The sermon of the sea

 A flock of seagulls flies in the blue cloudy sky over the sea and burrows into the waves/Freepik

TO BREAK out of the hustle and bustle of human toil.

To escape from the rut of encultured habit.
To flee from the jealous, constricting embrace of vainglory.
On New Year’s Eve, hastened I to the eternal sea.
And in my solitude, a soliloquy.

Cast off the old. Ring in the new. The incessant monotone of the year-end… after year-end, after year-end…So, we bid 2022 good riddance, and joyously welcome 2023 with much louder boom than the proverbial bang.

Fleeting as the wind, footprints in the sand are.
Swept to nothingness by the onrushing waves.
As fleeting are the days, flushed by the tides of time.
So waste not repentant tears over the demised year.
Refresh, renew. The new one promises something truly dear.
The year just past is better forgotten. With some spirit of thanksgiving and forgiveness.

The incoming one best taken. With open arms, with hope and prayer.
Less thanksgiving and lesser forgiveness, guarded hope and incessant prayer there, if I may. But not ever to be simply cast away.
To simply consign to the deepest recesses of memory injustices and atrocities, is in itself a worse injustice and the worst atrocity. An invitation to the revision, nay, the perversion of history. Of the past –

We may end the wailing but not the mourning,
We can stop the weeping but not the grieving.
This our sworn duty – as human beings –
As much to the dead, as to the living.
And as much as justice, to wish the cruelest death and damnation upon the perpetrator. That it may not ever happen again.
The waves rise, crest, fall – surging to ritual death upon the shore.
The sea murmurs, nay, roars:
”Leave the forgetting to the gull, 

its fish for the day its only care.

Leave the forgetting to the fish, 

escape from the gull’s hungry beak its very cause to exist.”

I am no gull. I am no fish.
The sermon of the sea I hear, and shall heed.

“…Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children…ships get wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and the children play…” The Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore in Gitanjali, I suddenly well remember.

Over. Done with. 2022 was.
Dwell in the past, no matter how dead. Why must I?
In. Going. Doing. 2023 is.
Live in hope only of a future best. Why can’t I?
For like the sea – rising and falling,
In its very waters the old in the new abiding. I am.

(Updated from a piece published here January 2010)

 

 

 

SunStar-Pampanga: The origin

AN IMPOSSIBLE dream. For the longest time, just about every newspaper in Pampanga had its thoughts fixed on a daily frequency as soon as it got birthed.  Only, to grow and live a weekly existence – many even dying before getting to their volume 2.

Even in these dot.com times, still impacted in the very core of Central Luzon’s oldest newspaper – founded in 1954 – is that dreamed-of masthead, The Daily Voice. Notwithstanding the nearing extinction of the print media. There’s just no substitute to the smell of pulp, especially on a daily whiff.  

But dreams come true. Not, unfortunately, for Pampanga’s “best in reading, no kidding” “most cherished newsweekly.”

Sometime in mid-1995, media maven Jose “Joe” Pavia called his PNA (Philippine News Agency) bright boys to a meeting at the Shanghai Restaurant in Angeles City. Over a sumptuous lunch, Joe adumbrated the plan for a daily newspaper that will serve, primarily, as a platform for the Clark Special Economic Zone as well as the recovery of Pampanga from the then-still extant Mount Pinatubo devastations. SunStar-Clark, it will be called.    

While owned by the Sun-Star Cebu of the Garcias, SunStar Clark will be independent of it with Joe himself as publisher-executive editor, thereafter promptly assigning Bong Lacson as editor-in-chief, Fred Roxas as news editor, and Peping Raymundo as managing editor, giving us the freehand to recruit the editorial staff – from section editors, to reporters, correspondents, and photographers.

Fred cited possible conflict with his position as PNA-Pampanga bureau manager but could help from the sidelines. Lacson begged off being the senior consultant to Gov. Lito Lapid, unwilling to risk the paper being identified with the then new governor.

Asked who could be EIC, Lacson recommended Ody Fabian, then acting publisher of The Voice. Roused from his siesta, Ody managed to join the group for coffee.

Joe asked if Lacson could be at least named associate editor and serve as opinion editor, to which the latter acceded.

