Pointed criticism

NO OTHER local paper has been as remarkably biting as Punto! right at its very aborning. Debuting in late September 2007, here’s what we penned here of the paper by early October – of the same year.

PUNTO! Central Luzon edition, in less than two weeks is already impacting itself in the local consciousness. Proof positive of this are the stinging remarks hurled at the paper – such as “’tang nang Punto!” – by some onions who felt they’ve been skinned too closely.
To them and to others who may be “Puntoed” someday, find solace or distress in our piece On Criticism published in a different paper in 2001 but finding greatest attribution to Punto!
TO AFFLICT the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
That is the social calling of the committed critic. He of the journalistic species, as extracted from the larger literary genus.
Criticism by itself though is never an end. It is a multi-faceted means to primarily expose, expound, and examine acts within the ambit of human wrongs as delineated by society’s mores, traditions and laws. With the express purpose of righting those wrongs.
Nowhere is the praxis of journalistic criticism more pervasive, prevalent and pronounced than in the field of governance. This, arising from the tradition of adversarial relationship between a free press and the government.
Public office being a public trust requires public scrutiny. Not an iota less than open, constant, vigilant inquiry. Else, public office will easily degenerate into private enterprise. For the corruptive essence of power – attendant to any public office – mixed with inhered human frailty is one sure-fire formula for debauchery.
Here lies a grave danger to society. Here stand guard media, committed and free. All these prominently exemplified in contemporary history that is too recent to fade from the people’s collective memory. Or have we forgotten Martial Law? (Closer to home now, how the public coffers bulging with the quarry funds were turned into personal piggybanks, nay, ATM accounts by you-know-who.)
Criticism is painful, for truth hurts.
Going by the medicinal analogy: 1) it is a very bitter pill, hard to swallow; 2) the greater the dose, the harder it gets down one’s throat; 3) consequently though, the faster the healing, the more efficacious the cure.
Like medicine to physiological well-being, criticism strengthens character-building. The committed critic assumes here the role of a doctor doing a physical check-up on a diseased body, identifying symptoms, dispensing with prescriptions. To better the person.
There is thus an essential altruism in criticism. As the great French philosopher and essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne writes: “We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.”
Comes to mind here the friendships I have kept as well as those I lost and discarded – not principally due to my critical mindset but rather predicated on a personal dictum: “If I cannot anymore say – in your face – the things you do not want to hear, then I have ceased being your friend.
STILL, criticism stings.
And there can be no way to ignore, to be immune from the personal hurt it inflicts upon its object. Tao lang po, as some wag is wont to say.
To his critics, unseated President Joseph Estrada offered this mantra: “Tawagin n’yo na akong bobo, huwag lang magnanakaw.”
Thus, he even reveled on the so-called “Eraptions” that insulted his (un)intelligence. But promptly filed a libel suit against the then Gokongwei-owned The Manila Times over its “unwitting godfather” banner story on the Impsa deal.
Libel is a course of action for the afflicted official. That is a fundamental right respected by even the harshest critic. But libel is by no means the only recourse to redress the infliction.
Enshrined in jurisprudence is this decision on U.S. vs. Bustos: “Men in public life may suffer under a hostile and unjust accusation: the wound can be assuaged with the balm of a clear conscience.”
A clear conscience is the Teflon or the Kevlar that protects him who is not at fault, who has done no wrong, from every brickbat thrown at his person. Even as a guilty one is the festering wound that stinks and hurts like hell when exposed to open air.
So how to deal with criticism?
One, grin and bear it.
As U.S. vs. Bustos again holds: “A public officer must not be too onion-skinned with reference to comment upon his official acts. Only thus can the intelligence and dignity of the individual be exalted.”
There, criticism serves as the crucible of character refinement. A necessary, albeit painful, cleansing process. Clear too to the critic, comment on official acts, not private deeds or personal habits.
Two, follow Zeno. Be a Stoic.
Calmly, accept all pain – as well as all joy – as inevitable, as the very dictates of the divine will to which one must completely surrender. To us Filipinos, this is “Ipasa-Diyos na lang natin ang lahat.”
Three, if you cannot stand the heat, don’t just get out of the kitchen. Go to someplace cooler, like the Arctic and swim with the seals, waddle with the penguins, or wrestle with the polar bears. There you’d be totally out of criticism’s reach.
Finally, to the critic, a quote from the very quotable American President Harry “Give ‘em hell” S. Truman: “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth, and they think it is hell.”
Oops, there is a pahabol -- Why not just ignore the criticism and the critic?
Indeed, why not? So long as you can live happily ever after notwithstanding the snide remark, the knowing smirk, the insulting laugh thrown at your back by everyone that has read or heard him?
Go, figure.

12 years, still rising

A DOZEN years. But it did not, as the idiom deemed, come by anywhere near cheap.

Spinning off the four-page centerfold of an eponymous Metro Manila daily tabloid, Punto! Central Luzon came into its own in the latter part of 2007 – dismissed off-hand as just another upstart local paper of the volume-one-only-one kind.

It came as a shock to the Capampangan community when Punto! immediately took on the then-highly popular but fledgling administration of the reverend Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio, not as this paper’s bete noire as it came to be generally believed, but purely in pursuit of media’s counterbalancing role in democratic society, aye, of living up to the journalistic tradition of the press’ adversarial stand vis-à-vis government.

