Bread of peace

"LET THEM eat cake!”
The royal insolence of the infamous Marie Antoinette – in reaction to reports that her subjects had no bread – leaps to mind with the news that the biggest flour millers in the country will sell cheap pan de sal in the slums of Metro Manila to help the poor cope with the rice shortage.
No rice? Let them eat “tasty” bread, instead.
Recollections of the queen consort of Louis XVI and the tragic finis to the ancien regime get intense with con tempora news of riots and unrest feared to erupt with the tight supply of rice here.
The sans-culottes storming the Bastille launched the French Revolution: Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI losing their heads, literally, at the guillotine. The sans-rice mob storming Malacanang to launch a new Philippine revolution?
Palace factotums , understandably, are quick to quash any talk of food riots. Especially in the aftermath of the collapse of the Haiti government caused by its abject failure to address mass riotings triggered by a food crisis.
The Malacanang spin doctors are not so historically dumb after all as to fail to consider parallel political events that transpired in 1986 in that impoverished Caribbean nation and the Philippines.
Revolted by the culture of corruption that pervaded the government of President Jean Claude “Bebe Doc” Duvalier and the ostentatious extravagance of his wife Michele Bennett Pasquet amid the grinding poverty that made their country the poorest in all of the Western Hemisphere, Haitians took to streets – starting with raids on food distribution warehouses – and succeeded in putting a definitive end in the first week of February 1986 to the Duvalier dynasty that started with Francoise “Papa Doc” Duvalier in 1957.
Of course it was also in February 1986 – on the third week – that the corrupt conjugal dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos was ousted from power.
A not-so-trivial-pursuit: Among Michele Duvalier’s prized and priciest possessions were diamonds, mink coats, and shoes; for Imelda Marcos, it was diamonds and shoes.
So much for parallel destinies there.
“We as a people and a nation would never allow riots and unrest because we believe in our laws and government institutions that are working for our own benefit, particularly in solving the rice problem and other pressing global issues.” So said the deputy presidential spokesperson, Anthony Golez.
So how dare this senior economist of the International Grains Council Darren Cooper to say that it was because “the President’s job is on the line” that she ordered a bigger rice importation.
With bread alone, and at the low price of P1.71 por piraso as promised by the Philippine Association of Flour Millers and the Chamber of Philippine Flour Millers, all specters of hungry mobs rioting immediately vanish into thin air.
For one, with its leavening quality, bread – sans palaman – but with water alone is more filling than rice. Not to say cheaper too.
Historically, and this goes much farther back in time than Marie Antoinette, bread, along with entertainment, has been proven as a pacifying instrument.
Panem et circenses – bread and circuses – the ancient Romans prescribed them to fill the hungriest, and calm the angriest, of mobs. Then as now, still the most efficacious of means to placate even the most restive of the populace.
So, how about having Piolo Pascual as pan de sal boy and Angel Locsin peddling pan Americano, or, better yet Katrina Halili serving “tasty” bread. Ah, instant satiation there. What rice shortage?

