As ever: It's enforcement, duh!

CSF addresses traffic problems through summit

In a bid to address traffic congestion in the city, the Local Government of San Fernando conducted the first traffic summit yesterday at the Heroes Hall.

This was participated in by different transport groups, barangay officials, government agencies, non-government organizations, and representatives from schools, churches and malls.

The summit is the start of a series of consultations and collaborative efforts from the local government unit and stakeholders in order to give viable solutions for the city’s traffic operations. 

Ret. Col. Danilo Bautista, Officer in charge of the Traffic Management Division (TMD), said the summit aims to identify the causes and effects of the rising volume of vehicles in the city and get recommendations from the stakeholders involved.

“Among the cited problems during the summit were the insufficiency of parking spaces in fast food chains, obstruction of ambulant vendors in major thoroughfares, and the lack of discipline of public utility vehicles’ operators,” Bautista added.

For his part, Mayor Edwin “EdSa” Santiago said the city is pushing for the institutionalization of the Public Order and Safety Coordinating Office to spearhead the effective planning and focusing on the issues of traffic jam.

“We are continuously adding manpower in the TMD and we are striving to provide our personnel with skills and educational trainings and keep them well informed on the national and local traffic rules to effectively manage traffic,” Santiago added.

Under the New San Fernando concept, the city mayor also plans to implement a comprehensive Land Use Plan to decongest the city’s central business district. To improve accessibility in main roads, the local government will also focus in traffic management modernization.

Meanwhile, city officials led by Mayor EdSa and Vice Mayor Jimmy Lazatin and all stakeholders signed a pledge of commitment to implement and initiate policies and solutions; and abide by the traffic laws towards a more sustainable road, transport and traffic management in San Fernando.

IT’S ENFORCEMENT, stupid!

Great though the temptation to shout out the city government for its press release above, I am stayed by the consolatory at-least-they-are-doing-something-about-the-traffic-mess.

Hopefully, the doables this time will go beyond the conspicuous posting of traffic laws along the streets of the city that served nothing more than emphasize to one and all the inutility of the city government in enforcing its very laws.

“Tricycles are not allowed on major highways.” “No helmet, No travel.” With corresponding fines for violations appended. Trikes, bareheaded motorcyclists routinely zoom past these signages under the very noses of indifferent traffic enforcers.

Motorcycles carrying three passengers, as well as children packed between bodies – patent violations of national laws – are never apprehended.

Yes, it’s enforcement, moron!

That’s the first order in any list of possible solutions to traffic problems.

The problems of “obstruction of ambulant vendors in major thoroughfares, and the lack of discipline of public utility vehicles’ operators” cited in the summit are best resolved by strict enforcement.

Let us not delude ourselves, there is no such thing as self-discipline when it comes to ambulant vendors and PUV operators. As they are long-conditioned to break the law at any and every opportunity, given or otherwise, discipline need to be imposed, aye, impacted, the hardest on them.

Yes, it’s enforcement, imbecile!

So, how do you intend to solve the “insufficiency of parking spaces in fast food chains”?

For the existing ones, I will not suggest razing to the ground abutting establishments to make for parking lots. For those yet to come, how about imposing requirements of x-number parking slots before they are given any permit to operate.

Mayor EdSa’s push for a “Public Order and Safety Coordinating Office to spearhead the effective planning and focusing on the issues of traffic jam” and adding skilled, well-informed manpower to the city’s traffic management division are ideal initiatives that can only be good if backed by the political will to enforce the law.

Sorely absent in the summit – if we go by the PR – is any discussion of alternative road networks, either the construction of new ones or the rehabilitation of existing ones, to really decongest traffic in the city.

There was this idea of a road parallel to the NLEx from Sto. Tomas through San Fernando to Angeles City that was propounded at the time of Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez. Given the exigency of the moment, studies of its feasibility are definitely in order.

The tail dike can be asphalted – as it is now from Cabalantian to San Pedro Cutud – through its whole span to very well serve as alternate route to Sto. Tomas, Minalin and further to Macabebe and Masantol. I take that road every Sunday from St. Jude to the old folks’ home in Sto. Tomas in a span of 25 minutes flat as opposed to 45 minutes at the regular MacArthur Highway route.

Then, there is the need to open subdivision roads to light vehicles – especially that going through Gemsville and San Fernando Subd. connecting JASA to the Capitol Blvd.  

