The struggle continues

A SQUARE peg in a round hole.
Mayhaps on a dare or on a plea, she immersed herself in an established order diametrically opposed to her lifelong conscientization, struggles and advocacies that ever-adhered to militant nationalism and democratic populism. In this wise, disregarding – if that is too strong a word, setting aside then – the basic precept of the greatest of all isms on the “history of all hitherto existing society.”
In Marxist dialectical praxis, she made the thesis to the antithesis that was the very milieu she engaged herself in.
Where the critical call was to buck – stress on the “b” though another letter would have been most appropriate – the system, she plunged into it.
For all the fire and brimstone she heaped upon the system, she was yet one more romanticist – I thought so then – probably enamored with the notion that she could effect radical change from within.
Her principled politics naturally impacted on a calcified order of compromise and accommodation. Most naturally too, that order, established as it is, resisted and fought back.
So she was routinely and variably demonized as an avenging virago, as a cadre at the vanguard of a red army that took over city hall, even as that classic stern classroom-terror Miss Tapia.
The relentless assault on her person did not even dent her determined mission to make a great difference. And to an extent never before seen at city hall, she succeeded in whipping up a pro-actively working bureaucracy, instilling in its very psyche the article of faith of her superior, the very end of governance itself: Magsilbi Tamu.
Her populist mind-set found manifest in a multi-sectoral governance council that furthered people participation in running the affairs of the city.
Practically overnight, city hall became a beacon of ideal governance, reaping accolades from local, national and global political institutions. Much too much to itemize in this limited space. Hizzoner got even heralded as fourth best city mayor in the whole world. Truly a tough act to follow.
Ever shunning the limelight in favor of her superior, her efforts though were not unrecognized.
That she is the first – and up to now, still the only – Associate Fellow of the prestigious International Solidarity for Asia is an irrefutable testimony not only to her competence but to her excellence as Administrator of the City of San Fernando. This is an incontrovertible truth that no amount of political mudslinging however coated in legalese can ever negate.
So sadly now, with a sense of resignation, she intimated: “I did not fit into the system.”
Marx’s disciple in me would have retorted: “Who ever said you or anybody could?”
But I simply said – not commiseratively now but so matter-of-factly: “The system did not fit you.”
A system that opens to mere elementary and high school graduates political positions from the lowly barangay kagawad to the highest echelons of Congress and even the presidency itself but bars college undergraduates in the bureaucracy is not worth serving. It is not even worth keeping.
That system of governance is never meant especially for one as progressive, as nationalist as you.
And so my dear comrade Sonia Soto, the struggle continues.