The Governor's Monday

8:30 A.M. The sweet, stirring refrain of exaltation to the Kapampangan has barely faded when the governor takes the stand right by the flagpole to gently, oh so gently, remind the capitol employees the mission, nay, the very reason of their being: Serve the People.
Thus: “Sa isang halal na opisyal, isang kamalian ang taguriang nasasakupan ang mamamayan. Sila ay pinaglilingkuran. Kaya, sa abot ng ating kakayahan, atin silang paglingkuran nang walang anumang kapalit na hinihintay.”
Inhered in the governor is that value that holds the people not as subjects to be governed, but as sovereign to be served.
9:00 A.M. The stream of callers at the Office of the Governor meanders through the stairs and cascades down to the very portal of the capitol. The governor sees to it that everyone shall be personally attended to.
A social welfare desk takes care of indigents’ needs from hospital admittance to unpaid bills. Pre-arrangement by the governor with all hospitals in the province has greatly facilitated the medical care for the indigents. Of great help too has been the governor’s success in making 100 percent of the province’s senior citizens and indigents members of Philhealth within only the first year in office.
Taking charge of job-seekers is the provincial employment service office that is interconnected with all major business establishments in the province as well as the labor services department of the Clark Development Corp. and the Clark International Airport Corp. The governor has signed a landmark legislation passed unanimously by the sangguniang panlalawigan mandating that 75 percent of the manpower requirements of all firms doing business in the province should come from Pampanga. Only in cases where a local talent is unavailable should an exemption be granted.
10:30 A.M. The governor holds a working merienda with Vice Governor Yeng Guiao and the SP to set the capitol’s agenda for the week.
The governor congratulates Yeng, the appointed task force head, for the continuing increase in the quarry collections, with the proviso though that the rise in collection is never an end unto itself but only a means toward a nobler end.
“Ang pagtaas ng koleksiyon mula sa quarry ay tunay na kamangha-mangha. Subalit ito ay magkakaroon lamang ng saysay at kabuluhan kung mapapakinabangan ng mga mamamayan sa mga proyektong tumutugon sa kanilang mga pangangailangan at sa kalinangan at kaunlaran ng mga pamayanan.”
So the governor lays before the SP the provincial priorities on-stream.
On health: the rehabilitation of all the district hospitals by increasing their bed-capacity; the hiring of more and specialized health personnel; the provision of equipment such as X-ray and dialysis machines and complete laboratory testing, enough supply of medicines.
On nutrition: a feeding program – on a balanced diet, naturally – in all day-care centers and public elementary schools.
On education: construction of more classrooms, hiring of more teaching personnel; piloting cyber education in all districts.
It is understood that in the implementation of these priorities the board members shall take the role of focal persons in their respective districts.
12:30 P.M. Working lunch at the Executive House with the Pampanga Mayors League.
The governor wants to know the status of the municipal projects each funded with P5 million from the provincial development fund.
“On target,” is the collective reply.
Minalin Mayor Edgar Flores says the road widening and beautification project is nearly complete, thanking the governor for granting a permit-less tax-holiday in all desilting operations in the town, and for providing additional funding to the project. So will the governor be so kind as to grace the inauguration in a week’s time?
Mexico Mayor Teddy Tumang says the construction of the municipal hospital is running short of funds. The governor cuts him short by committing P10 million for its completion.
Bacolor Mayor Buddy Dungca does not ask for anything. He thanks the governor for the completion of desilting operations at the Gugu Creek.
Sto. Tomas Mayor Lito Naguit asks the governor to please help fast-track the completion of the Balangcas bridge along MacArthur Highway. The governor calls the public works secretary and gets the assurance that it will be finished in 30 working days or else the contractor shall be heavily penalized.
San Simon Mayor Digos Canlas expressed his town’s gratitude to the governor for lobbying with the President to release P35 million for his town’s various infra projects. The President, with the governor beside her, personally handed him the check right after the thanksgiving Mass for the President’s birthday in Lubao.
So, the governor asks the mayors, how are we coping with the rice shortage?
Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo smirks: “What shortage? The opposition is making a mountain out of a molehill as usual. Candaba has surplus that can be shared with other towns that are in need.”
Sta. Ana Mayor Omeng Concepcion also offers his town’s surplus rice.
3:00 P.M. A call from Malacanang. The governor is requested by the President to a meeting of a “very personal” nature.
“Dadalhin ko sa Presidente ang mga magagandang pangyayari dito sa Pampanga at ang pagmamahal ng mga Kapampangan sa kanya.”
And the governor, simply Nanay to her people, takes her leave to the applause of the Pampanga Mayors League.
How right still is that now-forgotten sage of long ago: “Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these ‘It might have been.’”
Not a few Kapampangans are pining: A Nanay for a governor. Pampanga would have been truly blest.