Among the first to go onboard SunStar-Clark were news reporters Joey Pavia, IC Calaguas, and Ashley Manabat; photographer Ricarte “Boy” Sagad; columnists Sonny Lopez and Cora Taus. Lacson’s column Golpe de Sulat in Mabuhay, Joe’s Bulacan-based weekly, was also moved to SS-C.   

Dry-runs thereafter ensued – first weekly, then three times weekly, until all weekdays. The editorial offices moving from the office of Sonny’s Sunny Vision company at the Marlim Mansion to Ody’s rented house at Sta. Maria Subd., both in Barangay Balibago, until settling at Plaza Romana in Dau, Mabalacat.

The maiden issue was officially launched with former DOTC Secretary Jesus Garcia Jr. and Gov. Lapid as guests of honor in November 1995.

Joe Pavia has left a lasting impression not only on the staff that worked under him at SS-C, but on every journalist that came under his tutelage. No anniversary of the papers he founded or served would be complete without some memorials for him.

Joe was the most respected long-time general manager of the PNA and no-nonsense editor of a number of publications from the pre- to the post-martial law eras, as well as chair of the Philippines Press Institute.

To say that Joe Pavia was a pillar of Philippine journalism is an understatement.

The mantra every journalist fortunate enough to have been mentored by Joe is “Accuracy. Accuracy. Accuracy.” Be it in a news story or in a headline.

No, he would never settle for simple fact-checking. It had to be checked, rechecked, cross-referenced with all possible sources for a final check. And then, after each news story: “Ang follow-up?”

Still, to Joe: No story is worth dying for. The well-being of the journalist of utmost precedence.

And then, Joe had this never-the-twain-shall-meet rule with news vis-à-vis opinion writing. At SS-C, he expressly enjoined me to lay off news stories as I was already writing a column and the editorials. Precisely, as news is bound by facts, and columns/editorials stand on opinions.

Food for thought: What would Joe say about SunStar-Pampanga today?

(P.S. Reconstructed from ageing memory, the writer apologizes for whatever lapses in this story solicited for the paper’s 27^th anniversary.)

 

Once upon the CL press

1978. It was July, most probably. Department of Public Information-Region 3 director Ricardo Velasquez Serrano – Kapitan Gigil, fondly – newly assigned to Central Luzon, though a Kapampangan by parentage, asked his senior staff how the office can engage the provincial press in development communications to support the socio-economic and infrastructure initiatives of government.  

Freshly schooled in OD (organization development) at the Development Academy of the Philippines, his chief of research, training, and development division suggested the formation of an association of “all working journalists” in Central Luzon, which Serrano readily approved, and tasked the proponent to do the working paper for such association.

The primary consideration laid out in the working paper was membership. Aware of the intramurals between provincial press clubs of the time, acceptance into the proposed regional press organization would be by individual membership with representation not of the press club but of the publication or radio station of the member. Thereby, an inclusive umbrella organization that will not be in conflict with the press clubs in terms of membership.

In a week’s time, backstopped by Fred Roxas, bureau manager of the Philippines News Agency in CL, and Ben Gamos of the Times Journal, the proponent traveled around Central Luzon in a campaign for membership to the new organization.

At the time, there were two press organizations that, unfortunately, were regional only in their nomenclature but not in scope of membership: the Tarlac-based Central Luzon Association of Journalists headed by Carlos Gatdula of Bulletin Today, and the Central Luzon Press Club of Romy Medina of Times Journal domiciled in Olongapo City.

It was naturally to these gentlemen that the trio from DPI deferred – they responded positively to the new organization, but with Medina asking for first right to the presidency. In character, the self-effacing and gracious Gatdula readily conceded, merely requesting that something of his club should be in the name of the new organization, hence: Central Luzon Media Association. 

From there, it was a breeze tapping the services of the “old guards” in  organizing: Rod Reyes of the Journal Group, along with brothers Jess and Bert Matic of The Reflector (CL’s first and only broadsheet) in Bulacan; Efren Molina of Bulletin Today in Bataan; Pacifico de Guzman of The Monday Post, Pete Salazar of Dahongpalay, and Anselmo Roque of Daily Express along with Isagani Valmonte of Times Journal in Nueva Ecija; Ben and Rose Razon of the Tarlac Star and radioman Ben Gonzales, Feliciano Pasion of Manila Times, and DPI coordinator Luz Ducusin in Tarlac; spouses Elpidio and Susana Curiano of Olongapo News in Zambales.

