Campaign notes

THE CAMPAIGN period for local bets officially starts March 29, but wannabes have been at the hustings as early as the filing of their certificates of candidacy in October last year, if not even earlier.

Proof positive of this is not only in the posters and tarpaulins hung or plastered on every available space; as well as the stenciled names on just about every wall. Wonder how the Commission on Elections will make good its threat of sanctions against candidates who fail to take these down immediately before March 29.

Pressing the flesh in house-to-house sorties, medical-dental outreach services dubbed “barangay day,” night miting in sitios happen 24/7.  

The marginalized sectors have become the object of affection – witness the preponderance of the perfumed set’s mingling with the soiled and sweated masses, vowing their affinity, if not kinship, to them. (Inday, ang alcohol! immediately thereafter)       

It comes too in the sudden outpouring of the generosity, ingrained or studied, of the candidates, which at times other than the election season was…well, seasonal like Christmas.

While no Yuletide ham has yet been reported to have come the way of the poor man’s rickety table, there is a marked surplus of hotdogs and tocino in even the remotest areas of the province.  

One wag says the gubernatorial contest is shaping up to a battle between Mekeni Food Products and Pampanga’s Best, whichever the final outcome surely raising the cholesterol levels of the electorate.

In Candaba though, it is dressed chicken not cured pork that is being doled out again to the voters.

I do not know if my mayor still gives out truckloads of panambac to his constituents as he did in the last elections, but I have heard reports of the pyramiding scheme, first put in operation over 20 years ago, in vogue anew.

It goes like a recruit is given P1,000 to enroll (to the campaign) two others at P500 each and they in turn do the recruiting…down the line.

Speaking of two decades past, there was that election where three of the candidates running for mayor in my town outdid one another in offering their products for free to the electorate. There were but a few takers – only those whose loved ones departed at the time of the campaign – of their caskets.

Vote-buying? In the urban centers you won’t see money – cash – actually changing hands anymore. It’s the electronic age and the purchasing of votes, like any other commodity, is usually through some pay-pal scheme, or ATM deposit.

It is a campaign constant for candidates to promise the voters – vow, is the current operative word – the moon and the stars, like P1 billion for a city college and another P1 billion for a city hospital. The promises almost always ending up… well, promises. Empty, as the mind that made the promise. That which the street filosofo irrationalizes thus: Mengacu ne, asa(h)an mu pang tuparan na ita?     

A rarity is the politico that makes good on his vow. Rarer, indeed the rarest, is one who already fulfills promises even before they are expressed. How?

On the comeback trail, former Mayor Catalina Bagasina of Sasmuan on Monday awarded 10 one-storey residential units to an equal number of families displaced by a reclamation project in the town.

“I heard the concerns of the residents whose houses were reclaimed so I decided to buy lots from SPIDC and have the houses built so I can provide decent housing to the people.” So was the one dubbed as the “Bea Alonzo of Pampanga” quoted as saying. SPIDC is the Sapang Pari Integrated Development Corp. that has a low-cost housing program in Sasmuan.

The former ALE Partylist representative now promises more housing units as the 10 families make but the first batch of beneficiaries.

Now, were other promising politicos as actualizing of their promises as Bagasina, yes, also dubbed “Cinderella of Pampanga”…

One thing so far missed at this stage of the campaign is name-calling.

The classic “Monkey-tong” and “5-6” of an ancient era, “Manintunan” and “A bad boy Santos” of olden times have not been supplanted by new and more colorful labeling.

In the current campaign, there is but one branding that has so far cropped up – the “Loan Ranger” – appended to Angeles City Vice Mayor Bryan Matthew Nepomuceno for his role in securing the controversial P1.2-billion loan for a new city hall, sports complex, among others, and reinforced with his “vows” to allot P1 billion for the city college and another P1 billion for the Ospital ning Angeles, if elected.   

Those which his rival Alexander S. Cauguiran scoffed at as more loans that will most certainly consign the city in an inescapable debt trap.

Yeah, with the Loan Ranger at city hall, “Tonto” becomes the Angeleno. Pure pun intended there.   

  

  

    

Recurrent conflict

FROM THE pages of People’s Tonight, Dec. 21, 1987, headlined The Final Conflict:

A storied political rivalry that started in the immediate post-war period is set to culminate with the January 18, 1988 elections.
Two aged and grizzled political warriors – ripe enough for the geriatric ward, their detractors scoff – are fixed to meet in a final conflict with the city mayoral post as plum.
Don Rafael Lazatin, 83, former governor, city mayor and assemblyman heads the UNIDO ticket against Don Francisco Nepomuceno, 74, former governor and immediate past city mayor who is running as independent.
Far from dotage despite their advanced age, both still pack political savvy and sting that have made them survivors in the changing national political landscape.
Both of the landed gentry, they have for decades dominated local politics, making Pampanga little more than a fiefdom titled between them.
Lazatin started his political career in 1937 as city councilor. Nepomuceno initially crossed his path in the late ‘40s. From then on, Pampanga politics was reduced to a two-family affair, notwithstanding Lingad, Valencia, Mendoza and Guiao who provided the interregnums in their dominion.
While some sort of a political détente existed between the two in the wake of the Ninoy Aquino assassination and went on through the Batasan elections in 1984 – where Lazatin and Nepomuceno’s wife ex-congresswoman and ex-governor Juanita ran and won – and the snap presidential polls in 1986, still the enmity between them remained.
The contest for the city mayoral post, no matter the outcome, is speculated to be the two’s final confrontation. Their advanced age, in all probability, would prevent any other battle in the future.
However, the storied rivalry may end in a denouement instead of a climax for both of them. As they are by no means the only serious contenders for the post.
Seeking to break the stranglehold of the Lazatins and Nepomucenos of Pampanga and Angeles City politics is Antonio “Bubusuk” Abad Santos, the PDP-Laban official bet.
Though “lower” in economic status than the old titans, Abad Santos, himself a scion of a former city mayor, Manuel, claims a mass base of people support enhanced by an organization of determined men and women transcending all sectors.
Then too is Gov. Bren Guiao’s “all-out support” for Abad Santos.
If only for the fact that Lazatin and Nepomuceno are locked in their final conflict, January 18 in Angeles will be worth watching. The entry of Abad Santos is an added political bonus.

Resurrecting the dead

ABAD SANTOS won of course and the two elders receded to oblivion dying in the ‘90s but not before burying the political hatchet and bonding in friendship.
Abad Santos himself was but a single-term interregnum, unseated by his vice Edgardo Pamintuan in 1992.

Pamintuan, against the stern warning of Rep. Carmelo “Tarzan” Lazatin that he would resurrect the already “politically dead” Nepomucenos, took in Francis “Blueboy” Nepomuceno for his vice mayor in 1995.

The 1998 polls proved Tarzan prophetic when Blueboy beat Pamintuan for the first congressional district seat.  

And the Lazatin-Nepomuceno rigmarole in city and district polls continued – Mayor Tarzan opposed by Jepoy, Blueboy’s son; Congressman Blueboy challenged by Janet, Tarzan’s daughter. No direct face-off among the seniors there but inter-generational crossovers that ensured at least one of each clan remained in power. Which raised some suspicion of a modus vivendi agreed to by the dynasts themselves.

The classic 1988 “final conflict” was “re-enacted” in 2007 with the re-electing Mayor Blueboy, challenged by Carmelo “Jonjon” Lazatin II and Bubusuk’s daughter Eleonor “Nong” Abad Santos.

Blueboy won that one.

In 2010, Pamintuan had his sweet vendetta in unseating Blueboy. Only to do a 1995 redux in taking the latter’s nephew, Brian Matthew Nepomuceno, for his vice mayor in 2013. How the then retired Tarzan nearly snapped his neck from its sockets at what he considered Pamintuan’s repetitive unlearning of history!   

Pamintuan went the full nine yards, anointing Bryan as his heir to the mayorship, estranging, aye, spurning his longtime comrade Alexander Cauguiran who, in 2013, already sacrificed personal ambition to give way to Nepomuceno for the vice mayorship, and even marshalled their triumphant campaign.     
Easy to cast now Cauguiran in the Abad Santos role in 1988 – both being veterans of the parliament of the streets, for one -- what with the head-on collision of the political dynasties’ third generation in Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin Jr. and Bryan Nepomuceno for the city mayorship. This makes not only that classic conflict in politics but one class war!

In such wise, will lightning strike twice?

My esteemed friend and compadre, the erudite Max Sangil has all this figured out. And what he sees is nothing short of revolutionary.

Man of the Year

Vivencio “Vince” Dizon, President-CEO, BCDA

LIKE A dream. For the longest time that is what Clark has been – its greater expanse called the sub-zone, particularly – in visions of an entertainment mecca, of a new frontier, of a green city, varying at every change of leadership in the Bases Conversion and Development Authority.

It works. Finally, with the accession of Vivencio “Vince” Dizon to the helm of that state-owned and -controlled corporation tasked to transform the former bastions of American military might in the Asia-Pacific into engines for national development.

At no time in Clark’s history has there been this concentration of projects – flagship and blue chips at that – as now, tapping as though every bit of Clark’s immense potential.

At no place other than Clark is the Duterte administration’s Build, Build, Build mantra most solidly manifest.

New Clark City

Fast and furious but all so-precise is the rise of the Philippines’ first “smart, green, disaster-resilient metropolis, where nature, lifestyle, business, education and industries confluence.”
Under a joint venture with the BCDA, MTD Philippines is in charge of Phase 1A of the National Government Administrative Center (NGAC) at the NCC covering world-class facilities to be used for the 2019 SEA Games, notably a sports complex with an aquatics and athletics center. The stadium will have a seating capacity of 20,000 while the aquatics center can accommodate 2,000 people.