Pornophobic

RAISE A howl moralists of the mitered and manang varieties did with the recent birthing in this presumed über- conservative only-Christian-country-in-Asia of Hedonistic Hef’s high-end piece of erotica.
Duh, I mean the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines and the self-appointed guardians of morals – primarily women long into libidinous inactivity – denouncing the maiden issue of Playboy Philippines. With such vehemence as though the glossy magazine were Satan herself came down to earth. Which – to their mind – it really is the case: Playboy to them being lewd, and therefore a scourge to morality; pornographic, and therefore a corruptor of the youth; the vehicle to perdition, and therefore must be condemned.
Expect some Playboy–burning activities soon.
Not much into the morality of the uppity class owing to my lowly social, if not sensual, status, I have long been an ardent reader of Playboy: taken in as much by the well-written articles that do not insult but enhance the intelligence, as by the magnificent poetry of the female form.
Alas, the absence of the magazine in these shores has depressingly deprived me of great reading, and viewing, pleasure. The last batches of Playboy I got in 2005 yet, sent by United Nations-in-New York-based Consul Elmer Cato in a bulging yellow parcel, multi- taped to seal its contents lest it hurt the gender-sensitivity of the courier, Sonia Soto, a feminist of the first order, and – as her recent long-deserved recognition from Soroptimist International indicated – a woman who has made a difference. Not only in issues about women but about the community at large.
At every recall of this incident, I feel down my spine the righteous rage of Ms Sonia when she learned what “women-degrading trash” Elmer made her carry home for me all the way from the Big Apple.
Instead of being terrified over the possible loss of my soul though, the fire-and-brimstone denunciation of the CBCP and the manangs got me so interested – pruriently as well as curiously – that I spared no time in hunting down a copy of Playboy Philippines. I did not find any either at the SM or Robinsons malls in Pampanga. Luckily, I chanced upon one at Puregold Duty Free Clark.
So, how did I find Playboy Philippines?
It is nowhere near the league of its foreign counterparts. In both the articles and the girls. No in-depth essays that could approximate those of Gore Vidal’s and Kurt Vonnegut’s. And can you believe it, no full frontals in a magazine that bears the Playboy stamp? Six nipples and two buffed butts, a trace of pubes through white lacy lingerie is all that can pass for “indecent” exposure. That’s lewd? That’s to titillate the prurient interest, if not rouse primal desires? Damn, it did not trigger even just the tiniest spark in my loins.
Hugh Hefner, how could you? I wuzz robbed.
FHM Philippines far out-skinned Playboy Philippines.
With that fantastic spread on flashy cars, Playboy Philippines is more in the league of Autoshow or whatever those car magazines are called. Not in the skin magazine genre.
By calling Playboy Philippines pornographic, the CBCP and its coterie of manangs have misappropriated the term. Or have they been so taken in, nay, blinded by the magazine’s reputation and have become so selectively pornophobic that that they failed to see the real pornography the country is awash in?
There is the tabloid Sagad and its ilk – full-color copulation in all its variations and perversions – sold openly by newsboys on the streets of Metro Manila?
In just about every corner of the archipelago, there are the pirated XXX CDs that make kamasutra virtually a catechetical manual.
Then, there is the internet with all the sexual perversions imaginable, and more beyond the imagination, just two mouse clicks away.
Uplift morality, damn Playboy Philippines?
At the risk of being branded pornophiliac, I’d still do no damning here. Playboy embodies, in more ways than words, free expression. That, any citizen is duty-bound to support.

Moral dilemma over a worm in a bowl of greens

WEDNESDAY EVENING the wife, the eldest daughter and the sole grandchild I took to a lean dinner at Kenny Rogers’ in SM City Pampanga after going through the customary window shopping rounds and the obligatory stock-up on groceries, fruits and veggies, and toiletries at the supermarket.
Half into her bowl of fresh greens, eldest daughter noticed a crawler worming its way out of a Romaine lettuce leaf.
Not her father’s daughter in temperament, she politely motioned to a waiter and most serenely showed him the worm in her bowl, whispering, “Will you please do something about this?”
Waiter took the bowl to the lady manager on-duty at the counter who promptly took the bowl and rushed to the kitchen.
By the look on the manager’s face, I could most ascertain that the poor soul who prepared the salad had a dressing down totally different from the French or thousand island kind.
Which kind of made me muse: Is the worm on my daughter’s salad worth the probable scolding that poor salad guy got from his boss?
Damned. Why should I care, we are the victims here. It is my daughter’s well-being at stake. What if that worm is a maggot? Who knows what it could have inflicted upon my dear daughter.
Came the waiter, profuse in apologies and saying he would bring a new plate of salad for the daughter.
Daughter was saying thanks when I bawled: “How can we be sure that your salads are free from worms? I want your manager here now!”
Bowled over, the waiter turned ashen and took all but three frightened leaps to reach the counter at the far end.
Oh God, I am so mean! So I shall rant and rave at the manager over the state of un-hygiene at Kenny Rogers. So I shall threaten to report the incident to my cousin-in-law who happens to be the chief sanitary engineer of the Department of Health in Central Luzon? So I shall tell her to get a copy of this paper and find her restaurant exposed? So?
So the manager will in turn rant and rave at the poor salad guy. So she shall take a cut of his measly pay for the day as punishment for un-cleanliness, for negligence perhaps. So she shall stamp a red demerit dot before his name, marking an unsatisfactory performance that shall doom him come rehiring time. So one family shall be deprived of what could possibly be its only means of income.
All these sufferings for a worm?
Damned me. Damned that inner voice saying, the littlest individual act impacts on a whole universe. Damned, I don’t even know if that’s Zen or dhammapada or Tao. Ah, a universe of thought in a millisecond.
Came the lady manager, nervously assuring us she has said her piece to the kitchen staff, saying “Sorry po” and asking would we please accept the replacement salad.
“Just refund us,” was all I could say.
Damned worm. I will never eat at Kenny Rogers again.