In Pampanga, members of the Pampanga Press Club enlisted en masse to the CLMA.

Aurora – at that time still part of Region IV-A – nevertheless joined in the person of Rodante Rubio of Malaya.   

That the greater mass of members came from the print – both provincial and national newspapers, reflected the state of media obtaining in the region at that time: only Olongapo, Tarlac, Angeles, and Cabanatuan had operating radio stations.

September 24, 1978. At the DPI-3 office in San Fernando, Pampanga, the first set of officers of the CLMA with Romy Medina as president was inducted into office by Public Information Secretary Francisco S. Tatad. 

Director Ricardo V. Serrano is the First, while the rest of those mentioned here are the rest of the Founding Fathers of the CLMA. Suffice for this writer to hold on, with honor and privilege, to the title Serrano himself bestowed upon him – “founding proponent.”

CLMA presidents: The first decade

1978. Romualdo Medina (Times Journal). Loosely organized, absent any constitution and by-laws, CLMA adapted to the standards of media practice – objectivity, fairness, and accuracy – and adopted these as protocols. 

1980. Maximo L. Sangil (Daily Express). The framing of the CLMA constitution and by-laws, engagement of the association in crusades in partnership with the Ministry of Public Information notably: the anti-pollution campaign that forced polluting sugar mills, pulp and paper manufacturing factories in Pampanga, Bulacan, and Bataan to put up pollution-abatement facilities; the anti-illegal gambling drive that resulted to the sacking of a regional Philippine Constabulary commander, provincial commanders and chiefs of police; and the anti-illegal dikes campaign which resulted to the demolition of some 300 dikes encroaching the waterways of Bataan, Bulacan, and Pampanga.     

Re-elected in 1981, Max holds the distinction as the only CLMA president who succeeded himself. Successive reelection has since been prohibited.

1982. Alfredo M. Roxas (Philippines News Agency). All the shibboleths of political campaign – T-shirts, streamers, balloons, food and drinks, leaflets – obtained in the election that saw Fred triumph over Amante Reyes (The Voice). The heavy turnout of voters indicated the rise in membership resulting from the increase in the number of provincial newspapers and radio stations in the region. 

1983. Jesus Matic (Reflector) and Hector P. Soto (Times Journal). With equal number of votes, a coin toss decided not who should be president but who would sit first in the shared presidency. Jess’ half of the term was cut short by his death leaving Toy more than his half-share.   

1984. Jeremias J. Lacuarta (Bulletin Today). A court injunction filed by a disgruntled CLMA director came too late to stop Jerry’s election. Lawyer-friends later questioned the injunction over the CLMA, it being a “social organization” unregistered with the SEC. The CLMA was officially affiliated with the National Press Club. CLMA meetings started to be moved from province to province instead of being centered at the MPI regional office. 

1985. Carlos P. Gatdula (Bulletin Today). His sacrifice of the presidency upon the organization of the CLMA bore fruit six years hence, being the only candidate for president in what turned out to be an acclamation rather than an election. Serious threats to his life constrained Gat to seek temporary sanctuary in the USA ceding the presidency to his executive vice president Bert Padilla (Bulletin Today).

1986. Benny Rillo (Balita). Along with acting president Bert, Feliciano Pasion (Manila Times) and Rizal Policarpio (Balita) were handily beaten by Benny in the election held in Cabanatuan City.

1987. Feliciano Pasion (Manila Times). Exchange of gunfire between NPA rebels and the military in an armed encounter in nearby Samal, provided the horrifying accompaniment to Ising’s election to the presidency held in Balanga, Bataan. A revised CLMA Constitution and By-Laws was drafted during his term.

1988. Jeremias J. Lacuarta (Manila Bulletin). The Constitution and By-Laws was approved overwhelmingly in the general assembly preceding the election. Jerry renewed his call to cleanse the CLMA of media scalawags and extortionists.  

(P.S. Reminiscing over events more than four decades back has taken its toll on ageing memory. This is the best reconstruction I can do for a piece celebrating the 44^th anniversary of the CLMA held last Dec. 2 at the Hiyas Convention Center, Malolos City. My apologies for lapses.) 

