The Dear Sonny letters

Addressed to Lt. Antonio Trillanes IV, an anonymous letter in colloquial Pinoyese (with a sprinkling of "swardspeak" and mock-Assumptionista) made the rounds of e-groups last week, even newspaper columns. The typically light-hearted communication has drawn reactions ranging from nodding snickers to raised hackles..

Since we’ve always espoused the ideology of light-up and/or lighten-up, we don’t think that contributing to epistolary literature should hurt or harass anyone. In this spirit have we culled other letters imaginably addressed to our hero-or-heel of the hour.

Where possible, the correspondence has been forcefully shorn of foul language and/or bad grammar. But we can only do so much, fazed by such a cascade of open letters, from fawning to trenchant. We also had to allow the spirit of each missive to be true to its nature, thus remain authentic.

* * *

Dear Sonny,

Thank you for the warm appreciation you expressed for our sending to you your latest idol poster, glossy, as designed by yours trulily. We must explain that we made it back-to-back with Aubrey Miles cuz mukhang bagay the two of you, even if she’s a girl, and we caught her kasi on TV the other nite saying she had a crush on you. Bigger kaya than ours? Only time will tell. Just like how it (Father Time) will tell when you can send the signal for us to start our very serious and dedicated Trillanes-for-Senator campaign. Meanwhile, our barangay basketball team has been formed. But we’re still looking for a sports tailor who will at least try to fit Mayhaligue Magdalo Mistah Marauders (M4 more macho than F4, o di ba?) on the front sides of the uniforms. Colored red, of course. With that alibata H or K ba ’yun in white. The numbers in the back will have to be the usual Roman. Thanks for the fundings. In the next tournament we wanna field two teams, senior and junior. The latter can be called the M4 Teens, o di ba? As for the spiral notebooks with your handsome mugshot on the covers, we will wait till sem break before distributing to vendors although we’re having them printed now. Thanks again for the fundings. Miss u on the celfon. This is such a long letter, my fingers cramps na, the tinta make tulo pa. O my manicure. Sorry, idol. Keep well. Luv ya,

Ompong Segurista,
President,
D’Orig Sonny Trillanes Fans Club

* * *

Hoy, Trillanes,

I must caution you against using intemperate language while you are still in uniform. You’re supposed to be an officer and a gentleman. Ad hominem arguments and epithets directed at a person of authority do not advance your cause or that of rational discussion. Excuse me, but when you scream "Traitor! Traitor!" in referring to your Commander-in-Chief who is our President, I can only say: That’s no way to treat a lady, buddy.

Pocket that smirk. You think we were all born yesterday? You think you can get away with murder most foul? Tell it to the Marines.

Hope you choke next time you’re interviewed on radio. Your emotional state betrays you for what you are, you Navy brat. In short, wag kang bastos! Ano, kakasa ka?

Engr. Romeo "Big Boy" Reynante,
Paco, Manila

* * *

Dear Sonny,

Your idealism is praiseworthy, and should be simulated by our youth. Also by all bishops. You have to be pure in your profession. That is what your message is to everyone, I am sure. Hope they’re all listening out there.

Your charges are legitimate. At least that’s what everyone says, even the Cardinal. I agree. So does my family. We pray for you. We will host the block rosary this Friday. I have bought all the candles. We will pray in our neighborhood that government will have to look into your accusations and listen to the grievances you aired very dramatically. My daughter says she hopes a teleserye comes out of it, but not starring any of the Viva Hot Babes daw. She was very angry with that text joke that went around saying one of your demands was for them to spend overnight at Oakwood. What kind of society do we have, always making fun of legitimate excuses, I mean, protests? You should have included the reformatting of the MTRCB as one of your demands, they let so many billboards have very large advertisements that are so lewd, over the Pasig River even, here near C-5. You were right to plant your C-4 around that Ayala park, they charge so much parking fees, it’s already obscene. Bless you, hijo, for showing our people the light at the end of the tunnel.

Thank you very much,
Pastor Iluminado "Boy" Baygon,
Executive Secretary,
Church of the Meek,
Bgy. Oranbo, Pasig City

* * *

Dear Sonny,

Our last offer is P4.5 million for the rights to film your bio. Per your firm demand, we promise not to turn this version into a massacre movie. But could you please reconsider your resistance to our idea of having Ms. Kris Aquino play your love interest? That would really be a casting coup, don’t you agree? Whoever plays your character, whatever. Cesar Montaño is still trying out Hollywood, so we don’t know. Besides, he looks too mature for your part. How about Lucky Manzano? We need big stars because your movie rights are for such a steep price. The title "The Seige" will not work, because most of the masa cannot pronounce it, or even spell it. How about "Rouge Soldiers"? Always, it’s a wrap,

– Carlo "Direk" Capatas

* * *

Dear Tukayo,

Now I understand what William Shakespeare meant when he said that "Youth is wasted on the young." Such energy. Such vitality. Such passion. But all for a lost cause. Rebel with a cause nga, but at what cost. Especially to our common nicknames. How can I now live this down? Especially since someone will soon note that four of my fellow senators actually had military careers, and not one of them ever thought of investigating this matter of corruption in their former domain. Not until now. Good that I can still go by another monicker. No thanks to you.

John O.,
Beverly Hills, Cebu City

* * *

Dear Sonny,

We the members of the List-Making Society of Sampaloc, Manila, thank you very much for the opportunity to add another exercise to our long lists of achievement thus far, dubious or otherwise. Because of your successful videocam and headline grabbing episode, now we can draw up a double-list of winners and losers.

Winners: Smart and Globe for all the prepaid cards sold that night, plus the postpaid charges for all the negotiators and observers all over our land.

