Unhappy land

AUGUST 28, I found in FB infographics from your favorite television network celebrating the Top 10 Filipino heroes in the people’s mind gathered from a Social Weather Stations poll.

What? No President Rodrigo Roa Duterte in the list?

My rage to slash at the SWS cooled the instant I saw in the fine prints that the survey was undertaken in 2011 yet. Which, instant recall, instinctively pushed the fingers to acaesar.blogspot.com, where my old pieces rest, and find this one from  Punto! April 11, 2011 titled Of Heroes.

UNHAPPY IS the land without heroes. So, some wag wrote.
Happiest then is the Philippines with its surfeit of heroes.
“Who are the persons whom you consider a genuine Filipino hero? You can name up to five persons.” So – with neither prompting nor proffered list – the Social Weather Stations asked 1,200 respondents nationwide in early March.
Emerging on top: Jose Rizal. Andres Bonifacio. Benigno and Corazon Aquino. Rightly so, the national hero is numero uno with 75 percent. Bonifacio had 34 percent. Ninoy had 20 percent and Cory 14 percent.
In a tie with Cory is the “Subime Paralytic” Apolinario Mabini, followed by four Presidents – Emilio Aguinaldo (11 percent), Ferdinand Marcos (5.1 percent), Ramon Magsaysay (4.3 percent) and Manuel Quezon (3.8 percent).
The very first Filipino historical hero Lapu-Lapu was named by 3.7 percent.
Just out of the Top 10 were Melchora Aquino (3.2 percent) and Marcelo H. del Pilar (3.0 percent).
President Noynoy Aquino at 2.9 percent edged the “Brains of the Katipunan Emilio Jacinto (2.8 percent), who was followed by pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao at 2.6 percent.
More historical heroes followed: Gabriela Silang (2.6 percent), Gregorio del Pilar (2.2 percent) and Juan Luna (1.9 percent), capped by President Manuel Roxas (1.8 percent).
Even former President Joseph Estrada figured with 1.8 percent of the respondents, followed by President Diosdado Macapagal (1.6 percent) in tie with presidential candidate actor Fernando Poe Jr. (1.6 percent) whom his daughter Gloria bested in 2004.
Alas, seemingly erased from the collective memory of the Filipino people are some other national heroes: the martyred priests Gomez-Burgos-Zamora, the propagandist Graciano Lopez-Jaena, military genius Gen. Antonio Luna, Diego Silang, Francisco Dagohoy, Macario Sacay and Jose Abad Santos. 
That the Dictator earned an honoured place in the Top 10 and the disgraced and convicted plunderer merited a place at all in the survey manifest some reconsideration in our general understanding of heroism.  
Yeah, how did Marcos and Estrada ever become heroes?
Some symptoms of a damaged culture patently manifest there. Unhappy is the land with a surplus of pseudo-heroes.

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A DIGRESSION…
So what does it take to be a hero?
A debate had long focused on the question: Are heroes born or made?
Is heroism inherent in a person or does it rise out of circumstance? Th e latter has traditionally been the preferred position buttressed by historical epochs.
Without the American Revolution would there be a Washington? Without the Civil War, a Lincoln?
Could Turkey’s Ataturk have arisen without the Ottoman persecution? Or Lenin sans the Romanov’s enslavement of Russia?
If memory serves right, I think it was Arnold Toynbee that provided the synthesis to hero-born versus hero-made contradiction, to quote liberally (from faded memory): “When he has in him to give, and the situation demands of him to give, he has no other recourse but to give.”
The essence of heroism inheres in the person and is drawn out from him by the circumstance. Both born and made is the hero then.
Even if one possesses all elements of heroism in him – generally thought of as intelligence, honor and integrity, courage, selflessness and commitment to a cause, self-sacrifice and love for others, if there is no situation that will warrant the extraction and expression of these elements – a triggering mechanism of sort – the hero will not come out of him.
That may very well be the lamentation expressed in Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: “…Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air…”

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HEROISM IS the summation of a life. Heroism is a verdict of history.
So what’s Marcos doing in that list of “genuine heroes”? Estrada too, and for that matter P-Noy and Pacquiao?
Ah, yes, I remember reading someone writing somewhere: “Anyone is a hero who has been widely, persistently over long periods, and enthusiastically regarded as heroic by a reasonable person, or even an unreasonable one.”       
Yeah, I can only think of the “unreasonable” ones getting them there.
Shame.

