Of the North

MANOMA. Makati North of Manila.

So claimed Mayor Boking Morales for Mabalacat City to highlight, aye, to hyperbolize his domain’s positioning as the central business district of Pampanga.

The forever-mayor’s political detractors quick though to point to the longevity of the dynasts’ reign over the country’s financial capital and all the perceived corruptions attendant thereto as the more valid basis to Boking’s claim.

Makati of the North.

Mayor Condralito de la Cruz stakes his own claim of the title for his beloved Porac, “solidly” grounded on the P75-billion Alviera development of Ayala Land Inc. covering 1,100 hectares in Hacienda Dolores.

Where Mabalacat City is yet to show but the slightest semblance of Makati anywhere in its territory, Porac already has the Ayalas – Makati’s very creators – sinking in P8 billion for Alviera’s Phase 1, comprising three residential communities, a 30-hectare industrial park, two educational institutions – Quezon City’s Miriam College and Angeles City’s Holy Angel University – and a country club.

Already up and operational at the site – and drawing huge crowds, on weekends especially -- is the Sandbox theme park just outside the Porac exit of the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway.

No brainer there which of Mabalacat City and Porac is the real Makati of the North.

Pride of place is premium motivation in appropriating successful brand names for another: in this case, Makati with all visions of the skyscrapers along Ayala and Buendia. Even when it sounds, and truly makes like that dialog from that Sharon Cuneta starrer as “a second-rate, trying-hard copycat.”

Aping the good in another is no monkeying around, it is serious business, profitable when it brings in the results. As in Porac.

That’s the upside. Now the downside to this whole business of this “of-the” titling. 

EDSA of the North.

No political leader in Pampanga has as yet commandeered that label for his/her town or city. Though Mayor Edwin Santiago of the City of San Fernando has sported the EdSa moniker since becoming running mate to Oca Rodriguez in 2004, through 2007 and 2010, and finding solo spotlight in 2013.

The EDSA reference here is to MacArthur Highway, also known as the Manila North Road, having traffic situations similar to, albeit of still much lesser intensity and miserability than that of Metro Manila’s Epifanio de los Santos Avenue.

Approximating EDSA’s 23.8-kilometer stretch from Caloocan City to Pasay City is the distance of MacArthur Highway from the Fernandino Monument in the capital city, bypassing Angeles City downtown, to Dau Crossing in Mabalacat City.       

As EDSA has its identified choke points, so has MacArthur Highway. This, drawn from the empirical evidence provided by my commute along MacArthur at varying times of the day and night.

Rush hour traffic – before school and work in the morning, and after dismissal in the afternoon and early evening – veritably grounds to a stand-still at the stretch of MacArthur Highway-Jose Abad Santos junction all the way to San Fernando city proper; the St. Jude Crossing-St. Scholastica’s Academy-San Isidro area; the crossing to the regional government center, mainly owing to the oh-so-sloooow construction of a foot bridge there.

The worse traffic situation at rush hour is in the stretch between Balite and Telabastagan with three choke points: crossing to Angeles ecozone in Calibutbut, Paning’s to the circumferential road, and the jeepney terminal at Savemore.

Usually gridlocked too is the Angeles roundabout going to Magalang, with some road works still on-going there.       

The flow of vehicles along the Balibago stretch tough has greatly improved with the median barriers preventing both vehicles and pedestrians from crossing just about anywhere.

The Clark rotonda eased traffic flow considerably but not during downpours when it gets easily flooded making it impassable to light vehicles, thereby further aggravating the all-weather traffic mess all the way to Dau.

Expect more bumper-to-bumper traffic in the area with the construction of the Capilion building smack at the very entrance of the Clark Freeport. The scheme of traffic to come already presaged during the anniversary of the canonical coronation of the Virgen de los Remedios at the freeport. The wife taking all of two hours and 42 minutes to come home to St. Jude Village from the rites.   