Forgetting not, in any instance, fairness and accuracy in reporting though. Thus, Panlilio declared our Man of the Year, the first in what has come to be a milestone event as much for Punto! as for the community it serves.

Indeed – Jose Victor Luciano, president-CEO of Clark International Airport Corp. Oscar S. Rodriguez, mayor of the City of San Fernando. Lilia G. Pineda, governor of Pampanga. Edgardo D. Pamintuan, mayor of Angeles City. Cebu Pacific and SM malls. Arthur P. Tugade, president-CEO of Clark Development Corp. Dennis Anthony Uy, president-CEO of Converge. Daesik Han, president-CEO of Widus Hotel and Casino. Irineo Alvaro, president-CEO of BBI International. Alexander S. Cauguiran, president-CEO of Clark International Airport Corp. Vince Dizon, president-CEO of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority – Punto!’s choices of the top newsmaker of every year make an extraordinary league of gentlemen, lady, and corporate entities. To our reading public’s acceptance, if not acclaim.

Not that our MOTY accolade though is in any way a lifetime immunity from any adverse story or criticism rising out of our pages to confront any of the awardees. All harking to the call of accountability, to the principle of transparency, to those in government most specially. Again, to our reading public’s acceptance, if not delight.

Giving credit where it is due on one hand. Finding fault wherever it lay, on the other. It can never be any fairer than this.

The right of those at the receiving end to cry libel, we highly respect. Hence the three cases – so far – we have faced and triumphed over. One yet to start hearing at the Guagua RTC.

Stung by what they felt was unfair treatment, a number did not go the “legal” way. One barged into the office threatening everyone there with mayhem – he did not make good his threat. Another, a magistrate of the law at that, spewing  all ravings and rantings against the paper at our poor newsboy who just happened to be delivering Punto! copies at the hall of justice. Yet others, by texted threats.

It’s all par for the course, no offense taken.

No fear. No favor. All fair. All free.

So how far has Punto! gone?

Volume 1 long passed. And defying all expectations, more, much more than one. As a matter of fact, into Volume 13 now. And print branching out online.  By right, a time for celebration. But moreso, of reaffirmation to that Punto! stands for: Pananaw ng Malayang Pilipino.

To you, we owe it all.

(Editorial, Punto anniversary Sept. 27, 2019)  

  

      

           

Color me red

NO, RED-TAGGING is not a monopoly of dictatorships, like Marcos’ and their second-rate apers, like Duterte’s.  

Duterte, yea, no matter him infamously ululating once: Sinong NPA dito? Halika nga. Tapos pagtalikod mo, marami. Sige na, sige na. Walang hiyaan. Huwag kayo mahiya. Sino? T*** i*** ang ni sino sa inyo walang kamay ni isa. May alam ako mga journalists na Left talaga. O baka nagkadre doon sa Cordillera.

As the recently red-tagged Sonia Soto spotted on: It was not between her and the NICA-3 director Rolando Asuncion, her tagger who has since made a sorry excuse for an apology, a fauxpology veritably. Rather, it was the system.

The system, the State, indeed.

As the very meaning of red-tagging or red-baiting cited by Supreme Court Associate Justice Marvic Leonen in his dissenting opinion in Zarate vs. Aquino III definitively impacted: “the act of labelling, branding, naming and accusing individuals and/or organizations of being left-leaning, subversives, communists or terrorists (used as) a strategy...by State agents, particularly law enforcement agencies and the military, against those perceived to be ‘threats’ or ‘enemies of the State’.”  

Aquino III there referencing the BS whose administration was generally hailed as democracy at its freest, if at its weakest. Yeah, red-smearing happens in democracies as much as in dictatorships.

Why, even the administration of the BS’ mother, the sainted icon of democracy  Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino herself, was not spared from the maculation of red-tagging.

Cory bet is Red. So screamed the banner of Tempo, June 13, 1987, to wit:

Brig. Gen. Eugenio Ocampo, chief of the Regional Command 3 of the Philippine Constabulary and the Integrated National Police, said that he can substantiate his report on alleged cheating during the May 11 elections.

…General Ocampo said that an administration congressional candidate who won in Pampanga’s 3^rd District is a ranking member of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army and was listed in the military’s Order of Battle…

General Ocampo cited how former Pampanga Governor and Solicitor General Estelito P. Mendoza lost…to his opponent Oscar Rodriguez, a Lakas ng Bayan candidate.

According to military intelligence, Rodriguez is known as Ka Jasmin in the CPP/NPA and was in the Order of Battle…

The Order of Battle, where red-tagging routinely descended to. Its basic military meaning of “a tabular compilation of units, commanders, equipment, and their locations in a theater of operation” mutated to extra-judicial means, aye, mutilated to nothing more than a list of “perceived and actual enemies of the State for neutralization, not excluding execution with extreme prejudice.” That hodge-podge of terms I concocted.    

The Order of Battle. Something a number of journalists, this one not excluded, shared with Cong Oca during the heydays of Cory’s democracy.

It still creeps he hell out of me to now recall:

Pampanga PC-INP commander Lt. Col. EQ Fernandez reading over radio DZRH the names Elmer Cato of Manila Chronicle/Reuters, Sonny Lopez of Malaya/UPI, Bong Lacson of People’s Tonight/AP, Chandler Ramas III of Daily Globe, Jay Sangil of the Philippine Daily Inquirer as listed in the Order of Battle after they were found in the “roll of members of the CPP-NPA” along with other “subversive documents” during a police-military raid in a rebel safehouse in San Fernando, Pampanga.

