The comeback

NOW FILMING: Ang Pagbabalik ni Leon Guerrero (The Return of Leon Guerrero).
Opening scene: A flashback. Fred Panopio warbling the Leon Guerrero theme on the background.
Tall in the saddle, Leon Guerrero rides his white steed into a golden sunset. His job well done: his people liberated from the political warlords, saved from nature’s rampage.
Segue to: Clips of the Mt. Pinatubo eruptions juxtaposed with Leon Guerrero opening his poultry farm to feed a starving population. Scenes of rampaging lahar dissolve to Leon Guerrero wading waist deep in swirling mud, an old woman in his arms, dissolve further to Leon Guerrero on a helicopter ladder plucking an old man from the top of a coconut tree.
Segue to: Clips of masses upon masses of people mobbing Leon Guerrero – women of all ages hugging, kissing him; Leon Guerrero doing the ritual respectful kissing of the hands of the elderly – dissolve to Leon Guerrero riding his way to the Capitol, and arriving there, doing some horsemanship, capped by a tumbling from the saddle and landing squarely on his feet. Pan camera to the crowd roaring in delight.
Back to the opening scene: From a panoramic shot of a Leon Guerrero silhouetted by the golden sunset, move to a close-up of Leon Guerrero with the faintest trace of a smile, self-contented for a job well done. Up tempo now of the Leon Guerrero theme.
Then total black out.
Act 1. Scene 1. Close up shot of a clerico-fascist – the contravida (anti-hero) – repeatedly saying: “E ku mayabang, E ku mayabang (I am not a braggart)” even as his stance shows otherwise , juxtaposed with clips of his ranting and raving in a face-to-face confrontation with his critics.
Scene 2. Close up and medium shots of the contravida repeatedly saying
“Konsiyensiya, konsiyensiya (Conscience)” juxtaposed with multiple shots of the Balas boys at their picketline and capped with shots of the lady aide – the character actress a la Bella Flores -- dancing in delight.
Scene 3. Close up shot of the contravida, panning to Bella Flores, er, the character actress, by his side, with the phrases “God willing” and “good governance” repeatedly said off cam, juxtaposed with scenes of the people of Minalin rallying against their own at the Capitol, capped with the lamentations of the Crying Madonna who was once the contravida’s patron.
Scene 4. Clips of protest rallies of the Balas boys, calling for the resignation of the contravida and Bella Flores. Multiple clips of the Balas showboats and streamers. Close ups of A-1 stars at the rallies.
Scene 5. Clips of the 15,000 strong Recall rally. Highlight the cameo roles of dramatic actor Jerry Pelayo, matinee idols Rosve Henson, Yeng Guiao and Willy Villarama, and for climax, the Crying Madonna again.
Scene 5. Clips of the Capitol siege by the truckers and the Balas boys segue to a raving but fearful contravida.
The scenes finally dissolving in red.
Act 2. Scene 1. Leon Guerrero mounting his faithful white steed again, riding towards the sunrise with the Capitol slowly emerging from the horizon.
Cut and print!
THIS IS the movie in many a mind with Leon Guerrero registering anew as a voter of Porac, Pampanga last Tuesday.
Can he make a blockbuster of a box-office hit again?
Not after the Bida ng Masa’s total collection of P155.626 million from quarry taxes in the 11 years that he ruled the Capitol ranged against the P319.338 million drawn during the 18 months of the administration of Gov. Eddie Panlilio.
The numbers don’t lie. Doubts come aplenty there as to Leon Guerrero’s much touted white blanket of integrity he said his mother birthed him in.
Then again, do not underestimate the gullibility of the Kapampangan. So warned a friend. For despite all those charges of plundering the provincial coffers, of abject ignorance bordering on utter idiocy, of maladministration, of chronic absenteeism, Leon Guerrero managed to stay high on his horse for three terms, and even bequeathed his post to his firstborn.
Yes, do not underestimate the gullibility of the Kapampangan.

Broken windows

EVER PROACTIVE and with its focus fixed on becoming a “Habitat for Human Excellence” in the near future, the City of San Fernando has set the groundwork to address the blight of urbanization.
In a recent news report, the city’s own attorney-general – lawyer Ramsey Ocampo, a retired police chief superintendent – pointed to the “growing need for the integration of services aimed at promoting the safety, cleanliness, orderliness and beautification of the city, lifting the standards of this capital city from the alarming stage of decay and deterioration.”
"At present, the city proper does not showcase the city as we envisioned it to be, for just like any other city, it depicts a picture where there is struggle for survival," Ocampo was quoted as saying.
Hence, the birthing of Project Habitat, with its eponymous task force for its implementation in the specific target areas of traffic innovation, jurisdiction over streets and sidewalks, waste management, urban greening and beautification, and some such others.
TF Habitat, Ocampo said, shall employ the "Broken Windows" concept.
For the clueless, “Broken Windows” came from an article of the same title in the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic Monthly written by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, which the latter later expanded into full book form.
“Broken Windows” was culled from a passage in the said article, thus:
"Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.
Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars."
Fix the problems as they start, small – and therefore fairly manageable – as they still are, says Kelling. Repair a broken window, so as not to attract vandals to break more.
Kelling’s article indeed finds resonance in any Philippine city.
Allow a small bag of trash to be dumped on an open lot. Soon that lot becomes the garbage dump of the whole neighborhood.
Let a hovel stand on a dry riverbed. Soon a whole shanty town takes over the river bed and the banks as well. Take a good look at the Abacan River in Angeles City and weep.
Permit a shoe shine boy to ply his trade on the sidewalk. Soon all sorts of trade and commerce converge on that sidewalk.
So how fared “Broken Windows” in its full implementation?
The best example here is New York City at the onset of the term of office of Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 1993 onwards to its climax in 2001.
The former district attorney who battled New York’s crime syndicates inter-phased “Broken Windows” with “zero tolerance” – a no-nonsense enforcement of laws, and “quality of life” – clean-up drives and community action. Which resulted to the plunge in the crime index for both petty and serious crimes for 10 years straight. Giuliani first carved his niche in the American psyche for having cleaned up New York City of its dregs before becoming the poster boy of strength and determination in presiding over the city’s phoenix-like rise from the devastations of 9-11.
Two immediate impacts of “Broken Windows” were Central Park taken from the grip of criminals and muggers and given back to the New Yorkers and the millions of tourists that flock to it every year, and the transformation of seedy, smutty, 42nd Street from being the mecca of pornography into a chic, family-oriented strip of restaurants and boutiques. I should know. I was there. Solo in 2000, then with the wife in 2006. And immensely enjoyed The Big Apple both times.
“Broken Windows.” As it was with New York City so it would be with the City of San Fernando?
Better believe it. For as it was with Mayor Rudy Giuliani so it shall be with Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez. As they were fired in and formed from the same forge, cut from the same cloth.