 

Punto's ultimate timeline

MAN OF THE YEAR. An annual encomium to the most substantively significant individual – man, woman or any of the multilettered genders – traditionally bestowed by publications has become, hereabouts, the signature mark of Punto! Central Luzon. For no other reason than it is the only publication that unfailingly comes out with this otherwise regular feature.  

Simply put, newsworthy and – as much as possible – praiseworthy comprise the only criteria to making it as Punto’s MOTY which, serendipitously, has come to serve as the very measure of Punto’s years in existence.

On this our 15^th year, we look back, guided by the opening paragraphs of each tribute, generally giving the rationale for our choice, and some micro zeitgeist of their period.  

2008: EDDIE T. PANLILIO, Governor of Pampanga

MIRACLE MAN of the year. Even if that homage of his fanatical followers be taken out of the equation, Pampanga Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio will still surpass the grade as the most significant personality to have emerged in 2007 in the whole expanse of Central Luzon, if not in the whole country. If only for crafting history as the first Catholic priest to be ever elected governor.

Breaking his priestly vow of obedience – unheeding the five-fold plea of his superior to forego with his political ambition – Panlilio ran – and won – on the sheer strength of his sacerdotal persona, Among Ed.

2009. VICTOR JOSE LUCIANO, President-CEO, Clark International Airport Corp.

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., is one our Man of the Year could not refuse. Not in Puzo’s The 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.

2010. OSCAR S. RODRIGUEZ, Mayor of the City of San Fernando

EXCELLENCE IS a passion; good governance, a duty; service to the people, a commitment. The cardinal virtues of leadership in a republican state – long lost in the parody of democracy that is the Philippines – find renaissance in Mayor Oscar Samson Rodriguez of the City of San Fernando. And the Fernandino could not have been happier, nay, more blessed and prouder: of his city and his leader.
As 2009 proved yet another banner year for the city, reaping just about every recognition in myriad fields of endeavor. 

2011. LILIA G. PINEDA, Governor of Pampanga

2010 MAY as well be “Year of the Mother” for the Province of Pampanga with the ascendancy of Gov. Lilia Garcia Pineda. 
In all her public incarnations – mayor, board member, and now governor – as much as in her private persona, motherhood has come to be the very definition of Lilia Pineda: its full meaning finding expression in her singular efforts to promote the health and well-being of her people. The endearing sobriquet “Nanay Baby” as much a manifestation of the reciprocal respect and esteem her people hold her in, as a testament to the nurturing care she unceasingly provides them.
Thus, it came to pass that “Nanay Baby” was all it took to strip the veneer of sanctimony of a rehashed morality play, of a discredited crusade in the 2010 election campaign and buried in an avalanche of 488,521 votes the pretender to the Capitol throne. Indeed, an indubitable vindication of a true Pineda victory in 2007.

2012. EDGARDO D. PAMINTUAN, Mayor of Angeles City

RIGHTING – rather than just fighting -wrongs. Forged in the crucible of the Marcos dictatorship, Edgardo Dizon Pamintuan is steeled in the protection and promotion of human rights, and thus fated to a public life of correcting human errors, political, social and fiscal, administrative and criminal: his end in view, a society grounded on the democratic ideals of equality and liberty; his goal-in-hand, a community sharing in prosperity. 
Pamintuan's persona as honorable mayor of Angeles City makes the latest -if arguably, the greatest - testament to this: taking over a city awash in wrongs, if only to set everything in it a right, and how! As a call of duty, at the instance, mayhaps even the insistence, of destiny. 

WE MADE a break from the usual when instead of men and women, we opted to give our annual accolade to the COMPANIES OF THE YEAR.

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. 

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 AFP 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. 

2014. ATTY. ARTHUR P. TUGADE, President-CEO, Clark Development Corp.

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…

2015. DENNIS ANTHONY UY, Co-founder and President, Converge ICT

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, President-CEO, Widus International Leisure Inc.

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 Daesik 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…

2018. ALEXANDER S. CAUGUIRAN, President-CEO, Clark International Airport Corp.

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…

2019. VINCE DIZON, President-CEO, Bases Conversion and Development Authority.

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.

