Bong Mallonga Mendoza

Bong Mallonga Mendoza Political commentary, photopoetry, poetry, and photography

11/08/2026

I. My original English version

doubt is good
it spurs creativity
and innovation

certainty paralyzes
stultifies
ossifies
stupefies

one can never be certain
unless he's certainly a fool!

©crazyhorsepoetry 29jul2014

II. Spanish translation through Grammarly Free AI Translator

la duda es buena
estimula la creatividad
y la innovación

la certeza paraliza
estupidiza
ossifica
aturde

uno nunca puede estar seguro
¡a menos que ciertamente sea un tonto!

Query: Dear Spanish and Spanish-speaking readers and friends, is the Spanish translation by Grammarly good or merely satisfactory?

11/08/2026

doubt is good
it spurs creativity
and innovation

certainty paralyzes
stultifies
ossifies
stupefies

one can never be certain
unless he's certainly a fool!

©crazyhorsepoetry 29jul2014

11/08/2026

Matter is always changing; a young boy is getting old by the second. A beautiful woman loses her beauty and allure as she ages or when she dies.

Plato took pains to differentiate the perfect world of forms (ideas) and the imperfect material world. Appropriating Plato's ideas, the Platonist St. Augustine (the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa--then a Roman colony) gave us the City of God (the world of perfection) and the City of Man (the sinful and impertfect world).

Change is not linear. It is not always progressive. Sometimes, change is many steps backward. But the potential for positive results is present.

Change is the mode of existence of matter, according to F. Engels in his Dialectics of Nature.

This is true in the physical world.

Is it really true also for the social world?

11/08/2026

I.

keep still
calm down
oh beating heart

the upright leader
reports, praises, gives thanks,
blames, remonstrates, and
inflicts his unwarranted pride
on clueless sycophants
and the world at large.

II.

kailangan ng hinahon
lubos na pasensiya't pag-unawa
o pusong uma-alma

ang dakila't tuwid na lider
nag-uulat, nagbibigay pugay, nagpapasalamat
naninisi't tumututol
nagpapasikat nang wala sa lugar
sa mga uto-uto
at sa sanlibutan.

11/08/2026

I'd rather
have a Life
than just
dream a Haven

I prefer
to be Guilty

than Innocent
of trials
of travails
of grief
of heart-rending
sorrows
of challenges

I steel
and brace myself
hoping to prevail
ultimately.

11/08/2026

With this piece, I offer a nuanced understanding of the principle and practice of checks and balance in democratic polities. Checks and balances is based on the notion of co-equality of branches of government (three in the case of presidential systems).

The notion of co-equality of branches of government is more myth than reality. This is most specially true with the Philippine presidential system where the executive branch is, de facto, clearly the most powerful part of government.

The Philippine president is the head of state, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, chief of the public bureaucracy, and the country's chief architect of foreign policy as well as its premier diplomat.

While the constitution stipulates that the legislature has the power over the public purse, real power is wielded by the branch which actually releases public money for purposes supposedly specified by the approved national budget. And that branch is the executive headed by the president. Often, the release of public money is done through the president's alter ego--the budget secretary.

With an edge over the legislature, the executive can leverage the release of money to influence the passage of so-called administration bills, including the budget itself.

In command of the entire public bureaucracy, the executive has a great edge over the legislature in budget preparation. In this sense, legislators can only tinker with the budget bill proposed by the executive. In fact, most if not all legislators are merely interested in the money allocated for their constituencies or their districts as well as what they can pocket.

The judiciary is acknowledged as the weakest, de facto, branch of the government. The Supreme Court is at its apex, a court that is merely reactive rather than pro-active (notwithstanding bouts of judicial activism). The SC cannot do anything, not being a tryer of facts, unless a case is brought to its sala. The judiciary will likewise have to wait for its funds to be released.

It is clear that the executive is the most powerful governmental branch.

In the Philippines.

This runs counter to the thoughts and wishes of the English political philosopher, John Locke, who developed the notion and principles of separation of powers and the corollary checks and balances.

Locke argued that the most powerful governmental branch should be the legislature since the body is most representative of the citizenry. He would not be in favor of empowering the head of state--one person--over all other branches of government as he came from a great struggle of the English people against an absolutist monarch.

Meanwhile, pioneering Filipino political scientist Remigio Agpalo, echoing anthropologists studying Southeast Asia and other pre-modern "big men" societies, argued in the 1960s and early 1970s that the country had a predilection for a so-called "pang-ulo" system akin to an elected monarchy.