Half-full church for Cory

MOST BELOVED, albeit adopted, daughter of Pampanga. Once.
So flushed with the Cory Aquino fever was the province in the post-EDSA Uno period that whichever hand the President raised in the 1987 congressional elections and in the 1988 local elections automatically won.
So blessed was Pampanga under the administration of President Aquino – by no small measure owing to the closeness of Governor Bren Z. Guiao to her and to her martyred husband – that the province for a time even overtook pace-setting Cebu in industrial growth.
And how the Kapampangans loved Cory, showering her with respect and affection every time she came over, mobilizing human barricades to block the routes of renegade military forces at each of the six or seven coup d’etats mounted against her.
Beloved adopted daughter of Pampanga. Not for the nonce, it seems.
At Monday’s healing Mass for the colon cancer-stricken Cory, the City of San Fernando’s Metropolitan Cathedral was only half-full. Even to the supreme optimist, that is no indication of any lasting love of the Kapampangan for a beloved daughter.
The good Apu Ceto, archbishop of San Fernando, who celebrated the Mass paid a most fitting tribute to Cory for her role in regaining freedom for the country, calling her a “woman of democracy” and reminded the Kapampangan faithful of the progress and development to the province the Aquino administration brought about.
Even as he prayed for the recovery of Cory and appealed to all Kapampangans to bombard heavens with their prayers, one could not but be saddened by the rows upon rows of unoccupied pews.
Indeed, the half-empty church resonated with the emptiness of the statement of the Reverend Governor Eddie T. Panlilio that "the Kapampangans love Cory very much and will support and pray for her."
He could have said – more rightly—that the Kapampangans loved Cory very much, and hopefully, would support and pray for her.
One wonders now, did local politics rear its ugly head even in that apolitical and purely spiritual exercise?
But for San Fernando’s Oscar S. Rodriguez, not one of Pampanga’s 22 mayors was there. Cong Oca’s hand Cory raised in 1987. That blazed his spectacular political career that suffered but one drawback, in 1992.
Yet another hand among the Mass attendees that Cory raised then was Mars Pineda’s. He won, of course, and sat as congressman before being unseated near the close of his first – and only – term by the now departed Egmidio Bondoc.
The presence of both the governor and Vice Governor Yeng Guiao at the Mass did not manifest a reconciliation of sorts but rather masked, only for the duration of the ecclesiastical celebration, the rift between them. Yeng, it must be pointed out, is a godson of Cory.
"The Mass was open to all, it is up to the people to come." So was Yeng quoted, rationalizing that mere attendance did not diminish any the love of Kapampangans for Cory. Another “notable” present was Ping de Jesus, Cory’s public works and highways secretary.
So where were the others who benefitted from the Cory magic of yore? The OIC-mayors that took over local governance after EDSA Uno, most especially?
The dead among them – Porac’s Roy David, Minalin’s Jimmy Lopez, Mexico’s Javier Hizon, Guagua’s Manoling Santiago, Bacolor’s Gem Balingit – are excused. But those that still live make the rogues’ gallery of ingrates.
How about the current crop of political leaders who, unwittingly perhaps, made the loudest statement with their absence? So what really gives here?
Could it be that the Kapampangans have become so enamored with their current favorite daughter that they have to dispense with their adopted one?
We all know that the Glorious One and the Widowed One stand on polar grounds. The latter unceasingly asking for the ouster of the former.
So, between the glory that the province – despite its governor – has been getting from the current Palace occupant and the “truth” that Cory has been banding about, which would you think the Kapampangan would choose?
Sic transit gloria mundi. Thereby passes the glory of the world. A lesson to us all.