Chicken fever

A FEEDING FRENZY over chicken – primarily fried and adobo, and eggs – balut, hardboiled, and buro caught Pampanga by storm Friday. If only in photo-opped boodle fights staged by LGUs to allay public fears rising from a paranoia over the avian influenza.

Actually, it started – the publicized feasting, that is – earlier in the week with Candaba Mayor Danilo Baylon rounding up a few brave souls, the provincial information officer Joel Mapiles included, to gorge on fried itik (mallard), the town’s culinary specialty.

A few days after, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Pinol himself, with Vice Gov. Dennis Pineda and San Luis Mayor Venancio Macapagal partook of avian culinary delights right where this current bird flu started.     

The chicken fever peaked Friday with Lubao town and the cities of Angeles and San Fernando mounting their own look-‘ma-chicken’s-still-finger-licking-fine festivities.

Before taking to the long table groaning from the weight of chicken dishes and hardboiled eggs, Mayor Mylyn Pineda-Cayabyab went around the public market to check on the sale, rather, the lack of it, of poultry products.

The responses she received from vendors ranged from matumal – very slow, to ala – zilch. Whereupon, the mayor’s pusong mamon (soft-hearted) took the better of her, buying wholesale the chicken and eggs unsold on retail.

“Poultry products in Lubao remain safe from the avian influenza,” declared the mayor, picking a chicken leg from the adobo dish to signal the start of the joyous breakfast meal of chicken and eggs with the municipal council, barangay chairs, and anyone who wanted to join in.   

Whole chicken, dressed of course, and eggs which the mayor earlier purchased now bagged in individual packs were distributed – for free – to a frenzied crowd that suddenly materialized.        

‘Pag libre ang manok, libre din ito sa sakit. Chicken given free makes it bird flu-free! The virus swept away by the benevolence of the giver. Whoa, what miracle the mayor wielded there!

“Abe, ali ka migaganaka (Friend, don’t worry) Pampanga chicken is safe” screamed a streamer in Barangay Panipuan, City of San Fernando as 3^rd District Rep. Aurelio “Dong” Gonzales and Mayor Edwin Santiago led officials and the barrio folk in a brunch – boodle fight, but of course – of chicken and egg adobo and rice.

“We want to drive the point that chicken and other fowls in San Fernando are safe. Our anti-bird flu task force has been monitoring the situation and are strictly checking the quality of chicken sold in our markets,” Santiago said, hoping this will arrest the precipitous plunge in the sale of poultry products at the city markets.

Declared Santiago: “Chicken here is safe to eat, as long as it is cooked well and hygienic practices are observed, that is our assurance to Fernandinos and our cabalens.”

Over at the Pampang Public Market in Angeles City, Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan and the city council feasted on lelut manuk (chicken porridge), adobo and fried chicken

“Nyaman na (It’s delicious),” gushed Pamintuan over a crispy chicken leg, in effect making himself the specimen to disprove to one and all whatever supposed risks poultry products posed to humans in the wake of the avian influenza outbreak in far-off San Luis town.   

The mayors have made their point: Don’t chicken out. Fear not. Feast on.

Come to think of it, could this avian influenza declaration by the Department of Agriculture no more than a disproportionate reaction to a “common” age-old problem of poultry farms?

Patse sinipun ya ing manuc, icauani mu neng culungan para e la miaua reng aliua pa. Nung ali, ma-peste la ngan (When colds hit a chicken, isolate it from the others to prevent their contamination. Else, pestilence will kill them all). Some folk wisdom heard from the barrio of long ago when peste – avian flu was yet to be invented – killed chickens but did not warrant the setting of zero ground quarantine and seven-kilometer radius controlled areas, when no checkpoints were established to bar the transport of poultry products, when no wholesale culling was ordered. And eating chicken – those that did not die from the peste – was never deemed a risk to humans, much less ever forbidden. Why, even the infected ones made routine – and free – pulutan to the drinking sprees of the barrio istambays!      

Friday’s feeding frenzy is one triumph of the old Kapampangan will. That, instantly reminds me of Nietzsche: “…what does not kill me makes me stronger.”   

Why, there may even be some Shakespearean thing in the avian flu outbreak.  As in “much ado about nothing.”

Remembering Tirso

HE WOULD have, most certainly, been back and into his third and last term anew at the Apalit town hall. Had not a hail of lead snuffed the lights – the wit and the laughter memorably – out of him.