FOR 2020, there was no MOTY with the suspension of Punto’s print edition caused by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

2021. Dennis “Delta” Pineda, Governor of Pampanga

“’PAYBACK TIME’…I don’t know this guy. I don't know what his politics are. But this is the kind of thing that people – Batangueños, Caviteños, helpless-feeling Filipinos everywhere – need to hear at this time. That someone cares, that someone who can marshal resources is doing something. A message that imparts not just what he's doing but also the solidarity that's driving him.”

Thus, Pampanga Gov. Dennis “Delta” Pineda in a social media influencer’s articulation of the expressions of awe and gratitude posted by hundreds, aye, thousands in the web for his initiative in mobilizing a 50-vehicle convoy of relief and rescue within a day of the Taal Volcano eruptions at the start of 2020.

Pineda’s motivation for prompt action drawn deep from Pampanga’s own volcanic ordeal: “Payback time po ito. Ito po ay ating pasasalamat dahil noon pong pumutok ang Bulkang Pinatubo, marami po ang tumulong sa atin para iligtas tayo at muling makabangon.”

2022. CARMELO “POGI” LAZATIN JR., Mayor of Angeles City

OUT OF the reflected glory from his illustrious forebears, into the light on his own shines now Carmelo Gurion Lazatin Jr. – Pogi to everyone – honorable mayor of Angeles City. His brilliance breaking through the pandemic gloom, giving full measure to that toughness of character ultimately tried and tested in the toughest of times – and thrived. Indeed, 2021 defined Pogi Lazatin. His response to the coronavirus pandemic gave the essential meaning to leadership in a time of crisis.

AYE, AN extraordinary league of gentlemen, lady, and corporate entities make Punto’s MOTY. To our reading public’s acceptance, if not acclaim.

 

 

 

 

The will of Vi

COMPARISONS ARE always odious. But they cannot be helped, especially between predecessors and successors – in electoral politics, most pronouncedly.

Thus, it was with Oscar Rodriguez and Edwin Santiago – the former’s shoes too big for the latter’s slippers.

Thus, it is with Santiago and Vilma Caluag. Period.

A matter of style, so his friends say of EdSa’s proclivity to seek the path of no resistance, most manifest in his “tapik” tactility and “ah, pare” diplomacy, leaving everyone wondering “an’yare”?

Not that nothing was ever accomplished in the nine years of Santiago at city hall. Far from it, rather than par for the EdSa course. The city civic center and the so-called tourism road are but two high profile manifestations of the edifice complex of Boy Tapik’s administration. Never mind who most benefitted from them, especially that stretch from MacArthur Highway to Calulut maliciously dubbed “EdSa’s Buy-the-way.” Fearing libel, further affiant sayeth naught.

It is just that Santiago’s perceived passivity has been highlighted all too brightly with Caluag’s momentum in fulfilling her mandate as city hizzoner, not simply observed but actually felt from Day One through her first 100 days, and counting.

By a fluke – it is providence, Mayor Vi’s faithful profess – the putative failures of the Santiago administration were among Caluag’s first triumphs. To Santiago’s further disfavor.       

The scourge of motorists that was the unauthorized traffic light at Vista Mall that Santiago condoned well into the end of his term despite the public outcry, Caluag managed to decommission, two months into her term.

That P25-million bridge to nowhere in San Jose Panlumacan crossing to Del Pilar and the University of the Assumption, first exposed here in Punto in 2016, was finally opened last week: Caluag negotiating with the homeowners the right of way issues, compensation included, and thereafter mobilizing men and equipment to demolish all obstructions, and wangling a commitment from the DPWH to improve the bridge’s approaches.

Why, only this Tuesday, Oct. 4, ROW issues that restricted to a single lane a two-way bridge constructed three years ago in De La Paz Sur were resolved at Caluag’s initiative, paving the way for its “full use.”

Assured of their mayor’s support in their relocation and attendant needs, the concerned homeowners agreed to sign a notarized letter of consent to vacate their property obstructing the bridge.

For the longest time now since its establishment in 2008 under Mayor Oscar Rodriguez, the City College of San Fernando subscribed to stringent standards in accepting applicants, effectively depriving a vast number of willing and wanting Fernandino youth of a shot at tertiary education.

