‘Peechure! Peechure!’

It is ridiculous for someone – especially a lawyer – to claim that a photo taken of Bongbong and Liza Marcos in a Chinese restaurant in Pasay City can – and will! daw – prove their connection to POGOs and why these gambling hubs supposedly proliferated during his (BBM’s) term.

That assertion is wrong on so many levels it is nothing short of ludicrous. First, as one of the men who were present at that restaurant – special envoy to China Benito Techico – has come out to clarify, the photo was taken in November 2020, when they were Bongbong and Liza Marcos, not President and First Lady. Techico explained the owner of the restaurant asked the Marcos couple for a photo with a group of customers, who turned out to be Chinese and maybe POGO-ers, including Cassandra Li Ong, now a guest at the House of Representatives detention center. After the picture taking, the group of Ong left and the group of BBM continued with their meal.

It is so Pinoy to want and ask for a photo with anyone even nominally famous – showbiz, politics, sosyal, etc. And any public figure is obliged to oblige – or risk being branded as mayabang and, these days, bashed on socmed. Politicians aspiring  for higher office – as I assume BBM was in 2020 – especially cannot/must not say no to such a request.

I am probably one of only a handful – maybe there are only 38 of us? – of people in the Philippines who runs away from the camera. I remember on a fam tour some years back, when we were taking a group photo, someone said, “Tabi ako kay Doreen, para sigurado akong lalabas sa newspaper!” To which the tour leader, a friend who knows me well, countered, “Naku, pagkatabi mo siya, ma-crop ka for sure!”

When some of us were in Malacañang for an interview with President Noynoy Aquino, he very kindly obliged to pose with each one individually. When everyone was done, he asked if I also wanted a photo. I asked him if I am stopped on the road for an infraction, would I be let off if I showed the cop my photo with him. He laughed, “Lalo ka ma-arrest ng pulis!” I passed; I now kind of regret that I do not have a single souvenir photo with my president.

A friend who loves to have such souvenir photos with the famous and infamous once tried to drag a group of us for a photo with a young man who had a crowd around him taking selfies. The rest of us refused, so she went ahead and took a selfie with the guy. As she excitedly showed us the photo she asked, “Who is he anyway?” I rest my case.

I guess my aversion to photos with celebrities or wanna-be celebrities, especially politicos, I got from my mother, who once made me tear up and throw away a photo of me with a then-minor government functionary (who eventually became a top official) taken at a neighborhood event (“For shame!” she admonished, though the term is much harsher in Hokkien). This aversion is reinforced by the realization that photogenic I am definitely not; I think I’m better read than seen. So while my line of work in media, plus my involvement in the arts and culture scene, gives me many opportunities to make “peechure peechure” with the rich and famous and powerful – or those who think they are – I do not have any such photos.

Oh, let me correct that. The one person I made sure I had a photo with was Yuan Longping, a national treasure in China known as the “Father of Hybrid Rice” who saved millions from starvation. I met him at a dinner in the home of the late Henry Lim Bonliong, whose SL Agritech Yuan Longping collaborated with to develop a hybrid rice variety suitable for Philippine conditions.

But back to that photo with the Marcos couple that Ong “authenticated.” Sure, the photo is real, but the real circumstances surrounding the taking of that photo should also be “authenticated” by Ong, whose current address is the Batasang Pambansa. For her lawyer to claim that “this picture may hold the clue as to why POGO operations, especially illegal POGO, multiplied during the time of President Marcos” is pure balderdash. He added, “Sabi nga nila a picture speaks a thousand words” – it could just as easily speak a thousand lies.