Yeah, the so-called roll of members actually the attendance sheet in a previously held press conference of the Alyansa ng mga Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luzon in their office.

Our protestations of innocence meriting not the expungement of our names but their – Elmer’s, Sonny’s, and mine – enrolment in the more lethal list of right-wing vigilantes then headed by the dreaded Col. Rolly de Guzman, who rose to infamy in the all-too-public murder of Zamboanga City icon Cesar Climaco. At the time, Angeles City and Pampanga were in the grip of a war of attrition between the NPA urban partisan guerrillas of the Mariano Garcia Brigade and the para-military vigilantes that in a single month claimed over 40 lives.       

As indeed a “standing order for execution” was issued against the three of us, stayed only by the intercession of friends and patrons with personal connections to the executioner, and subsequently arranging for us a parley with him, where sans any apology, and after a long diatribe against the communist movement warrantied our safety from the vigilante’s bullets.

Much, much later, in an interview on Sonny’s Aksyon Central Luzon with Gen. Jovito Palparan who was then with the North Luzon Command – GMA time, if memory serves right – I asked if there were any mediamen in any military order of battle in the region. His definitive answer: None.

The relative peace of mind among media brought about by Palparan’s affirming assurance shattered now with the NICA director’s wholesale tagging of 31 media persons as virtual red cadres. That he did not give any name other than Sonia’s was calculated to impact the ranks of media with a more pervasive chilling effect.

Red, I feel my soul on fire. Indeed, Le Mis.      

Recurring struggle

"SA CLTV36, kilala niyo ba yun? Si Sonia Soto, 'yong maganda? Iyon." (On CLTV36, do you know her? Sonia Soto, the pretty one? She is the one.)

No. One Rolando Asuncion, reputed to be made establishing distinction of the regional director of the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency, did not pay paean to Ms. Soto’s pulchritude during Tuesday’s forum at the Don Honorio Ventura State University in Bacolor, her very hometown.

Asuncion made the establishing distinction of Ms. Soto as Exhibit 1 of his claim of 31 media personalities in the NICA list of alleged members of the communist rebel movement. No, Asuncion did not name any other nor said if the list obtained only in the province, in the region, or nationwide.

Ms. Soto’s reaction in her Facebook page: “Yes, I am now officially a victim of red-tagging and you know what? I am not even proud that I am no longer the firebrand that I used to be! Sobrang bait ko na nga simula nang magtrabaho ako sa gobyerno ng 4 na taon, naniwala ako sa reporma. Sus!”

“I believe in reform.” Alas, the precise lamentation I heard of Ms. Soto nearly 12 years to the day as articulated here on Sept. 28, 2007 under the head The struggle continues.

A SQUARE peg in a round hole.
Mayhaps on a dare or on a plea, she immersed herself in an established order diametrically opposed to her lifelong conscientization, struggles, and advocacies that ever-adhered to militant nationalism and democratic populism. In this wise, disregarding – if that is too strong a word, setting aside then – the basic precept of the greatest of all isms on the “history of all hitherto existing society.”
In Marxist dialectical praxis, she made the thesis to the antithesis that was the very milieu she engaged herself in.
Where the critical call was to buck – stress on the “b” though another letter would have been most appropriate – the system, she plunged into it.
For all the fire and brimstone she heaped upon the system, she was yet one more romanticist – I thought so then – probably enamored with the notion that she could effect radical change from within.
Her principled politics naturally impacted on a calcified order of compromise and accommodation. Most naturally too, that order, established as it is, resisted and fought back.
So she was routinely and variably demonized as an avenging virago, as a cadre at the vanguard of a red army that took over city hall, even as that classic stern classroom-terror Miss Tapia.
The relentless assault on her person did not even dent her determined mission to make a great difference. And to an extent never before seen at city hall, she succeeded in whipping up a pro-actively working bureaucracy, instilling in its very psyche the article of faith of her superior, the very end of governance itself: Magsilbi Tamu.
Her populist mind-set found manifest in a multi-sectoral governance council that furthered people participation in running the affairs of the city.
Practically overnight, city hall became a beacon of ideal governance, reaping accolades from local, national and global political institutions. Much too much to itemize in this limited space. Hizzoner got even heralded as fourth best city mayor in the whole world. Truly a tough act to follow.
Ever shunning the limelight in favor of her superior, her efforts though were not unrecognized.
That she is the first – and up to now, still the only – Associate Fellow of the prestigious International Solidarity for Asia is an irrefutable testimony not only to her competence but to her excellence as Administrator of the City of San Fernando. This is an incontrovertible truth that no amount of political mudslinging however coated in legalese can ever negate.
So sadly now, with a sense of resignation, she intimated: “I did not fit into the system.”
Marx’s disciple in me would have retorted: “Who ever said you or anybody could?”
But I simply said – not commiseratively now but so matter-of-factly: “The system did not fit you.”
A system that opens to mere elementary and high school graduates political positions from the lowly barangay kagawad to the highest echelons of Congress, and even the presidency itself, but bars college undergraduates in the bureaucracy is not worth serving. It is not even worth keeping.
That system of governance is never meant especially for one as progressive, as nationalist as you.
And so my dear comrade Sonia Soto, the struggle continues.