Set upon the standards of world governing bodies in athletics such as the International Amateur and Athletics Federation and the Federacion Internationale de Natation, the sports facilities are eyed for completion by October this year, in time for the opening of the SEA Games in December.

Also included in the Phase 1 are back-up offices of various government agencies to ensure continues business operations and services to the people in cases of disasters or calamities in Metro Manila.
To complement the Comprehensive Master Development Plan (CMDP) for the NCC, Dizon signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corp. for Transport and Urban Development (JOIN) and the Surbana Jurong of Singapore toward the establishment of the framework of a smart city concept with fully-integrated infrastructure and utilities for power, water, sewerage, information and communication technology, security, and even traffic management.

The CMDP was developed by BCDA and JOIN, in partnership with urban planning and engineering firms AECOM, Nippon Koei, and Philkoei International Inc.

Access roads

Now nearing completion is a primary road to the NCC which includes two interchanges, three bridges, bike and pedestrian lanes, roadway lighting and linear parks. At a cost of P3.125 billion, the construction of the 12.05-kilometer, eight-lane thoroughfare was awarded to V. T.  Construction and China Harbor Engineering Construction Consortium. 

Other ongoing access road constructions are the seven-kilometer NCC-MacArthur Highway road, and the four-kilometer MacArthur-SCTEx road .

The BCDA also started the construction of Phase 1 of the NCC-Diosdado Macapagal International Airport access road last July 2018.  Phase 1 spans 5.33 kilometers at a cost of P3.9 billion
The total length of the six-lane access road is 19.82-kilometers that will include a 900-meter bridge, bike and pedestrian lanes, roadway lighting and linear parks.

DMIA expansion

After the epical failure of past administrations, the new terminal building of the Clark International Airport now renamed Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) finally broke ground on December 20, 2017 and will be fully operational by June next year.
The P9.36-billion project entails the construction of a 10.2 hectares area passenger terminal building that can accommodate an additional eight million passengers per annum.

Dizon said the new terminal building is the first of the Duterte administration's hybrid infrastructure projects under its Build, Build, Build program. It is considered the fastest to be implemented by the national government since its approval by the NEDA board in June 2017.

The DMIA is envisioned to be the Philippines’ next premier gateway and is expected to help decongest the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

Luzon Bypass Infra

Yet another initiative of Dizon’s BCDA is the Luzon Bypass Infrastructure (LBI) project. A terrestrial bypass route for international submarine cables that will terminate at the landing stations in San Fernando, La Union and Baler, Aurora.

Aimed to be a world-class facility, the LBI project will support the broadband needs of the Philippine government and the BCDA zones while providing resiliency for communication infrastructure across the globe.

At present, the Fronthaul Cable Network Corridor is already completed and the rectification of punch listed items is ongoing.  The construction is also ongoing for the Modular Information Technology Facilities and Repeater Stations and the target completion is by the first quarter of 2019.  Terrestrial Cable Network Corridor is already being constructed with the target completion eyed by the second quarter of this year.

Subic-Clark rail

Now in its preliminary procurement works, the Subic-Clark Railway Project is finalizing its funding source.

To cost P50.031 billion, the project comprises a 71-kilometer initial freight service connecting the Port of Subic Bay to Clark airport which is expected to be completed by November 2022.
It is a component of the PNR Luzon Development Framework envisioned to spur the development of a freight railway system for Luzon, and decongest traffic in Metro Manila.

Branding

In November last year, the BCDA and its subsidiary the Clark Development Corp. launched a new Clark brand integrating the former baseland’s four districts – the Clark Freeport Zone, Clark Global City, Clark International Airport, and New Clark City – in some quadrant of development which unifying rationale Dizon articulated best: “It is the dream of every Filipino to live and work in a city that provides the quality of life that we only see now abroad, that unfortunately we do not see yet in the Philippines. And this is what we want the Clark brand to be – a brand that gives the Filipinos, whether rich or poor, young and old, the access to live the quality of life that we all deserve.”     

Hence, Clark: It works. Like a dream.  

Now more than ever. Vince Dizon at its helm. – With reports from BCDA and Ashley B. Manabat

Men of Clark

MORE ADVERSARIAL than cordial has been this paper’s relationship with the head honchos of Clark since it – Punto! – came to being in 2007. Even much longer was the animosity that permeated the social intercourse between this corner and Clark’s top brass – dating back to the very first Clark Development Corp. president that was Tito Henson.

Still, our doubting stance has never in any way beclouded our journalistic objectivity where the Freeport and its leaders proved even if only par for the course. When they excelled, we rain tinsels on their parade.

Proof positive of this is the dominance of Clark’s personages, corporate locators included, in our annual choice for Man of the Year.

