Trillanes as ‘persona etchapwera’

Senator Antonio Trillanes could be the happiest guy these days. He is back to grabbing headlines after about two months out of the limelight.

Trillanes was again in the news this week after a speech before Pinoys in the US, where the opposition senator, an arch critic of President Rodrigo Duterte, tried anew to demolish claims that Davao City, President Duterte’s hometown, is the safest city in the Philippines.

Rehashing an issue he hurled at the President during the 2016 presidential election, Trillanes said that in 2015 when Duterte was still mayor, Davao City, according to records of the Philippine National Police (PNP), was on top of Philippine cities with the highest number of murder and rape cases. This is a lie, of course. Trillanes apparently picked his figures from the air.

The Interior Department under President Noynoy Aquino, then headed by Mar Roxas, the Liberal Party bet President Duterte beat by more than 6 million votes in the 2016 race, will bear that Trillanes is lying.

From 2010 to 2015, the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) honored Davao City every year with the Award of Excellence. The centerpiece of the award was the city’s excellent peace and order, which elevated the Davao City Police Office to the award’s Hall of Fame.

Despite the fact that Trillanes lied with his figures, mainstream media and social media warriors critical of President Duterte lapped up the Trillanes US speech giving the senator much media mileage.

The pro-Duterte were also quick to the draw and denied Trillanes’ claim.

Ouch! Pro-Duterte social media warriors further provided more sound bytes to the Trillanes blast, by flooding the internet with a tsunami of anti-Trillanes invictives , which made the senator grin from ear to ear.

Trillanes is like fish in the water. He thrives on controversy.

It is difficult to fight a person with an almost maniacal greed to insult and shame others and a sadistic addiction to being insulted and shamed.

The Davao City Council, alas and alack, would not be left behind in the counter-attack against the senator and passed a resolution declaring Trillanes as “persona non grata” -- ungrateful and not welcome to Davao City -- that further made Trillanes happy for the added publicity.

Trillanes does not care if he is praised or crucified for as long as he lands in the news.

Davao City councilors have just passed two separate resolutions declaring influential US-based wealthy Pinay businesswoman Loida Lewis and Trillanes as “persona non grata.”

Lewis is accused in the resolution for allegedly influencing the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) into action on the “crime against humanity” rap due to alleged extrajudicial killings in the anti-drug campaign of President Duterte. Lewis, who supported Liberal Party’s Vice President Leni Robredo, also earlier had been accused by pro-administration groups and personalities as a major funder of the destabilization plots against the President.

Trillanes, was slapped the hate resolution, for his speech in the US where he said Davao City is the most dangerous city, not the safest, in the Philippines.

There is nothing new to the Davao City Council dispensing resolutions placing certain people in the ‘hate list’ of the Dabawenyos for dishing out insulting and disparaging remarks against their city and its people.

A few years ago, the City Council also slapped the same tag on a minor actor for joking, during a show that Davao City is flooded with “ hipons .” Hipon (shrimp) is teenage lingo for women with a beautiful face but ugly body. The assault on the Dabawenya stirred anger, and the actor Ramon Bautista was pulled out of the stage before he could be lynched by an angry crowd. The City Council would later declare Bautista as “persona non grata.”

Months before the 2010 mayoral election, when then Vice Mayor Sara Duterte beat then House Speaker Prospero Nograles by more than 300,000 votes, city councilors also passed a resolution declaring as “persona non grata” then party-list representatives Pastor Jun Alcover of ANAD, and Retired General Jovito Palparan of BANTAY, who supported Nograles.

Palparan, “Butcher” to human rights fighters who accused the military officer as behind summary executions of activists when he was in active service, and Alcover, a rabid anti-communist, earned the ignominy of being heaped with the tag for saying Davao City is crawling with communists and that there is shaky peace and order under Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who they also linked to the communist rebels.

Not to be outdone by city councilors, the New People\s Army (NPA), which supported Inday Sara, was not pleased, and played a sick joke by “passing” its own resolution declaring Palparan, Alcover and Nograles as “persona etchapwera ,” rougly translated as thrown away and dismissed outright as an inconsequential dot.

Whether we like it or not, Trillanes is a good propagandist, with media lapping up his every word every time he fires verbal stabs at the President.

Trillanes, of course, could not defeat President Duterte, himself a good propagandist, in the propaganda department.
Their difference is that while President Duterte breaks his head in finding cures to the country’s myriad of ills, Trillanes spews out nothing but lies with his motormouth.

It is lamentable that the President has to spend much time and energy in engaging the senator in a verbal joust, wasting time and energy from the President’s focus on steering the nation.

Trillanes today is the most hated persona in Davao City, for his relentless attack on the President and his family.

He had hounded President Duterte since the presidential campaign period for alleged corruption, extrajudicial killings in Davao City during his term as mayor and for alleged billions in hidden wealth.

The Ombudsman has dismissed the senator’s charge of illegal wealth against the President and daughter Inday Sara Duterte Carpio, a fact that Trillanes refuse to accept.

He had linked Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte to a million-peso drug smuggling case, and, during a Senate committee hearing publicly insulted the Presidential son with an insane demand to do a striptease and disrobe to prove that he had a tattoo on his back that Trillanes claims would indicate Paolo’s membership in a Chinese drug mafia. The Senate has dismissed as hearsay Trillanes’ charges against the Vice Mayor, who would later resign his post in view of the unfounded scandal.

Trillanes would continue to be good media copy as a source of lies and controversy particularly in his attacks against the President and his family.

Not even a thousand “ pu - - g … na ” from President Duterte could stop him.

He is not going to stop even if the 16 million Filipinos, who voted President Duterte into the presidency, would go to social media and attack the opposition senator with a flood of epithets and invectives and curse him to death.

What to do with Trillanes?

Instead of the “persona non grata” resolution, the Davao City councilors should have declared Trillanes as persona etchapwera , as the NPA did to Palparan, Alcover and Nograles, with a colatilla advising pro-Duterte groups and netizens to dismiss and not write about or comment on whatever dirt that flows out of Trillanes’ mouth so that the senator would be reduced to an inconsequential entity in the media.

Or the Davao City Council, in a reverse psychology, should have opted to act friendly and invite Trillanes to come to Davao City and himself discover why the city is the safest city in the country.

For all his savvy as a propagandist, Trillanes has an ego as large as the lies he peddles against President Duterte, and with the importance given him by the city council, could fall for the ploy and indeed come to Davao City.

If he does that, the angry Dabawenyos, would hold their tempers and give him a big welcome at the Davao airport.
The Dabawenyos would be led by VM Paolo, who would, Oh My God! meet Trillanes in the tarmac and ram into his throat a whole Arancillo!

What is an Arancillo?

Arancillo is a variety of Davao City’s famous durian fruit, the sweetest but with the ugliest spines!