INDEED.

Always, Japan

NOT ON time. But ahead of time – exactly 25 minutes to ETA. It’s getting to be a habit with Cebu Pacific.   

Narita this time, the nth trip to Japan but still as exciting as the first one in the 1990s yet. The frequent traveler’s “been there, done that” jadedness dissolves in the heartfelt warmth, the unspoiled beauty, aye, the sheer magnificence of the land of the rising sun. That each coming turning in anticipation of yet another happy returning.

And happiness counts not the days, immersed the happy one in the gentle flow of moments.

Immersed, indeed, in sensory delights in the digital artwork installations – some combined with water, knee-deep at certain points – at the teamLab Planets in Toyosu, our first stop. Its labyrinth of light bounded by mirrors, magical.

Magic turns to marvel at nearby Odaiba, the eternal boy escaping out of this senior body at the sight of the 65-foot Unicorn Gundam, iconic of Japanese sci-fi anime.  

The experience working up the appetite for dinner, sated so fully by the succulent sushi and sashimi at Tsukiji Tama Sushi. 

Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku for our first night lived up to its luxurious billing. But before calling it a night, a short walk to and ride up the 45^th floor observatory of the  Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building where before one’s eyes lay the city in all its nighttime glory.  

Woke up to a morning call by son Jonathan, daughter in-law Kaori, and grandson Jin-kun for an hour-or-so of family bonding. It’s that thing I call “the relativity of travel.”

Mount Fuji

On board the bus at 10 a.m. to Arakurayama Sengen Park in Fujiyoshida. Offered prayers to the mountain deities at the shrine by the foot of the stairs. Huffed and puffed climbing the 398 steps, to be rewarded with the breathtaking panorama of Mount Fuji, foregrounded by the five-storey red Chureito Pagoda and the city sprawl. Sans its iconic snow cap – in summer – though, Mount Fuji is only as majestic as Albay’s Mayon. The view gets its awesomeness in springtime – with all the beautiful sakura in full bloom, and in autumn – the red, gold, and orange leaves shimmering. Both I’ve experienced in previous visits.

Off to the Hakone Open-Air Museum for a buffet lunch at its aptly named Bella Forest restaurant and a walk through its sculpture park featuring the works of Japanese and Western artists set amongst lush trees and sprawling lawns. Alas, time constraints held us back from its Picasso Pavilion and its natural-fed hot-spring footbath.

A rather longish bus ride to Yokohama, quick check-in at Hotel New Grand and rushed to Osanbashi Pier for the Royal Wing six-course dinner cruise along Yokohama Bay. The night view of the city from the deck is enthralling.

Promenaded back to the hotel through Yamashita Park along the waterfront.  Watched the dancing fountain at the Sea Goddess statue a few steps from the hotel entrance.

Hotel New Grand is a story in itself. Opened in 1927, it has played host to historical figures ranging from Gen. Douglas MacArthur to Charlie Chaplin and Babe Ruth. We stayed at its newer Tower adjacent to the old building which opens up to a panoramic view of Yokohama Bay, especially its Le Normandie, recognized as highest in the Top 20 best restaurants in Asia-Pacific by the Miele Guide.  

Tokyo Skytree

Sunday’s back to the capital. Tokyo Sukaitsuri, the Skytree, tallest tower in the world at 634 meters, second tallest structure after Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.   

Observatories splashed with images of the Peanuts gang of Charlie Brown and Snoopy at 350 meters and 450 meters offering panoramic views of the city and its river, Sumida. Sections of glass floorings gives a downward vertiginous view of the streets below. Great for selfies and Instagram though.

Lunch at Sizzler at Richmond Hotel Premier Tokyo, just across the street from the Tokyo Skytree. Deviated from the usual Japanese fare, for salads, soup, baked potatoes, and a rack of lamb, medium rare. Oishi!

At the Asakusa Amezaiku – Candy Art Crafts, travel mates tried their hand at fashioning candy in the shape of a rabbit – ending with new, if mutated species of the animal. Fun, fun.

Outside the workshop waiting, jinrikishas to take us around Asakusa in the immediate vicinity of the Sensoji Temple. More fun. Pity the shafu (driver) though that took on the 200-pound-plus-plus Deng Pangilinan.

Denied – by time and circumstances – a walk-through at the Shibuya Crossing, the first-timers in our media group made do with pedestrian lanes crisscrossing by the main entrance to Asakusa Temple.   

Shopping for souvenirs at Nakamise-Dori ended in silent prayer at the temple.  

At Asakusa Tempura Aoi Marushin, more than an assortment of tempura was served for dinner – sushi and sashimi too, plus dishes with names hard to remember but tastes that stay forever.

Drizzle, drizzle. Foreshadowing typhoon Faxai fast approaching. Taxis to Asakusa View Hotel and checked in for the night. But for this senior, quietly slipped out all to one destination – Don Quijote. No rain could stop the shopping bug.

Past midnight roused from sound sleep by pounding and creaking – Faxai unleashing its 207 kph winds on the city. Strange, the fascination instead of fear at watching the storm passed by the floor to ceiling window of Room 1503.

Up to a summer day anew, traces of Faxai in Asakusa but in the fallen leaves and one or two overturned signboards.

