Liar, liar

“YOU CAN call me fat and ugly but not a liar because I will fight back.”
Fat and ugly, still-putative provincial administrator Atty. Vivian Dabu, is not. At least in the eyes of the romanticist Ram Mercado, if not in the heart of the enamored you-know-who.
Dabu bristled at Senior Board Member Crisostomo Garbo for calling her a “liar” in a privilege speech on Monday: “We did not promise or say we were withdrawing or to issue another ordinance agreeing to the release of the P10,000 bonus… Lawyer Dabu is a liar and she has always been.” So was Garbo quoted as saying.
The gentleman from Duquit, Mabalacat was himself incensed at Dabu’s revelations over local television that on December 28 three board members, Garbo included, met with Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio and agreed to withdraw the resolution granting P20,000 Christmas bonus to the Capitol employees and replace it with one favorable to the stand of the governor, to wit: P10,000 across-the-board cash gift, any other P10,000 to be based on a performance evaluation scheme.
No, the Capitol employees were not betrayed, no agreement whatsoever was reached with the governor. So Garbo insisted.
Sun-Star Pampanga reported that the “two other board members allegedly present in the meeting corroborated Garbo’s disclosures and said they too never said about withdrawing and issuing another ordinance contrary to Dabu’s claims.” So that would make Garbo’s talk on the Dabu lie stick.
Garbo was even cited by the daily as having denied any “December 28 meeting last year tackling on the bonus issue.”
Which Dabu countered with a confirmation that the meeting was held on December 28 at the Governor’s Office “upon the request of the board members led by Garbo.”
“Ibinalik namin ang ordinance based on the DBM (Department of Budget and Management) na nagsabing kung hindi iyun ang request ng governor, dapat ibalik. Hindi ganoon ang request namin. Ang request namin ay P10,000 so we returned it without action.” So was Dabu quoted, and “She said Garbo told them the PB could not withdraw the ordinance as it would be the august body which will appear in bad light.”
“Wala ang kamalian sa amin. Sinunod namin ang proseso. Merong hindi sumunod ng proseso pero hindi kami. At hindi ako nagsinungaling at hindi ako magsisinungaling at tatayuan ko kung ano ang napag-usapan namin.” So firmly stood Dabu.
A prank – to me, that was all there was to this supposed meeting between Panlilio and Dabu on one hand and Garbo and the other board members on the other. The date was a dead giveaway – December 28. Ninos Inocentes, the Filipino version of April Fools’ Day.
As Dabu is not fat and ugly, subjectively now, so she can’t be a liar too. The non sequitur I shall allow, in deference to my friend Ram and you-know-who. And that was supposed to be that.
But came one Jenina Pineda, supervising and management specialist of the DBM to the SP on Monday too putting some truth to Garbo’s claim on the Dabu lie.
In a letter to DBM Director Elisa Salon dated December 29, Dabu said it was upon the advice of the agency and Pineda that the “Governor returned an ordinance to the PB and without action and merely taking note thereof.”
The same thing Dabu told Sun-Star Pampanga as cited in some previous paragraph here.
Testified Pineda before the SP: “I did not tell (Dabu) to do that. Besides, I was quoted through a phone conversation, which is not the official statement of the DBM. It is usual practice that we entertain questions of local government officials on budgetary matters but we always impress on them that the official stand of the DBM will always the one that is signed by the regional director.”
Pineda furthered that she also texted Dabu but her opinions were “in her personal capacity” and did not represent the DBM.
An aghast Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao could only utter: “Very disturbing of Dabu to quote mere phone conversations and use these as legal bases for action on a very critical issue.”
There lies the truth.

