BCDA trashed for waste project

“NGAYON PA lang po ay sinasabi ko na sa inyo, tumututol po kami.”

Vehement was Capas, Tarlac Mayor Roseller “Boots” Rodriguez in declaring his people’s resistance to the waste-to-energy project the Bases Conversion and Development Authority is impacting in Barangay O’Donnell: the constituency’s opposition officially embodied in the Capas sangguniang bayan resolution passed at the committee of the whole hearing on Feb. 18.

 

Gallery erupts in applause as Mayor Rodriguez declares opposition to WTE.

The hearing itself was prompted by an urgent “manifesto of concern” of O’Donnell barangay chair Wendell Mercado over the BCDA “water and dump site project.”

“Para na itong pambabastos sa LGU,” noted Vice Mayor Alex Espinosa of the BCDA equipment already on site without any prior coordination with the barangay or the local government.

                  SP hearing ‘manifesto of concern’

Rodriguez himself took the BCDA to task for its apparent consultative deficiency. “Ang sinasabi naman po sa Local Government Code, it’s clear, whatever the project of the national agency, that will affect the environment and the community, that there should be a prior consultation.”

“What you told us before, it’s not a prior consultation. Inabisuhan niyo po kami noon na itatayo na. So, it’s not a consultation,” the mayor told BCDA representatives during the hearing, referencing to a previous BCDA visit to his office where he was presented with printed Google maps of the site that did not show nearby houses and barangays, and was told they would first secure the barangay chairman’s approval before returning for further discussions.

Apparently, the BCDA reneged on its word as Barangay O’Donnel chair Mercado told the hearing that BCDA personnel have been conducting activities in the area almost weekly despite his calls for suspension pending discussion: “Ang sabi ko nga po sa kanila na huwag munang magde-draining, pag-usapan muna namin pero patuloy pa rin po yung pagde-draining nila, napakakulit po nila.”

Mayor Rodriguez has officially requested BCDA to remove all equipment from the site and halt all activities there to ease the fears of residents.

No permit?

Citing the need for the residents’ acceptance of the project, a representative of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-CENRO Capas disclosed that they have not issued any permit to BCDA for the project, reported the online publication Tarlakenyo.

“Sa part naman po ng DENR, once na meron po silang social acceptability, doon na po kami papasok,” the representative was quoted as saying. “Pero ang unang-una po yung social acceptability of the residents, ‘yun po muna ang ating kukunin.”

To which, the sangguniang bayan reacted that absent compliance with the DENR requirements mandated by RA 9003 (Ecological Solid Waste Management Act), “the project is illegal.”

“Napakaliwanag na di porke't pare-parehas na nasa gobyerno, ay hindi na tayo susunod sa mga kakailanganing dokumento na hihingiin ng batas. Sana ay mag-comply po kayo,” one councilor noted.

BCDA inconsistency

Capas municipal environment and natural resources officer Gener Tanhueco raised what he said were inconsistencies in BCDA planning, recalling that at the March 2023 anniversary celebration of the Metro Clark Waste Management Corp., BCDA officials were present when the then-Kalangitan sanitary landfill operator announced they would construct a waste-to-energy project in their area.

“So, how come, after two…three years, biglang pinasara ang Metro Clark? Hindi kinonsider ang waste-to-energy na pino-propose nila. Tapos biglang-bigla, yun nga magtatayo [ng waste-to-energy project] sa Barangay O’Donnell?” asked Tanhueco.

 

                          Kalangitan landfill shutdown

MCWMC’s operation of the Kalangitan landfill ended in 2024 after a contentious legal battle with the BCDA, maintaining that “a sanitary landfill is no longer consistent with the government’s vision of transforming New Clark City into a premier investment and tourism destination.”

While Mayor Rodriguez conceded that the community had already accepted the closure of the sanitary landfill, concerns persist over its long-term impact on the environment.

