The Governor's withdrawal

“BUT CAN he dare face the fury of a woman scorned?”
So asked an espressomate at Firenzi in SM Clark on yesterday’s banner headline here that Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio was set to let go of his putative provincial administrator, Atty. Vivian Dabu, on the condition that San Fernando City Administrator Engr. Ferdinand Z. Caylao would take her place.
There’s something wrong in the use of the idiomatic expression there, I pointed out to my friend. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” is commonly attributed to some betrayal in a wedded partnership. Thereby, ensued a rather lengthy discussion.
So what do you call that which bonds the Reverend Governor to his administrator?
Well, nothing more than an ordinary supervisor-subordinate relationship.
For all your pretensions to wide reading and to a broad expanse of experience in the intellectual and spiritual fields, you’re still a babe in the woods.
Ouch, that idiom hurts. At the rate you’re going with these idioms, I would not wonder anymore if you end up being an idiot.
Non sequitur, wonder not. Face the facts. Yeah, truth hurts. Now, just listen.
Okay, go on, master. Wonder if he got the sarcasm there.
There is more to the Panlilio-Dabu relationship other than your usual supervisor-on-top-of-subordinate positions...
Uh-oh, you’re insinuating something sexual here. I cannot allow this said of my compadre. Despite his suspension, he’s still a priest, for God’s sake!
Disabuse your malicious mind. You’re conjuring sexual thoughts from a purely rational statement of a given fact. In the organizational hierarchy, in government or in private corporations, supervisors are pre-ordained to be on top of subordinates. You, an ex-seminarian who has had the privilege of learning Latin should be the first to know that super means over, atop, above while sub means under or below. Panlilio always on top of Dabu. Only the dirty-minded sees something sexual there.
Okay, I am an idiot. A dirty-minded idiot at that.
How good of you to admit to a fault. Now, as I was saying, the Panlilio-Dabu relationship goes beyond the boss-hireling type – you really are gross if you still see anything sexual there. It is something written in the stars. It is a pact made in heaven. It is…
Aw, shucks, spare me these stupid sugary idioms again.
I am stating a fact. Was not Panlilio’s gubernatorial run and consequent victory deemed by many and proclaimed by the gospel of truth-in-media, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, as the very act of Providence?
Granting so, what has that got to do with Dabu?
Panlilio, being divinely sent, makes everything he touches approved by Providence. So that makes Dabu, whom he appointed provincial administrator, divinely-appointed too. There is your contract made in heaven. See how Panlilio remained steadfast – “strongly, unquestioningly, dedicatedly, radically committed” – in holding on to Dabu despite her non-confirmation by the sangguniang panlalawigan? Why, Panlilio even opted to lose the support of his top financial and manpower supporter in his gubernatorial run – Mrs. Lolita Hizon, as if you did not know – than let go of Dabu. That is simply because their relationship is heavenly, err, heaven-bound, err, bound in heaven.
Aha, you’re stammering. Okay, I got it. Now, if such is the case, why the apparent change of heart in the governor?
No change of heart. I see Panlilio merely buying time. Besides, he reckons that Caylao will not accept the post, happy as he is being city administrator and confident that Mayor Oca Rodriguez would not let go of him. Notwithstanding the mayor’s stock-in-trade “the city may be losing a good administrator but will be happy with the thought that the province is gaining one.” With Ms. Sonia Soto out of the city government, Caylao has become truly indispensable. At least for now, with no one of equal qualifications and loyalty to Oca, in sight.
So there was no withdrawal of confidence in Dabu by Panlilio?
Talk of withdrawals. These are painful matters. Be it in business – loss of money, in politics – loss of support or position, moreso in war – loss of territory. Panlilio is not withdrawing from Dabu his...
Very well said about withdrawals there. Isn’t the sexual sort the most painful?
Incurable pervert!