The top locators of the Clark Freeport –

2013. SM MALLS

THE SHORTEST distance between rural rusticity and cosmopolitan sophistication is an SM City mall.
No more is this truer than in the coming of the Philippines’ premier mall to Central Luzon, instantly turning the landscape from rural to urban, promptly transforming the shopping, dressing, eating, leisuring habits of the people. Setting a new lifestyle aptly captured in the catch phrase: “Mag-SM tayo!” translating to “The SM mall is all.”
The pre-eminence of SM City malls in this once rice granary of the country upped and maxxed some more in 2012 with the opening of SM City Olongapo in February and SM City San Fernando Downtown in July, bringing to – count them: SM City Marilao and SM City Baliwag in Bulacan; SM City Pampanga and SM City Clark in the regional center; and SM City Tarlac – seven Henry Sy’s malls in this region, the greatest concentration outside Metro Manila. 
Unarguably, SM Prime Holdings – with all its mainstay shops and tenants in its malls – is the single biggest job provider in the whole of Central Luzon... (SM malls got it all, give back some more)

2013. CEBU PACIFIC AIR

ADRIFT IN the doldrums was the Clark Freeport for much of 2012, the impermanence at the helm of the Clark Development Corp., arguably, taking its toll on prospective investments.
Performing CDC president-CEO Antonio Remollo was replaced in April by former Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff Eduardo Oban Jr. albeit in an OIC capacity, and was in turn replaced in mid-December by businessman-lawyer Arthur Tugade. Like the banana republics of yore, the constant changing in the CDC leadership gives the wrong signals to investors, to say the least. 
Providing the only redeeming value to the Clark Freeport in 2012 was – is – Cebu Pacific Air, the Philippines’ largest national flag carrier.
On December 4, CebPac opened its Philippine Academy for Aviation Training (PAAT), a P1.8-billion joint venture with CAE (NYSE: CAE; TSX: CAE), world leader in aviation training. Aptly capping 2012 with the greatest promise of a bullish 2013 for the Clark Freeport, as well as the Clark International Airport… (CebPac perks up ‘lethargic’ Clark)…

2015. DENNIS ANTHONY UY

NOT SO much with the Joneses but with Gates and Jobs that he has kept up – the extraordinary individuals, as well as the generic meaning to their names. As in information gatekeeper. As in job generator.

This is Dennis Anthony Uy, the self-made man ever at the forefront of the march to modernity, starting as trader in Betamax and VHS tapes back in the early ‘80s, now in the cutting edge of the information and communication technology that will soon connect the Philippines to the world…

2016. DAESIK HAN

TURNING A $4 million investment into a $90 million hotel-casino-convention complex in a period of 10 years is no mean feat.

Raising the ante to $190 million by next year is nothing short of spectacular.

Widus International Leisure Inc. is – unarguably – the Clark Freeport Zone’s longest running success story starting out a dream of Deasik Han, its president-CEO…

2017. IRINEO “BONG” ALVARO, Phd

NO PERSONAGE in contemporary politics and business hereabouts has invested as much personal stake in Clark as Dr. Irineo “Bong” Alvaro.

In Clark’s American past, Alvaro was a young working student soon catapulted to

the top leadership of the Filipino Civilian Employees Association that championed

the cause of labor rights and won for the local hires working conditions, salaries

and benefits that their off-base counterparts, aye, Philippine labor itself, could

only dream of.

In Clark’s freeport present, Alvaro is a blue-chip investor, upping the ante in the

hotel and gaming industry, priming Clark as premier destination area of what he

called the three Rs – rest, recreation and recuperation…

From the Clark International Airport Corp. –

2009. VICTOR JOSE LUCIANO

IT WAS a no-nonsense job tailor-fit for our Man of the Year.
Thrice offered by no less than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the top plum of the then fledgling Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) is one our Man of the Year could not refuse. Not in Puzo’s Godfather sense of the phrase though, but for the sheer challenge – of blazing a trail, and the impact – to national development – it posed.
Thus, it was that the fellow from Magalang, Pampanga who has made a name for himself in the national scene, retraced his steps back home to serve not just his fellow Kapampangans, but the rest of the people of Central and Northern Luzon and help them – and the nation – find their niche in the international arena of development…
2018. ALEXANDER S. CAUGUIRAN

AS 2017 turned out, the unfolding story of the Clark International Airport may well be timelined B.C. and C.E. Not of the Christ-centric old and the all-too secular new dating systems though. But one oriented in Alexander Sangalang Cauguiran, president-CEO of the Clark International Airport Corp.

Simply put, Before Cauguiran – for well over a decade – the Clark airport was at best a long-held promise epically failing short at every try of delivery….

Flights were a matter of coming and going, and going, going, unreturning. Destinations, both domestic and international opened, and just as quickly closed.

By the end of 2017 – the first full 16 months of the Cauguiran Era – Clark had recorded 103 percent increase in aircraft movement at 12,620 and 59 percent rise in passenger traffic at 1,514,531 passengers, surpassing the previous highest figure of 1,315,757 recorded in 2012…

From the Clark Development Corp. –

2014. ATTY. ARTHUR P. TUGADE

COMPETENT. DARING. Caring. Beyond sheer sloganeering, Atty. Arthur P. Tugade redefined the Clark Development Corp. by living up to that corollary meaning, therefrom the Clark Freeport Zone highly profiting.