Also, the clearing of minor roads of obstructions to serve as alternate routes, as Angeles City did, but sadly did not maintain.

Yes, it’s enforcement, duh!

Ghost case

EVERY POLITICIAN’S nightmare – a plunder case before the Ombudsman. Made worse with it splashed in media, and worst when screamed by the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Since 2014, that Pampanga mayor formerly known as “John Lloyd” has been living that nightmare.

P128-M plunder charge vs ex-Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo so headlined PDI on March 8, 2014 the story bylined Gil C. Cabacungan which, to this day, remains in the paper’s website.
Former Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo, a close ally of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, has been charged with plunder in connection with P127.7 million worth of ghost projects that were supposed to be implemented in the last nine years.

The plunder case was filed in the Office of the Ombudsman by more than a dozen Candaba residents led by Arnold Canimo, who accused the former mayor of conniving with several individuals and corporations to embezzle government funds.

Canimo and his fellow complainants claimed that Pelayo had engaged several individuals and corporations for 11 separate contract agreements to establish, maintain, develop, rehabilitate and improve a demo farm at the Clark economic zone in Pampanga province, and construct, repair, rehabilitate and improve irrigation service roads, including the Barangca Bridge over Malisik River…

…According to the complainants against Pelayo, “equipment like hand tractors, irrigation pumps, planting materials, pesticides, seeds and the like that were supposed to be used for the demo farm, were not delivered to the municipality of Candaba.”

The scheme, the complainants added, had Pelayo’s crony corporations receiving funds from the Candaba municipal hall based on disbursement vouchers.  The corporations would then deliver the funds to the Arroyo ally in exchange for a 3-percent handling fee.

“In sum, respondent Pelayo, then mayor of the municipality of Candaba, in connivance with respondent corporations, amassed, accumulated, and/or acquired ill-gotten wealth, in the amount of P127,753,914.64 through… a series of misappropriation and conversion,” the complainants claimed…

By all looks of it, a great expose of a grand wrongdoing there. Only, it did not happen. The ghost, not in the projects, but in the Ombudsman case.  

“We waited for three years for a summon or subpoena asking us to comment on the case or to appear before the Ombudsman but there was none,” said Pelayo in a statement over the weekend. “So, I decided to go to the Office of the Ombudsman to inquire personally inquire on the case supposedly filed against me and I was issued a clearance stating I have no case – criminal or administrative – pending before it.” The Ombudsman clearance is dated June 27,2017.

A clear case of kuryente the PDI readily fell for, and how! Citing a plunder case filed before the Ombudsman absent any docket number, not even a receiving copy of the supposed complaint! Patently false news predating its very invention by two years in the Duterte era.

To right the wrong done him, Pelayo said he had filed a libel case against Canimo and his alleged cohorts before Quezon City RTC Judge Branch 224, “which upheld his case and ordered the arrest of his supposed accusers,” namely Canimo, Edgardo de Guzman, Gaudencio Lacanilao, Francisco San Pedro, Lorenzo Catacutan, Romeo Balatbat, Rufino Pabalan, Dionisio Guevarra, Rodolfo Manalili, Jessie Laurente, Danilo Bartolome and Bernardo Santiago.

As to PDI, Pelayo merely asked that the paper “would do something about this.” After all, they were the ones who did this to me. Maybe they could take down that story from their website,” he said, still smarting to this day of the publication’s impact on his life.

Rues Pelayo: “I am no longer connected with politics for several years now. I manage my own business. But, unfortunately, whenever potential business partners search my name on the Internet, that particular story published by the Inquirer keeps popping up. So, I have to explain again and again what really transpired. And I even have to show my Ombudsman clearance and copy of the RTC decision ordering the arrest of my supposed accusers.”

As to his political rival whom he suspected of being the brains behind the “demolition case” against him, Pelayo defers to the Ombudsman.

His successor, one-term mayor Rene Maglanque who lost in the last polls, is currently entangled along with 25 others in a P900-million plunder case filed by the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with the pork barrel scam of Janet Napoles.

Some sweet revenge already for Pelayo there.

Coming full circle

ENTERTAINING, TO say the least of SunStar-Pampanga’s banner story of the Arayat local government unit seriously considering to file libel raps against ABS-CBN rising out of the network’s primetime series FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano.