Flores de Mayo

CATHECHETICAL INSTRUCTIONS started right after Labor Day. The first lessons: the sign of the cross and its meaning, the mystery of the One True God in Three Persons.
(Always the caveat: The Holy Trinity is a mystery of faith one cannot question. Not even the great Doctor of the Church, St. Augustine unraveled it. Once Augustine was by the seashore wracking his brains over the mystery. He chanced upon a child cupping water with his hand and pouring it on a hole on the beach. What are you doing? Augustine asked. Transferring the water of the sea to this hole, the child replied. That’s impossible, Augustine was supposed to have remarked. More impossible is to find human explanation to what you are thinking about, the child retorted.)
Three weeks after – through the Our Father- Hail Mary-Glory Be, the Apostles’ Creed and the mysteries of the Holy Rosary, Salve Regina and the Angelus, the Mass, the Ten Commandments, sins – cardinal, mortal, and venial, and the Act of Contrition – came one’s first trip to the curtained box by the entrance of the church to pass the penitential rite.
The day that followed – always a Sunday – in immaculate white, down to the shoes, one skipped breakfast in order to prepare one’s body for the entry of the mystical Body of Christ on his first holy communion.
But not before one, along with all the other first communicants, lined up, flower in hand, singing Indung Alang Musing (Immaculate Mother) to take his turn at offering the blooms – of yellow zinnias and red gumamelas, fragrant white camia and pink roses, suntans in assorted hues and even the violet flowers of banaba – by the foot of an image of the Virgin Mary.
That was the Flores de Mayo I have known since youth. That is not the Flores de Mayo I see now.
Mixed with the other Maytime festivity that is the Santacruzan – a dramatization via procession of the search by the Empress Helena of the Cross with her son Constantine in tow – the Flores de Mayo has now evolved with its own sagalas -- rightfully called May queens in some cultures – in their finest evening and formal gowns based on the Filipino baro’t saya, parading through the streets under gaily decorated arkos.
From a religious ceremony in veneration of the Virgin Mary, the Flores de Mayo has been reduced, okay, secularized, to a competition of fashion and a contest of beauty.
At a recent media conference for a Flores de Mayo, I asked the contestants what Flores de Mayo meant to them.
The answers were invariable: a religious tradition they, as Catholics, would be proud to participate in; a part of our cultural heritage that has to be celebrated so as not to be forgotten by the next generations; a celebration of Capampangan beauty.
So I asked, where was the image of the Virgin Mary here? Everyone was clueless, giving me the glare that said: What Virgin Mary? This is Flores de Mayo, dummy!
I got the tiger look from one of the organizers, imparting: It’s for a good cause too, can’t you see? Its staging is for the benefit of hospital charity patients and poor, poor university scholars. Ain’t that enough for a religious reason?
On hindsight now, they were right: Flores de Mayo is a religious rite that is part of a cultural heritage that celebrated beauty. Not of our Catholic and Spanish heritage though, but way earlier in the march of time.
The way it is celebrated today, Flores de Mayo goes back to the pre-Christian era, way, way back to mythical Olympus itself and the worship of its pantheon of gods, in this wise, Bacchus and Aphrodite. Our sagalas taking after the vestal virgins, their couturiers after the eunuchs at the temples and palaces.
And as if these were not enough a desecration of the religious essence of the ceremony, there now are Flores de Mayo celebrations by, for, and of the gay community. One even sported the very funny and punningly Flawless de Mayo. Which tortured the Philippine Catholic hierarchy no end.
Neither homophobe nor homophile am I, but a line’s got to be drawn between the unrestrained expression of rights and the disparagement of faith.
Or maybe, I am just a medieval monk lost in contemporary times. Call Grand Inquisitor Torquemada! Save Mother Church! Burn all heretics at the stake!
Good God, what has become of us.