“We want to make Clark a logistics hub but this cannot be done without a business environment and a habitable society,” Tugade told Punto in April 2013, some four months into his term as CDC president- CEO, in his first ever interview with media.

“So, basically what’s the direction? Set the predicate for business here and once it is there you can pursue the logistics hub and effect a habitable community. The trust gained, the total persona of the businessman – pleasure, education, leisure and enjoyment – attained.” The road map set there…

And, finally, from the Bases Conversion and Development Authority –

2019. VIVENCIO “VINCE” DIZON, President-CEO.

IF ONLY for the New Clark City – that which, in its various incarnations throughout the BCDA existence remained still-born – coming, at last, to its full realization.

OF PUNTO’S 13 Man of the Year awardees, nine are Clark-connected. The remaining four – Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio, 2008; Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez, 2010; Gov. Lilia G. Pineda, 2011; and Mayor Edgardo D. Pamintuan are in local governance.

Come to think of it, this is the least being adversarial to Clark. We are actually biased for it.    

Sin City, still

RECLAIMING, PRESERVING, and promoting Angeles City’s cultural heritage is one of the better – if not the best – initiatives of the Agyu Tamu administration, unarguably bettering Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan over all his predecessors, bar none.

As I once wrote here, so I write again.

Only Pamintuan – conscienticized in the lessons of history – could have conceived of and concretized the delineation of Old Angeles downtown as Heritage District, and in keeping with some belle epoque ambience, rid the area of the unsightly spaghetti wires of the telcos, and paved part of the main street with cobblestones.

That cultural revolution immediately fruiting in the city’s back-to-back triumphs for the Grand Prize in the Association of Tourism Officers of the Philippines-Department of Tourism Pearl Awards – for its entries “Revitalizing Heritage in Angeles City” in 2015, and “Safeguarding Angeles City Heritage: Success Stories and Beyond” in 2016.

Only Pamintuan could have visualized and realized pocket gardens out of the garbage-dumped, vermin-ridden, disused and dilapidated railway tracks crossing the city – catapulting him to prominence in both national and international fora on urban renewal and sustainability.  

Only Pamintuan could have effected the legislation of “the best pork dish in the world” as an “intangible cultural heritage” of Angeles City, that allowed – to quote him – “for us to finally claim, not only by word-of-mouth but on document that sizzling sisig originated from our city.”

Only Pamintuan could have ideated the Pupul ning Banua, literally “harvest of the year” or “harvest from heaven,” the annual recognition bestowed upon Angelenos who excelled nationally or internationally in the field of arts.

Indeed, it was only Pamintuan – of all the mayors Angeles City has had – that initiated, invested in, and so impacted a cultural renaissance in the city. Mayhaps, if only to return the city to the core of its character at birth, so to speak, as this side of the world’s haven of the heavenly hosts, sadly lost in its charter as the City of Lost Angels.      

Alas, it wasn’t so. Alack, it isn’t so. That rebirthing of the city to its pristine glory.

Angeles as Sin City is not only a recurring nightmare but a given reality, virtually as well as veritably. Go, Google it, and weep.    

Sex tourism

Only a week back, the British paper The Guardian screamed in its online edition:

Do you ever think about me?': the children sex tourists leave behind

Bulleted: Their fathers visited the Philippines to buy sex: now a generation of children want to track them down

Angeles City, 85km north-west of Manila, is hardly the only place in Asia with a sex tourism trade, but it is one of its centres. There are perky Facebook groups and dedicated websites that cater to the men who come here: Angeles City, they say, is a place where “you can’t help but get laid”.

The speciality of the town is the “girlfriend experience”, or GFE; you pay a woman to be your “girlfriend” for a day, a night, a week or a month. This can include going on holidays to one of the beautiful resorts out of sight of Filipino poverty, or just staying at a client’s hotel, meeting his every desire...

Followed the Manila Standard headlining a story bylined Jess Malabanan: “Fatherless’ kids numbers grow in Angeles City

The number of “fatherless” children have reached to an alarming level and might eventually be part of the social problem should the local government fail to address the situation.

“’Fatherless’ children is now occurring and most of these kids are offspring of different nationalities who have visited the entertainment district of Angeles City. This is the social cost we have to face and address with haste specially with the current development of the Clark International Airport,” said Barangay Balibago, Angeles City Chairman Rodelio “Tony” Mamac. 

At present, Mamac said there are more than 800 to 900 fatherless children in Angeles City and nearby areas of Pampanga who were born out of wedlock with foreigner fathers. “This is the social cost we failed to notice but it is being addressed now.” 