"Ipinapakita nila na kuta kami ng mga terorista, na ang Mt. Arayat ay kuta ng mga terorista. Hindi lang dito sa Pilipinas, pati sa ibang bansa pinapalabas ang ‘Ang Probinsyano’ kaya ‘yung mga kababayan namin tumatawag sa amin (The (show) is depicting our town as a terrorists’ lair, that Mt. Arayat is a haven of terrorists. The show is aired not just in the Philippines but outside of the country that is why a lot of our townmates are calling us),” so was Mayor Emmanuel “Bon” Alejandrino quoted in the SSP story.

Recent episodes of the show dealt with a fictional terror group nesting in Mt. Arayat which, Alejandrino said, portrayed his town as a "haven or breeding ground for terrorists and hoodlums."

This, the mayor lamented, “smeared the reputation of Arayat as a wholesome and peaceful town,” and negated his administration’s strides in erasing “the stigma of Arayat as home of terrorists."

The sangguniang bayan earlier passed a resolution condemning FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano for its “reckless portrayal of the town” that “has caused not only the local government unit in a state of distress but also the Provincial Government of Pampanga.”

Alejandrino thus slammed former Pampanga governors Lito and Mark Lapid, making their showbiz comeback after disastrous losses in the last polls as protagonists in the series: the father as chief, the son as foot soldier of the terror group.

Raged Alejandrino at the Lapids: “Wala silang malasakit sa bayan namin at sa buong Pampanga. Sana sila mismo kinontra nila dahil dati silang nanungkulan dito at dapat alam nila ang totoong sitwasyon dito at kung ano ang magiging epekto ng palabas sa bayan namin (They have the least concern for our town and for the whole of Pampanga. They themselves should have opposed (the bad portrayal of Arayat) as they once served here and are supposed to know the real situation and how the show will affect our town).”

De-Lapidation

No karmic cycle maybe, but full circle certainly have gone the Lapids, as well as Alejandrino, here.

The dilapidation of Pampanga by the infamous quarry scam in the nine years of the Bida ng Masa and the single term of his hijo at the Capitol, whereby the provincial coffers dwindled even as private estates and mansions with fleets of luxurious vehicles escalated in Porac, came to a full stop with the de-Lapidation of the province in 2007, at the ascendancy of the Reverend Governor, Eddie T. Panlilio, who, in his very first day in office collected P1 million in quarry revenues. Definitively impacting there the graft and corruption in the Lapids’ collection of P115.6 million in 11 years. Do your math now: all it takes is three months and 11 days for Among Ed to equal the Lapids’ 11-year quarry (non)performance.     

Returning to their showbiz home ground, albeit on the aptly named idiot box, Lapid and son – if we take Alejandrino’s drift – are back devastating Pampanga anew. The image of peace and prosperity of Pampanga shattered by that nationally televised and internationally beamed, if only fictional, terrorist lair in Mt. Arayat.

For Alejandrino, the real has come all too reel. Of art imitating life, all too perversely.

It was not in the fastness of the mountains that I interviewed the then-supremo of the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan in the 1980s, but Mt. Arayat historically stood as the sanctuary of revolutionaries.

And Alejandrino was engaged in a revolution, his HMB though outsized, out-popularized, and out-propagandized by its splinter group the New People’s Army.

But no terror group was his – being masa-based rather than massacring, mostly agri-engaged, socially-grounded, even constructing village chapels, resorting to the gun “only in the pursuit of justice for the people.”

(How did I know? I had full access to the supremo. So, that when Alejandrino was presented to the media after his capture by the then-provincial PC commander Col. EQ Fernandez, I was promptly taken in for interrogation soon as he acknowledged my presence.)

Come to think of it now, more than the smear on his town and Pampanga, what drew the ire of Alejandrino against FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano is its utter perversion of the part Mt. Arayat has played in our history.

The redoubt of revolutionary movements degraded into a terrorist lair! Sheer sacrilege.

            

'Q' dynamics

QUARRY (1). n., pl – ries. 1. A bird or animal hunted; prey; game. 2. Any object of pursuit (Middle English querre, entrails of a beast given to the hounds, from Old French cuiree, variant of co(u)ree, from Late Latin corata, viscera, from Latin cor, heart.