Libeling ghosts

GHOSTS OF libels past have just been awakened from the deep to haunt local journalism anew.
Saying he was not interviewed by Punto! and wondering how “they came up with such a ridiculous story,” one Paul Ryan Puri, purported head of the Angeles City Sports Office threatened, nay, readied libel charges against this paper for – pun intended here – “paninirang puri.”
Puri deemed he had to regain some honor lost with Thursday’s banner, City sports head hit over ‘ghost’ workers with the sub-head Nets P0.4 million in six months.
Ever mindful of its own like a fretful mother hen, the Angeles City Information Office (CIO) produced the press release denying everything that our banner story contained. I half expected it to lecture us anew on the Ethics of Journalism like it did with its letter of denial about the police cars withdrawn by the honorable mayor in consequence to the unceremonious sacking of his hand-picked police chief, Senior Supt. George Gaddi last month.
So, okay, we take Puri’s word – per the CIO release – that he was not interviewed by Punto! This, not necessarily disbelieving the attestation of our editor that he talked to Puri over the phone the day before the story came out, duly affirmed by our administrative staff, the simply beautiful Tere Villanueva, who received the call from Puri himself; not necessarily deeming as pure hoax the number of text messages exchanged between Puri and the editor.
Let us leave that at that – Puri said he did not, the editor said he did – and let the people be the judge, or the fiscal’s office if ever a libel case is ever filed, or a trial judge if ever such case prospered.
What we perceive clearly here is the evolvement of instant denial as a policy at city hall; and the threat of libel as an instrument of that policy. At least where the person of Francis “Blueboy” Nepomuceno is concerned.
Blueboy is an amiable fellow. We have said this once. We say it again, and again, and again. A likeable chap is Blue whether at the golf course, in Congress or at the Angeles City Hall.
It is perhaps an accident, if not a cruel joke of circumstances that such a nice guy as Blueboy finds himself enmeshed with ghosts and libels.
The recently departed and much-lamented Dante Fabian of Sun-Star Pampanga must be laughing his heart, err, soul?, out in the Great Yonder.
Dante, it was that busted the “ghost pipes” scandal that hounded and haunted Blueboy’s congressional terms.
Dante, it was that Blueboy slapped with a libel case that landed him – for a few hours – at the cell of that police station at the foot of Pandan Bridge. Joining his late elder brother Ody in the experience, nay, destiny of a jail for libel. Which contributed to their greatness as journalists.
Dante, of course, was acquitted of the libel charge.
Now, come the “ghost workers” turn to haunt Blueboy.
No, Blueboy, was never mentioned in the story as having anything to do with the “ghost workers.” His signature though appeared in some appointment papers of the alleged “ghosts.”
Given the situation, it would have been the wise thing for Blueboy to have played ghost-buster by calling for an investigation of the whole issue, and letting the chips fall wherever they may. As it were, to let the spirits rest peacefully if found benevolent; or if found malevolent, splashed with the shame and punishment of the green plasma – or whatever that Dr. Egon and company busted their monsters with.
The instant denial and threat of libel from the CIO did a great disservice to Blueboy. Notwithstanding it was only a minor functionary at city hall that is involved. In a paraphrase of the old Tagalog saying: Kay Puri ang hataw, kay Blueboy ang latay. It portrayed him to be the kunsintidor , if not the pikon, that he is not, has never been, mayhaps, never will be.
A libel case for exposing ghost projects and ghost workers will not the least instill in the media the chilling effect it is purported to impact. Libel, on the contrary, will enliven their spirits. Libel, especially from government officials smarting from exposes of anomalies, being a badge of honor proudly worn, nay, flaunted by media.
And with the recent memorandum of the Supreme Court on non-imprisonment for libel conviction, there’s a ghost of chance that media will ever be cowed by a libel threat.
Go, sue? Think again, guys. Think Blue.