Asking the BCDA thus: “Ang tanong po namin sa ngayon, doon po ba sa Kalangitan landfill nakapag-submit na po ba or meron na po ba kayong closure plan sa landfill doon? Alam naman po natin na ang landfill kapag iniwan na, 30 years po ang hihintayin bago magiging maayos yung lupa.”

Like much of the queries from the sangguniang floor, Rodriguez’s went unanswered, the BCDA representative identified as one Fatima de Jesus apologizing for the absence of any technical personnel in their team, assuring the council that the concerns raised would be relayed to BCDA management, and requesting of another hearing.

Oblique response

On Feb. 23, five days after the Capas hearing, the BCDA posted on its FB page: WTE GAINS DENR SUPPORT, unleashing a torrent of PRs whitewashing, by happenstance if not by intention, the town’s opposition to the planned facility, to wit:

a)     DENR Secretary Raphael P. M. Lotilla expressed support for the development of the country’s first large-scale waste-to-energy (WTE) facility in New Clark City.

b)     A consultation was recently held among DENR, BCDA, the project consortium, and representatives from the academe to discuss the planned project, which is positioned primarily as a modern waste management solution to address growing solid waste challenges in the region.

c)     BCDA president and CEO Joshia Bingcang emphasizing: “This project directly contributes to the national agenda of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. by strengthening environmental protection, supporting energy security, and introducing modern waste management systems. It demonstrates how infrastructure development can deliver long-term environmental and economic value for the country.”

 

          BCDA foto of top-echelon consultation

Which, in effect, bared more contradictions and infirmities in the actions of the national government on the issue, to wit:

a)     How can Lotilla support the WTE that his own people in Capas said did not have the reglementary social acceptability pursuant to the issuance of a permit?

b)     A consultation was indeed held among the WTE proponents with the academe for obvious cosmetics, but not among the people of Capas, they who shall bear with the social and other costs of the planned facility, that which is mandated in the Local Government Code. This is discrimination, if not classism, of which BCDA is turning to be a master: think of the Aetas in NCC, the shareholders brouhaha in John Hay, and yes, the highhandedness in the case of the Kalangitan landfill.          

c)     While the WTE project may contribute to the national agenda of President Marcos, its pursuit by the BCDA is a total negation of the president’s express policy for government agencies to secure local government unit approval before implementing national government-funded projects, to wit: 

“Dati, ang sistema, pagka may project sa isang lugar, halimbawa, mayor ako        na may project ng DPWH o contractor doon sa lugar ko, magkokonsulta sa local government,” Marcos Jr. had said during the inspection of flood control projects in Tuba, Benguet in August last year. “Hindi lang, ‘pag malaki ang project, hini-hearing ‘yan from barangay to municipal to province. Walang ganoon. Walang ganoon na ginawa dito sa lahat na ito [flood control projects]. We are bringing that back because it was removed in the last administration. We are putting it back since it is one of the best safeguards we have.”  

Is BCDA discarding that “best safeguard” in its pursuit of the P4-billion waste-to-water facility in Barangay O’Donnell, Capas, Tarlac?

                                 BCDA’s WTE artcard  

That, ultimately, is the proverbial P400-million question, so to speak in the Filipino context, rising out of the Capas SB hearing.

(Sources: Sangguniang Bayan ng Capas FB Page, Tarlakenyo, BCDA Group FB Page)

 

 

 

 

 

The farce that was EDSA

                        photograbbed online

FORTY YEARS ago this month, the EDSA Revolt gifted the world with “people power.” The phrase was readily accredited to Cardinal Sin after he went on air to call on the nation “to use your power as a people” initially to “save” the embattled mutineers led by Enrile and Ramos from sure annihilation by the Marcos forces.

I do not mean to pull the rug from under the long dearly departed Sin. In the April 8-14, 1984 issue of The Voice – two months short of two years before EDSA Uno, the phrase already appeared in my column Ingkung Milio, thus titled:

People Power and the Filipino

IN THE annals of political struggles, war included, people power has long claimed its rightful place as the major determining factor in the outcome.

