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Makabayang Pilipino

IMAGE make-over specialists are agog at the possibility of fitting out a new look for the Malacañang top tenant. A freshly minted image that becomes her was called for after she affixed her signature to the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement or JPEPA in Helsinki last September 9.

Reports have it the two-way agreement allows Japan to dump its garbage onto Philippine soil. That means there’ll be mounds of cash for us for their mountains of trash.

Japan cranks out each year over 400 million tons of industrial waste alone.

That would be some 70,000 shiploads of filth we can use as landfill material to extend our nation’s coastline by several thousand more hectares. Landfill areas tend to become prime real estate over time. And we won’t mind if squatters use idled huge tracts as resettlement sites—it’s up to ‘em settlers to absorb and soak up the dioxin-rich atmosphere of such sites to render the additional territory fit for human habitation after a century or two, maybe more.

Let those senile lawmakers of the Senate pore over the agreement’s fine print prior to ratification. JPEPA’s a treaty. Senate’s job is ratify it or throw it out the window. While the senators are straining their sights, suffer loudmouths to cry themselves hoarse with an obscene-sounding, “Boo ratification! Boo ratification!”

Meanwhile, avid Palace watchers should await in excitement over the new look that image make-over specialists are concocting for Malacañang’s top resident. A new look that breathes of, blends ethnic, organic, historic and biodegradable as befits the JPEPA treaty.

That new image still kept under wraps ought to be called the Makabayang Pilipino look. That ought to be a radical departure from the hosto or japayuki look.

Ought to provide pièce de résistance for the new look would be the humble bayong.

Yes, the homespun bag of plainted buri palm leaves. Readily disposable, biodegradable and very, very earth-friendly. Just cut two holes on the bag to allow the wearer to see, dump it over the head and—voila!—there’s the new look.

Love that historic Makabayang Pilipino look which would affirm and strengthen bonds of calamity, oops, we mean amity with Japan.

In the not so distant past, Makabayang Pilipino was simply called Makapili.

Now it’s back.

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