“Some of these “fatherless” children have been loitering the entertainment district obviously neglected by guardians. Some have been involved in criminal activities as young as ten years old, they are now children at risk or child-in-conflict-of-the-law” said Mamac...

And those two stories are but the morsels in what could become some media feeding frenzy, both nationally and internationally. Three days ago, I was tipped off a Thailand TV crew filming around the city – principally its blighted areas and red-light districts. I was told they had a field day with the sight of used condoms and empty bottles of feminine wash trashing the squalid alleyways of the “Area.”

That is a clear giveaway of the slant their story will take. To one more strong reaffirmation of Angeles’ international charter as Sin City.    

  

Blessed are we for Apu Ceto

HE’S FIVE years into retirement but as active, as involved, as committed as ever in his labors in the Lord’s vineyard is San Fernando Archbishop Emeritus Paciano B. Aniceto.

He’s everywhere, as though nothing has changed, in his status – for lack of a word – dispensing the gifts of his priestly faculties, sharing the gift of grace with his flock.

This March 9, Apu Ceto turns 82. At a surprise advance birthday celebration our group of ex-seminarians – “non-ordained alumni of the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary,” as he calls us – stage for him at the Domus Pastorum last Tuesday, he specially requested me not to turn him into a saint, knowing that it has been my practice over so many years now to write something about him on his birthday.

Of course, the sinner that I am falls furthest from even the least possibility of any pretention to ever turning a Simon into a Peter. The most that I can do is to bear witness, to give testimony to a life dedicated to God and his people.

Here is one I wrote ten years ago that still stands true today.      

THERE IS something about Apu Ceto that is indiscernible to the naked eye.

Of slight – very slight – built, his physique exudes fragility. The very antithesis of the stereotypical ideal of masculinity.

Handsome – in the movie sense – he’ll be the first to laughingly dismiss that. Orator – in the televangelist’s fire-and-brimstone mold – he would not even think of it.

Apu Ceto is a priest in every bit not extraordinary. So, what draws people of all ages, of all walks of life to him?

He makes that classic definition of the priest that impacted our generation right on our very first day at the seminary eons ago – “the best gift of God to men, the best gift of men to God.”

So much so that simply being with him is always an experience in faith, an epiphany even. As that time in 2003 during his ten-day pastoral visit to California which was one spiritual journey, indeed a pilgrimage of renewal, of rekindling the fires of one’s faith.

Live the faith. Love the family.

His is a message so sincere in its simplicity. His is a message that indelibly touched those who reached out to him and those he reached out to: hundreds of Capampangans, scores of other Filipinos, and a sprinkling of Latinos, whites, blacks and other Asians in San Francisco, Antioch, Los Angeles and San Diego.

“The two priceless treasures of our people, coveted by other peoples…undiminished in value even through our worst economic dislocation,” Apu Ceto says of faith and family as the defining character of the Filipino.

“Modernism and materialism, especially in wealthy America, besiege increasingly the very foundation of the Filipino-American family. Against this onslaught, we need to return to our core values and be steadfast in our Christian faith to prevail.”

Apu Ceto has always made that call for the propagation of the Filipino core values of respect for human life, love for the elders, the bayanihan culture of sharing and malasakit, and family prayer, especially to those already born in America.

He denounced abortion and euthanasia as “pillars of the culture of death…high crimes against the family and against God.”

“The baby and the elderly are integral elements in the nucleus of the Filipino family. Take them out, fission ensues, and the nucleus suffers a total breakdown.”

In a clear jab at the pro-choice lobby in the US: “The baby in the womb is not a simple choice. It is a human being created in God’s own image and likeness and therefore should come into the world to fulfill God’s plan for him. Man has no business playing God, usurping His power over life and death.”

Of love and respect of the elderly: “Filipino culture puts premium in the wisdom of age. Thus, we take good care of our elders, never treating them like overused rags fit only to be shut in some retirement home, left to die alone, and as fast forgotten.”

And the attendant promise of a blessed long life for those who subscribe to the Fourth Commandment – “Honor thy father and thy mother” – “so that all may go well with you, and you may live a long time in the land.”

So, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians. So, it was written in Exodus 20:12. So, it has become Apu Ceto’s mission too.

Live the faith. Love the family.

Apu Ceto is his own message. Messenger and message fused into one. It is from that oneness that emanates Apu Ceto’s charisma – in its true essence of grace endowed upon a person owing to his privileged position with the Divine, to paraphrase the sociologist Max Webber.

Apu Ceto is that good sermon we see, we feel, and – prayerfully – we live.

It's P1 billion, moron

IS IT mere happenstance, or does it come exclusively to being a city, and immediately prior to election time?

This sudden surge of edifice complex most manifest among the chief executives of Pampanga’s twin cities of its American past – Angeles and Mabalacat.