This power received its utmost glorification in the social philosophies of Marx as embodied in his Communist Manifesto and put to empirical application in the Soviet and Chinese revolutions and countless other uprisings in those moulds, as well as in the failed Allende experiment in Chile.

That great Asian, Mao Tse-tung summed up the potency of people power in various quotations in his Little Red Book, most prominent of which was: “The people are the ocean, we are the fish that swim in that ocean.” There too was his stratagem of marshalling the people from the countrysides toward the encirclement of the cities.

With all these leftward tendencies of people power harnessing, populism has come to be identified with the communist prescription of wresting power from the ruling circle.
In its essence however, any move, be it parliamentary or revolutionary, has to mobilize people power to reach its successful or liberating end.

While we have seen people power in the collective anguish and indignation over Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, we have yet to see it in terms of concrete moves directed at our socio-economic and political liberation.

Our history as a people is so replete with the kisses of Judas that they have become part and parcel of the Filipino psyche. The betrayal of the Katipunan, Vicos to Diego Silang, the Macabebe scouts in Tirad Pass and Palanan (as held at that time), the Makapili during the Japanese Occupation, not to mention the American boys and unconscionable cronies, are glaring examples of the quislings who have always sold their country and their people in exchange for personal gains.

More glaring even are the current events related to the coming Batasan polls. The Opposition is united only in name – the first term in its acronym UNIDO. Beyond that, there is not even the finest thread that holds them together.

True, they all have an aversion to Marcos. Truer yet, they all draw “strength and inspiration” from the martyred Ninoy Aquino. Truest tough, there is no clear-cut, selfless, and nationalistic ideological basis for all their actions. Rather, it is a case of everyone to his own selfish motive and ambition. 

                                  photograbbed online

Invoking guidance from the sacrifice of Ninoy, they aspire – conspire may be the apt word – to move the people to exercise their potency for change. Not for the people’s own welfare, in the ultimate analysis, but for the advancement of their personal political ambitions. 

It is Robespierre and his manipulation of the French masses in the 1790s all over again. Nearer home, it is the Tejeros debacle re-staged in a not-totally dissimilar setting.

The fault however does not solely lie in these opportunists. Much of the blame is traceable to the people themselves.

The people, in all naivete and perhaps due to their fatalism bred by colonizers, foreign and home-grown, have been so accustomed to their hapless state that they could not see a power greater than the gun or the peso, even the devalued one. Bonifacio’s walis tingting has yet to form from the countless coconut ribs lying for the picking. For a mere pittance, even those who wailed the most at Aquino’s wake and funeral found themselves like sheep herded to provide an audience to some ruler’s folly.

We will see more of these idiocies until May 14. To impress the greater mass of voters, politicians would pay for every shout of “Mabuhay!”, for every wearer of a vote T-shirt, for every trumped-up attestation of love for a candidate.

People power? In many a Third World country, this is the new order of things. In the Philippines, it is seen more in the powerlessness of the people to rise, stomp their feet, and state that enough is enough. 

Ah, yes, despite all these, there is people power in this nation of cowards, to quote Mansfield. To us that power is the people’s strength in crying out in pain for years, and their power to bear all sorts of insults and injustice. And their powerful refusal too to transform anguish into a fiery zeal for their own liberation. 

Ninoy, you may have been wrong. It seems the Filipino is not worth dying for. (First reprinted in Punto! on February 16, 2008)

                          Photo: Romeo Gacad/AFP

AND THEN came EDSA Uno.

A vindication of Ninoy, his widow in yellow triumphant. Shining moment of the Filipino before the admiring world. Brief shining moment like the mythical Camelot, it turned out. Within 10 years, the Marcoses were back, their northern bailiwick as strong as ever.

A short 15 years after, EDSA Dos came. No, not against the dictator’s remnants, but one petty excuse for a president.