The writer

RAMIRO MERCADO makes us all local “writers” no more than pretenders to that title which the iconic Che Guevara called “the most sacred thing in the world.”
Ram so excels in the craft that I feel oftentimes reduced to that caricature so perfectly sketched by the19th century English writer William Samuel Lilly thus: “All men who can write grammatically – and many, indeed who cannot – seem to think they have a call to express their “views” on all subjects, human and divine. And their views will be found, in the vast majority of cases, to consist of shreds of information, generally distorted and often erroneous, claptrap phrases picked up at hazard, and dignified by the title of “principles,” preferences and predilections, always unreasoned, and not seldom unreasonable.”
To append the tag “journalist” to Ram is a supreme insult. For he has never been one. Not in the usual sense of day-to-day reportage bounded by the cold, cold “objectivity” of the who, what, where, when, why, and how of events-of-interest to the reading public.
Ram is too sensitive a person, too good a writer to be a journalist. A chaff-from-the-grain distinction: The intellect, of course, is essential but it is heart that truly makes the writer. And Ram is all heart.
That is most evident in the columns he has churned out through the years through all those publications he has written for, from The Voice to his very own Pampanga Eagle to Sun-Star Pampanga.
That is most manifest in his first book First Person just off the press.
More than a simple anthology of his past columns, First Person is a travel through time, a lingering look-back at a past made perfect by a tense present. The good old days, when the skies were bluer, when the grass was greener, when the sun was brighter as that song of long ago went.
One can’t help but wax romantic with Ram’s paeans to the Dalagang Kapampangan ; and nostalgic with his reminiscences of places, celebrations and even our American past.
Ram makes us laugh at our own foibles as a people. Even as, befitting the true son of Mexico, Pampanga that he is, he impresses upon us our inherent social consciousness.
A still life, a portrait, a landscape, a moving canvass of Kapampangan life in the brightest of colors did Ram masterfully paint in First Person.
Sub-headed “A memoir of life in small town Philippines,” First Person draws out of the Kapampangan psyche, like a long-buried heirloom, the soul of a place, the zeitgeist of an era irretrievably lost to the new generation of his race.
And like the true literary treasure trove that it is, First Person is a jewel to the enrichment of Kapampangan culture. Had I the authority, I would have made the book required reading in all schools in Pampanga. If only to impact upon our youth the ethos of a recent past for a clearer appreciation of their time and place.
In just his first book – and hopefully not his last – Ram has already his defining opus. I, who have come out with four books, am most envious of him. For I still am in search of that which shall define me, which shall truly make me what I now pretend to be.
I have my own anthology of columns dating back to the early 70s all-ready for encoding for over two years now. I even have a working title for it, not without some dose of my characteristic conceit: “I Write: I Am.”
First Person took the wind out of the sails of my self-importance. Now, I am more inclined to just leave my material as it is now – in yellowed, tattered clippings.
Notwithstanding the platitudes Ram heaped upon my person in his handwritten dedication to the copy he sent me – “Distinguished journalist and author, leader of media, social philosopher, the original rebel” – I will be – to use that overwrought cliché in a Sharon Cuneta movie – “nothing but a second-rate, trying hard copycat.”
Ram, the writer, is one tough act to follow.