“Let us not be the ones to put a period to their aspirations for a brighter future,” so spoke Caluag before the CCSF board and administration, enjoining a review of the standards to make the college more accessible “even to the average but striving students.”

The result: 849 applicants initially refused admission were qualified after reassessment.

The traffic light, the bridges, the CCSF reassessment of its admission policies – none of these even factored in Caluag’s election campaign. They were all a matter of her cleaning up after Santiago, so to speak.

Much like the new City Public Market Plaza. Ballyhooed as a project conceived, constructed, and completed in Santiago’s time, the market – to Caluag’s consternation – failed basic compliance with fire safety standards, precluding its operation. 

Her heart bleeding with the vendors cooped up in makeshift stalls on the city sidewalks to eke what little came their way for the duration of the pandemic, Mayor Vilma courted legal action when she ordered the opening of the market, this after seeking and getting the support of BFP for interventions – fire trucks deployed at the market premises pending the installation of the Santiago neglected fire safety systems.

As promised during the election campaign, so delivered within Caluag’s first 100 days in office is the establishment of the CSFP Hemodialysis Center, a realization of her very brainchild of a free dialysis program for Fernandinos.

Even as the city government’s partner firm Luzon Medical System was delivering the center’s 25 machines and 25 chairs that can accommodate up to 75 patients, the enrollment of beneficiaries was already being undertaken by city health workers.

Unarguably the most sterling of Caluag’s achievements so far, the center has already earned high marks from the DOH and a benchmarking visit from the local government of the City of San Fernando, La Union. 

And to think that the sangguniang panlungsod pooh-poohed the center when Caluag presented it as a PPP venture keeping the city coffers untouched!

Aye, the SP, at this early, is already making the big difference between the mayoralties of Santiago and Caluag – amicable to the former, adversarial to the later.

Still, the successor is already proving even at this early to all and sundry that she succeeded her predecessor not only to the post but more so in performance.   

Her will, his will not. That is why comparisons are always odious.     

A Martial Law story, my own

 
LIKE THE recurring refrain of a mournful song that long ago seared the very soul, the events of September 23, 1972 come as painfully, albeit less terrifyingly, fresh at each anniversary.

So, indulge me in reliving once more that day of days of 50 long years ago through this piece I found the courage to write only in 2012 – 40 years after the fact –  headlined Day of Faith.

A SATURDAY. Up early for a “DG” – discussion group – at the Assumption College in San Fernando.

Something uncanny: there is nothing but pure static on the radio. The usual though – light banter, small-town gossip among passengers – at the jeepney from somnolent Poblacion, Sto. Tomas to the capital town.

Something really uncanny: there are no newspapers at the news stands. Only komiks are being hawked by ambulant newsboys.

At the Assumption bus, some sense of gloom, a foreboding of doom, guarded whispers among us students of something terrifying…

On campus, a disturbing quietude. Still some two-dozen hardcore KM-SDK activists go on with the DG originally to finalize the agenda of the demo at the gates of Camp Olivas planned for Tuesday.

Marcos has declared Martial Law. First heard from a kasama with a brother in the military. The PC – Philippine Constabulary – has been rounding known activists since last night. Not even a murmur of Makibaka, Huwag Matakot! heard.

Just then, a platoon of uniformed constables enters the campus. Enough for all of us to find any and all means out of Assumption except the main gate where, we presumed more PCs are posted, maybe even with machineguns.

Downtown San Fernando, in front of the town hall were 6X6 PC trucks, military fatigues are everywhere. Long hair is sheared not by scissors but mostly by bayonets and hunting knives.

Jumped on a passing jeepney, just in time. My long tresses – down to my shoulders and back – saved for the day.

Proclamation 1081 – declaring Martial Law in the Philippines though dated September 21, 1972 came into the open on September 23.       

Martial Law! The news is out – even in barriotic Sto. Tomas. Arriving home, in time to see my mom stoking the last flames flickering on a mound of ash that used to be my beloved Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, Lenin’s thoughts in volumes of pamphlets, Mao’s The Five Golden Rays and the Little Red Book, Amado Guerrero’s Lipunan at Rebolusyong Pilipino, posters of Che Guevara, Marx, Lenin, and Mao.