Award undeserved

“THE QUARRY collection system did not deserve the Gawad Galing Pook 2008. It miserably failed to meet the criteria of sustainability, transferability and consistency.”
So declared Rene Romero, president of the Advocacy for the Development of Central Luzon. The man knows whereof he speaks being part and parcel of the other winning Gawad Galing Pook 2008 entry – the City of San Fernando’s public governance system.
“Parang bumaba ang pagtingin ko sa Galing Pook,” Romero said of the “undeserved” award for the Panlilio administration.
"The province's winning is mere luck and not actually good performance if we are to look at it closely," Guiao was quoted as saying. "It’s like basketball, you are good at what you do, not because you are lucky but because you are really good at it. But Panlilio's so-called quarry collection is just luck."
Guiao shared Romero’s sentiments on the “abject failure of the quarry collection system in the aspects of consistency and sustainability,” citing as proof the plunge in the collection and the continuing call for justice of the dismissed quarrymen of the Biyaya A Luluguran at Sisikapan (Balas), who were directly responsible for the increase in the collection.
A word from the Balas boys on the award: "It's unfair. We risked our lives to help improve quarry collections. Now all the glory goes to Panlilio and Dabu while we continue to starve here at our picket line, patiently waiting for our back wages. Is that what they call justice? We hope they could be fair enough to people like us who served them with dedication and loyalty."
Sans the sentiments of Guiao and Romero and the lamentations of the Balas boys, the Gawad Galing Pook 2008 bestowed on the provincial government of Pampanga, would still stand on very shaky grounds.
Res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself. So hallowed in law. So indubitable an argument in logic.
By the numbers shall Romero and Guiao’s argument against the Gawad Galing Pook 2008 find validation, especially as the numbers come from the provincial treasurer’s office.
Quarry collections for December 2008 totaled P14,295,000 – short of P1,815,000 when ranged against the collection for December 2007, at P16,110,000.
The plunge in the quarry collections started in July 2008, with an average of monthly P8-million “shortages” in comparison to the 2007 collections.
The difference assumed staggering proportions with the P34,385,000 gap between the July-December 2008 total collection of P84,795,000 and the P119,180,000 for the same period in 2007.
The spectacular shortfall being vainly glossed over by the Panlilio administration proffering the cumulative total of P319,338,000 from his first day in office in July 2007 to Jan. 9, 2009.
While sustainability is found so much wanting there, consistency is all too evident – the quarry collections in constant plummet.
So, how did the quarry tax collection system manage to snag the Gawad Galing Pook 2008?
Better ask Naga City Mayor Jesse Robredo, reportedly a member of the panel of judges and Panlilio’s close associate in the Kaya Natin! movement.
Kinaya kaya?

Dayagulo

“WE REGRET to inform the governor that we will not attend the said dialogue for we no longer believe in his sincerity and capacity to resolve our problem.”
So was one Benedicto Lacsamana, also-president of the Federation of Pampanga Truckers Inc., quoted in our front page item Truckers back out of dialog with Gov last Friday.
That, even as the governor, in the same news story insisted: “My office remains open. I have not closed the chances of dialoguing with them to address their concerns.”
Dialogue, truly a by-word in the Panlilio administration, is the least of its operative words. Here’s a refresher on Panlilio’s dialogue record in a reprint of this column’s August 27, 2008 edition.