As Narita’s been closed and major rail transport stopped till mid-morning, early check-out and trip to the Shisui Premium Outlet Park cancelled. Substitute destination – Akihabara, the electronics and gadget wonderland two subway stations away.

On the way to Narita by 4 p.m. Learned of the thousands of stranded passengers early in the day. Traffic to the airport was EDSA-like. Good our bus driver knew detours and side roads that led us right to the Terminal 2 gates.

Smooth check-in at the Cebu Pacific counters. Parting thanks to our tour guides and staff of the Japan National Tourism Organization, a most wonderful host for the visit. No sayonara though, but see you again, and again, sooner than later.         

Yes, Kyoto in autumn is wonderful. 

     

Promptly preemptive

THERE HAS yet to be a single reported case of African swine fever (ASF) in Pampanga, but the provincial government is not leaving anything to chance.

"Gusto po nating tiyakin na hindi makakapasok sa atin ang ASF at siguruhin na hindi madidisgrasya ang kabuhayan at kalusugan ng mga taga-Pampanga." So declared Gov. Dennis “Delta” Pineda, promptly issuing last Friday, Sept. 13, Executive Order 34 imposing a total ban on the ingress of live pigs into the province as protective shield over the swine industry and the meat processors for which Pampanga is renowned. To safeguard public health as well.

"With respect to pork and pork-related products, only those with National Meat Inspection Service (NMIS) seal or with appropriate Certificate of Meat Inspection issued by NMIS shall be allowed entry into the province, with the exception of those coming from ASF-affected area," read a part of the EO.

As a matter of course, it is the meat processing industry that puts the greater stake in the ASF issue for Pampanga, notwithstanding its ranking only third – at 51,415 metric tons live weight – largest swine producer in Central Luzon, to Bulacan’s 259,677 MT, and Tarlac’s 98,591 MT. Per 2018 data of the Philippine Statistics Authority.

Arguably among the biggest food processing firms in the country and with the widest markets, unarguably with the tastiest products, are not only simply based in Pampanga or owned by cabalens – Mekeni Food Corp. and Pampanga’s Best, take a bow – but do comprise a large section of the Capampangan culinary tapestry, so to speak. Delta’s EO may have just saved not only an industry but part of the Capampangan soul there.

No sheer knee-jerk response to an impending crisis is the EO though.

Right at the onset of hush-hush whisperings of suspicious death of pigs in then still-undisclosed localities, Delta already mobilized the hog raisers in the province to ensure the state of health of their livestock and the cleanliness of their farms to keep Pampanga free from the African swine fever virus.

“I know that this requires multi-level and multi-sectoral cooperation. Let us put appropriate measures in place in your pig farms and even in the entire province to avert the possible entry of the dreaded African swine fever. Let us not allow this virus to enter in Pampanga.” So, Delta rallied the hog raisers in that meeting of Aug. 24.

Among those agreed upon in that meeting were for the hog raisers to establish and maintain footbaths in all entry points of their farms; and ensure that bio-security measures are in place therein, and even at the slaughterhouses.

Invoking transparency, the hog raisers, led by Toto Gonzales of Magalang town, also expressed willingness to open their farms to local and national media if only to assure the public that whatever produce coming out of them is safe and suitable for human consumption.

Contemporaneous with his engagement with the hog raisers, Delta issued a memorandum to the local chief executives to institute preventive actions against ASF “as advised by the Department of Agriculture through Administrator Order No. 04-2019 on food safety measures and veterinary quarantine.”

Even prior to all these, Delta had already ordered the installation of “mandatory animal checkpoints” at the road ingresses to the province, most prominently at the boundary of Bulacan where, along with Rizal, the initial cases of suspected ASF were reported.

Delta’s task force

To oversee, undertake as well, contingencies on the swine fever issue, EO 34 also created the Pampanga ASF Task Force co-chaired by provincial veterinarian Dr. Augusto Baluyut and board member Atty. Jun Canlas, head of the sangguniang panlalawigan agriculture committee, with the veterinary quarantine station officer of the DA-Bureau of Animal Industry, provincial quarantine officer of the Bureau of Quarantine of the Department of Health, Philippine National Police provincial director, provincial health office, president of the Liga ng mga Barangay, and the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office as members.  

Yes, Delta is taking no chances. Pre-emption is core to prevention. Foremost in his mind the need for cooperation and coordination of all stakeholders needed to strengthen the implementation of preventive measures against the entry of ASF “and avoid what happened during the bird flu outbreak years ago.”

It was in August 2017 that Pampanga – San Luis town, specifically – became the epicenter of the country’s first bird flu outbreak.

A 1-km radius quarantine area within San Luis was imposed, with all fowls therein culled within the next 3 days to control the virus. A succeeding 7-km radius controlled area was declared, with the fowls and eggs there prevented from being  brought out.

The whole province was put in a state of calamity. With all poultry products from Pampanga prevented from entering other provinces, a near economic disaster was visited upon the chicken-and-egg industry, along with the allied industries of feeds, veterinary products, even KFC, Jollibee, and McDonald’s.

The impact of the bird flu seeking a second coming in the swine fever?   

Delta is leaving nothing to chance. And Pampanga’s successive National Gawad Kalasag awards in disaster risk reduction management is more than enough to assure the Capampangan he is in good hands.      