Propaganda techniques

SO HOW do we go about propagandizing?
The use of stereotypes. “Typing” people along unvarying socio-cultural patterns blurs individuality. Generalizations, instead of specifics, are fixed in the mind of the audience.
Damn political correctness here. Hence, Ilocano as kuripot (tightwad), Capampangan as mayabang (braggart), and in the global arena, the “Shrewd Jew,” and the “Muslim terrorist.”
Stereotyping agitates, nay, inflames cross-cultural biases and prejudices. Hate campaigns spring from there.
Name-calling. Substitution of real names with colorful aliases or appellations for greater recall or ridicule. Hence, Asenso Pusakal, Jun Balas, Litong-lito Lapid, Monkey Tong, Don Pipit Mercado, on the positive side, Smart Buddy. Of the current crop of candidates, Giba Teodoro, Abnoy Aquino, Money Villar. Invitation to libel always open there.
A caveat: Name-calling can backfire. Aesthetically-challenged, the late Apalit Mayor Tirso Lacanilao turned that liability to principal asset.
The first time he ran, Lacanilao’s posters were plastered with “PANGIT” by his rivals. He stopped putting up his own posters, reproducing by the tens of thousands those that disparaged his looks and plastering the whole town with them. Unwise to the scheme, the electorate found Lacanilao the harassed underdog and gave him the vote.
Canalization. Of the volumes of data at the propagandist’s disposal, he opts to use only those that will advance his cause, controlling or censoring adverse information. Canalization is directing the minds of the given audience towards the information the propagandist deems as “right.” That is, serving his purpose.
So mayoralty bet Tony Mamac, Balibago village chief, has been carping on perceived irregularities in the P600-million sports complex project of Mayor Blueboy Nepomuceno.
So did the Nepo camp respond with solid arguments backed by detailed data to demolish Mamac’s accusations? No. It is Mamac’s P12-million barangay hall, not Blueboy’s complex, that warrants questioning. So they responded. So was the issue canalized.
Believable lie. Falsehoods – to be “effective” – must be believable. A Kapampangan saying holds true here: Kapani-paniwalang kalaraman, dinan ditak a katutuwan.
Magnification. A close kin of the above, this is stretching the truth. Making a mountain out of a molehill. As in one activist who spent but a few hours at the reception area of a stockade but thereafter referred to himself as a “prisoner of conscience.”
Doctored surveys finding their way in the media are an example of magnification too.
Repetition. A statement repeated too often will, in time, be an accepted fact. Think of the Buddhist mantra, albeit on the spiritual plane.
Sloganeering. A variation of repetition, the use of crisp slogans impacts in the minds of an audience with greater effect than long winded exposes or treatises, no matter how rational and factual.
Remember Taiwan damned the re-election of Congresswoman Didi Domingo in the 3rd district in 1995.
Asenso Mexico re-elected Mayor Ernesto Punsalan.
Bawal ang Pangit sa Mabalacat earned its wordsmith, the late Fyodor Fabian, a case of libel but doomed its object to electoral defeat more than twice.
Porac Pamu mobilized the residents to fight all attempts of government to make the town a catch basin for lahar.
Manaplit ka, Apalit warranted landslide victories in three consecutive terms for its mayor.
A further variation of sloganeering is the use of catchy tunes for political jingles. That, I leave to the ears.
Assertion. The propagandist rarely argues but always makes bold assertions in favor of his position. The way of propaganda is the presentation of one side only, and therefore, necessarily, the deliberate limitation of the free-flow of thought and the eradication of inquiry.
Pinpointing the enemy. As the propagandist is for someone or something, he is necessarily against someone or something too. An enemy – even if only imaginary – has to be identified as the one frustrating the will of his audience, as the one obstructing them from their ideals.
Scapegoating is another term for this technique. Hitler for example made the Jews as the source of all ills that plagued Germany and therefore should be exterminated. To militant Iraqis and Muslims, America is the “Great Satan.”
Appeal to authority. There was that soap commercial that went “gamit ng mas maraming duktor sa Amerika.”
The authority appealed to or cited maybe a prominent political figure, a religious leader, an expert in his field of endeavor.
Cory’s candidate was a most desired appellation for every candidate in the first two elections after the EDSA Uno Revolution.
Celebrity endorsement falls under this category. Believing that the celebrity has enough following to sway to the endorsee, if not star power to rub off him and onto the latter.
Appeal to the crowd. Identification with the great mass is a blue-chip stock in the propaganda trade, from Magsaysay’s “man of the masses” to Marcos’ tayong mga dukha spiel at every Labor Day rally in his time, to the outgoing Bacolor mayor’s Buddy Dungca, anac yang maluca, mayap at maganaca.
The bandwagon effect aspired here too: as everybody’s in it, so one may as well join in.
Final notes: Soft-sell makes the best propaganda, being subliminal. Hard-sell makes the worst, being too direct. Still and all, neither overestimate the intelligence of some people, nor underestimate the ignorance of many others.