Authority sans accountability

SO WHO is this “Architect Laquindanum,” and why is his name uttered but in guarded whispers at the Provincial Engineer’s Office?
That came to the fore at Monday’s sangguniang panlalawigan en banc committee hearing on the status of projects being implemented under the 20 percent development fund for 2007.
It was with pained reluctance, and only after a second jab of intense questioning from Vice Governor Yeng Guiao, that the acting provincial engineer breathed out almost inaudibly “Architect Laquindanum” as the one who provided him with the compact discs where written the text and imprinted the photograph of the governor, and ordered him that these be given to contractors for printing and posting on project sites.
So who is this “Architect Laquindanum” and why did he wield so much power over the PEO? Yeng wanted to know.
“What I know is that he is with the Office of the Governor,” the acting provincial engineer Olimpio Pangan said, acting more frightened than engineer.
Good God, what has happened to the provincial government?
Here is an unknown, unverified character who simply goes by the moniker “Architect Laquindanum” able to command the PEO at whim on the strength of an unwritten affiliation, nay, a simple oral reference to the Office of the Governor!
No one at the PEO mustered enough brains, much less balls, to question the authority of this “Architect Laquindanum” to issue orders?
What has become of the PEO? A kennel of mangy mongrels terrified to submission, to go fetch, to heel, and to stay at the command of an unknown master? Go, Bantay, go. Jump, Tagpi, jump. Good job, Olympio, here’s a morsel for you. Sickening.
Asked by Yeng, one Attorney Joseph Quiambao of the provincial legal office said all he knew of “Architect Laquindanum” was that “he is with the Governor’s Office.” No titles, no position, no assignment, no nothing. There is an apparent case of usurpation here.
Could “Architect Laquindanum” be one of those consultants that periodically come out of the woodwork and as regularly worm themselves back in since the assumption to office of the Reverend Governor? We have seen this happening at the still-as-yet-SP-unsanctioned provincial information office. And at the quarry-handling Balas office too.
Can’t be, Board Member Tars Halili, chief of the SP human resources committee said. “We did not approve any position of consultancy lately.”
So who is this “Architect Laquindanum” who – per the fear factor he has instilled at the PEO – struts around like a field marshal of the governor?
No plantilla position, no appointment of any kind appearing so far, no accountability thus, but with all that authority?
Governor Eddie T. Panlilio, don’t tell us this is your kind of good governance and transparency.
Authority without accountability is plain and simple tyranny.
Come to think of it now, is this “Architect Laquindanum” one and the same character as that Laquindanum who, at the time of the gubernatorial campaign last year, called the local media “bayaran” -- paid hacks, to you our foreign readers – and “bereft of moral bearings”?
We strongly enjoin Yeng and the SP to really, really pull the mask out of this character. He deserves no place in government. Not even as a street sweeper. Our apologies to street sweepers.

Infrastructure of fear

A BLUEPRINT of inefficiency, if not masterplanned incompetence, founded on an infrastructure of fear obtains at the Pampanga provincial engineer’s office (PEO).
That is what emerged from Monday’s committee hearing at the sangguniang panlalawigan (SP) on the status of projects being implemented under the 20 percent development fund for 2007 yet.
It was no funereal silence but the subdued, if not angst-ridden presence of a dozen engineers of the province was not lost to the board members (BMs), moving Sasmuan’s Cinderella, Lina Bagasina, to ask whatever happened to the vaunted tikas -- poise and carriage for you, Anglophiles – of the erectors of buildings and bridges.
Less of take-charge guys and more of castrated eunuchs, their chief-of-the-moment, one Olimpio Pangan appointed only on May 5, sheepishly admitted to Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao that he was clueless on why there was rapid turn-over of PEO in-charges. Pangan’s predecessor Renato Gutierrez having occupied the post for six short months.
Couching in diplomatese the straightforward query if indeed the “actual” provincial engineer is the putative provincial administrator (PPA), BM JQ Quiambao, asked Pangan: “Is it true that all requests to the PEO from the SP are forwarded to the provincial administrator for her decision?”
Couched with caution was Pangan’s reply: “Iwasan kung magdesisyun nung e da balu, uling under observation ku. (I avoid making decision without their knowledge as I am under observation)”
A confirmation of the fear factor there, with the Orwellian – not the Pinoy – Big Brother, or in this case, omnipresent Big Sister, keenly watching all goings and doings at the PEO. One misstep – at her whim – you’re fired.
So what can Pangan decide for himself and what needs to be consulted with the don’t-call-her-madam-call-her-Attorney-Vivian-Dabu, say for example request for the use of heavy equipment?
“E ku pa a-test ing sarili ku karing equipment uling ala kung diesel (I haven’t tested myself with the equipment because I have no (supply of) diesel). Not rising to the majestic heights of his namesake, Pangan’s totally insipid response dumped him to a mole, nay, ant hill. What disgrace to Olympus!
One engineer, a certain Bogs Halili showed his balls with a straightforward: “Minamatyagan ang bawat galaw namin. This is not healthy to our organization.”
He went on to speak of Panlilio-instituted “innovations” at the PEO as the clustering of engineers and the transition team as prime sources of the delay in the implementation of projects and the demoralization at the PEO.
Sad that it was only Halili who showed big balls at the committee hearing. All the others seemingly had theirs shivering and shriveling at the safe deposit box of the putative provincial administrator. Perhaps in the same box where the P500,000 Big Brother waved before the news cameras are kept.
So, have these concerns of the engineers been taken to the Office of the Governor, Yeng wanted to know.
“We have proposed some suggestions,” came the reply. Not from any of the engineers, but from one Atty. Joseph Quiambao, reportedly of the Office of the Provincial Legal Officer.
That confirms its all: indeed an infrastructure of fear and intimidation has been set up at the PEO. Big Sister is indeed watching every move there, and wherever the engineers may be at. Why, she even has her own personal monitor, a GPS of sorts, in that character of a lawyer.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. May momo sa PEO.