Past the ninth anniversary of his still unsolved murder, he came in a dream. His face he ridiculed as not even his own mother could ever come to think of as handsome have become beatifically angelic. Quick as he came, quicker did he leave. Yeah, leaving me threads of memories articulated in this piece here on August 5, 2008.

“SINASABI PO ng aking mga kalaban na ako ay mukhang kabayo. Mga sinungaling po ang mga iyan. Kayo na ang mismong nakakakita, hindi ako mukhang kabayo, ako ay mukhang tsonggo.” (My rivals say I look like a horse. They are liars. As you can well see, I don’t look like a horse. I look like a monkey)

“Matatapang po ang aking mga kalaban at sila ay inyong kinatatakutan. Ako po ay hindi natatakot sa kanila, sa katunayan sila ay aking hinahamon. Kung talagang sila’y matatapang, sige nga magpalit kami ng mukha.” (People are terrified of my rivals, but I am not. If they are really that fearsome, I challenge them – to trade their faces with mine.)
“Ako po si Tirso G. Lacanilao. Ang ibig pong sabihin ng G ay guwapo. Ang spelling po nito ay g-a-g-o.” (I am Tirso G. Lacanilao. G stands for handsome. It is spelled stupid.)
“Y Tirso mayap ya, maganaka ya pa, andiyang matsura ya.” (To the tune of rap: Tirso is good, he is kind, even if ugly.)
Only Tirso can get away with murdering himself at the hustings and live to win elections. Independent, ticketless vice mayor in 1992 and 1995, mayor in 1998, 2001 and 2004. So, he lost in his sangguniang panlalawigan bid in 2007. It was a half-, nay, quarter-hearted try at best, going through the motions of a campaign that started and ended with the filing of his certificate of candidacy.
In the field of politics where face is a premium, self-deprecation has never been raised this high. And paid most handsomely.
Politics, as practised here, was the least of Tirso’s concerns. Moved as he was to serve, and serve best, his constituents.

In his first term, Apalit was adjudged the cleanest and greenest town in Pampanga, in the whole of Central Luzon and was finalist in the national level, earning a coveted Gawad Pangulo sa Kapaligiran.
In 2001, Apalit was hailed Outstanding LGU for Livelihood Skills Development.
It was also in Tirso’s administration that the municipal coffers increased with improvement in market collections and sound fiscal management. From 1998 to 2003, the annual income of Apalit rose to P301 million, its internal revenue allotment to P209 million.
“Bayan ang amo, utusan si Tirso.” (The people are the master, Tirso is mere slave.) That well summed up Tirso’s political philosophy. All the honors heaped on him he passed on to his people: “Sa Apaliteno ang karangalan, ako ay abang instrumento lamang nila sa adhika at mithiin nilang kapayapaan, kaayusan at kaunlaran.” (Honor is to the people of Apalit as I am merely their instrument in their aspirations towards peace, order and prosperity.)
Thus it was that Tirso made the very antithesis of the traditional politician. That it was that he was called Tatang by his people, honored elder and selfless provider. Even stern disciplinarian.
“Kung ayaw ninyo ang patakaran ko sa pagdidisiplina sa inyo, huwag ninyo akong iboto. Ikampanya ninyo ang mga kalaban ko. Pero habang ako ang mayor dito, sumunod kayo.” (If you don’t agree with the discipline I am implementing here, don’t vote for me. Campaign for my rivals. But so long as I am mayor, you have to follow me.) That he impacted upon grumbling tricycle drivers who did not want to part with their slippers, shorts and sandos while plying their routes.
Tirso was not spared from being enmeshed in some controversies, the worst of which was his having been reported to have admitted over the radio receiving money from gambling lords.
Tirso’s simple honesty, coupled with his clarity of language, that saved him from a suspension order from the Department of the Interior and Local Government and court summons.
“Ang sinabi ko ay ako ay nakatanggap, hindi tumatanggap.” (What I said was I received (once), not I was receiving regularly.) Further clarifying that he did not know the source of the money that was left in a paper bag on his table; that the money was distributed to the charity seekers then present at his office; that he tasked his men to look for the source of the money who – after two years was identified as one “Dante” – and by then dead. Case closed. End of controversy.
Looking forward to the end of his third term, Tirso told this writer he was already brimming with excitement on the prospect of returning to the job he loved most – being a latero, a smith in his car repair business, and spending more time with his horses, his other passion.
July 31, Thursday, 2:30 p.m. Assassins’ bullets snuffed out all his passions. Good God, why did it have to end this way? Will most surely miss you, Tatang.

