First "Holy Week" home in 18 years! The whole country practically shuts down by Maundy Thursday and slowly reawakens by Easter. The thoroughfares are eerily deserted and it is very pleasant to go about the city. We visited 7 churches and recited the 14 Stations of the Cross. The one slight difference was we ate in an Italian restaurant after the "Visita Iglesia"--years ago, only hard core Chinese eating places remained open on Holy Thursday and we had no choice except to eat in Binondo or Santa Cruz.

Along the way, we encountered roving bands of young people walking towards Antipolo, their form of personal penance to make up for past transgressions. Life may be getting harder and we are not investing sufficiently for the future but we are a humble people (sometimes too humble in fact) and we will also find our voice one day.

First a definition of terms. In the US, I was firmly pro-choice because I did not want the government to criminalize a woman's right to a tragic choice. For somebody who was privy to the most private matters on a daily basis I not only felt the deep anguish this decision brought, I also felt that I needed to fully respect a woman's right to follow her conscience.

Here in the Philippines, we don't have a Roe v Wade. Abortion is illegal. There is no choice here. Yet 500,000 abortions are performed each year. Women, mostly in their thirties with 5 or more children, who decide to have an abortion know exactly where to go to. Yet no serious effort to stop this tragic problem appears to be within the horizon. We all need to realize that this is not a population problem. It is a problem of how to prevent any more abortions.

I have been a licensed physician for 18 years now. I have only valued life even more. This is why I have become firmly against human failings that degrade the dignity of human life. When we begin to minimize the value of life, we will soon begin to allow human rights abuses to slip by. We will shortly become apathetic to the inhuman poverty that surrounds us. We will begin to tolerate corruption and compromise in its many forms. We will start rationalizing the use of violence.

I am absolutely Pro-Life.

I wish to assure every reader of this blog that it is only because I am simply overloaded with work that I am unable to reply promptly to your questions. I will admit that I did not expect this challenge to be as challenging as this. Remember that I am one of the very few hotshot Filipino gastroenterologists who could see a hundred patients a day and still have time to spend with my children, read my beloved books and sip a few couple Bombay Sapphires with Doctor Paul, Doctor Todd and Captain Ed.

This part of my journey has gotten me to experience clinical anxiety for the first time in my life which alone will make me become a better physician because I will be able to better relate with my patients whenever they tell me about their symptoms. I am not complaining though, remember that I asked for this.

To those who demand immediate answers, take it easy. Let me give you well-thought-out answers that fully conform with my conscience. See, I am not about to squander my most precious quality as a political novice and start compromising and pandering this early so as to make everyone feel happy, so I might become the most appealing political commodity because I am not here for the money and the perks and the privileges and the adulation. I could have taken a better pathway than fronting for a Party that brooks no compromise and demands that we all shape up because we are all at fault.

Previously, exasperated Catholic apologists came up with the phrase “if you cannot understand my silence, then you cannot understand my words” and they would always artfully place this quote under the image of the crucified Christ. You haven’t exactly gotten silence from me. I have allowed you to become privy to my evolving views. What you see is what I am. Answerable only to my Creator.

So if you wish to quibble on what my views are regarding diaphragms and debt caps, condoms and charter change you miss the point entirely. I wish to change the bigger picture. When we claim we are pro-life and we uphold human dignity, we cannot ignore the fact that half a million abortions occur each year and we are not doing enough to prevent every single one of these tragedies. When we claim we are pro-poor and stay silent on the crippling of entire generations through substandard education and picayune healthcare programs because we refuse to question public policy on debt payment out of fear that we will suffer even more?????

Are we not now already the most corrupt? Highest infant mortality rate. Lowest life expectancy. Highest maternal mortality. Lowest growth compared to neighbors (which is really how you need to measure growth anyway, like who is the top student in a class and who is getting left behind?). What are we waiting for? Are we hoping for these politicians presently outpromising one another to undergo a collective metanoia? Wake up, that ain’t happening. No prophet necessary to understand this. We are going down. Clearly an inappropriate moment to analyze the vacuous vagaries of vasectomies.

Today is Black Saturday and we need to look forward to the Easter.

A popular online paper interviewed me and archived the interview via podcast. I received many comments and a number of them were from economist and banking industry friends who were disturbed nay flabbergasted by the mere mention of “debt cap”. I was warned it would convert us to a hermit kingdom much like North Korea and we were going to be treated like a pariah and so many other dire warnings. Told most of them to calm down, everything is negotiable at this stage. Get the pun? Our negotiating position would vastly improve if we confer to our negotiating panel the full and unrestricted support of the Filipino people.

Point is we need to engage in critical thinking here. Capping interest payments is not tantamount to heresy especially if some of the loans were secured to pay off behest loans and odious loans. How will we get out of this tragic mess if we are perpetually timid to making difficult moral choices? Renegotiating or restructuring (much more acceptable terms to the cognoscenti) our debts to our advantage needs to be considered. We aren’t getting too far with this meek and obedient pathway. The consequences will probably be not as harsh as the consequences of being a model beggar nation.

In my newfound political peregrinations, I am invariably asked why I am fighting a lost cause. I always begin by asking them what's lost because I certainly don't see anything lost in my cause. And here's the time they allude to a certain amount of pity that they feel for me, a sweaty and sunburned physician asking for their vote. I still haven't paused long enough to think of a perfect response because I am treating this challenge the way I have conducted myself throughout my life. I am going to pour everything that I have into this very worthy cause. Many people seem to have no idea how many Filipinos graduate from the University of the Philippines College of Medicine, complete a specialty in Internal Medicine and a subspecialty in gastroenterology in the US, become board-certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine, build a solid and successful medical practice in the buckle of the Bible Belt...while I will appreciate pity if it comes with a vote, I hope every Filipino understands the gravity of our situation. This is without question a battle for the heart and the soul of our country. The next 6 weeks will tell us whether the 3000 Filipinos who leave for other countries daily will swell to 6000, whether we will condemn entire generations to mediocrity, whether we totally become numb to all these human rights abuses, whether we want to continue being treated like a doormat by the international community, whether we as a nation are prepared to sacrifice, to pay the steep price required to get off this deep rut of corruption, loss of identity, poverty and hopelessness.

I have said it before and I will say it again, we do not have to continue going down this well-traveled road to more failure. We need to take our country back from all these pretentious and pompous politicians because we have seen what they can do and there is no reason on earth why they will change course, why they will veer from their tried and tired formulae that has brought us to where we are--most corrupt in Asia, highest infant mortality rate, lowest life expectancy, 500,000 abortions each year.

I gotta go. There's a high school graduation nearby. When you don't have radio and tv ads and all you have are pocket calendars, you need to hustle for votes on a person-to-person basis.