His own trumpeter

DOTC chief supports Laus’ plans for Clark. Thus appeared on the upper left hand corner of this paper’s front page last Tuesday a story datelined Manila written by our ace correspondent Joey Pavia.
“Transportation Sec. Larry Mendoza yesterday expressed his full support to the leadership of Liberato “Levy” Laus as president and CEO of the Clark Development Corp. in a meeting at the Department of Transportation and Communications here.
Laus said Mendoza “noted the progress of the Clark Freeport” under his leadership…”
So the first two paragraphs of the news story go. So goes too an apparently uncivil display of pride and vanity.
There is no reason to doubt that Sir Levy is telling the truth and nothing but the truth in Mendoza’s recognition of his leadership at the CDC and the progress it wrought.
There is not an iota of doubt that Sir Levy’s leadership at the CDC did indeed account for wondrous things at the Freeport.
But for Sir Levy to say so himself goes beyond the pound-per-square-inch (psi) limit in bloviating one’s self-importance. In the old jargon, Sir Levy tooted his own horn, trumpeted his own accomplishments. In current corporate public relations, Sir Levy became his own spokesperson cum spinmeister.
Why did it have to be Sir Levy making a release of Mendoza’s praise to him? He had with him – per the news story too – “other CDC officials in the meeting with Mendoza. They are CDC Director Adrian Chincuanco, Vice President for Operations and Technical Services Frank Madlambayan, AVP for Investment Promotions Bernie Angeles, Corplan Assistant Marichelle Raagas.”
So, why not any one of them accounting for the praise release of Sir Levy? It was not part of their job descriptions? That is being so myopic. The promotion of the Clark Freeport and its officials, especially CDC’s president/CEO, is part and parcel of any job thereat.
None of them heard Mendoza say the good things Sir Levy said the DOTC secretary said? Now, now, that would put Sir Levy under a dark cloud of doubt.
Mind you, the skies above Sir Levy are ever sunshiny bright. Remember his mantra? “The future of Clark is so bright you have to wear sunglasses to see it.”
A slip of the ego there? Or was it only the over-zealousness of Joey-the- writer at meeting Zeus himself in his pantheon of corporate gods?
Whatever, what has been written has been written. As ‘tis often said, and said so true, there is finality in the printed word.
There now shall find an affirmation by Sir Levy’s cabal-yeros – to use the word crafted by his loyal sympathizer Que Sio, Que Tal – of what they have long prejudiced him to be – “credit grabber.”
So sad. So truly sad. Of whom Mendoza “noted the progress of the Clark Freeport” under his leadership…” According to him.
Indeed, a disservice to Sir Levy that which Punto! front paged last Tuesday.
Joey Pavia, no more page 1 stories for you. You’re grounded to page 3.