Makati of the North – sans the Binays – is a most welcome proposition, be it  Mabalacat City or Porac.

EDSA of the North for MacArthur Highway has ceased to be a mere probability and started to turn into a reality already. We do hope none of our local executives has the making of the Francis Tolentino of the North here.    

  

La Virgen demeaned

“TUGADE CITED by priests; Clark’s success also seen in Holy Masses”

So was a press release from the Clark Development Corp. slugged, okay, titled, which I found in my email late afternoon Monday. Failing to meet the deadline for the day, the PR just had to make do with this Wednesday issue. Pursuant to my editorial duty, in line with my journalistic obligation.

This commentary on that PR, an opinion all my own though.

Right off the bat I see something remiss.

No, there’s absolutely nothing wrong, morally or otherwise, with CDC President-CEO Arthur P. Tugade being cited by priests. For all I care, the reverend fathers can serve as postulators for the future San Arturo de Tatalon. And I shall, my left hand on the Book, totally inhibit myself from being the devil’s advocate in his process of canonization.

Yes, there is something I find sacrilegious in seeing Clark’s success in Holy Masses.

I pray for Clark’s success – honestly, most sincerely – when I go to Mass. I do not, I cannot consider the Mass, no matter how many times celebrated in a day, as some measuring tool for the freeport’s success.

I see in the Mass the divine sacrifice, the offering of the very body and blood of Christ, and the partaking of it for my salvation and that of the whole world. Amen.

Hence, in the celebration of the Mass the uplift of the human spirit, the searing of the soul, the nearness, aye, oneness with the mystical Body of Christ.   

Thus I take exception to “the chaplain in this Freeport (saying that) officiating more groundbreaking ceremonies for locator-firms and fully-booked First Friday masses in various companies here is an indication of sound business climate in this Freeport.”

To me, “fully-booked Friday masses” take the divine essence out of the Holy Sacrifice, reducing it to a commercial enterprise, as in fully-booked restaurant, fully-booked theater, fully-booked cruise, fully-booked concert hall.  

Booking? You don’t do reservation, or buy tickets in advance to go to Mass. Or this chaplain does this to his congregation? At what price? 

There is something uncanny in the perspective – as the CDC praise release presented – of this chaplain identified as one “Fr. Adrian Paule, parish priest of Clark Freeport Zone.” (Is this the same Fr.  Paule that some Sapang Bato parishioners led by a retired ranking police officer denounce for allegedly spiking far beyond their reach the cost of burial at the village cemetery?)     

Of the recently held 59^th anniversary of the Canonical Coronation of the Virgen de los Remedios at the Clark Freeport, Fr. Paule deemed “the said religious event was a success.”

His basis: “The Senior Officials’ Meeting 1 of the Asia Pacific Economic Conference (sic) in the 1^st quarter of this year played a big role in the preparation for this event (coronation) in terms of logistics and security.”

Spoken like a devoted CDC employee. Of which he is first, and a religious only second? I kind of expected something less secular and more spiritual from an ordained minister. But then I realized, it is a CDC praise release that I am reading after all. And thus that template, followed faithfully by others cited in the PR.   

Msgr. Antonio M. Bustos STHL, parish priest of Our Lady of Sorrows, Dolores (CSF): “Clark Parade Grounds is spacious and I prefer it as a venue for the annual coronation of the Blessed Mother.”

Now in some sort of a marital status and with children but still-waiting-for-his-dispensation from the priesthood, Cris Cadiang, musical director and choir master of the VDLR rites: “I have seen all the venues in Pampanga (for the coronation) but I think this (Clark Parade Grounds) is the best, this is perfect and this is the most ideal.”

Motives other than ones inspired by the Paraclete, immediately sensed there.

Msgr. Bustos whose family owns the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Medical Center in the City of San Fernando which has a Clark branch is, in fact and in effect, a locator at the freeport.    

