2009 began as a bull kicking its heels and looking for action. Then a red cape with ‘Pangandaman’ inscribed on it in bold letters waved provocatively from Bambee Dela Paz’s blog. Next a furious newborn bull was filling the air with dust from the eve of Holy Innocents past the Gregorian New Year.

An arrogant, abusive Philippine elite has been with us for centuries, they almost start the day. Fresh proof in young Bambee’s blog caught the bull’s eye just as the nation found itself with renewed post-Christmas energy, ready to resume a fight with the status quo.

First notice in my Inbox led me to this blog and I marveled at the instant rain of indignation that met it – close to a hundred messages of support before New Year, over a thousand a week later. The indignation continued to seep into my Inbox as Vicissitudes next found itself in the Inquirer front page, headline and opinion page, multiplying in more online news sites and dailies, opinion columns and countless Filipino blog sites.

The Net is the latest Pinoy drug of choice. In a week, it seemed a nation online was demanding the resignation of Pangandaman father and son – to start the year right, so to speak. It wasn’t just what they did to Bambee’s family, by her account. ‘Pangandaman’ had become a new name for strutting, born-to-rule Filipinos led by government officials more numerous than we care to count, for longer than we can remember.

Usually the soul of moderation, two of my regular e-mail correspondents dropped out of character and instantly took sides, urging me to end a rare holiday and get back into the fray. One sent a heated debate among Ateneo alumni, with everyone bearing down on one of them who dared suggest that there could be two sides to the story.

But just as an Inquirer editorial took the air of a new national crusade came this “corroborated report” from the Valley Golf greens. When the flood in my Inbox began to ebb, I thought it was because more people had seen the chinks in Bambee Dela Paz’s story suggested by RGE’s account. But no, in continued indignation, two of the most recent reactions spanned an even wider social spectrum from farther out.

OFW Fred Roda moaned in Saudi Arabia, “Ito na naman, ulit ang istorya ng ating bayan. Ilang linggo lang ang pagitan nang pumutok yung pag-uumbag ng isang mayor sa golf course, headline naman itong drug scandal. Here we go again, same old story for our country. Only a week or so between a mayor beating up someone on a golf course and a new headline on this drug scandal.)”

Next Manila columnist Rene Azurin skewered the Pangandaman story in well-distilled anger: “The reason the alternative version of the incident now being purveyed by the mayor, his Cabinet secretary father, their lawyers, and their PR machinery is dismissed as incredible by ordinary citizens is that it simply goes against the grain of our collective experience.” Here’s the rest of this column.

Together they took the scenario right back to the fire lit by Jun Lozada’s tearful confession at the Senate investigation of the NBN-ZTE scandal back in February 2008. The flames of consensus on the urgent need for change in our government NOW had swept our global nation then, remember? But came the collapse of Wall Street into ongoing global financial crisis, and for a moment it seemed the flames had been doused. Filipinos take a lot as a matter of course, but even we can bear only so much reality.

But here, in new collective indignation at the Pangandamans, is proof that the fire burns. Some are working for change more actively but a whole nation is clearly keeping score. No one has forgotten the bottomline, Mrs. President. At home and abroad, everyday, cheers come for the ripening of what began in the parliament of the streets and remains unfinished business over a quarter of a century later. Present provocations labeled ‘Macapagal-Arroyo’ are only more kindling for the flames.

The Pangandamans have obviously been shocked out of their kantius by a global nation’s instant fierce response to what they thought was their own private affair on a golf course. Too late to hush it up now with Malacañang’s help, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Mayor. This goes beyond you and Delfin Dela Paz, whatever his family and the courts decide to do with their close encounter with your rotten piece of Filipino political culture. It’s become public property, a new rally with an old cry – sweep the stinking stables clean, burn them if we must!

Provoked by first things first, the Year of the Ox came awake even before its formal birth in the lunar New Year. Now the horned one’s eye turns to a related piece of rotting meat in the Philippine judiciary – those suspected millions that changed hands when, with unaccustomed haste, a state prosecutor dismissed charges against three rich boys for drug pushing, another provocative symbol of the state of this nation.

“What else is new?” asks Fred Roda in Saudi Arabia. After all, bigger money stolen from public coffers or scooped up from government-run and -related rackets – jueteng, bribery, smuggling, skimming the cream of foreign grants and loans – continues to buy the status quo everyday.

Well, there’s a fundamentalist character to this one. Notice this paper’s full-spectrum coverage of this story? Prize-winning reporters are nailing down its many angles – from the main one and what it reveals of the underside of Filipino legal culture at home on golf courses (Do they also tee off with the Pangandamans?); to the Senate investigation where a new folk hero emerges, decked in a sterling record on the military battlefield.

Marine Maj. Ferdinand Marcelino turns out to be a perfect team leader for the recycled patriotism of Oakwood rebels deployed by the military chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency. Once in a while, things work in our country. So early in the year, both the military and the ox of 2009 have found a target worthy of their heft.

A classic downbeat to this story is its portrait of casual, widespread drug addiction in the Filipino upper class. The light it sheds on a family feud is all too familiar in a class that might just as well be living on another planet. F. Scott Fitzgerald was right. The rich are different from you and me, related to the rest mostly by how much money and how many connections they can throw at the wolves that ravage us all.

Here’s a new portrait of what we have become – escapees, escapists, victims, often enough all three. But would all this be happening, would corruption be as thorough on all levels of our society if a quality leader ruled this lopsided pyramid? Where, oh where, is our own Barack Obama? How long must we wait before such a one emerges to lead a thirsty nation out of its long wandering in the desert?

The ox is not one to wait for answers to rhetorical questions. This year, it invites all Filipinos to ride its back, keeping an eye on the target. Collective longing links all our parts, scattered as they are throughout the planet, wherever Filipinos still love and hope for our country. May it take us deep and far this year.

Respond to: slmayuga@yahoo.com