Quarry (2). n., pl – ries. An open excavation or pit from which stone is obtained by digging, cutting or blasting. – tr.v. quarried, -rying, -ries. 1. To cut, dig, blast or otherwise obtain (stone) from a quarry. 2 To use land as a quarry. (Middle English quarey, quarere from Old French quarriere from quarre (unattested), “square stone” from Latin quadras, square.
The lexicographic definitions of the word quarry – the Grolier International Dictionary used here – are too clear for any misunderstanding. (What? No mention of sand in the definition? Well, sand, along with marble, mayhaps only came later to join stone as materials being quarried.)
Well-defined as it is, still – in Pampanga – the word quarry has assumed myriad connotations and varied denotations well outside the parameters of its dictionary meaning.
It was not so long ago that the word quarry meant all of these things: some tracts of lands and fishponds, some choice lots in premier subdivisions, condo units along Manila Bay, and the heart of a Mutya ning Kapampangan finalist.
In that same period, quarry assumed the synonyms of top-of-the-line sports-utility vehicles like Lincoln Navigators and Humvee 2s, luxurious S-type Mercedes Benzes and 7-series BMWs. Forget the Pajeros, they were for pesantes. The Patrols, to the bodyguards as back-up vehicles
Still then too, quarry connoted grand palaces and stately mansions sprouting in rustic Porac.
Ah, those attributions were well within our first dictionary entry of the word: “object of pursuit.” The pursuers making prey of the collection pot for their own ends.
In our common understanding, quarry meant digging. For sand, that is. Still, misunderstanding persists.
Again, an instance in the recent past.
Threatened with suspension over the reported indiscriminate quarrying in his town, my once favorite mayor rolled his Rs in his spirited defense that: “There is no quarrying in Mexico. There is only the scraping of lahar from private agricultural lands in pursuit of our noble objective to make them arable again for greater productivity and prosperity of our people.”
Only scraping and not quarrying? Even when the lahar scraped was used as pantambak (filling materials) to the pinak (marshland) atop which SM City Pampanga rose?
One month after Eddie T. Panlilio took his seat at the Capitol, quarry assumed the definition of P1-million per day. And at the same time confirmed the earlier definition of quarry as unexplained wealth and plunder.
So we are now all agreed on all that the Q word stands for? Not yet…

SO, WE wrote here on October 10, 2007 under the title Defining ‘Q’ with the ending: Truly, quarry is a very dynamic word.

Indeed, as the “miracle” that was the Reverend Governor’s P611.1 million collections in his single term made nonfeasance, if not malfeasance, out of the Lapid father and son’s 11 years combine of P115.6 million.

The miracle going mega with Gov. Lilia G. Pineda’s P799.2 million quarry revenues in only her first term, already exceeding P2 billion, and still counting, a year into her last term.

For all the connotations and denotations of beneficence, transparency, efficient collection, and good governance it evokes under the Pineda administration, quarry has reassumed its materialistic, morally challenged “object of pursuit” meaning.   

At the Capitol only last Monday, much of the governor’s time was squandered by interests not even, strictly speaking, within the ambit of her responsibilities – quarry operations at the Clark Freeport, which as everyone knows is a distinct republic separate from Pampanga.

Even as the arguments among an ex- ex-local official, an Aeta leader, and a champion of marginalized groups on one side, and a Clark “locator” engaged in vibro sand-processing on the other centered on an ingress-egress blockade issue, the drift went well beyond it.

Piecing what was said before the Gov with what we have long been hearing, the bigger picture of quarrying in Clark comes as a turf war between rival indigenous tribes, compounded by “outsiders” comprising of a merry mix of former local officials and police officers, self-serving crusaders, and plain hustlers. All for that which gave the Capitol no less than million-peso-a-day pay dirt. No pun intended.

Already dire at this stage, the situation is further complexed with the leadership crisis currently obtaining at the Clark Development Corp. which, in the first place, holds the authority over the area.

With stakes high as these, the situation can easily turn ugly. Even uglier than in the elder Lapid’s time when the sands of Passig-Potrero were drenched in blood.

So, what has the governor to do? Call the CDC OIC who is at the same time the chair of the Bases Conversion Development Authority to impress upon him the gravity of the situation and strongly suggest that the usual ingress-egress be immediately opened to all, with a police contingent deployed in the area meanwhile to keep the peace.

