The Emerging Power of Blogs

The Valley Golf brawl has once again demonstrated the potential power of blogs to correct an injustice. In this case, the Pangandamans with a direct link to the President of Philippines being one of her Cabinet secretary and on the other hand the ordinary citizen, the De la Paz Family.

GMA must have her hands full these days, Pangandaman with his Valley Golf Brawl and Gonzales with his Alabang boys bribery case. These issues are distracting her from her main focus, Charter Change and term extension.

Ducky Paredes (http://www.duckyparedes.com/blogs/) has an interesting account of the incident saying that “he ignores the testimonies of the so-called victims or the alleged ruffians”. The De la Paz were the ones who started the fight. These are, he says, accounts from “caddies of parties, the marshal, the starter and other club personnel”.

But Bambee de la Paz wrote in her blog that “Right in the clubhouse. I came back after the fight was over and talked to the receptionists. They say they did not see anything. The general manager of Valley Golf would not give us the names of the men who made my brother's ear bleed. It took him an hour. Maybe even more than that. He seemed to not want to help us. Because, we were against the SECRETARY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRARIAN REFORM and the MAYOR OF MASIU CITY, LANAO DEL SUR. They were all scared.”

The Pangandaman’s did not see it coming. They did not expect the power a single blog post can do. It eventually tilted the power relations to what is now even playing field, with the Pangandaman’s on the now on the defensive end, trying to block the full force of the blogosphere. Its like Manny Pacquiao, the underdog versus the much bigger De La Hoya.

These are signs of Hope, a beacon of light for those who seek justice in an otherwise unjust system, justice finding its way out into what ever channels it can find.