Pursuant to his vision to “make Mabalacat a model city not only in Region 3 but in the whole Philippines,” Mayor Crisostomo Garbo is headlined as “eyeing” a new municipal hall. So was press released last week, and immediately ridiculed by some local wordsmiths as retrogression, thus: Siyudad ne ing Mabalacat, nanung linub qng quiquintab nang buntuc Garbo obat buri ne pang ibalic queng panga-municipalidad?

A city hall is to a city. A municipal hall is to a municipality. Mabalacat is a city, therefore…Garbo is not exactly wrong with a municipal hall as apple of his eye for his city. The adjective “municipal” used in its meaning “of or relating to a city or town that has its own local government.” Go, check its entry in the Cambridge and Collins dictionaries. Semantics though is the least of the issues obtaining from Garbo’s scheme.

“We are planning to purchase two out of the six-hectare lot of a private owner. The lot is worth P400 million. Then, we will construct a municipal hall worth P600 million with complete facilities and equipment. It is now on the drawing board and the plan is now being finalized,” so was Garbo quoted.

Funding for the P1-billion expense, Garbo said, will be sourced from a bank loan. Which bank, it was not said. He hastened to assure though that the LGU had the capacity to pay, citing the upturn in the city budget of over P700 million annually, and an IRA of P1.7 billion and still counting year after year.   

Swell, so where’s the Mabalaqueno’s beef?

For one, the target location – right beside the San Rafael Church along MacArthur Highway fronting Mary Help of Christians School of Mabalacat and a spit away from the SCTEx-NLEx ingress-egress – is already a traffic trap.

Two, the current city hall – the Delfin S. Lee Building – at Xevera-Mabalacat is barely 10 years old, still new by building standards. Not to mention its more spacious surroundings, and over 100 meters off the national highway.

If it ain’t broke, why fix it? The naysayers contend.

Misprioritization that can only lead to misappropriation of valuable, even if not scant, financial resources resulting to disservice to the public. So is Garbo’s gambit widely, if not, indeed, wisely considered.    

In similar, earlier, straits was – and still is – Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan with Angeles City securing a P1.025-billion loan from the Development Bank of the Philippines as “funding for the construction of the new city hall, sports complex, multi-level steel parking, and other related capital expenditures.”

“Totally inconsiderate,” mayoral aspirant Alexander Cauguiran decried the city’s action and demanded the city government “stop all these projects as no award has yet been made.”

Lecturing: “The mayor and vice mayor must first address the basic priority needs of the city and its residents, to provide better medical and health services, and expand opportunities for free college education, before constructing these modern facilities.”

Pointing to the urgency, indeed the emergency, that is the case of the Ospital ning Angeles and the primacy of the City College of Angeles among the most pressing needs of the Angeleno.  

Damning outright: “Spending public funds for the construction of grandiose project before the immediate need of people is a failure of public policy and flaw in good governance.”

But ain’t it a priority to replace the antiquated city hall – constructed at the time of Antonio Abad Santos (1988-1992) – with a spanking new one befitting the status of a world class mayor, and instill a pride of place among the citizens? Besides, it will certainly draw lots of tourists, someone in the city council said.

So, Cauguiran’s choking on his own bile? Whatever, the P1.025-billion loan and its ramifications have fueled the engine of his campaign, now nearly at full throttle.

In what could be a renascence of their twinning from their US bases past, Angeles and Mabalacat are unified in one defining issue in this election, in a paraphrase of Bill Clinton circa 1992: It’s the P1 billion, moron.

Whither goeth the political fortune of the partylist running Pamintuan – and by extension his anointed assumptive successor Bryan Matthew Nepomuceno – and the re-electing Garbo starts from there. Or ends, right there.

P1 billion. Catch the drift. Do the math. Better yet, fractionalize. It does not take a genius to figure this out.       

Perpetually ‘defeated’ but outliving all her ‘conquerors’

“ITONG KATOLIKO na ito will disappear. In almost 25 years wala na ‘yan.”

So, President Duterte declared Monday in his speech at the 1st National Assembly of the Liga ng mga Barangay sa Pilipinas in Pasay City.

Blabbering at church people anew: “Hindi na makalimutan ng tao ‘yung — ito pala ang Katoliko. ‘Pag inabot ng libog, madre. Kung ang mga bakla ang p***** i** niya, mga bata. Who needs a religion like that? Tapos sige ka pa bigay kada Linggo ihatid pala niya sa kabit niya.”

For one, Duterte showed he did not know how to count. It has not been five years but a scant year and 10 months that he haughtily predicted “that religion (Catholic) will become passé in the next 30 years.”

For two, it is a historical given that the Church survives even her worst persecutors – from the Roman emperors, to the tyrants during the Reformation, to megalomaniacs like Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin. Duterte, the least of them.

Indeed, recurrent refrains have become of Duterte’s spastic ululations against the Catholic Church. None though comes close in spiteful arrogance, in abomination to his campaign vow: “I will destroy the Catholic Church!”

Passé in 30 years. Disappeared in 25. A destroyed Catholic Church. It shall not come to pass. A vanished Duterte, it shall.  