Yes, quarry is a dynamic word.

      

TOTGA

THE ONE that got away. Less in love here, as in fishing. As in the campaign against illegal drugs too. Unspeakable tragedy for the small fries, despicable impunity for the big fish.

“What we have caught in our antidrug campaign are small pushers,” rued Gov. Lilia G. Pineda before Ismael Fajardo Jr., PDEA Central Luzon director, and Senior Supt. Joel Consulta, Pampanga chief of police, at her office Monday.

Ay, the small pushers deprived of due process, indeed, deemed unworthy of even the least due them as humans – exterminated with extreme prejudice in patently state-inspired, if not -sanctioned, modus.

And the big-time drug dealers, always conveniently unfound in just about every raid – whether one-time-big-time or sporadic – of a shabu laboratory, factory or warehouse. TOTGA!

So, how many of these shabu production and storage facilities have been raided in Pampanga?

Within the last two years, at least five, if fading memory still serves right. Count now: three laboratories in posh villages in Angeles City, that underground shabu refinery in a piggery farm in Magalang, and that “mother-of-all-shabu factories” in Arayat, shocking no less than President Duterte himself.

Oh, how can we forget that warehouse in Greenville, City of San Fernando that yielded hundreds of millions worth of meth? And that mansion that yielded shabu too, in Lakeshore, if we’re not mistaken? 

So, how many drug lords have these raids yielded?

Nada. Zilch. TOTGA!

“High-value targets” may be generic in some police watchlist but not apparently those of higher- and highest-values.

On the other hand, the low-esteemed targets – the street pushers – are always found dead in some dimly-lit rural road or city nook and cranny, the cause of death listed as either nanlaban to arresting police operatives or victims of vigilante gangs; their cadavers ever cardboarded “Pusher ako, ‘wag tularan!”

With few and far between drug deaths in “legitimate encounters” rather than one-sided EJKs, Pampanga takes exception though to the extreme solution to the drug menace. Its jampacked provincial jail makes one definitive negation to extra-judicial killings, as much as an affirmation of the slow justice system in the country.

Lamented the governor: “The problem is that these suspects are all thrown at the provincial jail. They stay longer in jail because hearings are reset when witnesses or complainants among the police do not appear in court.”

In the meanwhile, the Capitol pays the cost – at P2 million monthly for just the food of some 2,300 inmates, 70 percent of whom face illegal drug cases.

And more in rehabilitative as well as livelihood programs for them and subsidies for their families.

Rightfully rues Pineda more: “The money should have been spent instead on education and health. We spend also on conferences but the illegal drug problem is not completely solved.”

With her police director Consulta asking for “the cooperation of the community to give us information about the identities of drug personalities,” the governor immediately responded with a commitment to of her office’s intelligence funds, even her personal financial resources, to help PDEA and the police intensify the local war against big time drug lords.

No more TOTGA, henceforth there can only be Gotcha! in the drug war in Pampanga. Nanay expects no less.  

Remembering

UNGIFTED OF fluency in the amanung sisuan, I held the supreme envy to Ed Aguilar.

His mastery of the meter and the rhyme in Kapampangan crosses effortlessly between poetry and prose, making his Que Sio Que Tal truly a reader’s delight, and now – with his demise last week – an irretrievable loss.

Sorely shall Ed, best known for his media moniker Macky Pangan, be missed too in press conferences which he always spiced up with his impromptu poesia on whatever was at issue. How he laughed when we prefaced his introduction to these events with the horrorific puñetang Kapampangan, punning the poeta in the aguman he belonged to.   

My first meeting with Ed was in a rather hostile environment – at McDonald’s Dolores junction, would you believe? Over burgers and fries we had a rather spirited debate surrogating for our respective gubernatorial bets in the 1995 polls: he championing the Don Pepito Mercado, his Minalin townmate; I trying to intellectualize the uncolleged Lito Lapid.

Even as we wrote for the same paper – The Voice – for some time, we tended to end up on opposite sides, primarily on the presidents of the Clark Development Corp. and contending local politicians. But this did not detract us from cultivating a friendship that led to the formation of the Society of Pampanga Columnists, an informal aggrupation of opinion wielders that dies a little after every passing of its members, starting with Rolly Lingat of Balita, followed by Ody Fabian of The Voice, then “associate member” Rizal Policarpio of The Angeles Observer.