Irresponsible parenthood

“ALL SCHOOL-AGED children in basic education must be in school.”
Thus declared Education Secretary Jesli Lapus in support of a bill filed in the House by Cagayan de Oro Representative Rufus Rodriguez that sanctions jail terms and/or fines to parents who fail to send their children to school or to provide them with an education.
Poverty, Rodriguez pointed out in his explanatory notes, should never be a hindrance to education since parents can enroll their children in public schools which provide free education.
Lapus even went further to say that poverty should even be a motivating factor for parents to send their children to school.
“Education is life’s great equalizer. It is also the number one anti-poverty measure we can have,” the education secretary was quoted as saying.
As “knowledge is power,” so “education is the greatest gift parents can give their children.” It is a life-long treasure that cannot be stolen, that will not perish.
In the rural communities, cursed is the home that did not have a wall – even if only of the lowly sawali – serving as shrine to education whence displayed the diplomas, medals and citations of the children.
Premium is indeed put on education as sure-way to get out of poverty. The sagas of Diosdado Macapagal and Oscar Rodriguez are testaments to that.
Parenthood is measured not simply in the number of children sired, but in those reared and educated to be useful citizens.
Failing there thus is the pits of parental irresponsibility. So well discoursed by the philosopher John Stuart Mill in his essay On Liberty: “To bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction or training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society.
A moral crime indeed! Your children did not ask you to be brought out into this world. You did it – with pleasure, to boot! Now you rear them until such time they can go on their own. That is your obligation not only to your God but to society as well.
But where stands the traditional bastion of morality here?
No to all forms of artificial contraception. Yes to tuition hikes in its exclusive institutions. And the population-education-poverty problem gets on a full cycle, nay, on a spiral: the poor getting more babies, the population mired in ignorance with quality education beyond, poverty a-breeding.
There has to be a stop somewhere. And penalizing parents for abandoning their moral responsibility makes one good start.
Most proper and just then for the state to act.
Thus, per Rodriguez’s bill, failure to send children to school will mean imprisonment of six years or a penalty of not more than P100,000.
Abandonment of children translates to six months to two years and a penalty of P100,000.
All sectors of society are bound to support Rodriguez’s bill. To save the children. To save society itself.

Affirmative action

“…QUETA PU quecami, dacal lang Baluga, malati’t maragul, biyasa lang mamana.”
From that ditty of our bygone youth, the “Baluga” – old Capampangan for the indigenous Aetas – has figured much in our lore. In that instance, as master archers; in some others, as yokels out of their native woods. Like in those so called “Area jokes.”
(For the uninitiated, “Area” refers to that enclave straddling Barangays Pampang and Sta. Teresita in Angeles City that has – since pre-WWII – catered to blue-collar sex.)
So there was this story of the Baluga who was experiencing hunger during a severe drought in his mountain village and went down to the plains to find some food for his people. His wandering took him to the Area. In one of the brothels, he chanced upon an open room where a couple were engaged in the tombalibanta position – that’s 69, for you, dummy.
Quickly, he ran out and rushed back to his people warning them that the unat (the straight-haired, as distinguished from them, the kulot – the kinky haired) are in a graver situation of hunger: “Queng danup da, Cuyang,ila nang mipanganan.” (In their hunger, they eat each other.)
And then there was the other Baluga who, after selling his rootcrops at the Pampang Market, sought out the Area for some good time.
Returning to his village, he called for a tribal council to report on the greatest sexual experience he has had: “Lima nang aldo, kaluluwalan ku pa, Apu.” The onset of STD he mistook for continuous ejaculation.
Cry political incorrectness there. Scream racism. Those derogatory tales are nowhere near in disparagement than to the cultural fixity of the unat on the kulot.
Prejudiced as lazy bones that live on dole outs; prejudged as naturally prone to sleep on full stomachs – casting away any activity in favor of dreamland, Aetas for too long have been deemed as truly deserving of their sorry state, as virtually second citizens in their own country, if not the forsaken children of a lesser god. Their nomadic, food-gathering natural way of living, totally ignored. Their pre-eminent ownership of the land, completely forgotten. Thus, their exploitation.
A celebration then – and a challenge too – is the rise to excellence of Aeta tribesmen and women. Like the news of an Aeta scholar of the Clark Development Corporation (CDC) and the Angeles University Foundation (AUF) recently earning his bachelor’s degree with flying colors.
Twenty-year old Augusto S. Laxamana, aside from earning his bachelor’s degree in Criminology, was awarded a citation for being the champion in the Annual Junior Law Enforcers Association Firing Competition held at the Regional Training School in Magalang, Pampanga.
Laxamana led eight other Aeta scholars who graduated this year: John Paul Galang, BS in Business Administration; Andrea Tiglao, BS Education; Natalie Lacson, BS Education; Louchelle Capiz, BS Education; Leslie Joy Estardo, BS Education; Elaine Diane Maria, BS Criminology; Mark Rein, BS Criminology; and Lyn Layug, BS Criminology.
The CDC-AUF Aeta Scholarship program, established in 2004 during the presidency of Dr. Emmanuel Y. Angeles at the CDC president, extends scholarships “to qualified and deserving beneficiaries living within the Freeport contiguous communities.”
At least 40 scholars, majority of whom belong to indigenous tribes of Mabalacat, Pampanga and Bamban, Tarlac have benefited from the program.
This is one affirmative action that the kulot must fully exploit to get out of the umbra of prejudice and discrimination and stand as tall and proud as the unat under the light of socio-economic equity.
Black is beautiful, not only in America. Black power too. Carpe diem – Seize the day – is all that the Aetas need to do.