Another Aquino, the BS III in an interregnum of sorts, sampling Pampanga’s Glory-Been in his self-caricature of Mr. Clean.

In another 15 years from EDSA’s second coming, the nation descended to Duterte’s despotism. 

                             photograbbed online 

2022. But one generation removed from the original EDSA, comes the son and namesake of the dictator at the cusp of claiming his birthright to the presidency.

Never again. Never forget. Not ever in the Filipino, alas.

Marx paraphrased: History repeating itself in the tragedy that was Marcos Senior and the farce that is Marcos Junior.

And now Duterte daughter drooling over 2028.

Santayana impacted: Unlearning of the lessons of history, we are a people dumbed, we are a nation damned.

Rabelais dead-on: “Draw the curtains, the farce is played.”

Game over.

 

Connector road to NLEX: Can Vilma do a Geld?

NO GHOST project but something of a white elephant is the San Fernando Tourism Road designed to link the MacArthur Highway in Barangay Del Rosario to the NLEX Mexico toll plaza.

Broad and cemented, the road has been practically completed for some time now, but its eastern phase crossing Calulut Centro Ave. has remained closed, leading as it is to nowhere with construction stopped right at its planned terminus abutting the perimeter fence of the NLEX Mexico toll plaza area. Look up Google Map, better yet watch that YouTube reel of moto vlogger Froilan Does (stills in this article) and get a so-near-and-yet-so-far miserable vibe at the forlorn site. 

That it took the Pampanga Business Circle to call the attention of Mayor Vilma Balle-Caluag and the Department of Public Works and Highways over government obliviousness to this all-too-obvious “a strategic traffic decongestion measure that will improve road safety, mobility, and economic flow in the area” speaks of negligence, if not indifference, or worst, ignorance of the magnitude of the road in the overall traffic scheme of the city.

As PBC senior fellow Rene Romero noted in his letter to the mayor and the DPWH-3 director, once completed and properly integrated into the NLEX access system, the connector road would “provide a direct and efficient approach to the expressway, divert a significant volume of vehicles away from overloaded intersections, reduce congestion along the Mexico-Calulut corridor and nearby junctions, and improve overall traffic distribution and travel efficiency.”

The business leader is precisely citing the very reason for the conceptualization and construction of the SF Tourism Road.

It is almost a decade ago – in September 2016 – since local media reported then-Department of Tourism Region 3 director Ronnie Tiotuico announcing that his agency funded with some P1 billion the construction of a “new convergence road” to be facilitated by the DPWH.

Dubbed as Tourism Road Infrastructure Project, Tiotuico said the road would traverse Barangays Del Rosario, Sindalan, and Malpitic, connecting the FVR Megadike Road to the NLEX-Mexico Exit.

Enthused then-Mayor Edwin Santiago: "Aside from the development bringing us more tourists, makakatulong din ito sa panawagan natin na i-decongest ang MacArthur Highway at mabawasan ang traffic sa ating major highways."

The tourism road, Tiotuico said then, was the third to be funded by the DOT after the Friendship Circumferential Road portion or the "Paning Road' in Barangay Telabastagan and Pandan Road in Angeles City “which are all intended to attract more tourists to the region.”

Tiotuico furthered that the road was expected to be finished and open for motorists by the end of that year, in time for the Christmas season.

That was, again, in September 2016, and indeed the long stretch from MacArthur Highway to the Calulut-Bulaon Road crossing was subsequently opened to motorists.

Less than two years later – in June 2018 – local media again reported that a total of 220 trees, including molave and African Talisay, and Japanese bushes were planted along that operational stretch of the tourism road in observance of that year’s Philippine Arbor Day.

Not much else was reported about the SF Tourism Road thereafter. But for some bikers and motorcycle riders who can squeeze through the concrete and makeshift barricades at the road’s entry going to NLEX, that portion has largely faded from the public consciousness, jolted recently with the PBC letter. 