Come to think of it, as much an impact to the life of the SPC as the death of its members was the dissolution of Old Manila at SM City Pampanga, our group’s unofficial clubhouse. Of the storied coffeeshop, I rhapsodized in August 2011 thus:

IT TUGS at the heartstrings. And Bette Midler’s poignant take on the Beatles’ In My Life made it all the more heartrending –
There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments…
Moments memorialized, enshrined in one’s very core.
Of Old Manila – premium choice pre-Starbucks – where the brew was good, and the café crowd even better.
Where Pidiong Mendoza – political strategist par excellence – extended his stroke-impaired existence some more years, dispensing political wisdom he gained from the gilded age of Philippine politics – the Puyat era, to the Aber Canlas and Midying Bondoc years.
Misty-eyed Pidiong ruing he would not live long enough to see Puyat-Bondoc scion Rimpy realize his father’s Capitol dream. Only to raise his hand against the son, clasping the hand instead of rival gubernatorial bet Rep. Zeny Cruz-Ducut. (In the 2004 elections).
Yes, Madame Zeny flanked by Pidiong and newsman Ody Fabian in one flash of glory, arms outstretched in victory. That did not come. Ody and Pidiong now long dead. Zeny lives, and serves, as chair of the Energy Regulatory Commission.
Old Manila did indeed brew politics more than Arabica and Robusta beans.
Almost daily habitué – from 2 p.m. onwards was Apalit Mayor Tirso G. Lacanilao – the G for guapo spelled g-a-g-o, as he was wont to say – made good copy for mediamen, his smallest anecdotes of little town governance enough to make the pages of the papers, his soundbytes getting substantial airtime, the next day.
Tirso’s soliloquy on his brand of politics perfunctorily cut with text messages on his mobile that signaled the coming of some comely lass, her going only after some wads of cash in her hands and a doble beso on the mayor’s cheeks. Always to the amusement of his audience.
When Tirso was not around, it was the man he dethroned, Oscar Tetangco, Sr. that held court, usually huddled in some serious talk with five friends.
One day in 2004, the coffee crowd got crowded out of Old Manila, human-fenced as it was, two-persons thick, the object of over-protection there was Mexico’s new Mayor Teddy Tumang. A first-and-last appearance there though for the nemesis of Alyas Tigas, as he preferred the blend of UCC coffee.
Two other mayors that took their regular mugs at the Old Manila were Macabebe’s Bobong Flores and San Simon’s Digos Canlas, the latter later finding the way of Tumang at UCC too.
Making good copy and conversationalist too over cup-after-cup of Americano and espresso was Architect Normandy Canlas, best known for being the designer of the yet-to-be-realized Marcos mausoleum. Normandy has made his mark in the changing city landscape.
Then, how could we ever miss the age-defying Lotharios that regularly converged at Old Manila, as much for the sweet, sweet smell of brewed Arabica as for the even sweeter despatsadoras of Folded and Hung, Plains and Prints, Naf-Naf and Giordano. The guy’s runner, Coffeeboy Cris lugging McDo, Jollibee, Wendy’s, KFC and Tokyo! Tokyo! goodies was ever a welcome – and regular – sight to the ladies.
Of the lover boys at Old Manila, no one came even close to Daddy-O, fondly called Gokongwei, a US-based octogenarian whose credit card-filled wallet was triple the thickness of the blueberry pie Old Manila served.
Daddy-O, day-after-day, six months a year, motored from Sta. Ana, promptly took his seat at Old Manila at 10:15 a.m. and was fetched as promptly at 8:30 p.m.
In between, two ladies at a time – in varying degrees of pulchritude but fixed age bracket of 19-21 – came a-calling to Daddy-O and then, abresiete at his left and right, made a paseo around the mall, returning in two hours, lugging bags, bags, and more bags, of assorted colors and labels.
Soon as Daddy-O got his seat and ordered another cup of coffee, came the goodbye kisses from the girls. And Daddy-O waited for the next bilmoko set.
With his penchant for charity towards beauties-in-need, it did not take long for Daddy-O to fall victim to the budol-budol uglies. Yes, the crime was perpetrated over coffee.
Old Manila ambience vanished with La Nilad taking in retro-modern setting. Still, the old crowd – minus the assassinated Tirso – religiously trooped in.
Local papers even made an editorial spot out of La Nilad, copyreading, editing and lay-outing right there whenever there was power outage in the city.
How many ground-shaking exposes, hard-hitting commentaries and bitter criticism found conception and expression at Old Manila and La Nilad, no mediaman can accurately count. Not even the precise and concise Macky Pangan, aka Dan U. Pan, aka Dan Monyus, the most regular of all coffee confederates at the place.  
Sad, so sad. Indeed, for all of us that La Nilad is also no more. Thanks for the wonderful memories anyways.
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love…them all.
Yeah.