Dayagulo

“I MAY be stubborn when it comes to my convictions but I am a dialoguing person.”
So said the Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio on his Monday’s Quezon City press conference, ensconced in his comfort zone of the Kaya Natin! Movement and his remaining faithful chorus, the Kapampangan Marangal, Inc.
“I may have differences with some civil society groups …to settle these bickerings and issues, I am more than willing to hold a dialogue with them at their most convenient time and place.” So was the embattled Governor reported as saying.
With that talk, Panlilio could have taken his audience for the proverbial Marines. Yeah, as in tell it to them dummies. For Panlilio is anything and everything but a “dialoguing person.” To wit:
Exhibit A: Panlilio’s dialogue with the quarrymen of Balas, moderated by the Rev. Fr. Deo Galang and attended by his civil society groups at the Social Action Center of Pampanga premises, July 18.
Yes, that dialogue had an immediate result: the end to the July 10-13 picket of the Balas boys effected by agreements vowed to by Panlilio to implement, principal among which was the reinstatement of the protesting quarry workers.
Its end result though was the bigger, noisier and bitterer August picket – still on-going at presstime – after the agreements reached in the dialogue were unilaterally disregarded by Panlilio – allegedly upon the proddings of putative provincial administrator Atty. Vivian Dabu.
“Peglokwan da kami, beligtad da ing pisabi.” They fooled us, they reneged on their word. So the Balas boys charged of Panlilio and Dabu. So Panlilio immediately sacked all 40 of them.
Exhibit B: Panlilio’s twin dialogues with the sangguniang panlalawigan both ending in deeper animosities between the two branches of the provincial government.
The lasting image of the second one – on local television yet – was an unpriestly ranting, raving and raging Panlilio to a dignifiedly defiant Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao.
Exhibit C: Panlilio’s early dialogues with Guiao, arranged by businessman Rene Romero, chair of the Advocacy for the Development of Central Luzon and president of the Pampanga Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The “gentleman’s agreement” for the executive to meet with the legislative to thresh out issues before being raised to the sanggunian floor cavalierly thrown to the wind with Panlilio’s “I forgot” in the cases of the blanket authority request and Dabu’s (non)confirmation hearing.
The end result: Romero giving up on his Governor and ultimately calling Panlilio a failure not only at governance but moreso at his word.
Not so flash report, okay, delayed news: Romero was reported as having accused the Governor of "merely stealing the crusade for good governance from civil society groups here…”
Now, now, that’s tantamount to calling Panlilio a thief, a bandit, a burglar, a robber, a ladron. ­ Very serious accusations there, Sir.
Exhibit D: On the very first day of the resumption of the protest rally of the Balas boys at the capitol, August 11, Panlilio issued a dispersal order to Senor Supt. Keith Ernald Singian for the police to clear the capitol grounds of the protestors. Talks had it that Panlilio verbally ordered the police to bodily carry out the protestors if needed.
Dispersal is anathema to dialogue. That Panlilio – a priest, albeit suspended – could even conceive of dispersing those calling for the resignation of his administrator makes a despot, not a “dialoguing person.” Think what Panlilio could resort to were his very own position at stake.
Exhibit E: The civil society groups, with Panlilio campaign manager Averell Laquindanum as spokesman, sought and were granted a dialogue by Guiao and the sangguniang panlalawigan.
The civil society groups had all praises for the SP, finding them approachable, reasonable, and even adaptable. The SP virtually empowered the civil society groups as full partners in local governance by asking them to provide the inputs – research, studies, proposed resolutions – on legislations, the rationalization of quarry operations being only one of them.
So there, Panlilio’s civil society found their dialogue with the SP, not with their idol.
Panlilio a “dialoguing person”? From the exhibits presented here, it can be reasonably deduced that with the Governor, the dayalogo -- as that CLTV 36 teaser called it – is not anything but a dayagulo. A cheat, a disorder.

School's out

A STATEMENT from the local government of the City of San Fernando:
“We cannot clearly see unselfish motives behind the signing of the agreement between the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) on the prohibition of local government units from opening local universities and colleges (LUCs).
We in the City of San Fernando, Pampanga have been pushing for the establishment of a City College for quite some time. We have seen the real need for such an institution when confronted with the glaring figures.
As of latest count, 80 out of 100 high school graduates in this country can no longer enter college.
What has happened to that dream of many a Filipino parent to have their children finish their schooling and become degree holders?
With this moratorium, the CHED and the DILG will only limit the options of our people in seeking the fulfillment of this dream. This is not the CHED’s mission. Nor is it the DILG’s.
What the CHED must do is to remain vigilant in seeking out those learning institutions that do not render quality education to their students. It is not in its place to stop local governments from realizing their goal of giving their people good and affordable choices for learning.
Our advocacy for quality education continues not only for the sake of our youth but more so because of our burning desire to make the City of San Fernando a Habitat for Human Excellence in the not so distant future.
No CHED-imposed moratorium will ever hinder us from attaining this vision.”
THE “UNSELFISH MOTIVES” that cannot be clearly seen as behind the CHED-DILG agreement prohibiting local government units from establishing their own colleges or universities may be gleaned though from the fact that the current head of CHED is none other than the esteemed educator Dr. Emmanuel Y. Angeles, long-time president and chancellor of the family-owned Angeles University Foundation (AUF) in Angeles City.
Yes, it is not only in the City of San Fernando but also in the Municipality of Mabalacat, where its own community college is now into its second semester, that cries of “vested interests” have been raised on the CHED-DILG prohibition.
Yes, clear as day, so it is alleged, community colleges in Pampanga are prevented from operating because they would take enrollees out of the AUF.
Unfair. Utterly unfair to attribute purely selfish motives on the part of the esteemed educator Dr. Emmanuel Y. Angeles when all he wanted was to raise the quality of education in the country. Now, if only every school hereabouts could rise to the level of the AUF, then, the Philippines would have regained its pre-eminent position as the center of learning in the Asia-Pacific region.
Well short of experience in running schools, nay, absolute zero in that regard, politics being their main pre-occupation, the LGUs’ will most certainly create more diploma mills around the country. And what good would that do to this already benighted nation?
Woe unto these LGUs for revolting against such a noble mission!
What right have these LGUs to know what is best in educating the youth? Would these LGUs ever know any better than the CHED, any better than the seasoned, esteemed educator that is Dr. Emmanuel Y. Angeles?
So, as the esteemed educator Dr. Emmanuel Y. Angeles knows best, the LGUs, like dutiful pupils should just let him do the rest.
Class dismissed.