The window of opportunity for the completion of the SF Tourism Road though opened widest, so to speak, with Mabalacat City’s similarly-situated Atlu-Bola Bypass Road, both being connector roads to the NLEX. 

It is to Mayor Geld Aquino’s credit – to his singularity of purpose and determined action, not to mention respectful but persistent engagements with the agencies concerned, DPWH, NLEX, Toll Regulatory Board, and Pampanga 1^st District Rep. Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin Jr. – that in less than six months the Atlu-Bola Bypass Road materialized from conception to construction, and in two more months to completion.   

As with the Atlu-Bola Bypass, so with the SF Tourism Road. Mayor Caluag may very well take a page from Mayor Aquino’s playbook… Uh-oh, guess I just shoved my foot in my mouth there. 

How insolent of me to even think of propounding that to the honorable Mayor Vilma Balle Caluag, gloriously hailed as “The Most Influential Filipina Woman in the World” by that most prestigious Foundation for Filipina Women’s Network. 

Aye, when her mere kembot on Tiktok will do the trick. 

Google Map photograb/Road photos: Froilan Does/Photos: CSFP-CIO, Mabalacat City News 

 

Persistence pays for Mayor Geld, Atlu-Bola Bypass Road constructed

 

MABALACAT CITY – Dogged determination defines Mayor Atty. Gerald Guttrie “Geld” P. Aquino, if only for his resolute pursuit of solutions to his city’s traffic problems, which – at least in one instance – has yielded spectacularly immediate – in the scheme of things infrastructural hereabouts – most favorable results.    

The case in point here is the Sta. Ines-Atlu Bola Bypass Road. Aquino’s singularity of purpose well documented in local news platforms and Punto! foto stories datelined Mabalacat City, chronologically, to wit:  

Aug. 26, 2025. NLEX, LGU IN TRAFFIC TALKS

Mayor Atty. Geld Aquino has engaged the assistance of the North Luzon Expressway Corp. to develop a comprehensive analysis of the city’s traffic situation as well as the harmonization of projects to ease traffic flow and mobility. Among those discussed in a meeting at the NLEX head office in Balintawak on Aug. 26 was the Sta. Ines-Atlu-Bola Bypass Road eyed to provide direct access to the NLEX Exit in Sta. Ines and ease traffic flow to and from the city proper.

Nov. 13, 2025. BYPASS ROAD TO NLEX

Mayor Atty. Geld Aquino and NLEX Corp. president Luis Reñon lead a site inspection for the proposed Mabalacat Bypass Road that will connect NLEX Sta. Ines Exit to the barangays of Mangalit and Atlu-Bola to alleviate heavy traffic flow to the city proper and its contiguous areas. Joining the inspection are NLEX Corp. AVP for business development Vic Apuzen, city engineer Rod de Leon, and city planning and development office chief Rosan Paquia. 

Prior to the inspection, the group met with Toll Regulatory Board executive director Atty. Jose Arturo Tugade in Clark Freeport to review project alignment, required documents, and project impact on the community.

In the past months, Mayor Aquino had consultative meetings on the bypass project with TRB, Department of Transportation, and the Metro Pacific Tollways Corp.

JAN. 23, 2026. BYPASS ROAD TO NLEX APPROVED

Department of Public Works and Highways Secretary Vince Dizon, on Jan. 23, HAS confirmed to Mayor Geld Aquino the approval of the Atlu-Bola Bypass Road which will provide an alternative route to the NLEX Sta. Ines Exit, the Mabalacat City Information Office said.

Jan. 29, 2026. PLANS FOR BYPASS ROAD FINALIZED

Technical details, implementation timelines, and inter-agency coordination were focus of the discussion towards the finalization of plans connecting the Atlu Bola Bypass Road to the NLEX Sta. Ines Exit among Mayor Geld Aquino, NLEX president Luis Reñon, NLEX AVP Vik Apuzen DPWH Assistant Secretary Suzanne Marie Ramos-Liwanag, and DPWH Region 3 director Arnold Ocampo along with their technical staff. Approved earlier by Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon, the project aims to ease traffic, improve expressway access, and boost Mabalacat City’s long-term economic growth.