Propaganda 101

“YOU CANNOT fool all the people all the time.” Secretary Ed Pamintuan did a Lincoln in his Agyu Tamu! Atbp. column recently to denounce the black propaganda being waged against his person in the internet and in some other publications.
No surprise there. It’s the campaign season. It’s war. Every candidate is fair game – to the electorate, moreso to the propagandist. Finding some relevance then is this piece I fleshed out of an old lecture outline I did when I was still in the academe.

Propaganda 101

“AN ASSOCIATION or scheme for propagating a doctrine or practice.”
So reads an old Oxford Dictionary definition of propaganda.
Its root word: the Latin propagar – to propagate – as the farmer’s practice of sowing rice grains, then when grown to seedlings pull them out and pin them into plowed and harrowed fields to reproduce new plants that will bear more grains.
Substitute ideas for the rice grains, the propagandist for the farmer, human minds for the field, and the plowing, harrowing and planting for the transmission of the ideas and therein is the meaning of the word as we know it, as we understand it, as we use it.
In its basic essence of propagation, propaganda was instituted in the Roman Catholic Church in 1633 when Pope Urban VIII established the Sacro Congregatio de Propaganda Fide -- the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith – that took charge of the foreign missions to the New World and the Orient.
Many a Filipino student gets his first brush with the term in Philippine history – the Propaganda Movement of Rizal, Lopez-Jaena, Del Pilar and the Luna brothers in Madrid which principal vehicle was the La Solidaridad. Its objective: to bring to the attention of the Spanish Cortes the abuses of the Castilian colonists in Las Islas Filipinas and seek provision for representation of the insulares in that legislative assembly.
In both usage by the Church and Rizal, et al, the ends and means of propaganda are most noble, to say the least.
It is the later misuse and abuse of propaganda that gave the word its ignoble meaning: of lies and deceit, as a deliberate attempt to manipulate if not control, by underhanded means, the minds of others to suit the propagandist’s ulterior, and always insidious, ends.
That mutation in the meaning primarily owing to Dr. Josef Goebbels, the German Third Reich’s propaganda minister, who put into devastating effect Der Fuehrer’s dictum of the “Big Lie,” to wit; “The broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.” A lie constantly repeated assumes, after a time, all semblances of truth.
There came a-borning propaganda’s qualifier: “black,” meaning “all lies.” Where there is black, necessarily there be at the opposite end, “white” too, meaning “all true,” and in-between, “gray” meaning “half-lies and half-truths” which essentially redounds to black. A half-truth being no truth.
The operative phrase in propaganda – in all its color variants – is “influencing the emotional attitudes of others.”
Beyond the dictionary definition of “a state of mind or feeling with regard to some matter” or the synonym “disposition,” attitudes are further qualified as “likely to be long-lived and do not necessarily reflect the feelings of the general public although they tend to reflect those of some group with which the individual has become associated.”
Unlike attitudes, opinions are briefly held and likely to reflect current public feeling. They are readily changed and therefore are more susceptible to propaganda or to reasoned argument.
The basic mechanism of propaganda is suggestion – the attempt to induce in others the acceptance of a specific belief without giving any self-evident or logical ground for its acceptance, whether it exists or not. Here rises the distinction of education from propaganda.
Education aims at independence of judgment. Propaganda aims at supplying ready-made judgments.
Education strives to produce individual responsibility and an open mind. Propaganda, using mass effects, strives to produce a closed mind.
Education teaches people how to think. Propaganda tells people what to think.
So how does the propagandist go about it? In this same space tomorrow, the lecture continues.