It's the land, moron

TO ADDRESS the rice crisis, both Houses of Congress are said to be reviewing existing laws that seek to impose harsher penalties against profiteers and at the same time reform the importation procedures. On the part of the lower house, it was reported that House Speaker Prospero Nograles called for a review of RA 7581 or the Price Act to give a sharper bite to the law against hoarding, price manipulation and profiteering. "It's time we revisit RA 7581 to determine how to further discourage, if not totally end, illegal acts of manipulating the prices of any basic commodity especially during such time that government is dealing with the continuing rise in the prices of rice and even fuel," Nograles was reported as saying. The Prosperous One furthered that the looming rice shortage has given Congress all the reason "to study how to add teeth to the law to fully deter price manipulation." Section 5 of RA 7581 considers hoarding, profiteering, and cartel formation as among the illegal acts tied to the manipulation of the price of any basic necessity or prime commodity. While Section 15 states that any person who commits price manipulation of any basic necessity or commodity shall suffer the penalty of imprisonment for a period of not less than five years nor more than 15 years, and pay the penalty of not less than P5,000 nor more than P2,000,000. So, let us make violation of the Price Act a heinous crime, being a most despicable act inflicted on the poorest and most powerless of the citizenry? At the upper chamber, Senate President Manuel Villar filed a bill that proposes the use of the National Food Authority (NFA) funds for the purchase of locally-produced palay and authorize farmer cooperatives to take care of rice importation. The presidential timber’s bill in effect seeks to end the NFA monopoly in rice importation. Said he: "This exclusivity clause that authorizes only the NFA to import rice has to be repealed. Attended by allegations of corruption, the system no longer works and has to be reformed to include other sectors of society." And, to Mr. Sipag at Tiaga, authorizing farmer cooperatives and organizations to import rice is one great way to increase their income, as "the farming sector has always been at the receiving end of any importation as this tends to dampen or lower the price of palay resulting in no or low income for our farmers. If their collective organization is given the privilege of doing rice importation, they are given an opportunity to earn additional income." Villar’s bill also proposes “to put NFA funds to use only in purchasing locally produced palay or farmer imports for food security requirements of the country." This would re-inspire farmers who, he said, have lost the incentive to plant rice because of low profitability and high price of farm inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides. Villar should realize that re-inspiring the farmers to regain their incentive to plant rice goes beyond “empowering” them with fertilizers and pesticides. For one, there is the injurious insult or insulting injury done on the farmers by the P700-million fertilizer scam of Joc-Joc Bolante.
Villar’s and Nograles’ initiatives to address the rice crisis are but palliatives to alleviate the pain caused by the cancerous disease. Not to cure it, so to speak.
It’s not the laws, wise guys. It’s the land, morons.
Robert Zeigler, president of the International Rice Research Institute made this revelation: Rice yields in the Philippines are nearly double those of Thailand – the world’s top rice exporter. But there is not enough land here.
So, there. With fertile ricelands being irretrievably converted to industrial, commercial and residential sites, it would not be too long before the rice paddy will be something we will just see in Amorsolo paintings.
So, there should look our legislators for the appropriate answers. But will they? Especially the Honorable Senate President whose vast empire is built upon agricultural lands converted to housing subdivisions.

Asenso model

FOR THE high price of panambak -- that’s earth used as filling material, to you non-Kapampangans – a million dollar investment project was pulled out of San Simon.
Thus rued Mayor Digos Canlas of the great opportunity lost forever to his town. And that is just one woe wrought about by the capitol’s cluelessness on the nature, if not the dynamics, of panambak.
Digos claims the P1,500-per-truck filling material at the time of the Lapid son at the capitol has ballooned to over P3,000 per truck under the watch of the Reverend Governor.
Endangered too of being mothballed is the Libreng Pabahay para sa Mahirap on a 9.7-hectare site acquired through a donation from the ambassador of China and with a counterpart national government commitment of P35 million. Again, it is a problem of panambak, says Digos.
Then there is the apparent collateral damage wrought by the new P120-million bridge to the farmlands in its vicinity. Farmers have to resort to double pumping to make irrigation water flow to the farmlands. Thus, doubling too the cost of irrigation. And a large hectarage of farmlands is still covered with the debris Mount Pinatubo vomited almost 17 years ago.
So what has got to do with panambak?
“Everything,” says Digos. The farmers want to desilt the irrigation canals to increase the reservoir of water they hold. They wish their lahar-covered lands be scraped of the debris and made productive again. The end-product of desilting and scraping? Panambak.
Now, if only the capitol can free panambak from a purely commercial categorization, then, Canlas says, all will be good for San Simon.
Perhaps Canlas can go seek some advice from the once reigning barako of Mexico. Yes, the sometimes lamented former Mayor Ernesto Punsalan himself.
For all his perceived brusko posturing, Senor Don Ernesto wielded the wisdom of the rural folk. Or have we forgotten how the Great Asensado Solomonically dichotomize the quarry-panambak predicament thus : “There is no quarrying in Mexico. There is only the scraping of private agricultural lands, in the pursuit of our noble objective to make these highly productive again. For the prosperity of our people.”
And the Lapid capitol left Don Ernesto largely to himself in the pursuit of his Asenso Mexico. Unmindful and unintervening even when loose talks circulated around the province that SM City Pampanga, Robinsons Starmills, uppity Lakeshore, and the rehabilitated North Luzon Expressway were all built upon the panambak of Mexico.
So there.
Minalin Mayor Edgar Flores should take the cue from Don Ernesto to cut his own Gordian Knot of the quarry-panambak tied by his own townmate, the governor.
The extraction of panambak from the silted rivers, farmlands and fishponds of Minalin intended for road rehabilitation and widening, for town beautification – under the Punsalan precedent – does not constitute quarrying and therefore should not be taxed. Nor should it be covered with a permit from the capitol. The autonomy of the local government unit to pursue what is most advantageous, what is best for its constituency is at issue here.
What is best for the town is ever in the realm of the mayor, never in the province of the governor.
All the mayors of the quarry towns then, no, make that the Pampanga Mayors League, should make Don Ernesto their very own Consultant on Quarry Affairs.
And Don Ernesto would serve them better than where he is now, a decorative fixture called “Chief of Political Affairs” in the office of Senator Lapid.