Losers: TV anchors with no sense of continuity, because of the absence of central intelligence manning the news desk, so that when a new tandem comes to take over they do not know what has gone on before, therefore nobody asked what about the planted bombs all through those hours you were holed up inside Oakwood, nobody was minding the bombs, even when it rained, didn’t they get soaking wet, who were guarding them, nobody asked that question. Also, nobody asked or wondered if those bombs were the real thing or just fake, everyone assumed they could really be detonated, through tripwires that all those vehicles were running over, nobody asked aloud, also that girl on never mind what channel, she kept asking about the penalty facing your group, she didn’t even know the difference between the declaration of martial law and the declaration of a state of rebellion, she just kept trying to look pretty, pa-ngiwi-ngiwi there, and the rival station naman kept saying that Magdalo was the Andres Bonifacio faction, my goodness.

Sorry, got carried away. Now for the rest of our winners versus losers list … (NOTE: The rest of the communication had to be edited due to space considerations.)

Best regards and thanks again,
Archimedes Ong,
Chairman,
List-Making Society of Sampaloc, Manila

* * *

Dear Lt. SG Tony or Sonny Trillanes,

Martial Law? You said GMA was planning to declare Martial Law this August? Mwa-ha-ha! Waaah! That only showed how ridiculous your gripes and demands were, also your level of naiveté and paranoia. Already hard to believe that a President and a Defense Secretary can plot together to bomb Davao like a wag-the-dog scenario. And you even had to add as hearsay intelligence the impending imposition of Martial Law!? Grow up, Sonny Boy. You sounded just like your idol Gringo, who said it was just coincidence that his National Recovery Program followers walked down EDSA with NRP streamers the next morning. Coincidence? Mwa-ha-ha! Waaah! Come on, you clowns. You try to insult our intelligence. We’re so ashamed of you. You’re failures even as stand-up comics. Better take lessons from Mike Navarrete and Michael V. Try to make us laugh about realistic things next time.

An irate TV viewer and disillusioned cadet (name withheld upon request),

PMA,
Loakan Road, Baguio City

* * *

Dear Sir Sonny Trillanes,

We wish to report to you that certain members of Congress and their staff have been illegally recycling toners and fax paper, even vacuum-lift computer chairs, by selling these to couriers from the Senate. We hope you can have the media look into this matter. We have to keep buying and buying more of the stuff. Imagine the unnecessary expenses being shouldered by the people.

Batasang Pambansa
Employees Association

* * *

Dear Sonny-Babe,

I am so sad and disappointed. I still lounge around in my lingerie and await your coming. Your lawyer say you have no time right now to honor my invite to an intimate dinner I will cook myself, just for the two of us. If you don’t come, producers not to take notice and cast me in R-18 movie. What happens then to the investment made by my manager on thong bikinis? So how long does my heavenly body have to wait? Make up your mind now, Sonny-babe. You are my Sunshine. And I’m all Yours,

Glorietta 1 Magdalo
(o sige na nga, sexpot wannabe)

* * *

Dear Sonny & gang,

It was a travesty of our forebears’ noble ideals that you appropriated the name Magdalo for your rebel group. I hope you serve an extra-long sentence in the stockade (without your cell phones). Then I hope you make the mistake of passing through Maragondon in the distant future, cruising around in a van of any make, so you will find out how deep the ravines are in our municipality. Only a Caviteño can recycle that historic name in the spirit of Cavitismo, as our beloved former Gov. Johnny Remulla did for a political party in the good old days not too long ago.

Now even a TV station’s reporters keep repeating the mistake of one of your fellow mutineers when he said Magdalo was the faction of that Bonifacio. Well, fact him. Whoever does not study history correctly and hold it sacred does not deserve any mercy from any court, high or martial. That means also: You take the high road, we’ll show you the low road. Then we’ll kanyod Maragondon lahat kayo.

Boying

* * *

Dear Lt. Sonny Trillanes,

Whilst I observed in admiration how you manifested distinctive valor and nobility in laying your lives on the line if only to expose and prejudice the corruption that is so grievously endemic in our society, wherefore even our military has become the laughing-stock in Southeast Asia let alone the formal aggrupation that is ASEAN, I could not help but console myself over my own feelings of flabbergasted trepidation over and with regards the manner and conduct that your otherwise crusading assembly perforce resolved to carry it out (with?).

My dear student, you were wrong, to begin with. That was thoroughly unbecoming, given the parlous state of our economy, stability and tourism. But let this mentor grant you the benefit of the doubt, that you erred on the side of throwing caution to the winds of fate.

My next philosophical beef with your actions is that when you had already made the world sit up and take notice, you still had to make all those non-negotiable demands. Now that was talking through your hat and upping the ante post-colonially. What self-respecting government would so easily capitulate to such unreasonable demands and still hold its head up high? For a while there, I must admit, fear gripped my entire being as I imagined the proverbial spare tire turning into our transition President, and treating us to absolute sufferance through long-winded rhetoric posing as speeches, delivered in stentorian fashion at that. Indeed, it was a positive miracle that we were spared such a national calamity.

I must argue with the right side of the brain that once you managed to air your grievances, you had already succeeded, you had won thusly. To have subjected us to further surreality of extreme theater only meant that you overstepped the bounds of intellectual discernment, discourse and resolution.

I can polemicize with you or anyone till kingdom come, on this matter of commodification of arms, but I fear, ultimately, that you have not learned your classroom lessons well, and am therefore thoroughly disappointed over your precipitate contentment in achieving only the Consciousness Two level, such as to allow an arrested state of mental ferment, let alone development. I will not let you off easy next time. Your thesis advisor,

Prof. Porfirio Tangcangco, Ph.D.,
National College of
Public Administration
and Governance,
UP Diliman.

P.S. As you once riposted ever so subtly if eloquently in class, "Blah blah blah …"