Cadiang has a sentimental affinity to Clark having served as parish priest of Sapang Bato immediately preceding the hanging of his habito. I leave it there, further sayeth not.

Rather than censure Bustos and Cadiang for their insensitivity, let us just indulge in their blissful ignorance in seeing the Clark Parade Grounds as perfect, as the most ideal venue for coronation.

Being at the area of the altar, they all heard the readings, the prayers and incantations, the homily, the songs. Which those far back and in the peripheries were totally deprived of.

A number of devotees thanked this paper for Ashley Manabat’s story on the coronation which virtually, and faithfully, recorded the full homily of Archbishop Florentino Lavarias. What they did not hear at the rites, they were able to read in Punto and made them richer spiritually, they said.

Too absorbed in his concert performance, Cadiang could not have cared at all if the congregation joined in the singing.

Obviously, they – and Paule too – did not suffer the horrendous after-coronation traffic gridlocks at all the gates of Clark.

No, they were not even aware of the elderly women who had to put their dignity on the line, hiding behind whatever tree and vehicle at hand, covering themselves with umbrellas or cardboards to answer nature’s call in the midst of the traffic standstill. Or the padres could have simply considered this as part of the sacrifice to La Virgen.

No, they did not feel the pangs of hunger of the faithful waiting forever for traffic to move. Again, the reverendos could have consigned this to some fasting penitencia, in exchange for some indulgencia.

And then the PR saying: “The 59^th Canonical Coronation of Virgen Delos Remedios is in partnership between Clark Development Corporation Tourism and Promotions Department and the Archdiocese of the City of San Fernando represented by the vicariate of Sacred Heart headed by Fr. Rey Cruz.”

A sacred religious tradition demeaned to a tourism spectacle to be promoted to increase arrivals at the Clark Freeport. Reducto absurdum, as my Latin professor was wont to exclaim when the holy transmutes to the odd.   

Yes, the CDC is either absolutely clueless or totally indifferent to the ramifications of all this. Its express purpose solely to score pogi points out of the Virgen de los Remedios rites. With unwitting but very much willing priests for accomplices.

Sheer sacrilege here.

  

    

                                   

Terminal tales retold

“FROM ‘guarded pessimism’ to laudatory thanksgiving.”

So we wrote here last Tuesday of the mindshift of the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement over the news of President BS Aquino III finally approving Friday last week the allotment of P1.2 billion for a new French-designed modern airport passenger terminal at the Clark International Airport.

News reports further quoted Clark International Airport Corp. President-CEO Emigdio Tanjuatco III that the terms of reference for the project, which would cost a total of P15 billion when totally finished, are now being prepared for bidding.

And we quoted PGKM Chair Ruperto Cruz, thus: “Pasalamatan ta ya y PNoy pero most especially y Dino Tanjuatco kasi iya ing ikit tamung meg-lobby ken (Let us thank PNoy and most especially Dino Tanjuatco as we have seen how he lobbied for it."

The thanksgiving side of our lead paragraph is all there. So where’s the pessimism coming from? In the youthspeak of the moment, hugot pa more, from this piece published here only last May 8 and headlined:   

Terminal tales

CLARK AIRPORT advocates, rejoice!

Only last week, this most happy news:

MANILA, Philippines - The Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) is set to bid out the contract for the first phase of the P7.2 billion low cost carrier passenger terminal building at the Clark International Airport in Pampanga within the next two months.

CIAC President-CEO Emigdio Tanjuatco III said the first phase of the project worth P1.2 billion would be presented to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) for approval next week.

 “Once the President approves it, hopefully the bidding for the project will start by the middle of this year,” Tanjuatco said.

According to Tanjuatco, the project obtained the green light from the NEDA - Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) last week after being pushed by the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC).

"The fact that the national government infused P1.2 Billion for airport improvement is an indication of the government’s support through the DOTC,” he said.