Once upon a city

IT WAS the worst of times.
A city in ruins, devastated by the worst calamity of the 20th century. Its infrastructure in shambles – fallen bridges and collapsed buildings; villages reduced to ghost towns; the city hospital eroded to its very foundation, devoured by rampaging mudflows.
A city in the direst financial straits, its very economic base abruptly, and totally, uprooted with the last of the GI Joes stampeding out of the equally devastated – and thoroughly looted – Clark Air Base. It’s peripheral industries – manufacturing and export of handicrafts, furniture and garments – buried by the ashfall that crushed the factories. Businesses joining the hegira of the citizens to elsewhere.
A citizenry on the brink of despair: in that gray landscape of desolation, of interrupted lives and broken dreams, what ray of hope can still come through, better yet, come true?
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IT WAS the best of times.
The fate of the city not so much fixed on the stars but in the resiliency of its people and the character of its leader, character cast in the crucible of crises: The Marcos dictatorship brought out the freedom fighter and human rights champion in Atty. Edgardo Pamintuan; the Mount Pinatubo devastation birthed the leader in Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan.
And thus came to pass – in less than three years time – the triumph of Angeles City over the Pinatubo tragedy.
Even as the city needed all the funds it could scrounge to rehabilitate and rebuild, Pamintuan deferred the imposition of higher tax rates. This gambit paid off with local revenues reaching P47 million, a P10-million or 27 percent increase over the previous year’s. Plus the internal revenue allotment of P148 million, the income of the city rose to P195 million – the highest ever recorded at that time.
Most manifest in the increase in revenues were the restoration of the public’s trust in the city government, as well as the confidence of the investors; and the integrity and efficiency of the city government’s tax collection scheme, to say the least.
Factored here too was the revival of manufacturing in the city – with some 700 establishments engaged in woodcraft, furniture and fixtures, textiles and garments, leather and footwear, metalcraft, food and beverages, chemicals. Which caused the return of the city to its pre-eminent spot as top exporter in the region, at $36.5 million per records of the Department of Trade and Industry, which comprised 63 percent of all exports from Pampanga.
To further expand the base of the local economy, Pamintuan preached and practised the gospel of cooperativism, which materialized in 70 coops with over 3,000 members getting training and initial funding from the P79.3 million allotted for economic services.
The upturn in the local economy contributed greatly to the enhanced peace and order situation in the city. No high profile crimes were committed. Even the petty ones were at an all time low.
Gone, the Americans may have been. The Clark Special Economic Zone (CSEZ), yet to tap even just a quarter of its potential for development. The Clark Airport still a destination only for migrant birds. But foreign tourist arrivals had started picking up, with 40,095. Over 12 percent higher than 1993’s entry.
The CSEZ nonetheless engaged the services of 5,000 local workers.
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PINATUBO’S CONTINUING fury – in ashfalls and lahar, coupled with the social costs obtaining in any city: basic health services, sanitation and environmental care, education, population concerns, drug abuse prevention, the control of sexually transmitted afflictions, comprised the main social agenda of the Pamintuan administration, funded with P67.8 million. Which marked a 333 percent increase in per capita allocation for social services at P180.30 over 1992’s P41.60.
Innovations and interventions in health care merited Angeles City the Most Outstanding City in the National Immunization Day campaign of the Department of Health for topping all other cities nationwide in exceeding the target by 102 percent.
And the Angeles City General Hospital was resurrected from the grown up with a 42-bed facility constructed through a P21-million grant from the US Agency for International Development, and with modern medical equipment donated by the World Medical Relief Inc. based in Detroit, Michigan.
In education, P2.6 million was appropriated for the special program for employment of students. This on top of the regular scholarship fund for poor and deserving students. Not forgotten was the welfare of the public school teachers with an additional P1.5 million released through the local school board for additional allowances.
In infrastructure, P33.1 million was spent for the repair and construction of roads and drainage systems. Intensified lobbying was undertaken for the reconstruction of the Abacan, Pandan and Friendship bridges by the national government.
The continuing need for habitat of the Pinatubo victims, as well as the urban poor, constrained the city government to purchase some three hectares for a resettlement site.
Yet another recognition for the city was its being adjudged as one of the Five Cleanest Cities in the Philippines – along with Olongapo, Davao, Iligan and Baguio – meriting a Presidential Award of Excellence.
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A PERFORMING city is only as good as a performing bureaucracy. The city hall employees received the full range of benefits of uniform allowance, hazard pay, 13th month pay, longevity pay, cash gift and other incentives. Salaries and wages were never delayed.
Clean. Peaceful and orderly. Sound economic policies. Business-friendly. Citizen-centered. Working and contented bureaucracy. Leadership integrity. Thus was Angeles City in 1994, with Edgardo Pamintuan as mayor. So the city shall soon again be.