Her pound of flesh

“NO one forced anybody to support my candidacy and no one is forcing anybody to stay.”
Thus spake the Honorable Eddie T. Panlilio, governor of Pampanga, in response to his reported rift with campaign supporters and their subsequent drift from his camp of ardent followers.
Foremost of them is the tapa and tocino queen of Pampanga, Mrs. Lolita Hizon, reputedly the biggest campaign contributor to Panlilio. She has gone on air and in print to demand the ouster of the governor’s twin towers of bungling arrogance – the (un)confirmed provincial administrator Atty. Vivian Dabu and the also (un)confirmed provincial legal officer Atty. Maria Elissa Velez – claiming they are “not fit” to serve at the Capitol.
No, Mrs. Hizon, who also leads a Christian charismatic group, has not severed her ties from her “Among.” Not as yet, despite her cold, cold demeanor towards the governor in a recent televised meeting with former Vice Governor Cicero Punzalan as go-between.
“I am not mad but I am disappointed. Not because of the money (that reportedly flowed from her immense treasure chest, not to mention the thousands of kilos of pindang and longganisa, during the campaign). He (Panlilio) can do much better if only he would consult us,” she was quoted as saying.
Even as Panlilio gave the re-assurance on television too that he still looked up to Mrs. Hizon as a son to his mother, the situation between them appears to have gone beyond a simple spat in the family.
For one, the governor in a Rotary talk was heard to have gone unson-like, defying the age-old mother-knows-best truism in alleging that Mrs. Hizon did not know the real situation at the Capitol as she rarely ventured out of her hallowed corridors. The figurative hyperbole here mine, not Panlilio’s
Of still greater concern are some loose talks currently circulating at the Capitol picturing Mrs. Hizon as a Shylock demanding her pound of flesh. (To those who have forgotten their Shakespeare, Shylock is the ruthless, exacting usurer in the Merchant of Venice.)
This is most unfair to Mrs. Hizon – “the unkindest cut” to use another Shakespearean phrase – coming from the direction of one who has wallowed so much in her innate goodness.
“Ingrato,” is what some local coños have deemed the governor for “biting the very hand that fed him.”
Some self-anointed civil society hireling countered that Mrs. Hizon desired to “reign over if not rein in the Panlilio administration.” So it was even more than a political payback that she most wanted.
From there we can most reasonably deduce that Mrs. Hizon was not a supporter but an investor in the Panlilio candidacy. The purported millions of pesos she poured into the campaign were not charitable donations but investments demanding instant returns once the Capitol was won. The time for ROI is now!
Indeed, a most unkind proposition given Mrs. Hizon’s defining persona as Mother Charity herself.
I wonder how her Conscience will take this.
(Zona Libre – PUNTO! – Sept. 13, 2007)

Maturity becomes Mikey

NOT I alone instantly dismissed him as no different from Disney’s most famous rodent when he first burst into the Pampanga political scene in 2001.
Mousy. His most vicious media critics – myself not excluded – ridiculed him during the campaign. His name, a prime stock in-trade in Philippine politics, many times we punned to utter disrespect.
Even his US-education I did not spare: No, he did not get it from the University of California-Berkeley, as his curriculum vitae said, but from the then-resident bad boy of the NBA, Charles Barkley. I had all the local corns popping with that snide then.
His landslide victory as vice governor readily credited to his grandfather, mother, the actor-governor, to just about everyone but him. Also, media played all too well the withdrawal – from the race, rather than the bank – of his opponent midway into the campaign.
If he hurt from all that criticism that followed him to the sangguniang panlalawigan, he did not show. He was always cordial to us, and genial in interviews, his respectful “Kuya” or reverential “Tito” ever appended to our monikers.
His being a fun person – deemed as happy-go-lucky brattyness – denied him the seriousness he deserved as vice governor.
His reactive outburst “Langaw ka lang” directed at the then emerging quarry kingpin, the now departed Benjie Galang – righteous as it was – took a different track in the public mind, as the temper tantrum of a brat. The sincerity and humility in his subsequent public apology lost in their prejudiced image of him.
A shock the media got when, after his first election as congressman, he thanked them for their criticisms that he said helped tremendously in accelerating his political maturity.
And his constituents in the second district have never felt more contented. What with all the projects and services he has been pouring on them.
“Simply being Mykey is enough for a runaway election victory, not only in the second district but in the whole of Pampanga,” said a mayor who asked that he be not identified for fear of misconstrued as seeking some favors from the presidential son.
That he has changed – tremendously, and for the better, of course – was most evident in a recent tete-a-tete with the Society of Pampanga Columnists.
Where before he fielded questions with knee-jerk reactions or coming-from-thin-air responses, he now speaks with the certitude of wisdom and the magnitude of study. A sampler:
On the stalemate at the Pampanga capitol: “Beyond the basic check and balance, mutual respect defines the relationship between the governor and the sangguniang panlalawigan. Open communications, both formal and informal, are essential here too. And of course, compromise – it being in the very nature of politics.”
On the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway interchange: “The determining factor on the interchange covers the standards of: 1) most advantageous to the government; 2) engineering soundness; 3) absolutely no compromise on the safety, comfort and convenience of the travelers. This makes purely incidental the other factors as whoever owns the land where it will be situated and the advocates of the proposed sites.”
On the national broadband controversy: “Only one side has been hogging the limelight, doing all the talking. We have to wait for and listen to the other sides of the issue. At its core is still: has there been any money plowed into the so-called deal?
“I am not the President’s spokesperson so I can’t speak of her position on all these. But let me tell you, my father is far, far from the image he is being made out in this issue.”
Why, even the significance of the day was not lost to him.
“It is not purely incidental that I chose to met you on this day – the eve of the 35th anniversary of the proclamation of Martial Law. I want to make an expression before you members of the media of my continuing commitment to the freedom of the press. Your criticism of my actions, even of my person, no matter how painful I have always taken as positively constructive. They have contributed greatly to my maturity.”
Truly, maturity becomes Congressman Juan Miguel Macapagal Arroyo. And sagacity defines him.

