MANILA, Philippines – First of all, thanks to Rotary Club of Makati Buendia for inviting me to speak on a topic of paramount (or prurient) national interest that our busy senators like Bong Revilla, Miriam Defensor, Jamby Madrigal, Alan Peter and Pia Cayetano, as well as Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales and Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita had the time to make public pronouncements about in defense of our morality — the Dr. Hayden Kho, Jr. sex videos.
My apologies to Bong, whom I admire as a top actor and for having a great wife in Lani Mercado, but I believe the last people qualified to defend morals in this country are our politicos, many of whom are not immoral but are amoral!
Many of our hardcore clowns and shameless buffoons in politics are worse than porn stars, they’re modern-day kings, queens and datus with no clothes.
By the way, I have also been invited to a luncheon on May 26 by medical doctors of the Philippine Medical Association led by president Dr. Rey Santos, Philippine Psychiatric Association officials and others to speak again on this raging national issue, which is about the foibles of their fellow doctor Hayden Kho, perhaps for them to analyze his psychiatric problems or idiosyncrasies if any? This scandal has also rocked the whole Philippine medical profession.
I just want to clarify that I am only a film buff whose hobby is being editor in chief of the glossy showbiz monthly S magazine, which is having in-depth features on the scandal in our June issue, but I’m not an expert sex videologist!
One guy whispered to me: “My wife is a sex object. Every time I ask for sex, she objects.” Congratulations, at least you wouldn’t have any scandalous sex videos for sure!
As a columnist of the country’s leading newspaper The Philippine STAR and as editor of a showbiz mag, some readers have emailed me copies of four sex videos of Hayden engaging in bedroom gymnastics allegedly with starlet Katrina Halili of GMA 7, new showbiz denizen Maricar Reyes of ABS-CBN 2, and a Brazilian model. Sources tell me there are still more sex videos of Hayden with other women. Wow, hot pandesal!
Seriously, at a recent lunch, when we first saw the Hayden videos on a laptop, Comedy Queen Ai Ai de las Alas told me I could quote her saying this: “Para siyang tanga, t****tado si Hayden. Kawawa yung mga babae (He’s like a fool, Hayden is an a**hole. I pity these women).”
This scandal has a possibly pernicious impact not only on the morality of many impressionable young people nationwide who still look up to showbiz celebrities as icons of success, and the best antidote is the Christian concept of sex as beautiful and sacred within the context of a monogamous marriage.
Beyond morality, this Hayden sex video scandal also has serious negative impact on our national elections next year and on our Philippine economy, because this sordid circus has so engrossed us and turned us into Internet voyeurs, I’m seriously concerned it might corrode our civic spirit and desensitize us to the more outrageous political pornography that might possibly be done next year if automated elections are not set in place in an orderly way.
Why, less than a year before the national elections, we still don’t have a pragmatic, workable, understandable and sensible automation plan? Why is there no outrage, no fiery senatorial speeches and no Justice Secretary bombasting the chaotic Comelec, which seems to be laying the groundwork for election confusion in May 2010?
On May 20, the same day that starlet Katrina Halili went to Senator Bong Revilla and the NBI to seek help to file a case against Hayden, the World Competitiveness Yearbook prepared by the Swiss business school Institute for Management Development reported that the Philippines had dropped three notches to number 43 out of 57 countries in terms of global competitiveness. Wow naman, this is worse than an unsuccessful doctor-slash-showbiz wannabe dropping his pants on video!
Also, proliferation of Internet sex videos might affect overall productivity because lots of people might suffer sleepless nights (or wasted office hours) downloading or watching, thus adding up to gross national inefficiencies to our economy!
Also on the same day that Katrina was seeking the help of Senator Bong and the NBI, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) issued a report declaring the Philippines may face an “education crisis” due to declining enrollment of students, as well as shortages in classrooms, textbooks and teachers.
The UN report also raised the problem of our wasting millions of pesos on salaries for excess government personnel, pointing out as example that 13 out of 24 government departments have too many undersecretaries and assistant secretaries, with 56 percent of them having no executive service eligibility. The report also noted that the Office of the President has the most number of undersecretaries and assistant secretaries with 31 officials or 38 percent of the total!
Not enough government funds for education, while we waste money in a bloated state bureaucracy, isn’t this a bigger and more disgusting scandal than any errant doc’s wild sexcapade videos?
On the same day Senator Bong Revilla made a rare privilege speech in the Senate condemning Hayden as a “pervert of the highest order, a predator” (why not use “a pervert of the lowliest kind, a lowlife”?), the United Nations Committee Against Torture also expressed in its 12-page report its “grave concern” about what it described as “a climate of impunity” allegedly involving police, military and other Philippine government officials that supposedly paved the way for torture and other human rights abuses.
Isn’t alleged trampling of basic and universal human rights — if proven true — a form of perversity of the worst and most horrific kind?
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita weighed in on the Hayden sex videos scandal, saying, “Anything that is offensive to public morals must be sanctioned.” Be careful, Sir, among the popular meanings of “sanction” in the dictionary is “to allow,” “to authorize,” “to approve,” “to ratify,” with alternative meaning in international law as “to penalize.”
I also ask — aren’t the abovementioned humongous but still surmountable challenges of contemporary Philippine society more infinitely offensive to morals, decency, social peace, civilization and public order than any lurid Hayden sex video?
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