No birthright

NO HEIRLOOM up for inheritance is the presidency of the republic.
The way the campaign of front-running presidential pretender Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino is being run, it looked as though he had a birthright to the presidency.
So he is the son of the martyred Ninoy and the sainted Cory. So what? That would not make him the most ideal nor most capable of the presidentiables.
A matter of record is the fact that family connections are a bane of good governance in the Philippines, or have we forgotten the storied Kamag-anak Inc. at the time of the Cory Aquino presidency?
Truly deserving of the electorate’s rapt attention and reflection are the statements of Senator Richard “Dick” Gordon, standard bearer of the party named Bagumbayan.
At a recent presidential forum, Gordon raised issues on the executive capability of Noynoy, pointing out that he had never held an executive post and it is the top executive post in the land that he is now coveting.
From their public pedestal, Gordon pulled down and demystified the Aquinos claiming that the Aquino family was given opportunities to make the nation great but “regrettably failed to deliver.”
Said Gordon: Noynoy “had in (his) family a president, a vice president, four senators, congressmen, governors—all the posts in Tarlac, but how is Tarlac?”
Asked he: “How many more chances do you want? What is Noynoy Aquino’s ability in local government? He hasn’t been tested even as a barangay captain. Even in legislature, what law did he craft whose benefits are being felt by the people?”
Gordon’s lowdown: “The record of service is important. Can you really do your job? Before you left your province, have you fixed your town?”
On record now, Gordon so fixed Olongapo in the ‘80s that it became the model city in the whole country. It was Gordon too that catalyzed the transformation of Subic from an American basetown to its current status as an engine of national development.
In the same forum, second-running presidential aspirant Senator Manny Villar made an articulation of his own on Noynoy’s perceived Achilles’ heel: “ Meron ka na bang naipakita na may kakayahan kang magbago (Have you shown that you have the ability to effect change)? But you can’t easily change society. All forces will go against you. The question: ‘May nagawa ka na ba (Have you done anything)? Did [you] change something in the past? It is important to establish that when you say that you will change ... you are really capable (of doing it).”
A call for change Villar sounded – change in the way we Filipinos choose those we vote for: “…In the end, it is what you have done and demonstrated in the past that matters. The poor have never seen managerial competence as basis for electing a president…In all these elections, popularity is the sole basis. For decades now, we always use popularity and emotions as basis. It’s about time we used abilities and competence and experience. (Popularity as basis for election) has to stop. Let’s start now!”
Yeah, let’s not vote Kris Aquino president.

