Of gazelles and lions

THERE is an African proverb that Thomas Friedman quotes in his bestseller, "The World is Flat," which goes like this:

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning, a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is a gazelle and she knows she has to outrun her enemies, and even supposed allies, in order to survive. Former President Cory Aquino was a gazelle once and she spent six years surviving nine coup attempts, one after another. Now that she is no longer a gazelle, Cory is free to ask the current gazelle to stop running and trying to survive.

Senate President Franklin Drilon is a lion and he knows he has to outmaneuver his Senate rivals to be appointed vice president by a President Noli De Castro, or he will be termed out as senator in 2007 and lose any chance to one day be president. Drilon knows that if De Castro becomes president, then Noli will be the third in a row to go from senator to vice president to president, a route Drilon desperately wants to follow.

Because all the senators are lions who want to be president, none of them support a change to a parliamentary system, which would deny them their chance to be president. It is a system where they would be demoted to the level of House representatives.

Everyone in the Philippines is either a gazelle or a lion and everyone is running. But the politicians are amateurs at playing lions compared to the Filipino TV network bosses.

After a virtual decade of monopolizing the global Filipino satellite TV market, with 200,000 subscribers in the US alone, ABS-CBN's the Filipino Channel (TFC) is poised to face its first competitor in the US, GMA-7 Pinoy TV, the #1 ranked TV network in the Philippines.

When ABS-CBN learned that GMA-7 was set to stage its star-studded "SOP Tour" in San Francisco on July 23 at the Bill Graham Auditorium to launch its US program, ABS-CBN scheduled its even more star-packed "Kapamilya Tour" for the same date at San Francisco's Monster Park Fairgrounds to draw attendance and attention away from its rival. The SOP Tour event was supposed to charge a fee but when it learned that the Kapamilya Tour would be free, the SOP Tour was forced to open its doors for free as well.

GMA-7's SOP Tour boasted Regine Velasquez, Jaya, Janno Gibbs and Ogie Alcasid, with comedians German Moreno and Richard Gomez to complement them. But ABS-CBN countered with Jasmine Trias, Kuh Ledesma, Gary Valenciano and Rachel Alejandro, among its major stars. GMA-7 had TV hosts Mel Tiangco and Joey De Leon but ABS-CBN had Korina Sanchez and Kris Aquino.

About 7,000 Filipinos attended the indoor event of GMA-7 at the Bill Graham Auditorium but 25,000 showed up for the ABS-CBN outdoor spectacular.

Charging $12.99 a month to 200,000 subscribers is only the beginning (about $3M a month). The ads on all the 24-hour a-day programs produce even more revenues for the networks.

Because the stakes are enormously high, no one wants to "starve to death" so everyone is running from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn.

It is not only the competition for overseas Filipinos that is causing sparks, it is also the competition among overseas Filipinos that is generating heat.

In its July 22-28, 2005 issue, Diaryo Pilipino presented a full-page ad signed by Filipino-Americans entitled "An Open Letter to the President of the Philippines" demanding the resignation of President Macapagal-Arroyo.

Internet regular Bobby Reyes from Los Angeles, who identified himself as "Still a Proud Filipino Citizen," blasted the "American citizens of Filipino descent" for "interfering in the domestic affairs of the Republic of the Philippines, which is no longer a colony of the United States as of July 4, 1946."

"I wish to stress most respectfully that Filipino Americans have only one President and he is no other than His Excellency, George W. Bush," Reyes wrote. "Please address to President Bush your concerns about your country, the United States of America, and its relations with other foreign countries. After all, you have left the Philippines and abandoned your Filipino citizenship. If you have something to say about the Philippines, please address them to your State Department or through your congress people, so that they could present to the Secretary of State your concerns and apprehensions about your former homeland."

Reyes' Internet nemesis, Perry Diaz from Sacramento, California, who identified himself as "a proud and productive Fil-Am," immediately retorted that "everyone of the three million Fil-Ams, including TNTs, has the birthright to give his or her opinion on any issues involving our Motherland."

"The Philippines recognizes our birthright and that is the reason why Fil-Ams are accorded special treatment by the Philippine government when we go home as balik-bayan. Furthermore, if we contribute to the economy or help in humanitarian projects like the Gawad Kalinga and Books for the Barrios, we are referred to as balik-bayani. We are the biggest source of tourism revenues. The 8.5 million OFWs including Fil-Ams and other expats remitted more than US$21 billion last year… Regardless of what narrow-minded people say, Fil-Ams have a voice in the internal affairs of our Motherland."

Or infernal affairs, as the case may be.

With all the lions and gazelles prowling around on TV and in the Internet and everywhere, it's a virtual zoo out there. Watch out.

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