Bird-brained, egghead

ANGRY ARE the poultry raisers of my hometown of Sto. Tomas and neighboring Minalin.

Their farms are well beyond the seven-kilometer radius “control area” set by the Department of Agriculture to contain the spread of avian influenza from its ground zero of San Carlos in San Luis town. Yet, their produce suffers the same stigma as those from the infected farms themselves. Subjected as they are to what they called “very restrictive and unclear provisions carried by the ban” imposed by the Bureau of Animal Industry.

"It is very unfair that we could not sell eggs even if we are not part of the areas with infection," lamented Mayor Johnny Sambo, who, being a graduate of veterinary medicine, presumably knows what he says.

“Kulkul” (literally translating to “hole”), a sliver of land straddling the Sto. Tomas-Minalin boundary, is the biggest egg-producing area of the fourth district at 1.5 million eggs daily.

Even as Sambo claims Sto. Tomas’ 700,000 stocks are for egg production, Minalin has long been acclaimed the “Egg Basket of Central Luzon.” Just to underscore the gravity with which the BAI ban impacted upon the poultry farms there. The reported P4 million daily losses in revenues from unsold eggs being but the most conservative estimates. 

So, what is there to do but for Sambo to plead with the BAI to clarify “restrictive” provisions in its ban and issue “shipping permits” to areas outside the one-kilometer radius quarantine zone and seven-kilometer radius controlled area.

Pleadings, given governmental inertia, miraculously answered with utmost dispatch.

Lo and behold, came rushing right in the midst of Sambo’s town hall meeting Monday with poultry farm owners the BAI chief veterinary officer/assistant secretary for livestock/officer-in-charge director bearing a freshly minted – dated the same Monday, August 14 – memorandum circular which title is even longer than those appended to the bearer’s name: “Amendment to MC 8 (S) 2017 on Temporary Ban in the Movement of Live Domestic and Wild Birds and their Products including Poultry Meat. Day Old Chicks, Eggs, Semen, Manure from Luzon to Visayas and Mindanao.”

Most pertinent provision to the egg producers in the MC is that intra-Luzon movement of subject produce “may be allowed” provided it is outside the seven-kilometer radius control area and accompanied by shipping permit and veterinary health certificate for live birds, and shipping permit and meat inspection certificate for poultry meat fresh or frozen, and presumably eggs included.

New pleadings – and more prayers – come now from the poultry owners: for the BAI to be as swift in communicating its circular to all its regional and provincial officials and ensuring that it be followed by the LGUs for them to cease and desist from stopping the access of Pampanga’s bird flu-free poultry products in their territories.

All’s well…but not quite.      

Angrier are the duck people of Candaba. For good reasons, having long held the birthright to the egg-bird industry in the province celebrated in its eponymous Ibon-Ebon festival.  

Already smarting from daily losses of up to P8 million caused by the BAI ban, the very reputation that put their town in the world map has been tarnished.

“Evidence showed that migratory birds could have been the cause of the avian influenza,” so said one BAI functionary, who, when asked for proof of what he said, first cited some generalized. purported statistics from China and then rephrased his statement of the migratory birds as “only suspected” of being a possible cause.

So, has the BAI conducted any on-site studies in the wetlands where migratory birds flock to support their “suspicion”?

Nada.

How the Candabenos wished Jerry Pelayo were still their mayor, if only to knock some folk sense into the head of that BAI minion!

All suggestions in the past of migratory birds being carriers of avian influenza were routinely, and haughtily, dismissed by Koyang Jerry as hogwash, thus: How can a sick bird escaping the cold winter of China or Siberia ever survive the long flight across vast oceans, roost in Candaba, and infect all poultry life there?

Yay. in the current scheme of things avian, the BAI seems not only caught with its pants down, so to speak. It has too tiny eggs to show.  

       

 

Facing priorities

NO CONGRESSMAN in Pampanga, not even 2^nd District Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the former president herself, can ever come anywhere close to 4^th District Rep. Juan Pablo “Rimpy” Bondoc.

Aye, no representative that ever sat and served the Kapampangans since the foundation of the Republic can compare, even the least favorably, to Bondoc. Yes, his father Cong Midying, not excluded.   