Invalidation

VALIDATION OF road clearing-related reports of cities and capital towns.

So was the subject of Advisory No. 2019-92 from the Department of the Interior and Local Government to its provincial and city/municipal officials, “per the directive of Sec. Eduardo Año.”

The advisory scheduled inspections in the City of San Fernando on Sept. 10, Angeles City on Sept. 11, and Mabalacat City on Sept. 11.

Even as an advisory, per se, is nothing more than a suggestion or recommendation with no compelling force behind it, this one apparently carries some power of injunction. How else explain Mayor Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin skipping his pre-planned guesting at the Pampanga Press Club’s Talk Widus forum on the same day.

Now, were the DILG as persistent in pushing for its boss’ earlier advisory to keep tricycles out of the national highways, there will certainly be better clearing of, and more order, on the roads.

DILG Advisory No. 2019-0016  that bans tricycles and pedicabs from major roads is but an iteration of the much older DILG Memo Circular 2007-001, which in turn sprang out of Section 10 of Presidential Letter of Instruction No. 1482 Series of 1985 – Marcos pa ito – that tricycles are “prohibited to operate along the national highway or any road which allows maximum speed of more than 40kph, especially on well-paved, high-speed roads, unless special tricycle/bicycle lanes on the shoulder are provided, except to cross.”

No mere advisory there but the full force of the law. But for Sec. Año’s perfunctory warnings to LGUs on the matter, there is nothing the DILG has done to “validate” his advisory’s implementation. If it did, then the state of mayhem on the streets of the cities of Angeles, San Fernando, and Mabalacat absolutely invalidated everything in it.

Yay, there are those “Public Advisory” notices on the median of MacArthur Highway in Angeles City reading “All tricycles and single motorcycles: Use outermost right lane.” Clearly a concession violative of the DILG circular and the LOI, but still absolutely ignored.

Just like the “No Helmet, No Travel” policy pursuant to Republic Act 10054 known as “Motorcycle Helmet Act of 2009” which mandates all motorcycle riders to wear standard protective motorcycle helmets while driving.

Again beyond “postering” along the national road of the NH-NT policy with corresponding fines for its infraction, the LGUs have yet to do anything with the least semblance of enforcing it. And the DILG, again, falls short in its “validation” of its implementation.

There apparently lies the problem – the long and short of it: a surfeit of advisories, circulars, orders on one hand; a dearth in implementation, in enforcement on the other. As much in the provinces as in Metro Manila.

What even passes for implementation usually all a matter of novelty – no different from a passing fad that wanes soon after it waxes – forgotten at the onset of another fancy. Ningas cogon, more aptly.  And on retail at best, as in tingi-tingi. One advisory or circular at a time.  

For once, can’t the DILG and the LGUs, include the other road and transport agencies like the DPWH, DOTr, LTO, LTFRB, HPG, get together whatever is left of their brains to come up with a unified, if wholesale, approach to road-clearing and maintenance of order thereat by simply strictly enforcing the law?

Constantly and consistently at that, till its strict observance is validated as to have become a habit for everyone.       

Marcos lives!

IF WE accept life as struggle, and history as the continuing struggle for freedom, we realize the necessity of revolution, and from that, the imperative of the militant creed.

I believe, therefore, in the necessity of Revolution as an instrument of individual and social change, and that its end is the advancement of human freedom.

I believe that only a reactionary resistance to radical change will make a Jacobin, or armed, revolution inevitable, but that in a democratic society, revolution is of necessity, constitutional, peaceful and legal.

I believe that while we have utilized the Presidential powers to dismantle the violent revolution and its communist apparatus, we must not fail our people; we must replace the violent revolution with the authentic revolution – liberal, constitutional and peaceful.

I believe in democracy as the continuing revolution; that any other revolution is unjustified if it cannot meet the democratic criterion.

I believe that even if a society should be corrupted by an unjust economic or social system, this can be redressed by the people, directly or indirectly, for democracy has the powers of self-rejuvenation and self-correction.

I believe that in the troubled present, revolution is a fact, not merely a potential threat, and that if we value our sacred rights, our cherished freedoms, we must wrest the revolutionary leadership from those who would, in the end, turn the democratic revolution into a totalitarian regime.

I believe that in our precarious democracy which tends towards an oligarchy because of the power of the wealthy few over the impoverished many, there remains a bright hope for a radical and sweeping change without the risk of violence. I do not believe that violent revolution is either necessary or effective in an existing democracy.

I believe that our realization of the common peril, our complete understanding of our national condition, will unite us in a democratic revolution that will strengthen our democratic institutions and offer, finally, our citizens the opportunity of making the most and the best of themselves.

I believe that democracy is the revolution, that it is today’s revolution.

This is my fighting faith.

So concluded Today’s Revolution: Democracy penned by Ferdinand Edralin Marcos on Sept. 7, 1971.

One year and two weeks hence, Marcos applied his theory of the democratic revolution with Proclamation No. 1081, placing the whole Philippines under Martial Law.

And the rest, as clichéd, is history? More its permutation, the very revolution Marcos idealized as people-liberating, he himself turned totalitarian.

Inevitably leading to another revolution romanticized as the people’s but itself turning into an oligarchy – the rich that Marcos banished returning home with impunity, getting back – and more – that which was, rightfully, if forcibly, taken from them.