Jan. 31, 2026. BYPASS ROAD TO NLEX GOOD TO GO

There is no other way but all-systems-go for the Mabalacat Bypass Road that will connect NLEX Sta. Ines Exit to the barangays of Mangalit and Atlu-Bola to alleviate heavy traffic flow to the city proper and its contiguous areas.

This, after the high-profile inspection of the site by Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon, NLEX Corp. president and general manager Luis Reñon, Pampanga 1^st District Rep. Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin Jr., and Mayor Atty. Geld Aquino.

Expressing bullishness over the prospect of bypass roads greatly contributing to the efforts of Mayor Aquino to make Mabalacat City the premier industrial-commercial hub of Central Luzon, Dizon said the DPWH is also looking into the funding of the Dolores Connector Road and bypass road to the Clark-Mabalacat-Angeles Road in Barangay San Joaquin connecting to the Pampanga Technopark being developed by AyalaLand in Barangay Tabun.

Feb. 13, 2026. ‘3-BALLS’ BYPASS ROAD UP FOR COMPLETION IN 2 MONTHS

Exactly 13 days after the Jan. 31 high-profile site-inspection by Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon, NLEX Corp. president and general manager Luis Reñon, Pampanga 1st District Rep. Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin Jr., and Mayor Atty. Geld Aquino, materials testing and concrete pouring are already being undertaken by the DPWH on the construction of the Sta. Ines–Atlu Bola Bypass Road connecting NLEX Sta. Ines Exit to the barangays of Mangalit and Atlu-bola to alleviate heavy traffic flow to the city proper and its contiguous areas. The project has a timeline of two months for completion.

LESS THAN six months from consultation to construction – seeing completion in the next two months. No mean feat there for Mayor Geld Aquino. Not without, of course, the DPWH and NLEX Corp. finding common cause to bring it all about. In fine, a confluence of will, purpose, determination, action with Aquino as catalyst.

  

An affront to the heroism of San Fernando teachers

TEACHER’S HEROISM Day, January 30, has served in the past few years as an opening event in the annual celebration of Kaganapan cityhood charter celebration in the City of San Fernando.

 

Ding Bayaning Talaturu mural sculpture unveiled at the city schools division office in 2021 as tribute to the “teacher-heroes” of January 1980. Marker alongside it was installed in 2022. CSFP-CIO file photo

A most auspicious event to start the coming-to-fulfilment – that’s what “kaganapan” precisely means in Pilipino — of whatever promised greatness for this capital city and its people.

But for a select few in-the-know at city hall itself, who is even remotely aware of the meaning of that day? Of what heroic act the teachers accomplished and are now celebrated for. Or, who these teachers even were.

The significance of the event not only to the city but to the country itself prodded me to re-issue this piece published here some years back.

The “Rape of Democracy” it was called by the mosquito press – the intrepid underground publications and tabloids of the time – as it merited little if any play-up in the mainstream Marcosian media, especially in its flagship broadsheet Daily Express which was derisively punned and fittingly panned as the Daily Suppress.

So, the electorate was allowed to vote freely in the local elections of 1980. But the manual counting and canvassing of their votes was an altogether different matter.

Sensing imminent wholesale defeat for the administration’s Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) candidates – yes wholesale, as bloc voting was prescribed by the Commission on Elections itself – even at the onset of the counting, operatives of the party in-power let loose their armed goons upon the polling precincts, taking the ballot boxes and all election materials, and – when they resisted – the teachers themselves.

Fading memory now notwithstanding, it was in the small barangay of Malpitic that the news of the “snatching of ballots” and “kidnapping of teachers” first came out, and spread fast across town with reports of similar incidents occurring in practically all barangays of San Fernando.

