Kapampangan shame

“KAPAMPANGAN KU, pagmaragul ku.”
Pride in being Kapampangan has been a recurring refrain in the administration of Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio. So recurring that it has been reduced to plain lip service, something akin to St. Paul’s clanging cymbal amounting to nothing but noise. Or, most appropriate yet, an ejaculation finding meaning in its opposite.
Pride in the Kapampangan is ever at the tip of the Reverend Governor’s tongue but not in the innermost chamber of his heart.
Consider his treatment of the gallery of former Pampanga governors at the second floor lobby of the capitol.
Sometime in August last year – just two months into his term – Panlilio had the portraits of the governors unceremoniously, and inexplicably, removed. Soon after, the capitol was plastered with portraits of Panlilio in all guises, in all poses, in all colors, in all sizes dating from his gubernatorial campaign to his inauguration. At the second floor lobby was placed a wide-screen TV continuously playing videos of Panlilio.
No pride in the Kapampangan, there. Only Panlilio’s pride of himself. One super massage of his ego, if not his apotheosis in-the-making.
Reeling from media flak, Panlilio after sometime announced that the portraits of the former governors were taken down for restoration, having been hung too long and exposed to dust and grime.
So where were they taken for restoration? In the ceiling of the Benigno Aquino Hall, for the indulgence of rats, mites and cockroaches.
Utter disrespect of the memory of past leaders is no manifestation of pride in the Kapampangan. Then there was Panlilio’s instant dismissal – insultingly made through a mere factotum – of the proposal for an archeological dig that would once and for all establish the existence of a Kapampangan civilization eons before the coming of the Spaniards. A Kapampangan Indiana Jones prepared the undertaking in cooperation with the National Museum and would cost the province some P3 million.
Panlilio’s reason for thumbing down the proposal: the province had no money for it. No money? P3 million is but a three-day’s take from the quarry taxes.
Pride in the Kapampangan, but not of his heritage? That’s no pride but shame of race.
Then there is Panlilio’s open hostility to the Pampanga police director.
Senior Supt. Keith Ernald Singian, a Kapampangan, may not fit Panlilio’s mould of the ideal provincial director. So he has to go, Panlilio being well within his right to choose the officer he most fancies.
But por dios, por santo, must Panlilio have to be so strait-laced as to think that only one Senior Supt. Cesar Hawthorne Binag is fit to be Pampanga police director.
Panlilio’s only-option in Binag – a non-Kapampangan – is a manifestation of the governor’s low regard, if not open disdain, of Kapampangan police officers more senior and more experienced than Binag and as qualified, if not more, for the post. Ala ni metung mang matinung Kapampangan a opisyal king buung kapulisan?
Pride in the Kapampangan? That is an insult to the Kapampangan.
Where police choices are concerned, it is not only Panlilio though who exhibits some sort of anti-Kapampangan tendencies.
Camp Olivas is rife with talks of this “very influential and powerful legislator” who allegedly makes the final decision on every police assignment, not only in his district but in the whole region.
“It is this honorable man – this, not dis – that tells the regional director whom to assign, the perfunctory list of choices sent to the local government executives a mere formality,” a well-placed source in Camp Olivas confided to me over coffee at Fiorgelato’s at SM City Pampanga the other day.
What is bad is the legislator – allegedly – has never recommended any Kapampangan officer for placement. “Para bang may galit siya sa mga Kapampangan, samantalang kadugo din niya naman ang mga ito,” the source said.
So there, Kapampangan ku, pagmaragul ku. One more meaningless blabber in the mouth of the province’s leaders.
Makarine kayu. Shame.