Thus, gone full circle – full vicious cycle – has Philippine society. Thus, Marcos, this time in Revolution from the Center in 1978:

NOW ANY society in which most of the people are poor is always in danger of having its political authority corrupted and dominated by the rich minority.

In the Philippines, the real power lay back of the shifting factions, in the hands of a few rich families strong enough to bend Government to their will. This oligarchy intervened in government to preserve the political privileges of its wealth, and to protect its right of property.

This intervention of wealth in politics unavoidably produced corruption. And when this practice seeped through the whole of society itself, the result was moral degeneration. So, the Philippine political culture equated freedom with self-aggrandizement, and the politics of participation, so essential in a democracy, with the pursuit of privilege.

Oligarchic “values” permeated society all the more easily because the rich controlled the press and radio-TV. The press particularly became the weapon of a special class rather than a public forum. The newspapers would noisily and endlessly comment on the side issues of our society, but not on the basic ones:

for example, the question of private property.

The oligarchic propaganda was that somehow, with the election of “good men” – good men who please the oligarchs – mass poverty would come to an end. The search for “better men in politics” and not institutional change; a “higher political morality,” and not the restructuring of society – this was the oligarch’s ready answer to the question of change.

Verily prescient, if not prophetic, the exactness of Marcos’ words applying to all presidents after him, not the least of whom the BS Aquino III. Least in words though, and most in (mis)deeds, Rodrigo Roa Duterte, in a worse image, in the worst likeness of the dictator.   

Aye, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Or as our favourite Irish saying puts it: “There is no present, there is no future. Only the past happening over and over, again and again.”
(Marcos would have been 102 this Sept. 11. But for the Duterte add-on, this column first came out as is on Sept. 16, 2013.)    

The crusade continues

AQUI en la Pampanga hay mucha piedad pero poca caridad.

It has been sixty-seven years since that lamentation over the “wealth in piety but poverty in charity” expressed by Bishop Cesar Ma. Guerrero, the first to occupy the bishopric of San Fernando, noting “the stark class differences between the rich and the poor, the strife between the landlords and the tenants, and a deteriorating socio-political-economic situation bordering on socialism.”

These were manifest situations of the imperative of revolution in his See. And a revolution did indeed obtain then in Pampanga, with the Huks already “at the very gates of Manila.”

Marked as apostates pursuing the establishment of a “godless” society, the Huks naturally had to be stopped, and their ideology uprooted to “save the country and preserve Mother Church.” A strategic policy of the Cold War placed the Church at the bulwark of the war against communism.

It was at the very cauldron of that simmering social ferment that Bishop Guerrero organized the Cruzada – the Crusade for Penance and Charity – in 1952.

In revolutionary praxis, the Cruzada served the ends of a counter-revolution. The conscientization of the oppressed masa that was the spark to start the inevitable prairie fire, doused by the sprinkle of holy water, the heart soothed by hymns and prayers, the soul seared with the promise of redemption, of eternal bliss in the hereafter. So long as the hardest of toils, the worst of privations, indeed, all injustices and oppression be borne as Christ did with His cross.

Unrepentant communists would readily see it as the affirmation of that Marxist dictum: “Religion is the opium of the people.”

Images of the Virgen de los Remedios and Santo Cristo del Perdon were taken all around the Pampanga parish churches and capillas where they stayed for days, the faithful seeking their intercession and intervention through nonstop prayers and nightly processions.

A hymn to the virgin was composed with peace as recurrent refrain: “…ica’ng minye tula ampon capayapan / quing indu ning balen quequeng lalawigan / uling calimbun mu caring sablang dalan / ding barrio at puruc caring cabalenan / agad menatili ing catahimican…” (…you gave us joy and peace / to the mother of our province / when taken in procession / in all the barrios in the towns / peace descended upon them…) Forgive the poor translation.

The charity end of the crusade – lamac – was institutionalized – all the barrio folk, even the poorest of them, contributed some goods that would accompany the images to their next destination and shared with the neediest there.

The Cruzada in effect became an equalizing and unifying factor among the faithful, regardless of their socio-economic situation. And relative peace did come to the province. For a time.

The breadth and depth of the devotion to the Virgen de los Remedios of the Capampangan moved Pope Pius XII to approve her canonical coronation as the patroness of Pampanga on September 8, 1956.

Since then, without fail, no matter the rains and high water, the Capampangan faithful flock to the annual commemoration of the canonical coronation. In a ritual of renewal of faith in their Lord of Pardon, of rededication to their Indu ning Capaldanan (Mother of Remedies), in celebration of their Tula ding Capampangan (Joy of the Capampangan).

Sixty-seven years hence, that “deteriorating socio-political-economic situation bordering on socialism” may have been arrested – the communist insurgency virtually as dead as Marx and Mao, if not deader. (Just a week or so back, the purveyors of the dictatorship of the proletariat declared by the provincial government as persona non grata in Pampanga.)

“The stark class differences between the rich and the poor, the strife between the landlords and the tenants,” though still obtain. In various manifestations, in the farms and factories, in the mills and in the malls – as much the wages of sin, as the sin of capitalism – from workers’ exploitation to farmland-grabbing, from contractualization to union-busting.

So, did the good Bishop Guerrero’s Cruzada of peace through charity and prayers fail?

So, we do still come in prayerful celebration every Sept. 8, in thanksgiving, in supplication.

