Encouragement To A Son

By: Atty. Marlo T. Cristobal

In one of your vlogs broadcasted with the tagline, “BANAT BY,” you expressed before your multitude viewers your feelings of desperation as well as your apprehension that nothing has changed for the better despite your ceaseless, blistering attack against corruption and other varied forms of roguishness in government. Your desperation was so graphic l could almost physically touch it, since l myself got the feeling that ours had sunk as a God-forsaken country.

But hearken to my encouragement, Byron. Cheer up, there exist circumstances that your vicious exposition will not be taken lightly—any longer, soon.

Remember that you have gone far ahead. You have chalked up a very huge viewers, having gained an incredible bond with and adulation of the great unwashed—here and abroad—that important government personalities are now enticed to gravitate around you to suck up to or ask for help. As you disclosed, politicians, top government officials or plain government officers have sought private meetings with you to complain or for you to air their complaints against corruption or anomalies in their respective areas of government service. I personally know some personalities in these private huddles, and l could only shake my head in disbelief knowing the character of those in attendance. Sorry for this irreverence of a father, but l don’t mean interference in or to be judgmental of your business. You are on the ground, you know better.

You may not realize that when men of consequence or influence come to you for consultation or for help or, as you revealed, when many government employees and the rest of your viewers confided to you that they gratifyingly watch your vlog’s flaming diatribes against government open and unrestrained banditry and duplicity ( although they remain capitulated to their lot of being coerced to silence or inaction for fear of reprisal), take this to heart—you have helped plant the seed of “revolution” on a fertile ground. Not a revolution of the bloody type, but a revolution of people’s minds being awakened to the offensive odor of festering corruption and fakery of the regime.

This seed that you have helped plant, in collaboration with other voggers of the same persuasion, will bloom into a full, radiant flower when people start to openly vocalize their sentiments against the stinking malfeasances of the government. They have in fact just started. Meantime, feel the earth tremor of that seed as it struggles to spring itself out to the ground surface.

Do not be impatient if you do not see right away the moral changes in government you are expecting. Wait for the natural process inherent to this, (the good process, not the kind of ‘process’ your opponents in your recent TV 5 debate advocated that an expression must go through first, brazenly ignorant that their ‘process’ serves as a barrier to free speech which our constitution holds dear and sacred, it being a foundation of democracy).You see, Rome was not built in one day. Neither did Christianity our Lord Jesus no less founded, flourish quickly.

Your enormous viewers are lapping up with gusto your impeccable logic and arguments and your searing no-holds-barred anti-corruption and government lying commentaries. You seemed to have set a standard different from the normal. In my time, l recall the bombastic political commentators, the late Damian Soto and Rafael Yabut, fierce speakers they were, yet showed restraint in their government critique, and now our current mainstream media commentators go downright timid or controlled. In contrast, you mount a direct and stinging attack, with a devil-may-care attitude, and ever damning the torpedoes. This is what endears you to your big following—the fertile soil of your political seed, who feel you are the perfect embodiment, if not a titillation, of their sentiments. Such is the miracle of social media that the elitist mainstream media wants to put down and belittle. It does not realize that social media is now an irreversible thing of the century, a blessing obviously, a God gift to those who want truth and justice to reign.

In your more poetic language, the nation is like a boil (pigsa) that has grown uncontrollably swolen and purulent (full of pus) and thus ready to burst anytime to spread its pernicious bacteria of disorder nationwide with just one more stroke of mishandling.

Take care always and God bless you for your advocacy of His doctrines of truth, justice and fairness.