 1967.

In this quirky yet simple public service message to get young Americans to vote, the joke is on the messengers, who include Tom Cruise, Leonardo diCaprio, Harrison Ford (who is hilarious in his piety), Cameron Diaz, Will Smith and others. The joker? Steven Spielberg.




All the McCain fans and Obama bashers who have posted comments in this blog will be happy to know from SF-based Pinoy columnist Ben Pimentel that if Filipino citizens could vote in the US elections, they would probably enable McCain to win by a landslide. That's not idle ruminating, but idle extrapolating from a Gallup poll. Click here for Ben's piece, which is also pasted below.

A swing voter stops swinging and votes for her man.

For the past several months, I've had a lively telephone exchange of views about the US elections with a US-based close family member, whom I shall call TG (a red-state resident, she doesn't want her neighbors to know her real political preferences). A die-hard Hillary fan, she was first crest-fallen when Obama got the Democrats' nod, and then enraged that such an upstart could beat her Hillary, and a black candidate at that! Like many US-based Pinoys (not all, mind you), TG has had issues with Obama's race. This retiree didn't even like the way Michelle Obama looked, code words for her espresso-hued skin. TG even threatened to sit this election out, one of those disaffected swing voters that both McCain and Obama were trying to swing their way. This intercontinental exchange had disturbed my liberal sensibilities and prompted me to write lengthy posts about Filipino racism that provoked further evidence of, well, Filipino racism. (By the way, thank you to E.P., EG, Lil Roble, and other smart readers who posted civil responses to each other in threads that occasionally degenerated into tirades and name-calling by others)

Despite her senior citizenship, she stood in line for over an hour so she could vote early.

That's why the last exchange with my one-person focus group convinced me that Obama essentially has this election wrapped up. "He's the one who understands the economy. McCain does not have a clue! Nakakagigil!" she said with fresh energy. Despite her senior citizenship, she stood in line for over an hour so she could vote early -- for Obama. Reflecting attitudes even in die-hard Republican states, TG is consumed by worries over the economic crisis and what it will do to retirement savings, and has decided that Obama is more in touch with common people's interests than the war hero her age. In our last conversation, she did not even bring up Obama's race. It's become irrelevant. Instead, she mentioned that Obama is a former social worker who worked in poor communities, like she did in her youth. The anti-Obama has morphed into an Obamaniac.

As a believer in Obama's transformational potential, I derived no small gratification from TG's own conversion, and perhaps my own small role in helping her see beyond skin color. But I also like to think that economic woes were just one factor in making US voters like her overcome their discomfort with Obama's race.

I think the main factor is just his rare combination of star qualities -- the even temperament, the world-class intellect, the organizational ability, the charisma, empathy, eloquence, even sartorial elegance and a sweet jump shot, this man seems to have it all (one minus -- he's a smoker). On top of all that is a compelling biography. It's churlish to even imply that he exploited his grandmother's illness to boost his connection to ordinary people. But his sudden flight to Hawaii (with minimal press coverage) to be at his dying lola's bedside resonated with anyone who has had a beloved granny, including this writer. It also reminded the US heartland that he has roots not just in Africa but in Bible-belt, vanilla-white Kansas.

With his kulay-caramel skin and a middle name like Hussein, Obama needed all those qualities to reach the verge of breaking the glass on the highest ceiling of all. I'm reminded of the Jackie Robinson statue in Jersey City that I was gazing at a few weeks ago while on vacation. A university professor stopped to tell me about the African-American Robinson's breaking the color barrier in baseball. Would he be remembered so fondly if he wasn't also a good baseball player? I asked the prof. "He wasn't just good, he was great, one of the best," the grizzled baseball fan told me. "He had to be." That's what Obama has to be to break the color barrier to the White House.



This magazine photo of a grieving mother of a Muslim Arab-American soldier killed in action in Iraq helped move (ret.) Gen. Colin Powell, one of the Republican Party's most revered figures, to endorse Obama on a national TV talk show. He had been upset by the hateful tone of his party's campaign, but what seemed to be the last straw was an exchange at a McCain rally where a supporter thought she was denigrating Obama by identifying him as an Arab. "No ma'am," McCain corrected her. "He's a decent family man."

This is how Powell led up to his endorsement, according to a transcript of his interview on NBC's Meet the Press:

I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards--Purple Heart, Bronze Star--showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life. Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I'm troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.