In between tears, a jumble of Marx-Lenin-Mao thoughts – The history of all hitherto existing society is a history of class struggle… Capital is dead labor, that vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks…The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation…Trust the masses, rely on the masses, learn from the masses…The people, and the people alone, are the motive forces of history…

And Che’s mind too: What do the danger and sacrifices of a man or a nation matter, when the destiny of humanity is at stake?

All gone in a holocaust!
An early morning date with the neighbourhood barber the next day. After a long while, the sun burns my ears and nape again.

Lie low, really low. Take refuge in the rice paddies. In morbid fear of what tomorrow may bring.  

So, what hath Martial Law immediately wrought?

Resumption of classes. By the main gate of Assumption College, the dreaded Black List is posted – names of activists who will not be re-admitted unless with clearance from the PC commander.

A piece of advice from my political science professor: “Don’t go to the PC alone, they will just arrest and detain you, as they did to a number of your comrades. Bring somebody influential with you.”

So, whom am I to seek but my spiritual director and rector at the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary – the Rev. Fr. Paciano B. Aniceto. (I was not even a year out “on probation” from San Jose Seminary.)

At the Pampanga PC Command beside the Capitol, Apu Ceto vouched for me as a character witness before a panel of interrogators, and then took my case to the provincial commander himself – the dreaded Col. Isidoro de Guzman who would later earn infamy in the Escalante Massacre in Negros.

Alone at the interrogation room, I was subjected to romanza military at my every answer the berdugos did not take to their liking.

“KM o SDK?”

Wala po – A smack on the head.

“Name? Alias?”

Caesar Lacson y Zapata. Nickname: Bong. No alias – A slap on the face.

 

“Ikaw si Carlos. Di ba ikaw itong nasa mga letrato (shoving to my face a number of photographs of marches, rallies and demos)”

Kamukha ko po – the table suddenly kisses my face.

Then off to the detention center at the side of the command. At each single cell, the sergeant – Pascua or Pascual? – shoves my face between the iron bars and asks the detainee: “Kasama mo ito?” and then turns to me: “Kilala mo yan?”

Of course, we knew one another but no one ratted out. Conscientization most manifest there.

Compared with what my comrades suffered under detention, I was given kid-glove treatment by the PC tormentors.

Contusions and all, I managed to be remanded to the custody of Apu Ceto. I have written this and I write it again: The good father, in what could only be deemed as a leap of faith – in his God unquestionably, in me too, maybe – signed a document that said in part, “…in the event that subject activist-provocateur renew his connection with the Communist Party of the Philippines and its various fronts in the pursuit of rebellion; or undertake acts inimical to peace and order, or in gross violation of the provisions of Proclamation 1081 and other pertinent decrees, the signatory-custodian shall be held responsible and as liable…” with a proviso that in my stead, he would be placed in the PC stockade.
Did he tell me to change my ways? Did he impale in my conscience the gravity of my case, his implication in any instance of carelessness or recidivism on my part thereon?
No. From the Constabulary command, his mere request was for me to please accompany him to church.
Before the Blessed Sacrament, he knelt and silently prayed. He did not even ask me to pray with him. He just motioned me to sit near him.
By the side of the good father, in that darkened corner of the Metropolitan Cathedral, I wept. Washed by a torrent of tears was my rebirth, the renewal of my faith.
No spectacular drama presaged my epiphany, no blinding light, so to speak, shone on my own Damascus Gate. There were but flickering votives. And Apu Ceto.     

My return to faith. That’s principally what Martial Law wrought.

(First published Sept. 20, 2016. Reprinted this 50th anniversary of the declaration of martial law.)

The Cruzada can only continue

 

AQUI EN la Pampanga hay mucha piedad pero poca caridad.

It has been seventy years, this 2022, 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 de Penitencia y Caridad – 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. (Covid-19 made the exception in 2020, and limited attendance in 2021 though). 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).

Seventy 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.

“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)

 

An Augustine but not yet

 

THE FEAST of St. Augustine of Hippo on August 28 has – for over ten years now – sparked cloistered moments of contemplation centered on a visit to the Sta. Monica Parish Church in Minalin town at the time it was declared by the National Museum as a national cultural treasure.