Bonus of contention

THE LANTERN had been taken down from the front window, the multi-colored lights put back to their boxes, the tree and all its trimmings boxed too and stored in the attic or in the closet. The queso de bola and ham consumed. Even the Three Kings had come and gone their way back to oblivion.
The holidays are over, still the Capitol employees yearn for their Christmas bonus.
Obstinately, Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio maintains that the cash bonus of P10,000 – already given – was all. The other P10,000 – being claimed as a right of all Capitol employees – is but a privilege to those who shall make the grade in some performance evaluation and appraisal process.
Panlilio, whom I likened to the curmudgeon Scrooge here a few issues back, has even asked the sangguniang panlalawigan to revoke Ordinance 378 which approved the release of the P20,000 bonuses, and to approve across-the-board the P10,000 from the P23 million personnel savings.
As is his wont, Panlilio developed verbal diarrhea on the bonus issue, lashing Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao and the SP with illogical non-sequiturs like their non-attendance in flag-raising rites, reporting to work only once a week, exclusion from using required biometrics for their attendance and wearing proper uniforms.
Ululated Panlilio: "Is it justifiable that the vice governor and I both receive equally when he reports to the Capitol one day a week if ever he does and I work on a regular basis?"
Panlilio – with more than the necessary exclamation point now – said it is the governor who makes the supplemental budgets, such as funds for bonuses, and not the SP.
Retorted Guiao: "He is ignorant. He does not know the budget process." The approval of the SP is a requisite to the allocation of every fund request, no matter how small, Guiao snorted at the Gov.
Lectured the Coach: "You cannot equate performance with how many days you go to your office. When he says we go to our offices once a week that is, the session. Legislation is judged by the results and the outputs of the SP. There is no backlog in our office, no unattended issue. Everything in the SP and the Office of the Vice Governor is up-to-date. We have reported on our accomplishments."
Guiao going for the jugular: “(Panlilio’s) problem is that he does not have any targets. He did not set any objectives in the first place, like in terms of infrastructure, how many kilometers of roads have to be constructed? How many classrooms for schools? How many Philhealth cards? How many additional scholars? How many millions in investments for the province? How much employment should be generated? Nothing, eh...So how can he say he is performing well? What is his basis?"
His unsolicited advice to the Gov: “MBO – manage by objectives and results, stop issuing mother statements and refrain from blaming others.”
Even ad hominems and ad misericordiams Guiao engaged in his arrguments: "And look. The SP budget is a measly P5-million compared to his P32 million plus all the intelligence funds and supplemental budgets. But we provide more help to our constituents judging from the number of people seeking assistance everyday at the SP. What does he want us to do? We have approved the budgets he needs, now he should work on that."
And the coup de grace: "The governor has no accomplishments. He thrives on intrigues. There are no concrete accomplishments based on objectives set early last year. He should have set those goals so there can be proper matters that can be evaluated. So what is happening now is that it is our poor who suffer because of his ignorance of legislative processes."
As long as Panlilio’s stay as governor is the problem of Christmas bonus of Capitol employees. Conversely, Panlilio is apparently the very problem of the Christmas bonus.
“Capitol X’mas bonus divides Gov, SP anew” cried the banner of Punto! On December 19, 2007.
Read the story: “Even in the granting of Christmas bonus for the employees of the provincial government, Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio has remained at odds with the sangguniang panlalawigan.
At Monday’s flag-raising ceremony, Panlilio announced that the employees would receive a Christmas bonus of P10,000 each.
This did not sit well with the employees as the SP earlier approved P20,000 as Christmas bonus."
A year after, on December 17, 2008, the editorial of Punto! titled ‘One-time big time’ read: "After weeks of neither-here-nor-there posturing, the Honorable Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio finally decided to approve the release of the P20,000 cash gift to each Capitol employee.
This, though only after serious talks with the Capitol Employees’ Union and an affirmation from the Department of the Budget and management on the nature of the gifts...
“One-time, big time.” So said the Reverend Governor of the bonus. Which the sangguniang panlalawigan had long decided – even as Panlilio hee-hawed – as most fitting and appropriate for the Capitol employees.
So what happens now to the performance evaluation that Panlilio earlier insisted as a requisite to the granting of the P10,000 half of the gifts?
Deferred for next year, to fine tune the whole thing.
“There is a challenge for us to systematize the rewards system and set to archive agreed upon targets. There is already an existing evaluation but we need to systematize it all the more,” Panlilio was quoted as saying."
Okay. Fair enough for the Capitol employees. For now though, everyone is assured of a happy Christmas.”
So unfair now we see. The promised performance evaluation system still up in the air a year after. And this bonus row again. As it was in 2007, as it was in 2008, so it was in 2009 too.
Pray it would not happen in Christmas 2010. Better, make sure it does not happen. All that is needed to do is to take the problem out of the Capitol.