So, when I look at all of this and I think back to my Army career, we've got two individuals, either one of them could be a good president. But which is the president that we need now? Which is the individual that serves the needs of the nation for the next period of time? And I come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities--and we have to take that into account--as well as his substance--he has both style and substance--he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president. I think he is a transformational figure. He is a new generation coming into the world--onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I'll be voting for Senator Barack Obama.

Sometimes it's hard being the life of the party.

Yanie aka Mr. Mellow about some kids at parties: Minsan nanakit, nanununtok sa private part, nanununtok talaga, ansakit promise. Minsan dudunggulin yung nguso mo, yung ilong, especially ilong dahil natutuwa sa nose e, aanuhin sa mukha. So dudugo minsan... Tatalikod ka na lang. Kailangan hindi mo maipakita sa kanila na nasaktan ka e. Talikod na lang, talon nang konti, pagharap nakangiti pa rin.

(They hurt you sometimes, hit you in your private parts. It really hurts. Sometimes they'll punch your nose, because they find the clown nose cute, so they'll squash it against your face. Your real nose bleeds... You just have to turn around and not show that it hurts. you jump a little, turn around and smile.)

Jigz aka Chussy: Yung mga nanay, wala lang, deadma lang din yung mga nanay. Hindi nila sinasaway. Parang ok lang din sa kanila na saktan kami. Mommy, hello, yung anak niyo po… Hindi ka pwedeng magalit, nakangiti ka pa din, kailangan maging masaya sila kasi ikaw nga hinire.

(The mothers, they don't care. They don't stop their kids, it's like it's okay that their kids hurt us. Hello, Mommy, do something about your kids... But you can't get mad, you keep on smiling. You need to make them happy because they hired you.)

My I-Witness documentary this Monday night is about the real lives of clowns. The doc focuses on one community of clowns living together in the same apartment without electricity and running water -- without their clown costumes and perpetual smile, they're single parents, working students, and struggling entertainers who dream of professionalizing their craft and even working as OFCs -- Overseas Filipino Clowns.

By the way, I also got to know what it's like to be a child's fantasy -- that's me in the center in the photo above: Howdie da Klawn! ; )

Ang clown,... bow!
An I-Witness documentary
Monday midnight after Saksi, October 27, 2008

Directed by Jazel Kristin Villamarin
Executive producer: Noi Cuanang
Videographer: Egay Navarro
Researcher: Cris Sto. Domingo
Hosted and written by Howie Severino

You can count on my wife Ipat to read this blog when nobody else is reading it. But she'll also be in the mix when the comments section becomes cyberspace's version of a firestorm, such as what's been coming down in the last few days in the wake of my blog post on "Obama and Filipino racism." Ipat writes:

"Interesting can of worms you opened up there.

You should answer this:

i personally would vote for Obama but if i have to insult or degrade my fellow Filipinos for being what they are and what they prefer, then i would be no better than those racists there in US, isn't it?

stupid is as stupid does.
#9 travidio lopez on 2008-10-14 18:56"

Holding a mirror up to someone's warts always risks having the mirror broken over the head of the person holding it. To call many Filipinos racist is stating a fact based on many conversations through the years, and something Filipinos have to face rather than denying it by calling the mirror holder a racist himself.

The truth hurts, and it hurts me as much as anyone else to see Filipino racism both in the Philippines and abroad, and to have to admit that many, but not all, Filipinos are racist. That is backed up not only by my own observations and that of the journalist who wrote the perceptive article I pasted in the previous blog post, but now by the numerous comments by readers on Obama in my blog that judge the man according to his skin color. I have had to delete some comments because of the profanity.

Making Filipinos face up to their racism is not the equivalent of racism, as Travidio implies. Racism is motivated by hatred. If one would rather shatter or ignore the mirror that the blog post wants to hold up to you, then you'll never get over it.

Besides, racist attitudes are on the wrong side of history. Obama is about to be elected president, proving that much of America can overcome their racism. Can Filipinos?

One would expect educated Filipinos not to act like the least educated white Americans.

With a perfect financial storm coupled with Sarah Palin's self-destruction, John McCain's boat is sinking and it's beginning to look like a landslide for Barack Obama, who is leading McCain now by 10 percentage points in most polls with less than three weeks to go to election day.

