the Philippines

By Marga Ortigas in Asia on April 28th, 2011

There’s no soft, spectacular sunset over Sabah this afternoon. No wisps of crimson, or feathery touches of pink.

Dusk is settling like a heavy orange yolk suffocating what’s already been an oppressive day. 

The mackerel-coloured sea is choppy, leading the small boats moored around the harbour in a syncopated dance. Their lights begin to come on…looking like fallen stars twinkling on the bobbing cobalt ocean.

The boardwalk is now dipped in colourful neon, and the stalls in the waterfront market begin to raise their rainbow tents. They look like the large colourful sails of the traditional vintas from Zamboanga in the southern Philippines. It’s where many of the vendors originate from. No surprise then that’s it now known as the "Filipino market".

By Marga Ortigas in Asia on February 11th, 2011
Photo by EPA

"They say so much… and accomplish nothing ..."

The almost-whispered words of the weary 24-year-old warrior reverberated in the sweltering heat of the marshland morning. Its' hollow echo like ghosts of all the fallen in this scarred land ... striking in their silence.

He looked away, but his words hung in the air like flies around a corpse.

As a Muslim, Norodin feels he was born into this war in the southern Philippines. His father was a separatist fighter before him, so he too joined the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or MILF. 

He knew little else. 

Many others share his story.

By Marga Ortigas in Asia on November 23rd, 2010



It was the fist just barely peeking out of the freshly-dug soil.

That’s the image I can't forget. 

And we saw it in-person, without the seeming “protection”, or distance, of a filtered reality depicted through a camera lens.

It was the day after it happened, and investigators were still looking for bodies. 

A digger was parked by the remains of several crushed vehicles. Bullet-ridden corpses were strewn on the ground like broken bottles after a street fight. The banana leaves on top of them the only available concession to propriety. 

The pockmarked Maguindanao mountain we were on looked as if a giant manic mole had burrowed furiously multiple times trying to find itself the right home.

By Marga Ortigas in Asia on June 30th, 2010
Photos courtesy of Sunshine de Leon

It's been said often enough to explain the many inexplicable events that take place here; "only in the Philippines!"

But indeed, where else would a presidential inauguration day end with the newly sworn-in leader himself regaling a crowd of thousands with an out-of-tune version of Frank Sinatra’s "Watch What Happens?"

That's exactly how Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III, the newly-installed 15th president of the Philippines, capped celebrations in Manila on Wednesday evening - and it was all broadcast live to a hopeful nation.

Let someone start believing in you,
let him hold out his hand,
Let him touch you and watch what happens…

By Marga Ortigas in Asia on June 24th, 2010
Andal Ampatuan Jr is one of 196 people charged over the massacre [Reuters]

The call came in around mid-day.

"They got to him."

I'm sorry?, I thought, still trying to recognise the voice at the other end of the line.

"They got to him,"  it was repeated sadly. "Just as he told you they would."

We were in the middle of working on another story, and I wasn't sure exactly what I was being told.

"The witness," the voice added, filling in my silence. "They got to him, he's dead."

We had interviewed two men who claimed to be witnesses to the Maguindanao massacre, the worst case of political violence in the country that left at least 58 people dead in the troubled southern Philippines.

The first one, known publicly as "Boy", was now in protective custody.

He claimed that he was there when the killings happened, but insisted that he was too shocked at the brutality, and was unable to participate in the shooting of innocent civilians.  

The second one we dubbed "Jesse".

By Marga Ortigas in Asia on June 22nd, 2010
Photo: Marga Ortigas

The bright pink frilly dress was lovingly laid out on the cold hard metal slab.

On the floor next to it - a long white coffin. Oversized for the three-year-old that was finally going to be put in it.

Levi Samuel had been waiting for this moment for exactly two years.

Well, "waiting" implies hopeful expectation, so it wouldn't really be the right word.

Levi hadn't wanted to say goodbye.

His niece and her father were among the over 800 passengers on board the 23,000 tonne MV Princess of the Stars when it sank in stormy weather off the central Philippines in June 2008.

It was one of the worst sea disasters in the Philippines.

The remains were only now turned over to Levi by authorities. And he is one of the more fortunate ones.

By Marga Ortigas in Asia on May 13th, 2010
Photo from AFP

At around two o’clock on Tuesday morning, with 24-hour rolling news coverage on local networks going into its second day, a very pleased-looking Commission on Elections (Comelec) official was being interviewed live on television from the national vote tallying centre.  

He could barely contain his excitement as he declared the first fully automated polls in the Philippines a success (much, it seemed, to his own surprise). 

He had been up against the proverbial wall for weeks prior to the May 10th elections as machines failed when tested, contingency plans were ridiculed, and the credibility of the process itself was questioned.  

He had been laughed at, scorned, and beseeched to put a stop to automated plans; but on behalf of the Comelec, he had said they would plough through - and the nation would be better for it.  

Now even the previous nay-sayers are flabbergasted.  

By Veronica Pedrosa in Asia on May 12th, 2010
AFP photo

It's back to the future in the Philippines.

Benigno Aquino III has surfed to the presidency on the crest of a wave of nostalgia for the episodes of more than 20 years ago, when his parents put the Philippines at the centre of world attention.

His mother and father, Benigno Junior and Corazon, were the main characters in scenes that fundamentally changed the course of Philippine history.

I am a "martial law baby" who grew up in exile in London. My parents had managed to get out of the Philippines before Imelda, the wife of Ferdinand Marcos, the late strongman, could have my mother imprisoned for writing a biography of her.

For my generation the shock of seeing Benigno III's father assassinated in a pool of blood on the tarmac of Manila International Airport is a kind of emotional bookend.

By Marga Ortigas in Asia on May 9th, 2010
Photo from AFP

There is a nervous anticipation in the air in Manila – almost a sombre silence. Many fear it could just be a deceptive calm before a storm. 

The Philippines is preparing to go to the polls this Monday, using a new automated system for the first time, and if local surveys are anything to go by, most here are eager to see a change in the nation’s leadership.
 
President Gloria Arroyo has been in power far too long, they say, and many have taken to comparing her to the deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

By Marga Ortigas in Asia on April 29th, 2010
Photos by Brendan Ager

By her own admission, she’s been called many names:  “evil”, “greedy”,  “corrupt”,  the Iron Butterfly.  And she lets it all wash over her like rain bearing down on a sunflower.

“They do not know the real me!”, she intimates with a smile.  Still standing tall at 5”8, this energetic 80-year old grandmother has also been known for her charm and her beauty. 

She takes pride in being among a select few in the world who can be identified by simply one name - “Not even the Queen of England is known just as Elizabeth…,” she offers.  “She has to be referred to as Queen Elizabeth the Second…”, a pause,  “but there is only one Imelda…”

Al Jazeera Live

What's Hot


Recent Comments

This work is licensed under Creative Commons. Please read our attribution policy.