Certified idiocy

INEPT AND INCOMPETENT. That was how the Honorable Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio infamously scorned the Pampanga police force, notably the provincial director, Senior Supt. Keith Ernald Singian and the chief of police of the City of San Fernando, Supt. Benjamin Medina in the wake of what he called the “siege of the Capitol” by disgruntled truckers and the disgusted Balas boys last Jan. 5.
Inept and incompetent. Idiotic too. That was what we made of at least two of the chiefs of offices under the Office of the Governor at the budget hearing conducted by the Sangguniang Panlalawigan at Montevista Tuesday. And we are still being kind to them, else we would have tagged them “cretins.”
Consider the head of the Civil Security Unit. The Jan. 5 incident is by itself an indictment of the ineptness and incompetence of the CSU, the security of the Capitol building being its very reason for being. Heads at the CSU should have rolled after the “siege.” But no, CSU’s egghead of a chief had to be let loose, if only to display a greater show of ineptness, incompetence and idiocy in trying to defend the proposed CSU budget before the SP.
Asked Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao: “The CSU has lesser personnel now than last year, how come you are requesting for more funds for personnel services.”
Answered the CSU chief: “Because the provincial band has been lumped with the CSU.”
An incredulous Guiao: “What has this band of musicians got to do with security? With what will they secure the Capitol, with their trumpets?”
(Maybe, Vice Gov., this is part of the streamlining program of the Panlilio administration, some sort of multi-tasking.)
Guiao, again: “What role does the CSU play at the Capitol?”
CSU chief: “We prevent looting and secure the Pampanga Day.”
(See? Multi-tasking. But where the heck could the looting possibly come from?)
So, what could the CSU chief say of the “siege of the Capitol,” Guiao wanted to know.
“The CSU escorted the truckers to the Office of the Vice Governor upon his request,” he answered.
Greater incredulity on the face of Guiao now: “What are you talking about? I meant the incident of Jan. 5 not Jan. 12. Just give us a brief of your incident report of Jan. 5.”
“It is not yet finalized, Sir,” came the reply.
(An incident report yet to be finalized eight days after the incident is not an incident report. It falls under the category of a historical report or an archival entry.)
Bless Guiao for his forbearance, patiently lecturing the CSU chief on the definition of an incident report. Idiota!
Then there is the chief of the Pampanga Investment Promotion Office (PIPO).
So, how much investment came to Pampanga in 2008, asked Guiao of him.
“I have no figures for 2008, Sir. What I have are for 2006.”
Guiao: “How can you come up with a plan for 2009 when you don’t have these basic data? How would you know if investments are growing or not?”
PIPO chief: “Sir, we concentrated on the streamlining program.”
Guiao: “Investment promotion is the very name of your office, not streamlining.”
PIPO chief: “Sir, I found here in my papers the 2008 data. A total of P31 billion new investments in Pampanga which amounted to 23 percent share of new investments in the region. This is from BOI, PEZA and Clark.”
Guiao: “Investments in Clark cannot be attributable to us because we did not have any efforts there. Clark has its own investment promotion program. Give us the investments on a per municipality basis. How much was agri-based, industrial, commercial, and the like.”
PIPO chief: “We don’t have them, Sir.”
(For the record, a quick check – through text – with the CDC public affairs office showed that for 2008, 164 projects were signed: 65 new investments, 22 expansion projects, and 77 renewals. The new investments and expansion projects amounted to P13.11 billion, with committed employment at 13,737. Now, that is what an investment promotion office should have. Basic data at its fingertips.)
Watching the budget hearings made us think that the basic qualification for chief of office at the Office of the Governor is certified idiocy. But if you think the above instances are all there is to ineptness, incompetence and idiocy thereat, then brace yourselves for this whammy.
Governor Panlilio: “I have to be candid before this body, I am not privy to the development plan. I expected Mr. Rommel Pineda (the PIPO chief) to come up with the plan.”
The governor of Pampanga clueless about the development plan of the province! And he is the acclaimed paladin of good governance!

Oca, of course

NO SURPRISE is the City of San Fernando landing in the Top Ten among all local government units – provincial, city, municipal and barangay – in the country in the Gawad Galing Pook for exemplary governance for 2008.
What could have been a surprise – and an unforgiveable offense at that – is the City of San Fernando not being in the Top Ten.
For one, awards of excellence have become a tradition for the city. It now appears that the good governance category in any award-giving body will be so much wanting, in luster, in substance, in merit, without the City of San Fernando at the podium. In the Gawad Galing Pook, this is already the city’s second under the leadership of Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez. The first, in his first term, in the aspect of cultural heritage preservation. The accolade this time is for the institutionalization in the city of the public governance system (PGS).
In August last year, at the Public Governance Forum of the International Solidarity in Asia (ISA), the city took center stage as one of the four “best local government units to provide the best business opportunities to investors.” The others being the cities of Marikina, Naga and Tagbilaran.
That recognition is conferred by ISA to local government units that have streamlined their local investment programs to accommodate and provide the best atmosphere for investors. That recognition is in effect an affirmation of that which was bestowed upon San Fernando in 2006 and 2007 by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry as “the most business-friendly city in North Luzon.” And further reaffirmed with the city government hailed by the Central Luzon Growth Corridor Foundation for its “excellent implementation of streamlining procedures in the issuance of business permits.”
These, and all the undertakings of the city government, are anchored on the PGS. For those still perplexed over the PGS, it simply means good governance at work, Magsilbi Tamu (Let us serve) actualized.
Here’s a re-take of what we have written in an editorial here last year under the title “Oca defines good governance.” It resonates even louder today with the Gawad Galing Pook for the PGS.
“…the recognition is a monument to the integrity of the city administration and a testament to the efficacy of the kind of good governance that Mayor Rodriguez espouses. Good governance that is not flimsily based on the grandiosity of verbiage but solidly grounded on a public governance system with civic responsibility as core value. This, concretized in a multi-sectoral governance council (MSGC) representative of all the socio-economic strata of the Fernandino community, working on set, measurable goals aligned with the city’s development agenda.
No simple captive civil society kowtowing to the local government’s wishes is the MSGC but a critiquing, coordinating, consulting, and working assembly.
It was with the MSGC that the roadmap and scorecards – basic implements in the public governance system that was birthed at Harvard University – of the City of San Fernando were crafted soon into Mayor Oca’s first term. It is with the MSGC that these are now being implemented.
The results are obvious. From a virtual state of bankruptcy in June 2004, the city government has not only increased the content of the public coffers but moreso raised the quality of life of the Fernandino with marked improvement in health care and education, better infrastructures as in the area of flood control, the preservation of peace and order.
All that auguring well for the city to reclaim its pre-eminence as top investment area in the region outside the Freeport zones.
The City of San Fernando is soon to be institutionalized – the first ever in the country – in the global public governance system in Washington, D.C.
Even without that supreme accolade, now obtains in the Fernandino a substantiated “pride of place” far and superior, nay, incomparable, to the empty “…pagmaragul ku” (...I am proud of) on the provincial level.”
Recently, from third class, the City of San Fernando has been elevated to the status of first class component city – in but three years since Mayor Oca took over its helm! That is PGS again at work there.
Indeed, as we wrote then: “NO, HE did not have to be a poster boy of a national newspaper. Neither did he have to fraternize with other propaganda props of some elitist academic bastion. Nor move around the country giving campus talks. All in the propagation of the ideal of good governance.
Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez of the City of San Fernando did one better than all those self-anointed, media-crafted purveyors of good governance combined: He walked the talk. He breathed and lived good governance.”