Indeed, not even Gov. Lilia G. Pineda herself – with all four districts in her jurisdiction – can match Bondoc.

That is in the number of “priority projects” tagged to his name. To be precise, imprinted with his face, in those screaming tarpaulins hanging everywhere in his area of representation, made all too ubiquitous by the absence of similar signages of self-appropriated credits in the other three districts of the province.  

Just about any infrastructure project in the fourth district – from the construction of the narrowest farm-to-market road in Candaba to the rehabilitation of the Manila North Road aka MacArthur Highway, from the repair of Tete Batu to the proposed construction of a pedestrian overpass both in Sto. Tomas, from the construction of a fishport to the erection of the PNP station and covered court also in Sto. Tomas, from the rehabilitation of the tail dike in Sto. Tomas (again!) and Minalin to the upgrading of the road and canalization in Macabebe, etcetera – bear the name and image of Bondoc.

Why, even dump trucks carrying lahar spoils for tambakan in the low-lying areas of southern Pampanga invariably bear his mug in those “Priority Project. Do Not Delay” cardboards on their windshields!     

Need still wonder now why the Bondocs – from father Emigdio to son Rimpy to daughter Ana York back to Rimpy – have sustained their political stranglehold in the fourth district?

All challengers to their reign, count them now – Mars Pineda, Nina Tetangco, Rene Maglanque, Ramsey Ocampo, Jerry Pelayo, Oscar Tetangco, Jr. – meeting ignominious defeat. Why, there was even one election where Rimpy ran unopposed! A first in the congressional polls in Pampanga!

Grounded on these tarpaulin-announced achievements, Bondoc is now poised to pre-position himself for the governorship anew, where he, most unfortunately, failed, in 2004.

Today though, it is an uncontested given that no other politician in Pampanga to can match up – equally – to Pinedas other than Bondoc.  

Alas, comes now a most imponderable spoiler to Bondoc’s image-impacted accomplishments, and ultimately, to his gubernatorial ambitions – roll the drums now – the fighting Senator Mannyyy Pacquiaooo, -quiaoo, -quiaoo…

Pacquiao filed on Aug. 1 Senate Bill 1535 or the Anti-Epal Law seeking to prohibit government officials from claiming credit for themselves public works projects through signages.

Explained Pacquiao: “Although these government projects are facilitated by their office, the fact remains that these are funded by tax levied from Filipino people. In colloquial term, these public officials are referred to as ‘epal’ or credit-grabbers and attention-seekers.”

Furthered he: “This unethical practice has led the public to believe that the projects named before the incumbent government officials are indeed sponsored by them, thus tolerating said officials to prematurely campaign for reelection and cultivate a culture of political patronage.”

Touché.   

The bill carries the penalty of one-year imprisonment and fine of P100,000 to P1 million, with repeat offenders facing absolute perpetual disqualification from public office.

To Pacquiao, his bill hews to the highest ideals: to “uphold the honesty, integrity, and transparency to foster good governance in public service.”

So, what makes that of our fourth district representative?

Unplanned parenthood

KAPAG ANG Pamilya ay Planado…Laging Panalo. So goes the blurb celebrating this year’s Family Planning Month with the aim “to spread awareness and increase contraceptive prevalence rate in the region to meet the need for modern family planning.”

A Capitol press release quoted Commission on Population regional director Eleanor Cura as saying the FP month activities “are mandated to help all Filipino families determine and achieve their desired family size through modern family planning stated under the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health (RPRH) Act of 2012 further strengthened by Executive Order 12, 2017 of the Duterte Administration.”

Unguided by UN goals, with no parenthood and reproductive health laws still in effect at the time, I did not plan my family. Hindi planado…hindi naman natalo. As it turned out.

All the wife and I did was subscribe to the Church’s teachings. As contained in this Zona narrative seven years ago:

MARRIED LOVE, therefore, requires of husband and wife the full awareness of their obligations in the matter of responsible parenthood…
With regard to the biological processes, responsible parenthood means an awareness of, and respect for, their proper functions. In the procreative faculty, the human mind discerns biological laws that apply to the human person.
With regard to man's innate drives and emotions, responsible parenthood means that man's reason and will must exert control over them.
With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time.
Responsible parenthood, as we use the term here, has one further essential aspect of paramount importance. It concerns the objective moral order which was established by God, and of which a right conscience is the true interpreter. In a word, the exercise of responsible parenthood requires that husband and wife, keeping a right order of priorities, recognize their own duties toward God, themselves, their families and human society.
From this it follows that they are not free to act as they choose in the service of transmitting life, as if it were wholly up to them to decide what is the right course to follow. On the contrary, they are bound to ensure that what they do corresponds to the will of God the Creator. The very nature of marriage and its use makes His will clear, while the constant teaching of the Church spells it out...
This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.
The reason is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life—and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called. We believe that our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human reason.
The majesty of Humanae Vitae finds greatest consonance with the exercise of our faculty of reason hence, we – the wife and I – fully subscribe to the magisterium of the Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church and live by it as closely as possible.