The media coverage attendant top the occasion turning, to me, into a pilgrimage. Thus:

Completed in the mid-1700s by the Augustinians the church has remained relatively intact, having withstood devastating earthquakes, typhoons and floods, and the Mount Pinatubo eruptions that swamped it with lahar.
No ostentatious ornateness but architectural splendor defines the façade – an outdoor retablo in concrete, where niched between Corinthian columns the images – as old as the church too – of Saints Peter and Paul, Francis of Assisi, and Catherine of Alexandria, with the top of the triangular pediment holding the image of St. Monica. Twin hexagonal four-story bell towers buttress the façade.
At the churchyard are the only four capillas posas still extant in the whole Philippines. Small chapels in red bricks, these served as holding areas for catechumens prior to their baptism inside the church in the early days of colonization…There ended objective coverage.
Aye, being edifices of faith, churches are not simply viewed. Churches are objects of contemplation, and, but of course, centers of worship, loci of adoration. More than the sense of wonder it evokes, the Sta. Monica Parish Church invokes deep stirrings of the soul…There commenced my personal pilgrimage. With St. Augustine, whose presence is embossed throughout the church named after his mother.
Crowning the window above the pasbul mayor, the main door of the church, is an escudo of an eagle – the symbol of St. John the Evangelist whose gospel was St. Augustine’s favorite.
“Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that thou mayest believe, but believe that thou mayest understand.” So, I remembered St. Augustine saying in Tractatus in Ioannis Evangelium. There entered I the realm of faith.
At the vestibule, above the baptistery, is the heart of Sta. Monica carved on the adobe keystone – the image of a spade pierced by an arrow. Significant of the sufferings and sacrifices of the mother for the conversion of her sinful son.
“But I wretched, most wretched, in the very commencement of my early youth, had begged chastity of Thee, and said, ‘Give me chastity and continency, only not yet.’” Thus, St. Augustine in Confessions.
Taking center spot in the iconography at the main altar is a painting of the Nuestra Senora de La Consolacion y Correa. Beholding the image dredged memories of my dearly departed maternal grandmother.
May 4, the feast day of St. Monica, Apu Rita took five-year-old me to this same church for Mass. As was her wont whenever we went to any church, she told me anecdotes about all the saints present at the altar.
Her take of La Consolacion – from memory now – St. Monica prayed nightly to God, through the intercession of the Virgin Mother, to change the sinful ways of her son Augustine. One night, as St. Monica wept, the Virgin appeared to her and as a token of compassion took off a black cloth cincture from her waist and gave it to St. Monica. It was that cincture that finally effected the transformation of Augustine. From then on, members of his eponymous monastic order have worn a black band across the waist as a pledge of devotion to La Consolacion.
In remembering Apu Rita, I heard St. Augustine saying: “What is faith save to believe what you do not see?”
Unschooled, unemployed, unfettered from the material world, Apu Rita totally devoted her whole life between home and “her one, true, Mother Church.” Again, hearing here anew St. Augustine, and St. Cyprian too, declaring: “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.”
Lest this be misconstrued as Roman Catholic conceit, the most recent Catholic Catechism interpretation of “Outside the Church there is no salvation” is that "all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body." Everything universal, nothing parochial in the expanse of the Church here.
The visit to the St. Monica Parish Church coming a day after the local media’s commemoration of the 21st month of the Ampatuan massacre, I was moved to pray for the repose of the souls of the victims and that justice be done. And then remembered St. Augustine saying in De Civitate Dei: “Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies. For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms.”
His City of God segueing further to current times: “He that is good is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.”
On the way to my parked car at the churchyard, my last look at the church centered on an escudo of a flaming heart – the very seal of the Augustinian Order – appliqued to the keystone of the main door.
Ah, how could I ever forget, the very core of St. Augustine’s Confessions: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you”
Maybe, I need to spend more time in churches than in coffeeshops. That will certainly make a lot of people less stressed, less upset, if not happier.
So then I cry: But I wretched, most wretched, in my every commentary, had begged charity of Thee, and said, “Give me charity, give me unquestioning acceptance of the powers-that-be, only not yet.”
So then I pray: God let me do a St. Augustine, but not yet.