Herded at the municipal hall and under pain of death, the teachers were forced to play the charade of vote-canvassing – first reading “KBL,” then tallying the vote in the designated KBL box of the canvass sheet, regardless of what was written on the ballot.

No mere urban legend were the stories of the teachers – in fits of nervousness and intense stress – peeing in their skirts and, perhaps on impulse of courageous defiance, reduced to stuttering “LBK,” “KLB,” and “BLK,” everything but the acronym they were forced to utter.

Truly, a stuff of legend though was the fearless stand of the teachers led by Madam Tess Tablante to publicly expose the ordeal they went through that forced the regime to nullify the election results – acknowledging that the teachers were “threatened and coerced into making spurious election returns without regard to the genuine ballots in the ballot boxes” – and unseated the Comelec-proclaimed winner, re-electionist Mayor Armando P. Biliwang.

In the interregnum ensued an unprecedented rule of succession with a Philippine Constabulary officer, Col. Amante S. Bueno, deputy commander for administration of the 3rd Regional PC Zone at Camp Olivas, taking over as OIC-Mayor, and succeeded by lawyer Vic Macalino, on the recommendation of the Honorable Estelito P. Mendoza, governor of Pampanga, secretary of justice, solicitor-general, among other titles.

The political impasse coming to an end with the special mayoralty election in 1983 won by Virgilio “Baby” Sanchez, who was Biliwang’s predecessor. That this: the teachers defending – with their very lives if needed – the sanctity of the vote at the height of the dictatorship when elections were a mockery of democracy, was damned heroic.

That in all of the Philippines where electoral terrorism was wanton practice, such heroism had to happen in San Fernando could only speak of redoubtable courage, a testimony to true grit of the local teachers.

January 30, 1980 in San Fernando is no mere footnote but a shining milestone in the history of the Filipino struggle for democracy, coming as it is full six years before the EDSA People Power Revolt that finally ousted the dictatorship.

More than just being opening event to the annual celebration of Kaganapan, Teachers’ Heroism Day needs to be memorialized – in stone, as in a monument to the courageous teachers, most fittingly at the Heroes Park; in book form, as in an oral history of the personal accounts of the teachers themselves.

In this era of fake news and forged histories, that task for the city government is as much incumbent as urgent. As much for the teachers, as for patrimony of the Fernandino.

So, what’s keeping the city from doing it?  

SO, WE WROTE here on Jan. 29, 2020. Now, fast forward to 2026.

 

NO, THE city government under Mayor Vilma Balle-Caluag did not wittingly disgrace the heroic teachers. It merely minimized their significance in this year’s Kaganapan 2026 that it so dubbed as “grandest and most historic cityhood anniversary celebration yet...”

Teachers Heroism Day – legislated by the then-Sangguniang Bayan ng San Fernando on Jan. 30, 1984 to be celebrated thereafter as “San Fernando Teachers Heroism Day” as fitting tribute to the 1980 heroic stand of the teachers – has not only ceased as kickoff event of Kaganapan: on the glorious silver anniversary rendition, it was all but totally expunged from the month-long calendar of events. Relegated as, indeed, a footnote to the “commemoration honoring the city’s journey, achievements, and collective aspirations” in the artcard #25FactsOn25th posted on the CSFP City Information Office FB page on Jan. 25, marked as 10 days to Kaganapan 2026.  

 

Where the city government was only remiss in properly observing both a Kaganapan tradition and the enacted legislation of San Fernando Teachers Heroism Day, Mayor Caluag’s online myrmidons banded under her campaign handle “Laban San Fernando” were outright in their denigration of the city’s public school teachers – of allegedly being herded to Pradera for what it alleged as “ginagawang hakbang ng kabilang grupo na naglalayong guluhin ang resulta at demokrasya ng nakaraang eleksyon” with “libreng tour, snacks, at pagkain” – implying some kind of bribery in a thinly-veiled, if overtly irrelevant, reference to the Comelec-ordered recount of the 2025 city mayoralty election results. Irrelevant, as the teachers will not have any direct hand in the recount.  