Death wish

YOU WERE there. In your heart of hearts, did you really believe your compadre’s life was in imminent danger when those truckers and Balas boys stormed the capitol?
My seminary elder Don Luisito asked over our usual espressos at La Nilad in SM City Pampanga.
No. His physical being was never in danger. Not even remotely.
What if the protesters managed to break through the doors to his office?
Not even then.
You, sure? The protesters were angry and agitated. They were ranting and raging since early morning. Why, the Balas boys even heckled the governor as he spoke of his accomplishments earlier during the flag-raising ceremonies.
Even if they raved, there was no way that they could have harmed him.
How can you be so sure?
There were no less than seven mediapersons – myself included – and three television cameras, from Infomax, ABS-CBN and CLTV 36, with the governor in his office at the height of the siege. Only the criminally insane would dare commit murder and mayhem in front of the media. From their looks, the protesters, both truckers and Balas boys did not fit the molds of Mad Dog Kelly or Jack the Ripper.
So, why do you suppose he kept on harping in his statements after the siege that his life and that of his – how do you say it, putative? – provincial administrator were in danger?
Lots of speculations there. Any guesses?
Okay, he could be overdramatizing the event, a pa-martyr effect, an argumentum ad misericordiam to gain, rather, regain the sympathy of the people. You yourself were taken by this.
Me? How?
So did you not become kinder to your compadre? You even wrote how you so assured him that you would stand by his side during the siege. Next thing you’d write would be you were prepared to die by his side then, ha, ha,ha.
Ha, ha, ha, funny. Anything more stupid from you?
Still on the dramatic mode. The governor exaggerated the life-threatening fiction to strengthen his case against Col. Singian. He found it auguring well for his open distrust of, no, make that hostility toward Singian and the whole Pampanga police practically. His hype made the police look all the more convincingly inept and incompetent, as he himself scripted. Don’t you agree?
Probably so. I am just intrigued with your use of the word “scripted.”
What of it?
I don’t know but the word broke loose a tsunami of sounds and images of my compadre in my mind.
Spill them out before you get drowned.
Ha, ha, funny. Anyways, there is the image of the gubernatorial candidate Among Ed in his blue bullet-proof vest telling the electorate he was ready to die for them in his advocacy for good governance. A comic scene there, really. Then, the reported foiled assassination attempt on Gov. Panlilio early in his term courtesy of a half-deranged man who, as he stood next to the governor, opened his belt bag to get a cigarette but in so doing dropped a pen knife. Another farcical act. Then, Panlilio himself adding one more R to the three he said were meant to take him out of the governorship…
Reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic?
You’re really funny, Don Luisito. That’s for Recount, Resign, Recall. And, with my compadre’s patented pa-effect, Requiem.
Now I am convinced your compadre, contrary to accusations has no Messiahnic complex. What he has is more of an obsession for martyrdom, a death wish, in the service of his flock. There’s the script.
Maybe. So next time I see him, I’d tell him be careful with what he wishes for, it may just be granted. And all scripts, incidentally, also come to The End.
Morbid.