Man of the Year

EXCELLENCE IS a passion; good governance, a duty; service to the people, a commitment.
The cardinal virtues of leadership in a republican state – long lost in the parody of democracy that is the Philippines – find renaissance in Mayor Oscar Samson Rodriguez of the City of San Fernando. And the Fernandino could not have been happier, nay, more blessed and prouder: of his city and his leader. As 2009 proved yet another banner year for the city, reaping just about every recognition in myriad fields of endeavor.
The Christmas Lantern Capital of the Philippines, naturally takes the Hall of Famer Award as “Best LGU Implementer of the One-Town-One-Product (OTOP) Program in Region III” for its uniquely magnificent lanterns memorialized to titanic dimensions in the annual Giant Lantern Festival. Already a rage throughout the Philippines, the Parul Sampernandu made a global impact during the administration of Mayor Rodriguez with its debut in Paris, France and in Vienna, Austria, its counterpart festival in San Francisco, California in the years past, and at the Philippine Center in New York this Christmas season past.
The Best PESO (Public Employment Service Office) in Central Luzon given by the Department of Labor and Employment in February merited the city’s entry into the national finals, where it gained second- place honors in October.
Undisputed champion in bureaucratic efficiency and effectiveness, the city government was elevated in March by the Central Luzon Growth Corridor Foundation to the Hall of Fame Award for Outstanding Achievement as “Consistent First Place Winner for Three Consecutive Years (2006-2008)” in the implementation of documented streamlined procedures on the issuance of mayor’s permit.
In virtual affirmation of the Rodriguez administration’s definitive solution to the Gordian Knot entangling the bureaucracy, the Civil Service Commission in September hailed San Fernando as the First City Government in Central Luzon to comply with the Anti-Red Tape Act of 2007.
That, further buttressed by the successive ISO 9001:2008 Certification of its Quality Management System awarded by the Certification International in October, and the Certificate of Recognition for its Compliance with ISO 9001:2008 Standards in the Issuance of the Mayor’s Permit given by the Government Quality Management Committee of the Office of the President in December.

Business-friendly

Accomplished efforts toward an efficacious bureaucracy moved the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry in October to declare San Fernando as the Philippine’s “Most Business-Friendly Local Government Unit (City Category, Level 1) for 2009.”
A declaration finding indubitable verity in the city assessor’s office being awarded by the Bureau of Local Government Finance in December as “Top Real Property Tax Producer Award, City Level.”
Being business-friendly pays, and pays handsomely. A succinct, if blunt, take on the imperative of nurturing the goose that lays the golden egg, of pasturing the milking cow, for the sustenance of the herder and his community. Or amor con amor se paga, love begets love, as the Castilian holds in affairs of the heart and of the purse.
Amity with business takes to an ever higher level with the city government signing in December a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Trade and Industry for the implementation of the Philippine Business Registry (PBR) Project that will put in place on-line business registration facilities in the city.
Auguring well for the bullishness of business is the peace and orderliness reigning in the city which peace and order council merited runner-up honors on the national level in 2009 from the National Peace and Order Council. And an environmental awareness well put into practice gaining first runner-up honors likewise in the Clean and Green Awards of the provincial government.
Still, the highest accolades showered unto the city in 2009 were that which made most manifest the city administration’s – okay, Mayor Rodriguez’s – core value: Excellence of governance in serving the people.
In February, handed out by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself in Malacanang to Mayor Rodriguez was the Gawad Galing Pook 2008 for Outstanding Local Governance Program: Making Governance a Shared Responsibility. This is the second Gawad Galing Pook for San Fernando under the Rodriguez administration, its first in 2005 for heritage preservation.
Later that same day, the United Nations Development Programme and the Galing Pook Foundation, awarded the city a Special Citation on Local Capacity Incentive Mechanism for Local Governance.
In September, the Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA) conferred on the local government of the City of San Fernando “Institutionalized Status” for its implementation of the Public Governance System (PGS), the first ever in the entire Philippines.
So exemplary is the City of San Fernando experience in the performance governance system that the ISA crafted for the city the Maharlika Hall of Fame Award for PGS Institutionalization.