O Virgen de los Remedios / damdam ca qng quequeng aus / iligtas mu que’t icabus / qng sablang tucsu at maroc / ibie mu ing quecang lunos / ‘panalangin mu que qng Dios. (O Virgin…/ hear our pleas / free and save us / from all temptation and evil / grant us your compassion / pray to God for us).

The Cruzada can only continue.

(Updated piece on Pampanga’s patroness, the Virgen de los Remedios, first published in Pampanga News, July 6-12, 2006)

Via satellite

THE DON Honorio Ventura State University (DHVSU) system has been set into motion in the towns of Candaba and Apalit.  

Its main campus in Bacolor – established in 1861, considered the oldest vocational school in the Far East – DHVSU followed the template it used in its earlier campus extensions in Mexico, Porac, Sto. Tomas, and Lubao.

In quick succession last week, memoranda of agreement were signed by the LGUs – Gov. Dennis G. Pineda, Mayors Rene Maglanque and Jun Tetangco – and DHVSU president Dr. Enrique Baking for the establishment of satellite campuses in the said municipalities.

Gov. Pineda committed P25 million to each campus for the infrastructure required.

Mayor Tetangco and his wife Jennifer donated a 12,074-square meter lot for the campus site.

The Candaba campus on the other hand shall sit in a 2.3-hectare lot in Sitio Pansol, Barangay Pasig near the boundary of Sta. Ana, Arayat, and San Luis towns. To better serve the needs of the contiguous communities.

“We want to bring DHVSU services closer to the people here. This is our way of helping our Kapampangan youth to have quick access to quality education. We will bring DHVSU here to further reach out to the distant populace in the far-flung areas who are unable to access tertiary education there,” said Baking of his school’s satellite campus initiatives.

For the governor, the DHVSU satellite campuses are “a manifestation of the commitment of his administration to provide inclusive, affordable, and quality education to the less privileged youth in the province.”

To this observer, these are a direct affirmation of what we dubbed here as “Continuity, Plus, Plus” to encapsulate the core agenda of the first term of the Delta governorship. Proof positive? Here’s our Zona dated June 30, 2013, at the start of the second term of Gov. Lilia “Nanay Baby” Pineda, to wit:

Gov as NASA:

“PINEDA TO spread satellites of state universities, colleges.” So screamed the banner story of Headline Gitnang Luzon, issue of June 28-30.

Wow! State universities and colleges hereabouts are far, far superior to their counterparts in all the world by having their own satellites! Beating even the Americans in their own game!

Wow, WOW! Gov. Lilia G. Pineda is her own National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launching these satellites! Eat your heart out PNoy, whose closest thing to launch is a kuwitis.

Yeah, the Gov does one better – she launches satellites – even over the mythical Helen of Troy – she launched only ships, albeit a thousand, that precipitated the Trojan War.

Really one for the books! Fictive, that is.

Defective, rather misleading, was the use of “satellites” in that headline. It’s not actually satellites – as we understand the dictionary meaning of “artificial body placed in orbit around the earth or another planet in order to collect information or for communication” – that is inferred there.

The word is used as a modifier – connotative of, rather, synonymous to “branch” – to an absent noun – “campus” – as in “Pineda to spread satellite campuses of state universities and colleges.”

There indeed are new satellite campuses of the Don Honorio Ventura Technological State University (DHVTSU) that Pineda caused to be established in Sto. Tomas and in Porac. The former at the Bacolor-based DHVTSU’s southeastern orbit, the latter at its northwestern orbit. Orbit here in all its astronomical, geographical, and journalistic meanings. He, he, he.

In the works is yet another DHVTSU satellite campus in Lubao – the land donated by the Pineda family – to serve the second district of the province.

And Pineda is now going outside DHVTSU in putting up satellite campuses, training her sights on the Mabalacat Community College (MCC) that forever-Mayor Boking Morales set up in Barangay Tabun in 2008, the first ever of its kind in Pampanga  

The governor is keen on an MCC satellite campus in Barangay Dapdap to cater to the seekers of higher education in the resettlement centers in Mawaque and Madapdap.

Hallmark

Come to think of it, “satelliting” has become a hallmark of the Pineda administration in its delivery of services to its constituents. The Gov indeed some kind of NASA, as in Nanay’s Advocacy for Speedy Action. The last terms interchangeable with Social Advancement.

So, in education there are the satellite campuses.

In health, the district hospitals which Pineda repaired, reconstructed, rehabilitated and refurbished serving as medical satellites of the Provincial Health Office, the Diosdado Macapagal Memorial Hospital and the JB Lingad Memorial Regional Hospital.  

In peace and order, Philippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Philippines Action Centers (PAACs) were constructed by the provincial government in coordination with the PNP and AFP at the provincial boundaries in Barangay Mapalad, Arayat; Barangay San Roque, Magalang; Barangay Dolores, Mabalacat, and along Floridablanca-Dinalupihan.

The PAACs make a nexus of dragnets, or, keeping with our theme, satellites, to check the ingress and egress of criminal elements in Pampanga.

In disaster preparedness, the local municipal disaster risk reduction management councils serve as satellite offices of their provincial counterpart, inter-connected by a communications system and rescue and relief support services…

THERE, WHERE the mother established, the son builds on. And the Capampangan could not be any happier.