But as in the Philippines' own electoral magic realism (with an emphasis on magic), anything can happen in US politics. Recall the bizarre events in Florida in 2000 that resulted in George Bush's victory despite losing the popular vote to Al Gore. And the early exit polls in 2004 that virtually declared John Kerry the winner over Bush, who then won with a surprisingly massive mobilization of the evangelical right. Among a crowd of political junkies in the US Embassy in Manila on that year's election day, I remember observing with a gaping mouth the unfolding state-by-state results on a big monitor, as Kerry lost to the man who would become what the New Yorker magazine recently called the "worst US president since the Reconstruction" (1863-1877).

For the first time in US history, race may be a decisive factor in 2008. As the first black Democratic nominee, Obama has done a masterful job of reaching out to white voters and making himself a candidate of all races. Yet despite the Republican Party's woes and a nearly flawless Democratic campaign, Obama was still in a dead heat with McCain before the financial crisis hit. To my mind, as well as to other observers', there can only be one credible reason: race.

Pundits are talking about the so-called "Bradley Effect," which describes a tendency on the part of white voters to tell pollsters they will vote for a black candidate but still end up voting for his white opponent. The Washington Post:

The phenomenon got its name a generation ago, after former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley (D), an African American, lost the 1982 gubernatorial race in California despite leading his white opponent in the polls on the eve of the election. Some experts suspected at the time that a portion of white voters, reluctant to appear biased, had essentially lied to pollsters about which candidate they were supporting. But whether Bradley lost because of hidden racism has never been clear

.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof cites studies that assert that "Mr. Obama’s support would be about six percentage points higher if he were white."

Most of the lost votes aren’t those of dyed-in-the-wool racists. Such racists account for perhaps 10 percent of the electorate and, polling suggests, are mostly conservatives who would not vote for any Democratic presidential candidate.

Rather, most of the votes that Mr. Obama actually loses belong to well-meaning whites who believe in racial equality and have no objection to electing a black person as president — yet who discriminate unconsciously

.

McCain, Palin, and their proxies have exploited this tendency on the part of many whites by making obviously coded references to Obama's race, trying to create fear about his foreign-sounding name, and creating an impression that Obama is Muslim and even Arab, as a middle-aged woman at one of McCain's town hall meetings proclaimed.

And then there are Filipino-American voters. Historically, Fil-Ams have voted Republican, intent on protecting their middle class pocket books from higher taxes. But this toxic campaign has underlined a toxic Pinoy prejudice against dark-skinned people. An article in the Filipino-American newspaper, Asian Journal Online, describes racist emails and comments not just from Filipino cranks but from leaders of the Fil-Am community:

A former president of the Filipino American Council of Greater Chicago taunted the Chicago-based publication, PINOY Newsmagazine, by e-mailing altered pictures with the heading, "If Obama wins." One image shows the Kentucky Fried Chicken logo with Colonel Sanders wearing a turban. Another photo shows the iconic McDonald's sign changed to McHammed's.

The Chicago alumni president of a very reputable Catholic university in Manila chimed-in by forwarding a message with the subject entitled, "Interesting: Barack H. Obama, 50 Lies and Counting." Asked by one of the recipients, whom he’s recommending for president, his loaded reply was, "The one who tells the TRUTH." When confronted, he feigned innocence by saying that he was only trying to pass the information around.

Yet another personality, who was crowned Mrs. Philippines in Chicago, was more direct. Santos, the newspaper publisher, recalled that after writing about Senator Obama, he was confronted in public by the individual who claimed "in loud and emotional outburst" that Obama is an "evil man." That same community leader also heads the Philippine Lions Club of Chicago.

The onslaught of racially-charged denunciations continued at the start of Spring.

On the 40th Death Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr. last April, this reporter invited a friend to watch a one-act play honoring the legacy of the foremost civil rights leader. Out of nowhere, a pointed rejection came: "Those blacks are parasites" followed by an Obama-bashing comment.

Another friend, a graduate of the Philippines' oldest university, could not hide his disdain of Obama either. As a healthcare practitioner, he said that he had encountered a number of African-American patients. He said that they are "lazy" and dependent on government dole-outs. He concluded that a win by Obama would only perpetuate the black's sense of victimhood.

Filipino racism of course is rooted in an inferiority complex we inherited from being treated like inferiors by pale Spaniards for four centuries. Yet one would expect educated Filipinos to overcome this weakness and not act like the least educated white Americans. Besides, most Filipinos are not any more fair-skinned than Obama, whose mother was white.