Denying Panlilio

“IT IS NOT the general sentiment of the mayors but the move of a select few.”
With confidence bordering on arrogance, Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio thus dismissed proposed Ordinance 172 being pursued by the Pampanga Mayors League at the sangguniang panlalawigan.
Ordinance 172, entitled “An ordinance providing for the equitable distribution of shares of fees/taxes imposed by the Province of Pampanga for the extraction of quarry materials, and for other purposes,” primarily seeks the integration of the P150 administrative fee the capitol collects per truckful of sand with the actual P150 per truckload quarry tax. With the resultant P300 per truck shared on the sanctioned 30-30-40 percentages for the province, the municipality and the barangay hosting quarry operations.
With only Mayors Boking Morales of Mabalacat and Eddie Guerrero of Floridablanca manning the ramparts so to speak during the sanggunian hearings on Ordinance 172, it certainly appeared that Panlilio was right: “only but a select few” of Pampanga’s 21 mayors were batting for the ordinance.
The governor even seemed to have tried to butter up the “many other” mayors of towns without quarry revenues and buttress his argument against the ordinance by reasoning that they too deserved a share of the quarry pot. Which, by implication, the administrative fee very satisfactorily provided.
A flawed argument Panlilio held, the namesake of the late, lamented Latino Heat of the World Wrestling Federation said.
“Because we are blessed with sand, we have to share this with those who have not. Very well, San Fernando has San Miguel and other bottling companies, all those car dealerships, SM and Robinsons so it must part with a certain percentage of its income for sharing with all of us who have none of these firms. Macabebe and Masantol have fishponds; San Simon, a special economic zone; Mabalacat, Clark; so they all must share their income from their lucrative “assets” with those who have none.”
A most equitable sharing already edging towards Marxist grounds, if you ask me. But is it implementable?
Still, Panlilio had the sway of arguments with but Morales and Guerrero being the “select few” doing all the talking. That was until yesterday.
The PML issued Resolution 08S-2007, “…Expressing the collective support of all members of the Pampanga Mayors League for the passage and approval of proposed Ordinance 172…”
Invoking Section 138 of the Local Government Code of 1991, the resolution held the belief that the provincial capitol had “no legal basis for the collection of administrative fee” calling it “grossly disadvantageous” and demanded their right over the income accruing from the quarry operations in their areas.
“To sacrifice the rightful share of each municipality and barangay as provided for by law on the pretext that the province has to extend support to other municipalities without quarry operations is unjust and unjustifiable,” declared the resolution.
It added that the capitol could do this with its own 30 percent share.
All in all, it makes a total negation of Panlilio’s assertions.
So what does this resolution now make of Panlilio’s “select few”? I would not say a liar as he is a priest forever, per Melchizedek’s order. He might just be grossly misinformed, if not abjectly ignorant of political dynamics.
Still, I get reminded here by my good friend Rizal Policarpio’s favorite dig: Ang resolution ng PML ay isang mariing sampal sa mukha ng gubernador.