Not quite Marcos redux

NOW ANY society in which most of the people are poor is always in danger of having its political authority corrupted and dominated by the rich minority.
In the Philippines, the real power lay back of the shifting factions, in the hands of a few rich families strong enough to bend Government to their will. This oligarchy intervened in government to preserve the political privileges of its wealth, and to protect its right of property.
This intervention of wealth in politics unavoidably produced corruption. And when this practice seeped through the whole of society itself, the result was moral degeneration. So the Philippine political culture equated freedom with self-aggrandizement, and the politics of participation, so essential in a democracy, with the pursuit of privilege.
Oligarchic “values” permeated society all the more easily because the rich controlled the press and radio-TV. The press particularly became the weapon of a special class rather than a public forum. The newspapers would noisily and endlessly comment on the side issues of our society, but not on the basic ones: for example, the question of private property.
The oligarchic propaganda was that somehow, with the election of “good men” – good men who please the oligarchs – mass poverty would come to an end. The search for “better men in politics” and not institutional change; a “higher political morality,” and not the restructuring of society – this was the oligarch’s ready answer to the question of change.
AS TIMELY as today’s paper, that was written over 30 years ago in a slim volume titled Revolution from the center authored by one Ferdinand E. Marcos.
There can be no mistaking whom Marcos was hitting at: the Lopez family that owned the power that was – and still is – Meralco, and the glory that was – and still is – ABS-CBN. Which “the state” confiscated after the declaration of Martial law in September 1972. (Of course, as in anything that Marcos took away, the succeeding revolutionary government of Cory Aquino gave back. The Lopezes, including a new generation of them, returning to the country from their comfortable American exile to reclaim everything they previously owned, and – if we believe the allegations – even much, much more.)
This long-forgotten part of Marcosian lore came déjà vu with what could be President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s opening salvo in an as-yet-undeclared war against the Lopezes – the “tough legal fight” for the control of Meralco.
Unlike Marcos though, GMA is neither going thongs and leather by her lonesome nor impacting all the power of the state against the Lopezes. She is enlisting some other power players in her campaign.
Rightly so, to project a broad-based front against a powerful enemy and avoid the issue’s reduction to purely personal vendetta against a perceived conscientious dissenter to her administration.
“Please be there with all your legal luminaries because this is going to be a tough legal fight and you will be the beneficiaries, your workers will be the beneficiaries, your consumers will be the beneficiaries, the Filipino people will be the beneficiaries,” GMA enjoined the Federation of Philippine Industries and the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industries Inc.
Her casus belli wisely couched with populist appeal: the bid to lower the high electricity rates.
So how will GMA fare against the Lopezes?
The venerable Amando Doronilla in his Analysis in Monday’s Philippine Daily Inquirer made a bleak but rational and historically-based projection that do not portend well for GMA.
Wrote the erudite Doro: ”The oligarchy scapegoat is no longer the same as it was during Marcos’ and (the elder) Macapagal’s times. The Lopez oligarchy and Meralco’s structure have changed since the demise of the Lopez patriarch, Eugenio Lopez Sr., who, in his time, called the political shots with his sugar bloc in Congress.
“The heirs of the defunct Lopez “oligarchy” have embedded themselves in post-EDSA corporate structures, less overt in their political interventions than their Grand Old Man. They have changed colors, but Ms Arroyo is fighting the Lopez family with the weapons that Marcos and Macapagal failed to crush the Lopez dynasty.
“Above all, she does not fit into the armor of a populist. She is not her father’s daughter. As a sedulous ape to Marcos’ authoritarian model, she is a clumsy and pathetic protégé.”
So GMA is historically pre-ordained to fail against the Lopezes?
Underestimation, like assumption, is a parent to failure.
So who would have thought that GMA could survive – much less surpass – all those thrown her way – from “Hello Garci” to the Hyatt 10, from the Magdalo to the ZTE-NBN?
The war against the oligarchy bears watching.