Because of both his skin color and upbringing, Obama may have a natural empathy towards Asian minorities in America. He is the only US presidential candidate in history to have spent a major part of his life in Southeast Asia, a childhood he describes so eloquently in his book Dreams From My Father. But that statement is only true if one doesn't count his opponent, who also spent a major part of his life in Southeast Asia -- all five years as a POW in a brutal Vietnamese prison, where no one would be surprised if McCain developed a lifelong hatred for Southeast Asians.

Here is part one of my latest I-Witness docu on sexuality education, Papa, Papa, Paano Ako Ginawa? directed by Jazel Kristin Villamarin and featuring a curious six year old with a tail:



Part Two:



Youtuber Kwadernongtagaulat forgot to either record or upload part 3 (but that's ok, dude). So what he labeled part 3 below is actually part 4, the ending:

The I-Witness docfest: a celebration of a rising art form and journalism genre

We just concluded our annual, two-weekend I-Witness documentary festival, a feel-good event for both us content producers and our viewers and fans. Staged at one of Gateway Cineplex's chic new theaters for the first time, the festival drew the usual overflow crowd, perhaps one of the few times theaters fill up in this DVD age. Of course, it helped that admission to all three screenings per day was free and the docfest was promoted by televised plugs. We regret that we even had to turn many people away, since Gateway doesn't allow an SRO audience.



Chosen for screening were eight recent I-Witness documentaries, each of about 30 minutes each, including two produced by my team, Boses Upos and Si Gob at ang mga Bugador.



Two of my "characters" showed up last Saturday, Emer Rojas of the robotic voice (to my left, above, with fans), and Governor Grace Padaca of Isabela, whose breathtaking Abuan River looked even more stunning on the big screen. The crowd howled with delight when Emer got up after last Saturday afternoon's screening to greet the audience in his signature voice.

I look forward to the open forum that ends each festival day.

The larger significance of the festival is its role in promoting an increasingly popular art form and journalism genre, the documentary. I-Witness has been both driving and riding this wave. I like to indulge in the thought that though our viewers may not outnumber fans of top-rated entertainment shows, they are probably the smartest. That's why the docfests resemble conventions of like-minded Filipinos: people interested in issues and the story-telling craft. I look forward to the open forum that ends each festival day, when I am frequently impressed by both the quality of the questions and the intelligent and heartfelt answers of my co-hosts, Sandra Aguinaldo, Kara David and Jay Taruc. I-Witness fans want the usual photo-ops and autographs, but they also want to engage us in a dialogue about our stories. It's never boring at these events.

The first program to showcase documentaries every week, as opposed to the shorter-form stories that come out on magazine shows, I-Witness was a punch at the moon -- a gamble by our network nearly a decade ago when few Filipinos even knew what a documentary was. It was taking a chance that local viewers would develop an attention span that could accommodate a single non-fiction story for an entire program.

The gamble has paid off, as I-Witness is now one of the country's longest running public affairs programs, remaining solidly in its original Monday late-evening time slot as various competitors have come and gone.

What I like about the program is its versatility -- we are not limited to any subject matter, we can experiment with creative styles (occasionally even doing black and white productions), and the content is easily transferrable to other formats and platforms, including a movie theater. We produce not only a show but content, work that can now also be seen on DVDs, youtube, and the big screen. And one of my favorite aspects of our show: I don't need to do time-consuming spiels to open and end the show. We start and end with the story, the way documentaries do anywhere else. Why use up precious airtime by showing more of ourselves when we can highlight the voices and lives of people who may never come out on TV again?

As cost barriers go down, the edge now goes to documentary makers who have good story ideas and can tell them in compelling ways.

This year's docfest also coincided with the screening of the winner of the first I-Witness student docu competition, Batang Tambol, directed by Blaine Uy of the University of San Jose Recoletos in Cebu. I had nothing to do with the judging, so I can say that I'm kind of glad that students outside Manila won it, for the simple reason being that it conveys the notion that the documentary movement is not limited to Manila. And it is a documentary movement -- showcased by our show (the so-called 'TV's finest hour'), documentaries are now being produced by a growing number of folks outside of TV at relatively little cost and with equipment that is much more widely available. As cost barriers go down, the edge now goes to documentary makers who have good story ideas and can tell them in compelling ways. With distribution being democratized by new media, docu makers don't even need TV to reach a growing audience.

The docfests are bonding events as well for the four teams that take turns producing I-Witness each week. Unsung but not unappreciated, our staff are as versatile as the show, able to organize an annual extravaganza as well as air the weekly show that we all adore. Special mention must go to our VP Nessa Valdellon and docfest coordinator Jenny Licen who conceptualized and managed this complex operation.