Revolution in governance
Spoke the ISA’s Dr. Jesus Estanislao during the conferment rites: “While other government agencies and units are just starting their PGS, you are actually now institutionalizing it. This is because of the commendable and exemplary performance of your city officials led by Mayor Oscar Rodriguez and the selflessness of your very own multi-sectoral governance council…
“This is a revolution in governance for development, because all the while, we have been emphasizing democracy, freedom. And that’s fine. That is a battle we have already won. What we are really looking at is: Can we use that democratic space for the genuine, integral and total development of our people?
“I think you have the best example right here in San Fernando. You can lead the way…With citizen participation, public-private partnership, all the projects you are doing like the emphasis on education, the integrated schools in elementary and high school and the city college, I haven’t heard so much of those elsewhere in the country...
“That is why the leadership of Mayor Oca is critical. And these good things are coming right out of San Fernando. With the country’s corruption index going up and up and things going the wrong way all the time, you come to San Fernando and ask: Is this possible? Are you really in the Philippines when you begin seeing and talking about all these projects?
“That is why, if you are looking at a real revolution in governance, it is right here in San Fernando.”
Right in the City of San Fernando, indeed, is a revolution. Right in Mayor Rodriguez is the revolutionary. Right is the cause of his revolution: Serve the People – that which bred a Ka Jasmin in the ideological ferment of a bygone era, that which sustained a Mayor Oca to determinedly march on towards total liberation.
Where good governance and its impact on the people is concerned, Mayor Rodriguez, will certainly make more than our Man of the Year – even more deservingly, our Man of the Decade.

The sermon of the sea

To break from the hustle and bustle of human toil.
To escape from the rut of encultured habit.
To flee from the jealous, constricting embrace of vainglory.
On New Year’s Eve, hastened I to the eternal sea.
And in my solitude, a soliloquy.
Cast off the old. Ring in the new. The incessant monotone of the year-end… after year-end, after year-end…So we bid 2009 good riddance, and joyously welcome 2010 with much louder boom than the proverbial bang.
Fleeting as the wind, footprints in the sand are.
Swept to nothingness by the onrushing waves.
As fleeting are the days, flushed by the tides of time.
So waste not repentant tears over the demised year.
Refresh, renew. 2010 promises something truly dear.
The year just past is better forgotten. With some spirit of thanksgiving and forgiveness. The incoming one best taken. With open arms, with hope and prayer.
Less thanksgiving and lesser forgiveness, guarded hope and incessant prayer there, if I may. But not ever to be simply cast away.
To forget the 57 women and men, 30 of whom were mediamen, mercilessly mowed down and unceremoniously backhoed in shallow graves is as inhuman as the barbarity of their killing.
We may end the wailing but not the mourning,
We can stop the weeping but not the grieving.
This our sworn duty – as human beings –
As much to the dead, as to the living.
And as much as justice, to wish the cruelest death and damnation upon the perpetrator. Hold in eternal remembrance the Maguindanao mayhem. That it may not ever happen again.
The waves rise, crest, fall – surging to ritual death upon the shore.
The sea murmurs, nay, roars --
Leave the forgetting to the gull, its fish for the day its only care.
Leave the forgetting to the fish, escape from the gull’s hungry beak its very cause to exist.
I am no gull. I am no fish.
The sermon of the sea I hear, and shall heed.
So shall I ever remember the martyred 57. And keep in mind too, for as long as memory holds, the lives – including those that barely started – paid for human error in the tragedies of that RORO ship and MV Catalyn B.
“…Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children…ships get wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and the children play…” The Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore in Gitanjali I suddenly well remember.
Over. Done with. 2009 was.
Dwell in the past, no matter how dead. Why must I?
In. Going, Doing. 2010 is.
Live in hope only of a future best. Why can’t I?
For like the sea – rising and falling,
In its very waters the old in the new abiding.