OLD MANILA brews again up there. Macky joining Rolly, Ody and Rizal, Pidiong and Tirso. Ah, what stories they must be making!

Of a sugared past

COVERED NOW in defining SM-blue is the frontage where used to rise a mountain of bagasse opposite Pampanga’s iconic sugar central – leading those not-in-the-know to anticipate yet another Henry Sy mall in the city. 

Fact is, there is much anticipation rising out of the area, not for one more mall that’s got it all though but for the mix-use, ten-year P30-billion project of Megaworld Corp. dubbed The Capital Town, right at the site of the long-defunct Pampanga Sugar Development Company.

Historic Pasudeco it is that has been bequeathed the distinct honor of being incorporated in the official seals of the City of San Fernando and the Province of Pampanga.  

Now, but for its two chimneys, nothing’s there but the rubble of history.  

Exactly nine years ago this month started the irreversible shift that has come to this. Zona, July 29, 2008 thus:  

Reinventing an icon

“SENTRAL.” That was how it was called for as long as I can remember.
And I do remember well having had a really personal attachment to the place.
In my boyhood, from the green rice fields of somnolent Sto. Tomas, lounging at the backs of carabaos we took to pasture, we eagerly anticipated the first signs of black smoke from its twin chimneys signaling the start of the milling season, cabio it was called in Kapampangan, usually in mid-October.
It would be time for my father to store in our lalam-bale his farm implements and report to the sentral as seasonal worker, a bagon driver. No, he never referred to himself as a freight train engineer. It was, to him, too lofty and presumptuous a title.
Pre-elementary – we were too poor for me to enter kindergarten – Tatang routinely took me along whenever he was on the primera shift. I enjoyed those downhill rides especially when he allowed me to pull the lever that sounded the horn. On the tersera shift, the family anticipated Tatang coming home early morning with cans of inuyat which we ambula in steaming rice and gatas damulag.
That Tatang served the sentral well was given testimony on his 25th year of service: some cash award, a certificate of recognition for his loyalty signed by the president of the sentral , the respected Gerry Rodriguez, and a black-dialed Seiko 5 watch.
That our family was served well by the sentral was seen through our family having coped with the hard times, all seven of us kids getting through high school and college before Tatang retired.
That the sentral served well not only the capital San Fernando but the whole of Pampanga was manifested in its chimneys made a part of the official seal of the province.
Ah, those smoking chimneys. The very signs of progress in my youth turned to be the symbols of environmental degradation in my early adulthood. The sentral became the scourge of Pampanga that poisoned the air with its smoke, and the river with its acrid and acidic effluents.
At the Department of Public Information, Region 3 office where I sat as bureaurat-mediaman, the sentral became public enemy number one from the late ‘70s through the ‘80s. And a war we did wage in the press, in various fora, up to the National Pollution Control Commission until the sentral was ordered to buy and operate some pollution-abatement devices.
Segue now to the ‘90s: the sentral not spared from the aftereffects of the Mount Pinatubo eruptions of lahar and floods, the take-over of its management and operations by a new company, and the subsequent establishment of the Sweet Crystals sugar mill in the hinterlands of Porac. And the sentral looked more like a rusted relic of a long past industrial age, totally alien in a City of San Fernando bursting with prosperity and aspiring to be the habitat of human excellence in the near future.
Last week, at a solidarity forum in the city, came word on the hoped-for reinvention of the sentral.
On its 90th year of serving the province, Pampanga Sugar Development Co. (Pasudeco) plans to transform its 35-hectare property into a multi-use facility to be of greater relevance to the times and contribute more to the development of Pampanga.
“We would like to remake the old Pasudeco as the new center of San Fernando to make the city a nicer place to live and work in.” So announced Michael Escaler, company chair and president, stressing, “We will not be guided by what is most profitable, but by what will be good for San Fernando.”
Adjacent to the Heroes Hall, the city hall annex, the Pasudeco property is planned to be developed for light industries, commercial enterprises, business offices, housing and parks.”
“We have been part of the history of the province. All our ancestors and the whole community benefitted from Pasudeco, so our generation, the direct beneficiaries want Pasudeco to give back to the community by reusing the area so we can make San Fernando a better place to live in,” Escaler was quoted as saying.
Now, I am back as the pasture boy, in awe of the sentral anew. Here’s hoping the chimneys will be preserved as heritage, as reminders of the sentral's part in Kapampangan history.