Gov's top cop

LOUD AND CLEAR so was heard the renewed call of Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio for the relief of Pampanga police director Senior Supt. Keith Ernald Singian, in the wake of January 5’s siege of the capitol by protesting truckers joined in by the long-picketing quarrymen of the Biyaya a Luluguran at Sisikapan (Balas).
“Inept and incompetent” Panlilio called the local police for their failure to contain the truckers and Balas boys within the perimeters of the Arnedo Park; the protester’s storming the capitol the governor deemed as direct threat to his life and that of his provincial administrator; the mauling of his nephews a direct assault on the freedom of expression (?), and promptly demanded – not so much on a silver platter but on a tiklis (a very large basket) as they are many – for the heads of Singian, City of San Fernando police chief Supt. Benjamin Medina, and the whole police force posted at the capitol that Monday.
Panlilio’s call, to repeat, was heard loud and clear: a 10-4 that was immediately taken not so much by those to whom it was addressed though – President GMA, Interior and Local Government Secretary Ronnie Puno and PNP chief Director General Jesus Verzosa – as by some police officers long salivating for Singian’s post. An opening gambit there, Panlilio most fortuitously provided them.
Our sources, deeply embedded in both Camps Crame and Olivas, say the jockeying for Singian’s post has started with the pretenders already moving about through the PNP woodwork, going the rounds of influential religious sects and pastors for some endorsement, and getting more up close and personal with the chums of somebody named Mikey. Not Disney’s mouse, dummy.
The earliest birds – so our sources say – are Senior Superintendents George Gaddi and Sonny Cunanan.
Gaddi and Cunanan shared common ground as erstwhile police directors of the City of Angeles. Where Cunanan’s term at Camp Tomas Pepito came to full maturity, Gaddi’s though was stillborn, aborted on its sixth month.
“He did not even make casual, were he a government employee,” so the joke on Gaddi went in the city after his unceremonious dismissal consequent to an overkill of a raid on the office of the local franchisee of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office’s Small Town Lottery (lotto).
The raiders in their full battle gear made like they were engaging the Abu Sayyaf, terrifying enough for one pregnant lotto employee to have her contractions and suffered a miscarriage. So the news reports then carried.
Of course, Gaddi was acting on orders of Mayor Francis “Blueboy” Nepomuceno who decreed that the lotto was illegal and even vowed to fight the “vice” to the finish.
Gaddi was finished. Nepomuceno is still mayor. The lotto is still thriving. So what happened to the fight, eh, Mister Blue? A P4-million question there, to paraphrase a cliché.
Cunanan’s watch on the other hand saw the proliferation of video-karera (VK) in the city, with the coming of a new VK lord in the person of one “Louie Boy” taking over the operations of the dreaded “3SM” gang that monopolized the game at the time of Cunanan’s predecessor, what’s-his-name Segubre.
These are the guys obsessing for the Pampanga police directorship? And, while writing this, Senior Supt. Pierre Bucsit, current Angeles City chief, too?
They most surely would not even come a quarter of the lofty qualification standards set by the Reverend Governor. As a matter of course, not one candidate already nominated or yet to be nominated by the PNP – whether Crame or Olivas – will ever pass Panlilio’s measurement weighted in moral values.
The governor has long ago set his heart, mind, and possibly, even his soul, on only one choice for Pampanga police director – Senior Supt. Cesar Hawthorne Binag, who made his mark as head of the PNP Moral Recovery Program.
If only to show the efficacy, if not the sanctity of his choice – so I already wrote here once – Panlilio enlisted the endorsement of Binag by no less than 30 bishops. I said then and I am saying it again: Having the imprimatur of that number of holy men warrants for Binag not only the Pampanga police directorship but the director-generalship of the whole PNP itself. No PNP chief has ever received that much endorsement from the prelates.
If Singian must go – he’s practically overstaying as officer-in-charge of the Pampanga police office for over two years already – then, by all means, let Panlilio get his choice.
So the next time the capitol is stormed a la Bastille by the Balas, the truckers, and whoever takes his right to free expression out of Arnedo Park, Panlilio would not have anyone else to blame.
Go Binag, Gov.

La femme extraordinaire

A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE. Even a man of great mettle would have crumbled at all the brickbats – kitchen sink and toilet bowl included – thrown her way but she is truly made of sterner stuff, titanium perhaps, and courageously withstood, nay, defiantly repulsed all the assaults on her very character.
Why, an almost similarly placed woman – publicly perceived as even stronger than her – succumbed to the vise-grip of pressure that tightened not around her neck but on that of her superior. Resigning her post, if only to give some breathing space to him she has served for decades.
No, our woman here could not be pressured. No amount of protest actions and rallies, no matter the ear-shattering decibels of cries for her resignation from all sectors, the loudest shrieks from her erstwhile associates, would even budge her a bit from her post, a putative one at that, given her non-recognition by the confirming powers.
Were the Imeldific and the Dame Margaret Thatcher not conferred the title Iron Butterfly, she would have deserved it most. But then again, somewhat wanting of the aesthetic brilliance of the Madame and somewhat short of the intellectual prowess of the once most powerful woman of the world, let us just be content in naming her Teflon Moth. The non-stick substance in her persona repelling all charges and complaints heaped on her.
A woman of substance, she is more Virago than Virgo. Never coy. Somewhat cocky. Always steadfast, resolute to the point of stubbornness in getting what she wants. In the process, stepping not just on a lot of toes but knocking on a number of heads. As when she bearded the sangguniang lions in their own den – more apt now, when she sheared whatever hair was left of the follicle-challenged board members -- jigging out of her non-confirmation hearings.
Truly a Dominatrix – even without the iconic thongs, whips and leather – as when she castrated the whole provincial engineer’s office out of their machismo. A lawyer – and a woman at that! – heading the whole engineering corps of the province! Beat that!
A WOMAN OF EXTRAORDINARY MEANS. What sustains her? Denounced as the root cause of all the mess at the capitol, damned as the very monkey on the governor’s back, even maliciously labeled – and very much libeled – as some conjugal partner in misgovernance, still she labors on, doing what she sees fit, proper, moral, legal. Without a salary to boot!
Really, what sustains her?
Working even beyond the regular hours – many times burning the wick to the wee hours at the capitol and at the Clark staffhouse with her perceived working partner – without getting a single centavo for it for over a year and a half now.
Wow! She really must own a bank from which to withdraw her daily sustenance and that of her loved ones. No, I could not by the stretch of my malicious mind imagine such a morally upright woman engaged in some shenanigans. No, way.
Hence, I could only behold her as the very reincarnation of that wadi woman that fed the prophet Elijah and was amply rewarded with a cornucopia that sustained her and her son for the rest of their lives. Indeed some parallelism here: Her continuing sustenance sans pay from the capitol is her own reward for feeding, in some way or the other, the reverend governor, himself the prophet of good governance hereabouts.
Woe unto us people of little faith! Not by bread alone doth man liveth!
A WOMAN OF TRUST. Absolute, resolute, radical, total trust. To use the very words of her man at the capitol.
That trust so manifest in the governor letting go of 15 of his own confidence team that run afoul of her; of the governor easily forsaking one he called “Mama” for nurturing his very campaign for the governorship; of the governor foregoing with the braintrust offered him by co-advocates in good governance and his very own civil society groups that conflicted with her.
In her he trusts. And that is that. A woman the governor could not do, mayhaps even live, without.
The provincial administrator, as the alter ego, draws power from the governor. Shift from that fossilized mindset: This provincial administrator is the very source of power of the governor.
Ah, what a woman is this Attorney Vivian Dabu.