Fiesta time, killing time

MAYTIME IN Pampanga is a swirl of religious rites and feasts – from the Santacruzan and Flores de Mayo to the fiestas of at least five towns and scores of barangays.
The religious solemnity and the bacchanalian feasts attendant to the merry month in the province were shattered this year by the staccato sounds of machineguns, the deadly bangs of .45s, and the fatal swishes of double bladed knives.
May’s orgiastic killings in Pampanga have so far claimed 27 lives – assorted individuals including a whole family of seven, a couple and their three helpers, three holdup men, a Philippine Air Force captain, a barangay chairman and the city engineer, all in Angeles City alone; an Army captain and two sergeants in a single incident and an airman in Porac; two suspected military informers in Guagua; and a town councilor in Arayat.
That total, however, makes up only the reported cases.
While mediamen here have lost track of the number of casualties this year – placed at 57 in mid-March, it is generally believed that with the latest upsurge in killings, the total of 197 casualties for the whole of 1987 “stands to be approximated or even surpassed by next month.”
Local officials have consistently expressed optimism that “the end of the killings is in sight.” One ranking provincial official has even gone to the extent of integrating in all his pronouncements that “the killings in Pampanga are all isolated cases,” that compared with other areas, the province “is very peaceful.”
To which, local residents, mediamen and even some local officials disagree.
Rep. Carmelo F. Lazatin (1st District-Pampanga) said the resurgence of violence in Angeles has reached alarming proportions as he called on the military and civilian authorities to take positive steps including “pre-emptive actions” to confront the deteriorating peace and order situation.
One city businessman who requested anonymity lamented the city officials’ coming out with “oblique assessments of the problems instead of frontal solutions.”
One civic leader, in obvious exasperation over the spate of killings said he hoped “the rains of June will cool down May’s heat wave of violence.”
IT HAS BEEN two decades this month since the above appeared with my by-line in People’s TONIGHT.
No, the rains of June did not dampen the killing spree a bit. Thirteen more bodies were collected within the first ten days after the end of May.
The insurgency laid claim to the greater number of casualties – the province then embroiled in war of attrition between the communist urban partisan group Mariano Garcia Brigade and the rightwing vigilante groups called Angelino Simbulan and Francisco Sabile Brigades, with the low intensity conflict doctrine of the Americans in full laboratory testing in Angeles City and Pampanga.
The insurgency has since simmered down. But today, the people of Angeles City and Pampanga are again in the vise-grip of fear – killings, robbery, rape again assuming nearly epidemic levels.
Is there some cyclical phenomenon here? Do we discern some method in this madness?
Take heed of the past. It is our vision of the future. As a variation on my favorite philosopher tells us.