 

Still, the Laban San Fernando post even carried the caveat: “… paalala at panawagan din sa ating mga guro: anuman ang ialok o ibigay, panatilihin nating sagrado ang eleksyon at ang boto ng mamamayan.” Which, in the context of the overlooked Teachers Heroism Day celebration, comes as a flagrant affront to the city’s teachers. 

 

Indeed, swift and stinging was Pampanga chapter of Assert, the official union of teachers and school principals in Central Luzon, in its rebuke of Laban San Fernando’s canard: “We strongly condemn the continued spread of false information and malicious accusations against the teachers of the City of San Fernando, Pampanga.” (translated from Pilipino). 

In its social media post, Assert clarified that teachers have no role in any vote recount process and stressed that claims of payments or personal benefit connected to any alleged recount-related assembly are entirely false.

“Such statements are a blatant form of disinformation and an affront to an honorable profession,” the group said.

Furthering: “Teachers are professionals who have long served with dignity, integrity, and dedication to the education of our youth.”

That, the San Fernando teacher is. And more, much more given Jan. 30, 1980: That, in all of the Philippines where electoral terrorism was wanton practice, such defiant stand against it had to happen in San Fernando could only speak of redoubtable courage, a testimony to true grit manifest of the heroic character of the local teachers.

The vain attempt of Laban San Fernando to disparage that heroism – if only to show its fawning loyalty to Vilma Caluag – only exposed the utter shamelessness of the mayor’s online kindred.

Or is there some fear, of a sense of déjà vu in their Caluag-collected subconscious, of the aftermath of terrorized cheating in the 1980 city polls – the ultimate defeat of the incumbent mayor in 1983 – happening again post-Comelec recount in 2026?

That’s a hell of a stretch, wider than the 43 years spanning the not-so-dissimilar events. Alas, beloved guru Riza Shanti Lim is too far in the great beyond to make a divination of this.

More recent, and hewing closer to the case at hand though is the recount of the 2007 Pampanga gubernatorial polls. We all know where that ended.

Sans an iota of doubt on the integrity, dignity, and dedication of the teachers.    

The President's point man, DPWH's finger man

 

YEAH, EVERY Juan – and Juana and Juanix to be universally gender-sensitive – knows Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon is President Marcos Jr’s point person for infra, and before that for transportation.

Really in character, as Dizon’s presidential point-personality merely crossed over from the Duterte administration where it was in fact birthed and bred: 1) as president-CEO of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, the point man for the development of New Clark City, notably the construction of world-class sports facilities in time for the 2019 SEA Games – never mind the much-criticized P50-million “kaldero” used as the cauldron for the Games; and 2) as deputy chief implementer of the National Task Force Against Covid-19, the point man for the government’s Test, Trace, and Treat (T3) program, even earning him the moniker “testing czar.”

So ingrained is this point persona in Dizon that he has come to channel it in his body language, literally with the forefinger, whether he is inspecting infra projects, fielding media questions, or holding meetings with his minions. 

Case in point is his recent inspection blitz in Pampanga where Dizon’s finger made a dramatic standout: at the collapsed – for the nth time – slope protection of the Candating flood control project; at the stalled flyover construction project in Angeles City; and at the proposed site for a bypass road connecting NLEX to some barangays in Mabalacat City.  

With cleaning DPWH of graft and corruption included in his functions as infrastructure point man, Dizon has naturally assumed the akin persona of finger man, openly demonstrated in Candating when he named three DPWH personnel he suspended for allegedly demanding 8% kickbacks in government projects.

Point person. Finger man. It serves Dizon, the government, and the people well thus far. That we have to concede. May he keep it with the right finger.

 

Photos from the web.