Without Cory

“CORY AILMENT seen as setback to protest movement.”
Thus cried a headline of the Philippine Daily Inquirer in direct quote of Senate Minortiy Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr.
“The ailment of Cory Aquino will cause the protest movement to limp like a person still mobile but hobbled by a pinched nerve…The mobilization of people may become more difficult.” So was quoted the Cory administration’s interior and local government secretary. Yeah, Nene of the (in)famous pogrom of all sitting local government executives and their replacements with OICs at the start of Cory’s revolutionary government in the immediate post-EDSA Uno period.
Cory is a “potent rallying figure” thus her absence in the protest movement would create a large vacuum. So admitted the opposition. So agreed the administration, not without some sigh of relief hidden in some hypocritical civility of “let us all pray for Cory.”
The “Cory situation” vis-à-vis the anti-GMA forces underscores the infirmity of the protest movement, or for that matter, of any political movement in the Philippines.
Again, I refer to the perfect characterization of Philippine politics made by the most astute Filipino politician that ever lived, Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, thus: “Populist, personalist, individualist.”
The popular, the personal, the individual make the core body of any political movement in the Philippines. Never the cause.
The movement’s rise or fall is totally dependent on the fortune or misfortune of the individual. Thus Marcos’ Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, Miriam’s People Reform Party, Roco’s Aksyon Demokratiko, and in the distant past, Manglapus’ Party for Philippine Progress, Cabangbang’s Philippine Statehood USA, and De los Santos’ Lapiang Malaya. To name but a few, that many of you could not even remember.
Even so-called cause-oriented groups are that only in name. Like the political parties, their attestations are no more than pretensions, being ever personality-centered and never cause-oriented.
Celebrated individuals, not noble causes, become the rallying points of the movement.
So when that individual upon whom the cause is arrogated becomes indisposed, the movement falters, the heat of passion for it flickers, the followers lose interest.
History shows that successful movements, even revolutionary ones , are solidly grounded on causes. It is the cause that solely makes the rallying point. The personalities serve as the coordinate points.
Not even so charismatic a revolutionary as Che Guevara succeeded in fomenting the Bolivian revolution with him as the rallying point. Che failed in rousing the Bolivians not so much for their lack of faith in him as for the absence of a cause to rally them.
Everyone in Bolivia in1967 was poor. There were no oligarchs from whose stranglehold the people should be emancipated. There were no large landowners whose lands needed to be distributed to the people. Even the military government was not as repressive, as corrupt nor as unpopular as its civilian predecessor. So assessed an American political think tank at the time.
Now, think why and how the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army managed to survive through all these years, despite the government’s mailed fist approach to the insurgency, its all-out war against the “communist terrorists;” despite all those land reform programs to “emancipate” the peasants, thus dissuading them from joining the insurgents; despite the capture and subsequent “rehabilitation” of the CPP-NPA leaders, from Dante Buscayno to Rudy Salas to Romy Kintanar to Popoy Lagman; despite the extrajudicial killings of militants.
The answer: the primacy of the cause . Personalities subsume themselves to the cause. Never the other way around. The fate and fortune, especially the misfortune, of the personalities feed, nay, nurture the cause. Here, we are reminded of Che: “Wherever death may surprise us, it is most welcome. Our funeral dirge will be the staccato sound of machine guns and the cries of battle and victory.”
Of all the movements in the country today, only the insurgency can lay claim to that age-old truism that “nobody is indispensable.”
Again Che: “What do the danger and sacrifices of a man or a nation matter, when the destiny of humanity is at stake.”
Now, back to the cause of truth as embraced by the anti-GMA forces: So without Cory, what will Lozada be?