SO IT has come to pass.

Yellow, curiously

THERE ARE a thousand and one areas of opportunity, read: problems/challenges, in Mabalacat City waiting for its new Comelected Mayor Crisostomo Garbo.

Of these, he picked as Priority One the repainting of city hall at the Xevera township in Barangay Tabun. And of all the myriad colors in the spectrum to choose from, it had to be yellow – of the syphilitic or ‘Noy shade at that!

Wow! Is that some secularization, if not sacrilege, of the Marian blue and white of now-ex-Mayor Marino “Boking” Morales’ devotion?    

Maybe yellow is Garbo’s favorite color, all rhymes and reasons being patently discordant and illogical in this choice.

Offhand, yellow takes the hues of cowardice. As in the yellow-livered sorry excuse for a soldier who waved the white flag at the first sight of the enemy.

No way that Garbo comes anywhere near a cobarde, having proven himself a fighter – in and out of politics – even against overwhelming odds. I remember him standing up to the then supremely popular Gov. Lito Lapid in at least two independent runs for the provincial board, and emerging Number One.

And definitively life-threatening to Garbo was when he literally stayed the hand of the then-dreaded now-departed Jess Tolentino, Lapid’s self-appointed gun-laden close-in security, about to strike at the now-dead board member Eddie Chu following a heated argument at the corridor of the Capitol. Porac legend has it, not many are said to have lived to tell their tale of altercation with Mang Jess. 

In the current scheme of things political, Garbo made the worst choice of color for city hall. Yellow is not only off-season but even an anathema in the blood red of the Duterte regime. 

Yellow too, if it must be overstressed, is the color of vindictiveness that made the express policy of the BS Aquino III administration.

It colors then, not just politically, Garbo’s first pronouncement as hizzoner: “The people of Mabalacat should not be afraid because I will establish a conciliatory administration and I will not be vindictive.”  Highlighting, mine.

So, safe for us to presume that colleague Diosdado “Deng” Pangilinan, unarguably Morales’ fiercest loyalist, shall remain in his various capacities, at least the official ones, in the city? His double, not single, vision for Mabalacat City to jive now with whatever Garbo has laid out before him?

So, shall city tourism officer Guy Hilbero stay in place at the Mabalacat City Hall Annex inside the Clark Freeport? This, despite what a media colleague said as Garbo’s pre-proclamation promise to close down the annex?

And, on the same account, the best Pangan bar-none that is Benjie as head of the city Public Employment Service Office?

As to his vow of “a conciliatory administration,” Garbo had already taken giant strides – having conciliated himself with once-Boking-confidante-turned-wannabe-whistleblower June Magbalot; and taken by his side at his very proclamation once-Boking-minion-turned-bitter-enemy Chok Santos, long-time head of the city traffic enforcement group ungraciously dismissed by Morales.        

Conciliatory administration, indeed! Like, the friend-turned-enemy of my enemy is now my friend. If only for the moment, knowing full well the impermanence of friendship –  enmity, as well – in politics.   

“I always pray for our beloved city. I enjoin our people to unite for the progress of Mabalacat.” No doubt, “Christian” as he proclaims himself to be, Garbo prays. And prays a lot. Maybe, even more than Vice Mayor Christian Halili whose prayer for a TRO against Garbo’s taking over city hall was initially granted but later dismissed.

As to Garbo’s call for unity, we pray with him, and wish him well.

But pray, tell, Mister Mayor, how will the fearsomely fiery Pyra Lucas – she who filed the case that ultimately deconstructed the long-standing Boking regime and set the stage for your ascendance – fare in your administration? What with her penchant to witch hunt even the slightest shade of yellow from every nook and cranny of the city?