Last week, Ateneo de Manila Grade School posted a notice for swimming tryouts on Facebook, and by Saturday afternoon it had attracted 11,400 laugh reactions. Comments were disabled, though. Darn. My comment would have been: “Since the basketball elimination was at Dipaculao, the swimming tryout will be at the basketball court.”
Imagine this in the future—Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) posting a team-building activity on its Facebook page. Let's see how many laugh and angry reactions that will get.
So this is what ADMU earns for what happened to Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili… Er, do we still have to be politically correct here? Okay, since I'm not as cruel as the trolls, let's just say this is what ADMU gets for the deaths during its team-building. Its posts attract mostly laugh and angry reactions these days.
In the world of public relations, whether it's good or bad publicity, it's still publicity—that should be ADMU's attitude now as it faces the grueling task of proving that it's not guilty. Will it end up blaming everyone else except its own respectable (ugh), honest (ugh), and trustworthy (ugh) self?
This is bad timing for ADMU to be involved in this "team-killing," er, team-building. With PBBM at the helm, and the Pinoy now desperately hoping for someone to help him avoid PBBM's, uh, alleged ineptness, that is when ADMU—one of the institutions that have always been there to fight for the Pinoy—gets embroiled in the Baterbonia and Adili case. So from whom will the Pinoy seek help now?
That's the reason why ADMU's negligence is unacceptable, because the Pinoy wasn't expecting it at all. Had it happened to another school, anger would still be there but perhaps with less intensity—ah, yes, that school, what can you expect?
The Pinoy is familiar with anger and grief. He has been angry and grieving for his country since, hmm, September 21, 1972, when then-President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. imposed martial law. Anti-Marcos protest rallies at Mendiola became the norm.
It was Ninoy Aquino's assassination on August 21, 1983, that elevated those protests to a succession of one rally after another. Afternoon and evening classes in Manila schools were often suspended either because of those rallies or fraternity rumbles—kind of choose your “advocacy.”
So when Baterbonia and Adili drowned and died, that gave the Pinoy something to pour his anger and grief on. All of his frustrations at the government and the country's situation he expressed through grieving, even if he had never met Baterbonia and Adili. The country's past went on fast rewind as he cried and remembered martial law, the Marcos dictatorship, Ninoy Aquino's assassination, the 1986 People Power Revolution, the graft and corruption that People Power failed to eradicate, former President Erap Estrada's impeachment, the pork barrel scam, flood control scams, "maletas," the 18 Marines, Baterbonia and Adili.
But the Pinoy's focus has shifted from government matters to ADMU and the drownings of Baterbonia and Adili. And it will continue to focus there until justice is served. Even Vice President Sara Duterte's impeachment trial pales in comparison? Hmm.