Riding the storm

YET ANOTHER first in Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio’s growing list of…er, firsts – first priest elected governor, first Pampanga governor to hit P1 million daily quarry collection, first governor rallied against by his own townmates, first governor with a woman as administrator, first governor to file libel against former confidantes, etcetera – was Monday’s siege of the capitol by disgruntled truckers.
Dump trucks of all sizes crisscrossed the capitol driveway, five days late in welcoming 2009 with all the honking, tooting, blaring of all sorts of horns. Made one think that truckers are the horniest bunch of all drivers, notwithstanding the claim of jeepney jocks to the title.
Anyways, I was the odd, old man, out in the company of media kids – all of the same age as my children – getting Panlilio’s take on the truckers’ protest when we were jolted by heavy stomping as though of a stampede followed by the heavy pounding of the door to the Office of the Governor.
“Mekapanik la pu. Durugdugan de ing pasbul. (They have reached the second floor. They are battering our door).” A harried staff of the governor at the anteroom hurried to him.
Panlilio looked at me and said, so calmly: “Pare, pepakit da na ing tune dang kule. (They have shown their true colors)”
“Pare, talakaran da ka keni. (I will stand by your side on this one).” I responded. Then I told his chief of staff to call the police.
Even before I finished, the governor was already on the phone: “We are under siege. What are you doing? Colonel, atsu no keni babo. Luluban da ne ing opisina ku. (They are here. They are about to storm my office). Do something! Don’t just send anybody to look into this. Ika mismu ing munta keni. (You yourself should come here).”
Then he turned to me, and, with that mischievous smile I have known for many years, whispered: “Dapat palto tang muwa, para galo lang agad. (We should show some anger to make them act quickly.)” He capped this with a chuckle.
He was all seriousness though – barely talking – when Pampanga top cop Senior Supt. Keith Ernald Singian came, with City of San Fernando police chief Supt. Benjamin Medina in tow, to report that everything was under control.
The security lapses were pointed out, foremost of which was an ineffective, if not totally inutile, capitol security force that merely watched by the sidelines when the truckers rushed the capitol. More police forces – including a crowd dispersal unit with shields and truncheons – were posted at the entrance and sides of the capitol building.
The protesting truckers ordered to move farther back from the capitol flagpole.
Medina ordered by Singian to coordinate with putative provincial administrator Atty. Vivian Dabu in the preparation of legal action against the truckers – for rallying without permit, for one, and against the still protesting quarrymen of the Biyaya a Luluguran at Sisikapan (Balas) for destroying the tarpaulin billboards on the recent Pampanga Day celebrations.
Shortly after lunch, no trace of the siege obtained at the capitol grounds. Not a single dump truck remained. The striking Balas boys were by their lonesome at their makeshift tents.
The passion of the moment totally dissipated, expended in all those heated harangues – and a sprinkling of cusses – directed at the governor, at Dabu and at the truckers’ former (?) president, Mike Tapang.
Still Ordinance 261 – that which put muscle to the Anti-Overloading Law – stands. With all its implementing rules and regulations which the truckers vehemently protested against.
“At noontime of January 9, 2009, Ordinance 261 with all its IRRs will be implemented. Unaccredited trucks that shall transport sand and quarry material starting that day will be impounded,” Panlilio decreed. This, even as he declared his openness to further dialogue with the truckers.
“Let us not resort to this unnecessary overexpression of passion. Let us talk dispassionately and rationally to resolve our differences of opinions,” Panlilio enjoined the truckers.
Yeah, I really do stand by my compadre’s side on this one. Adhering to the primacy of the rule of reason, and with the conviction that passion un-reined in takes the sapiens out of the homo in men.