Tanjuatco said the proposed terminal building designed by the French firm Aeroport de Paris could accommodate 15 million passengers annually…

Foremost Clark airport pusher Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement ain’t even smiling though.  

“To see is to believe.” So declared the PGKM, making like Glum, the Lilliputian, with its “guarded pessimism” over Tanjuatco’s oh-so-hopeful fascination.

“We have a long history of announced biddings for the Clark terminal from the time of GMA going until now,” said PGKM Chair Ruperto Cruz. “All announcements, all coming to nothing. Now, can you blame us for being pessimistic?”

Indeed, the PGKM stands on solid ground where proclamations on the construction of the new Clark airport terminal get mired in shifting quicksand.

Consider the following seemingly slightly edited version of the above-cited news story: 

 MANILA, Philippines – Construction of the proposed P7.2-billion budget terminal at the Clark International Airport will likely start in the second quarter of 2014.

On the sidelines of the press conference for the inaugural Dubai-Clark flight of Emirates, Clark International Airport Corporation President-CEO Victor Jose Luciano said the terminal is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2016.

The terminal, he noted, will have a capacity of between 10 million and 15 million passengers.

He added the government may fund the project or place it under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) program.

That was in October 2, 2013 yet. And Emirates, by May 2014, flew out of the Clark coop, er, loop, and has not since returned. 

Tanjuatco now. Luciano then. Same lines – same lies? – same CIAC character crafting fairy tales out of the Clark airport terminal. As these finds from previous pieces here show:

In September 2006, GMA presided over the laying of the time capsule for the construction of Terminal 2. It was announced then that the sum of P3 billion, to come from the Manila International Airport Authority, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., and the Bureau of Immigration, among other agencies will be allotted for the project.
…Luciano announced the $1.2 billion proposal from an ALMAL Investments Co., a subsidiary of the Kuwaiti mega developer M.A. Kharafi Projects, “to cover all civil components of the DMIA Terminals 1, 2 and 3 plus the adjacent 1,500 hectares in the aviation complex strictly following the CIAC original master plan.”
… CIAC press released that a group of major government-linked and private firms in Malaysia called Bristeel Overseas Ventures, Inc. (BOVI) offered to infuse at least $150 million in foreign direct investment to immediately undertake the much-needed expansion of the passenger terminal of the Clark International Airport.

…in a regular meeting on May 17, 2010, the CIAC Board “resolved to accept for detailed negotiations” the proposal of the Philco Aero Inc. on the Passenger Terminal 2 Development Project of the DMIA, as it was deemed “superior” to the BOVI proposal.
…Luciano – in January 2012 -- announced that “they” are pushing for the construction of a budget terminal that will handle about 10 million passengers a year at the CIA.
“The new facility, amounting to P12 billion, will take three years to complete and make (the CIA) the second largest airport in the country, next to Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport…This budget terminal is the kind of terminal that meets the requirements of our airport in Clark. Our terminal right now can only accommodate 2.5 million. So we need a budget terminal to effectively say that DMIA is the next budget airline airport of the country.” So Mr. Luciano said…

Too long in verbalization, ever short in realization. That’s the CIAC story on the Clark airport. Always has been.

P7.2- billion terminal in the offing? Believe, at your own delusion.  

xxxxx

WHY, the BS more than doubled what we deemed delusory!

Should I start singing You Can’t Lose a Broken Heart?  

“…Don’t say things in December (in my case May)
You’ll regret in June (September)

Weigh your remarks before you speak
Or you’ll be sorry soon
Don’t be erratic, be diplomatic
To keep your hearts in tune…”

A mindshift of my own now: From “guarded pessimism” I shared with the PGKM, to “cautious optimism” that is all mine. But remaining firmly grounded on the Doubting Thomas’ “to see is to believe.”

In the case of the Clark airport expansion project, to live to see it.  

Clark conspiracies

“BUT WHY is Pamintuan silent? Is he part of what is called ‘Bedan conspiracy’ at Clark?”