For neither God – at least ours in this Church – nor history takes Duterte’s side of his irreligious divide. Thrice already published here, yet gaining currency at each Duterte diatribe against the Church, this personal witnessing, titled Destroy the Church? What nut! 

DEFENSELESS ROME at the mercy of the rampaging barbarian horde, the seat of Christendom ready for the sacking, for scorching, for reduction to rubble.

The populace cowering in terror, their armies having long abandoned them to the slaughter. Who stands against the impending mayhem and murder? None but the Santo Papa, in his full papal regalia meeting the Barbaro at the very gates of the Holy City. Whereupon heaven opens, San Miguel Arcangel with flaming sword descending, scaring the wits out of the invaders. And Iglesia Catolica Apostolica Romana was saved.

The earliest tale of the invincibility of the Catholic Church I heard from my maternal grandmother, Rita Pineda Canlas vda. de Zapata, as part of my catechetical studies at age 4.

It did not matter that my Apu Rita did not even know the characters in the story, neither did she care of its veracity. All that counted was that it came from the cura parroco of her youth, the saintly Padre Daniel and served as an affirming moment of her Faith. And assured that I, her beloved apo, believed and would live up to that Faith.

I was already in high school, in the seminary, when grandma’s story found flesh in the encounter of Attila the Hun and Pope Leo I at Mincio – outside Rome – where the pontiff successfully convinced “the scourge of God” to withdraw from all of Italy. No Archangel Michael appearing in the clouds there, but “divine intervention” still cited – at least by my History professor Ciso Tantingco – in the famine and disasters visited upon the Hun tribes that gave Attila the scare to call off his invasion and plunder of Rome.

In those formative years, Attila’s story made one manifestation of gospel truth on the impregnability of the Church, as in Matthew 16:18: “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

Thus, the Church not only surviving but triumphing over every persecution, its persecutors cast to damnation: from its earliest days in the pagan Rome of Nero onto Diocletian and Galerius, to the Visigoths of Alaric, from the reign of empires and authoritarianism, to the spectre of communism. 

Stalin

“The Pope! How many divisions has he got?” Famously, and haughtily, asked Stalin dismissing the relevance of the Vatican in the post-WWII restructuring of Europe.

Less famously but as disdainfully, he told Churchill: “God is on your side? Is He a Conservative? The Devil's on my side, he's a good Communist.”

But, apparently, not good enough when it comes to sustainability: Stalin’s pride -- the monolith that was the USSR – totally disintegrating on its 74^th year. Though outliving the Soviet supremo by 38 years. 

Afflicted with the worst case of odium fidei – hatred of the Faith – was Hitler who subjected Catholics – second only to the Jews – to his persecutory perversity. The Church having stood up and spoke against the Fuehrer even at the very beginning of his ascendancy.

History still holds that Hitler ended a suicide in a bunker under the rubble of Berlin; his thousand-year Reich lasting but a decade.

Truly, G.K. Chesterton with his usual paradox: Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all its conquerors.

Indeed, as that anecdote -- currently trending in the web – of Napoleon boasting to a Cardinal how, if he, Bonaparte, so desired, could destroy the Catholic Church in an instant. And the Cardinal responding with a laugh: “We the clergy, with our sins and stupidity have been trying to destroy the Church for 1,800 years. What makes you think you can do better?”

That the Church has not imploded with all the vicious battering from within, incessant through the ages – from the heresies to the schisms, the forgeries, the decadence of the medieval papacy finding its zenith in the depravity of Alexander VI, the excesses of the Inquisition, the impact of the Reformation, all the way down to the cases of priestly paedophilia – can only bespeak of, aye, witness to, its divine foundation.

The Rock

Taking on Matthew 16:18, St. Augustine wrote in Interpreting John’s Gospel:

“Peter, because he was the first apostle, represented the person of the church by synecdoche…(W)hen he was told ‘I will give you the keys of heaven’s kingdom…’ he was standing for the entire church, which does not collapse though it is beaten, in this world, by every kind of trial, as if by rain, flood and tempest. It is founded on a Stone [Petra], from which Peter took his name Stone-Founded [Peter] – for the Stone did not take its name from the Stone-Founded but the Stone-Founded from the Stone…because the Stone was Christ.”       

How providential for this to first be written at the time of Corpus Christi Sunday, imbuing a deeply personal meaning to that truth long revealed and ever revealing: The Church is the Body of Christ. We are the Church. We are the Body of Christ.

Then, who can be against us? Indeed, not even the devil can destroy us?

Lest I lapse into some Catholic conceit, and dare all self-proclaimed wanna-be-destroyers of the Church to “Bring it On,” let me just leave it to Luke 1:52: “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, he hath exalted the humble.” 

The arrogance of power. Hubris, it is called in Greek tragedy. Finding its full meaning in Proverbs 16:18: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

So, shall it come to pass. So, he too shall pass. Have faith.

(Updated from a column first published in May 2016)