Agpalo's arguments were soon used to buttress and justify the Marcos dictatorship. Among others, they were also used to oppose changes to a parliamentary system for the Philippines.

If we locate the discussion within the Philippine context, one can note that the Philippine president is more powerful than the US president, the latter operating in a federal framework. For instance, the Philippine president is commander in chief of all armed forces.

In contrast, US state governors are in control of their respective National Guards (Army National Guard and Air National Guard).

The operational challenge is to make co-equality and checks and balance more reality than myth. In our country.

11/08/2026

We often contrast 'the rule of law' (the preferred situation) to 'the rule of men' (or persons, to be politically correct). But as Sanchez-Cuenca (2003, in Przeworski:2019) so obviously puts it: "The law cannot rule. Ruling is an activity, and laws cannot act."

In truth, therefore, men (or persons) rule in all polities and 'the rule of law' is the rule of men who obey or are constrained by Law. In contrast, the ideal type 'rule of men' is the rule of persons unlimited by Law.

Yet, Law is a human creation, an artifice of human existence. Would it thus be correct to assert that all polities are, in the final analysis, ruled by men?

What laws constrain humans when they create the Law? Or is law-writing an unregulated, unencumbered human process?

How about the intriguing notion that the absence of Law inexorably led naturally-unfettered humans (rational beings, that is) to make or write it, to agree to be bound by it? The English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes pioneered this novel idea in his 1651 magnum opus, 'Leviathan'.

Let us tease Hobbes' ideas in greater detail. Please pardon my play on words in what follows.

To start, the natural state of men is a state of statelessness. A condition where and when there is no state, no government, no over-arching Leviathan. As such, there is no Law. No common standard of right or wrong. What is right to an individual is what he wants or what benefits him. That may be a wrong in the eyes of another person.

In the natural state where there is no state, no Law--everyone is theoretically free to do as he pleases and do so in pursuit of his self-interest. However, the net result is an unintended world of complete misery. Hobbes presciently warned: the state of nature is a perpetual "war of all against all". And that life in the state of nature is "short, nasty, and brutish".

Picture this ugly situation: perfectly free and unfettered men living in misery and unending strife. Everyone is free but unhappy and insecure, fearful for one's life and property. Hobbes correctly predicts: no art, no science, no civilization in the state of nature.

Total freedom is an illusion, a cruel mirage! Perfect freedom is pure pain!

What will save humanity from this sordid lot?

Human reason will lead men to realize that the solution is for all of them to leave the state of nature for a realm of limited liberty--from a state of statelessness to a state with the State.

Through a social contract, they will agree to be bound to (by) a Leviathan who (that) enforces peace to ensure all life and property. The common agreement is for all to limit their freedom and free themselves of the crushing misery of complete freedom.

The terms of trade in the social contract: peace and security of life and property in exchange for perfect liberty and total war.
Reason does not convert contracting humans into selfless saints.

The social contract, even if rational and voluntary, is not self-binding or self-enforcing.

The Sword of the Leviathan enforces the social contract--the compact of all for the welfare of all.

No sword, no peace!

Of course, we also observe that animals like ants and bees seem to have law-governed existence. Natural law perhaps?

One may postulate that plants also do behave in a like manner. Or all nature for that matter.

But I am not qualified to fully explore these questions regarding animals, plants, and nature.

Any thoughts, dear reader?

11/08/2026

18 lines on governance ala Niccolo Machiavelli (the great Florentine political philosopher)

--retrieved verse--

it is never
a good idea
to govern a nation
and a people with
hate, bluster, and vitriol

this is obviously
a gross misunderstanding
of the great Florentine's aphorism
of it being better to be feared
than to be loved

supposedly men are feckless
fair-weather creatures
who value their gold
more than their wives
and mothers-in-law!

HATRED WILL ONLY BEGET HATRED

'tis a lesson that must be learned
'tis a lesson some apparently never learn!

©bongmallongamendoza 27 april 2018

11/08/2026

a septon on bliss and damnation

is bliss is a tradable commodity
or a good without a price tag?

some people are ready
to bargain away their souls
in exchange for some
fleeting piece of paradise
of Eden in their minds

'tis a nefarious deal
'tis no deal at all!

©bongmallongamendoza

11/08/2026

love is
the dawn of
our day...

it is
the pulsating engine
of our dreams...

love is fire.
it's a meandering river.
love is simply all!

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