Magic in the sand

MONEY MATTERS, indeed, but quite short in exploring all the details.
So was my friend Buru’s immediate reaction to the piece here yesterday. Buru is an old hand in the quarry business, pre-dating even the lamented Porac Mayor Roy David, the acknowledged lahar fighter at the time of the Pinatubo eruptions, and the undisputed quarry master in the aftermath.
So where did I fall short, I asked Buru over espresso at Starbucks, SM City Clark.
In the SMC. The Suretrux Management and Consultancy company you mentioned merely in passing when it is the very cause of the internal strife at the FPTI (Federation of Pampanga Trucker, Inc.), and, more importantly, is poised to the trigger the new plunder of Pampanga’s prized jewel.
How?
Mike Tapang was ousted as FPTI president due to what his own members said was his “unrelenting proposal for an outside management and consultancy company to manage the whole operations and all the affairs of the federation.”
Yeah, I wrote that exactly.
Okay, that company is SMC.
Yes, I wrote that too. And SMC is not acceptable to FPTI because of what the members said was “demands of the management company for fees that we found to be unreasonable beyond logical proportion and without any accounting records for such an undertaking.” I even made fun of the redundancies there.
Yeah, funnier still is that you did not write of the demands.
Okay, I really fouled out there.
The proposal of Tapang, as laid out to me by the truckers I talked to, was that SMC would virtually control all sand trucking and hauling operations in Pampanga for a fee of P20 per cubic meter of sand hauled. Work out your math now, calculate how much SMC would amass.
I am good only with words. My affair with numbers ended in high school.
Okay, with the total load capacity of the close to 3,000 sand haulers plying the quarry sites daily, that P20 per cubic meter easily translates to P1.5 million per day.
Why, that’s bigger than the P1 million a day quarry collection by the capitol!
Correction, times two of the now P700,000 plus daily quarry take.
Boggling. But can this work?
Of course it can. It has been done in the past. Not on a per cubic meter, but on a per truck computation, er...imposition. Sometime in 1998, the quarry operations in the province were divided into three main spheres with their respective overlords who were close associates if not relatives of the capitol tenants. The quarry stakeholders – truckers, operators, owners of quarry sites were organized into associations and told to collect, over the then capitol tax of P40 per truckload of sand, an additional P120 per truck as “management fee.”
Yes, I remember. That set-up triggered the raid on the quarry sites by agents of the NBI and climaxed to the suspension from office of the governor and vice governor with the filing of graft cases against them by the Ombudsman.
So you remember.
Very well, yes. But the so called plunder of the quarry collection in the past would look like raiding a piggy bank compared to what this new scheme would bring about.
So you discern some patterns?
Tapang as the overlord of this new management scheme. Possible. But he could not do it alone. As the experience of the past showed. For all those highly visible upfront, a shady somebody pulls the strings from some place higher.
So who is stubbornly thwarting all the moves of the FPTI to get Tapang out of the task force group on Ordinance 261? Whose name was all splashed in those streamers the truckers held in their protest march to the capitol last Monday?
Oh, I missed that.
It’s your favorite whipping person, that’s who. Okay, so what do you think is the hidden meaning of SMC?
As it is said to stand for Suretrux Marketing Consultancy...then, that could only be San Miguel Corp. Yes, San Miguel had some stakes in the Porac sand with its bottle-making company in Mancatian before its devastation by Pinatubo, right?
Wrong. SMC stands for Salamangka ng Magkasuyo sa Capitolyo (Magic by the Partners at the Capitol).
Yeah, after the miracle in the quarry collection where millions materialized out of the sand, comes now the magic a la David Copperfield. The disappearing act, that is.

Money matters

THERE IS more than what one reads in the papers on the protest of truckers against the implementation of Ordinance 261.
O-261 aims to regulate the hauling and transport of quarry-derived materials within Pampanga with a strict proviso on the truck size and load volume.
O-261 was principally authored by Senior Board Member Cris Garbo but crafted with the inputs of various stakeholders not the least of which is the Advocacy for the Development of Central Luzon which first raised the need to definitively put a stop to overloaded trucks that have been a curse to motorists and the principal destroyers of roads and highways.
In his sponsoring speech, Garbo emphasized O-261 “will prevent the deterioration and destruction of roads, bridges and highways and the recurrence of vehicular accidents that result to loss of lives and properties.”
These protesting truckers in effect are howling against the rightful regulations to check on their abuses. Damned, these truckers have no right even just to murmur against O-261, having long been violating, with so much impunity, the Anti-Overloading Law. They should even be thankful the Land Transportation Office and the local police have not exacted the full measure of the law upon them. Or have they, the exaction coming in some other form – yellower, bluer and with more graphics than a traffic violation ticket ?
Selfish motives, to be kind about it, are easily gauged among the truckers based on our above arguments. Then, there is still even worse.
The purported umbrella organization of these mostly sand and gravel haulers – the Federation of Pampanga Truckers, Inc. (FPTI) – reportedly sacked its own president, one Mike Tapang, for his alleged “individual judgment that is self-serving and of personal interest.”
The redundancies there clear indication of how much contempt those who ousted Tapang had for him.
Tapang, it was said, tried to bludgeon the FPTI with an “unrelenting proposal for an outside management and consultancy company to manage the whole operations and all the affairs of the federation.”
That company they identified as one Suretrux Management and Consultancy (SMC).
Cries the FPTI board: “We will not agree to the demands of the management company for fees that we found to be unreasonable beyond logical proportion and without any accounting records for such an undertaking.”
Redundancies there again. Guys, where did you learn your syntax?
The FPTI board’s coup de grace: “This federation do hereby condemned (sic) this individual judgment of Tapang...for such an act that is unbecoming of an officer especially being president and the lost (sic) of trust of its (sic) capacity to lead the federation objectively and without prejudice, we do hereby demand the concurrent (sic) president to turn over all of its (sic) duties and current affairs to the officers and board of trustees. Furthermore, we demand the President’s irrevocable letter of resignation effective immediately.”
More than a management and consultancy company, the FPTI needs a good English grammar teacher.
That aside, we can see clearly a power play in the FPTI.
So what has this Tapang to hurl back?
“There was no MOA or such other documents signed to finally use the services of the SMC. I was just bringing up an idea or plan as an officer of the federation. That is not enough ground to oust me for loss of confidence as cited in their decision,” so was he quoted as saying.
The real issue, whispered to me by one in the know, is Tapang’s membership in the technical working group tasked to implement O-261.
Tapang, it is bruited about, takes charge of the accreditation of truckers.
“As a trucker himself, Tapang should have had the decency to have abstained from the accreditation committee. Selfish, vested interests could not be helped but seen there by the other truckers,” my source said.
Of course, “selfish, vested interests” would be reared and nurtured there. As at the time of Gov. Lito Lapid – in his second term, specifically – when the men who controlled the issuances of official receipts were themselves quarry operators, to the detriment and chagrin of their competitors.
Pera- pera pa rin sa usaping buhangin. (It is still a question of money in the issue of quarry.)