2023: The year of the whodunit

MANILA, Philippines — First big news of the year was the assassination of Negros Oriental governor Roel Degamo, a classic whodunit in the tradition of political and media rubouts that seemed to have carried over from the year previous, particularly that of broadcaster Percy Lapid.

By noon of a seemingly calm March day, news sites were abuzz with the brazen killing in broad daylight, while the governor was meeting constituents in his hometown of Pamplona.

Prime suspect was the province’s 3rd district Rep. Arnolfo Teves, who was abroad at the time of the murder and has not returned, and has since been expelled from Congress for not discharging his duties as a lawmaker.

In early May the iconic Central Post Office in Plaza Lawton burned down, the conflagration in the wee hours visible for miles around, even by overnight workers at the printers in The STAR’s old office in Port Area.

The building had been featured on postcards, in tourist brochures, always by the Pasig River and nearby Jones Bridge, its cavernous halls and neoclassical design now a mere memory not only for Manileños.

As historical commissions and relevant agencies scrambled with plans for a rebuild and restoration, a cursory police investigation determined the blaze was caused by inflammable materials left untended in a basement section, likely near where parcels and packages were claimed.

By July the pet administration bill Maharlika Investment Fund already passed Congress and was set for signing by the President, the country’s first sovereign wealth fund patterned after more progressive nations but whose nomenclature was a throwback to the New Society.

Challenges were lodged in the proper courts by independent and opposition groups still riled up by a long deposed kleptocracy, but by yearend most of the corporation fund’s directors and officers had been named and taken oath.

After momentary glitch for a fine-tuning of implementing rules and regulations, the fund got maximum reps in the Chief Executive’s numerous foreign travels, as the press releases emphasized.

Keen weather observers could not but notice the too few storms that entered the country this year, only about half of the usual quota of 19 or 20 up to the letters S and T.

Blame fell on the encroaching El Niño phenomenon, the weather system that causes droughts and unseasonal rains, while monitors observed the water levels in dams and reservoirs.

Plans were afoot on how to counter the El Niño’s effects on crops and potable water, some fearing it may be too late the hero, even as the populace in other regions felt stirrings of another natural disaster, preludes to the Big One.

Runaway inflation in earlier months has been more or less reined in, the economic managers like to say, though consumers on the ground were reeling from unpredictable prices of basic commodities, and the campaign promise of P20 a kilo of rice remained like a search for the holy grail.

Fuel prices were volatile, spurred no doubt by the protracted war between Russia and Ukraine and the OPEC’s decision to scale down production.

Vegetable harvest was uneven, with oversupply of squash and tomatoes, but onions and sugar were at times scarce or expensive, depending on which way blew the winds of the cartel.

Use of water cannon was the latest in the continuing affair of love and hate between the Philippines and China, aside from laser light causing temporary blindness among other dangerous maneuvers, ramming and shadowing.

Authorities have almost lost count of the number of diplomatic protests and notes verbale filed, as China has ignored the arbitral tribunal ruling based on UNCLOS that all but invalidated its nine-dash line of claimed ownership of the South China Sea.

The diplomatic faux pas is seen not to affect the bigger picture of trade between the two neighbors, but for how long, considering that the US is rattling its ironclad saber should things get out of hand.

Confidential funds and red-tagging became buzz words in a post-Duterte world, as the Vice President and education secretary justified such funds “to protect the youth” from leftist recruitment and for the refurbishing of a revitalized Reserve Officers Training Corps.

Eventually these funds were scrapped from most civilian agencies and redirected to departments having to do with defense and disaster mitigation, among other more tangible threats.

The red tagging went on unabated, and battle lines started to be drawn with proposed refreshed peace talks a year before the next midterm elections on the issue of the allegedly duplicitous Reds, hawks in the Cabinet saying don’t say we didn’t warn you.

After seven years in detention on largely dubious drug charges, former senator Leila de Lima was finally freed in November, as two of the charges against her were dismissed and a third in the doldrums leading to her being allowed to post bail.

A special justice issue of the literary quarterly Santelmo featured De Lima on the cover, and in a relaunch at a Quezon City restaurant she thanked the contributors and editors behind the publication.

She planned to teach at De La Salle and take care of the handful of cats adopted from the custodial center where they kept her company, and waited for the next moves of the International Criminal Court against her nemesis now in semi-retirement in Davao City.

The looming phaseout of the traditional jeepney has triggered apprehension in the transport sector, with serial strikes toward yearend when a compulsory consolidation of jeepney franchises takes effect, paving way for a mandatory transition to a modern electric jeep.

Groups such as Piston and Manibela have warned of mass immobility should they be forced to purchase the new vehicles at a few million per unit, with minuscule subsidy from the government.

It is not farfetched then that we are seeing the last days of the former king of the road due to the previous administration’s order to phase out the Pacific War-era relic that sometimes runs without headlights on at night but still reliable when transporting passengers despite running red lights and stopping mid-road with neither rhyme nor reason.

After 61 years, the Philippines regained Asian Games basketball supremacy in October through the exploits of the Gilas squad led by naturalized Pinoy Justin Brownlee, whose epic performance in the semifinal against host China was one for the ages.

The final against Jordan almost seemed anticlimactic, but a sad footnote was that Brownlee tested positive for THC or cannabis derivative, perhaps an offshoot of rehab he underwent for a lingering injury pre-tournament.

Besides marijuana can hardly be described as performance enhancing, except maybe for the imagination to the extent that it made real the Asiad gold, and basketball fans can only nod in agreement that it is possible to hate drugs but love brownies… er, Brownlee.