Six kids

Hence, six children – three girls in a matter of twenty-two months – were born of our unitive and procreative love.
Raising six children was taxing to say the least. Being in-between irregular jobs at some time or the other, and the wife on full-time home management was truly the pits. Yet, as the sagrado Catolico of yore, aye, the very Filipino for that matter, we take the kids as blessings from heaven.
I remember a time when the sixth child was yet to be, between us and starvation lay only ten one-peso coins. So, what was there left to do but get down on our knees to pray. I got five for fare, left the half for whatever food they could still buy, and sought some friends for loans.
Finding the limited number of pals I could really count on all out somewhere, and with no means to reach them – this was long before the mobiles, I trudged my way back home feeling most forsaken – my pocket emptied of even tricycle fare.
So sorry, I told the wife, I left home with five pesos I got back with none.
In my sorrow, I failed to see the radiant glow in the wife’s face, shaking me out of despair with a jubilant cry of “God heard our prayers. He sent us 10 thousand pesos!”

Nido

It turned out that our lone entry to a promo raffle of Nido milk won for us the grand prize. To top it all, it was the last day before the prize would be forfeited in favor of the sponsor, as there was no claimant to it. It was a Nido worker who happened to have read me in the local papers that led the prize-giver to my home.
Ah, how we cried – and prayed, that day of days. With the greater resolve that God will never forsake those who call on Him. Whence, whenever need overtook us, we always returned to that day and be strengthened.
With faith in God, love and trust in ourselves, no burden is too heavy to bear.
From the hardships of yesteryears, today we enjoy our “blessings” of five kids university-graduated, gainfully employed, finding their own places in the sun. The youngest is a junior in college (He has since graduated). We are blessed with two grandchildren, and another one on the way. (We have a total of five grandkids now).
In the current battlegrounds of reproductive health, of population control, of so-called freedom of choice, we find our marriage a celebration of the supremacy of the Church’s position: responsible parenthood negates reproductive health as pushed by the state.
Modesty be damned now, we look at our family as a testimony to the true majesty of Humanae Vitae.

NOTE: The encyclical of His Holiness Pope Paul VI on the regulation of birth was issued on July 25, 1968. Turning 50 next year, it has not waned in relevance, in significance. 

Conflicted Aeta nation

UNITED UNDER the Sangguniang Tribung Ayta ng CADT 025-A (STA), the indigenous people have virtually declared an independent, if tribal, republic over their 10,600 hectares of ancestral domain straddling the Clark special economic zone.

This came with their declaration of non-recognition of the Clark Development Corp. and the unilateral annulment of their joint management agreement (JMA) with the state-run firm over the use of their land.

“Kailangan nang putulin ang aming ugnayan sa CDC para maiangat ang aming kabuhayan sa aming lupain (We need to cut our ties with CDC so that we can uplift our livelihood in our own land),” said STA vice president Don Robert Serrano.

His daughter Ruvielane S. Margarito, IP representative in the Mabalacat City council, decried the CDC for keeping them in the dark as to the JMA implementation.

Already “grossly disadvantageous” to the IPs with the 80-20 sharing – the lion’s cut to the CDC, the scraps to the tribes – the JMA, since its signing in 2006, has not had the least benefit to them, Margarito said. No thanks to the CDC’s “adamant refusal” for cuentas claras on the monies accruing from the agreement, not even a list of locators doing business within the ancestral domain.

Thus, when the CDC proffered before them a check of P14.6 million it said represented their 20 percent share, they refused.

“Mag-o-audit po muna kami kasi hindi namin pweding tanggapin ito dahil ito po yung estimated na kinita ng ancestral domain namin, so in the spirit of transparency kung talagang in good faith sila bigay po nila ang kabuuang kwenta (We need to conduct an audit first before we can accept the check. As it is our estimated share from the use of our ancestral domain, so in the spirit of transparency and if they are really in good faith, we should be given the whole accounting of the funds),” Margarito said.

When this was raised in a meeting with the CDC, the tribe was even derided thus:

“Who is going to audit? Kayo (You)? Bakit registered leader ka ba (Why, are you a registered leader)? Marunong kang mag audit (Do you know how to audit)?”

The scoffing condescension of CDC AVP for external affairs Rommel Narciso still stings to this day, said Margarito. “Doon po namin naramdaman na bakit pa kami makikipag-joint venture kung ganyan ang tingin nila sa amin (That’s when we felt why should we continue with our joint venture with them if they treat us that way).”

Divide and rule

Beyond perceived, if not felt, racism, the CDC has also been suspected by the tribes of a “divide and conquer” approach to their dealings with them.

Observed Serrano: “Naging gawi na ng CDC ang pagsasabing hindi nagkakaisa kundi nag-aaway pa ang mga katutubo. Eh, sila mismo ang nang-iintriga (It has been the wont of CDC to say the tribes are not united, that they are quarrelling. In fact, CDC itself is sowing the intrigues).

“Hindi po totoo na kaming katutubo ay nagaaway-away (It is not true that we IPs are quarreling among ourselves),” said Serrano, belying reports of inter-tribal rivalries that came to the fore over the lucrative quarrying operations at the Sacobia River.

STA president Oscar Dizon affirmed tribal unity which he said was effected in the formation of the STA which gained the recognition of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) “because all our tribal chieftains have certified it.”

Still, no recognition of the STA by the CDC.

Noel Anthony G. Tulabut, CDC communications manager, said the NCIP letter signed by regional director Ronaldo M. Daquioag on March 7 enumerating Dizon, Serrano, and four others as STA leaders is only a “virtual recognition” of the commission and will still be decided by the commission en banc.

Tulabut explained that the STA still needs to meet the requirements of certifications as IPO (indigenous people’s organization) and IPS (indigenous political structure) mandated in the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) law and under NCIP Administrative Order No. 2 series of 2012.

To compound the matter, the STA as “real representative” of the Aeta tribes in the Clark area has been challenged by “other” IP groups.

“Salungat po kami sa mga napiling anim na lider upang sumaklaw sa aming mga karapatan na wala kaming pahintulot sa kanila (We oppose the six leaders chosen to represent our rights without our consent),” read a letter sent to the CDC by eight other leaders headed by one chieftain Rading Sibal of Sitio Baguingin Barangay Anupul in Bamban, Tarlac.

In another letter to the CDC, Danilo Adrias, chairman of Barangay San Vicente, Bamban, questioned the STA, claiming it did not represent all Aeta chieftains. He asked for his inclusion in the group along with Oscar Rivera, a long-time leader of the Bamban Aeta Tribal Association.

Rivera himself has written the NCIP for inclusion in the STA, “given the fact that he was the authorized signatory (of the IPs) in the JMA.”

In the wake of these dissensions, credence obtains in pervading observations that the formation of STA negated its very purpose of uniting the IPs.

Vested interests

The pursuit of the highest interest of the Aeta tribes, Serrano said prompted the STA’s formation, its rejection of the JMA and their withdrawal of recognition of the CDC.

At a prescon last week, STA legislative secretary Albert de la Cruz impressed that the CDC can no longer issue business permits, and it is now the local government unit that can do so within the ancestral domain, with free prior and informed consent of the STA.

How this can be done, implementing rules and regulations -- within or without the ambit of Philippine laws – be damned, it was not said. 

Why, the very presence of De la Cruz in the STA has unsettled, indeed caused bitter recriminations among the tribes: What is the business of an unat (non-Aeta), the former vice mayor of Mexico, a town that is well outside the communities contiguous to Clark, sitting in the STA?

Alarms have been sounded too over the “high visibility” of other unats – an ex-member of the provincial board, a former CDC official, pro-poor crusaders, former police and military officers, contractors bragging of affinity with a powerful religious sect, and a host of other hustlers – notably in the quarrying operations.

It very well appears now that behind – at times even in front of – every tribal leader are non-Aeta cohorts. In reality, “handlers,” if we believe some CDC people. And succumb to racism as its external affairs AVP did, disparaging the IPs’ capacity to have a will of their own.

Will. The CDC, the NCIP, the LGUs, and the Aetas themselves can very well draw from there. For a start.