Asked the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement of Angeles City Mayor Ed Pamintuan last week disturbed of hizzoner’s persistent silence in the wake of the city council’s resolutions “vehemently opposing” the Capilion project by the main gate of the Clark Freeport, and requesting Pampanga congressmen Yeng Guiao and Oca Rodriguez, along with the rest of the Central Luzon congressional bloc to initiate a House inquiry into the Capilion issue.

As quiet as Pamintuan’s official stand on the issue was his sub rosa arrangement with the Clark Development Corp. for a briefing on the Capilion project exclusive to the council majority immediately after the first resolution was passed. Albeit, its sponsor Max Sangil, a member of the majority, opting out of the briefing.

Uncharacteristic of the usually loquacious Pamintuan, his silence seen as implying not merely tacit consent but even conspiratorial engagement.      

But what, how, why a Bedan conspiracy? Basic one-plus-one-equals-two. Or, birds of a feather peck just the same.

Atty. Pamintuan is an alumnus of San Beda College. He co-chairs the Metro Clark Advisory Council composed of chief executives of the cities and municipalities contiguous to the Freeport.

CDC President-CEO Atty. Arthur P. Tugade prides himself as a Red Lion nurtured by the Benedictine fathers from his cub years out of the Tatalon urban jungle. He chairs the MCAC.

While there’s but one other publicly known Bedan in the CDC Board – Don Manolo Feliciano, also a lawyer – it really matters little in the scheme of things at CDC. What with Tugade being the majority of one.

Lest we forget, if only for numbers’ sake, there’s Mabalacat City Mayor Boking Morales, whose length of tenure as MCAC co-chair is rivalled only by his term in office. Yeah, Boking spent college at San Beda too.        

There, the PGKM seeing red in the Capilion project is as much idiomatic as emblematic.

Conspiracy theories have been a PGKM staple with regards to what the advocacy group cites as the lack of development at the Clark Freeport and the sabotage of the Clark International Airport.

There were the so-called Imperial Dragons of Manila that would not want their investments in the metropolis endangered by the development of the Clark airport as premier international gateway. Not even as an alternative to the congested NAIA.

There were the bosses of the Department of Transportation and Communications – from Mar Roxas to Joseph Emilio Abaya – themselves accused of conspiring with the mandarins of Imperial Manila, along with their local lackeys at the Clark International Airport Corp.     

Indeed, at one time or the other in its recent but already storied past, the Clark Freeport, the airport too, underwent management by some sort of a fraternity – not necessarily school-based, but always, per PGKM, conspiratorial .

It was the “Jaycees Clique” at the time of CDC President-CEO Atty. Emmanuel Y. Angeles and Executive Vice President Victor “Chichos” Luciano, so-called because of their loftiest stature in the civic organization: the former being a TOYM awardee, the latter winning the JC International presidency.

Applying that which the Jaycees Creed decreed “…economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise,” they opened the way to SM City Clark, putting finis to the city’s small retail enterprises.

Before Luciano’s luck won him the CIAC, it was a virtual military junta seated there, starting with the Air Force’s Romy David as both CDC and CIAC chief, onto – in varying posts – Gen. Tereso Isleta, one Col. Abad Santos, two or three others lost to fading memory, up to Gen. Adelberto Yap as CIAC top gun with Col. Pete Sanchez as chief of staff. 

And then there was Gen. Narciso Abaya, having held the post President-CEO of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority.           

In the short-lived CDC presidency of Sergio Naguiat, said to have wielded real power – in brokering just about any transaction, from investments to the hiring of personnel – were the “KBL Boys,” so-called because of their political affiliation to the Great Ferdinand’s movement and their undying affection to Marcos’ foremost legal braintrust.  

Notwithstanding the disparity in the directions the freeport and airport were taken by these fraternities/cliques, the opposition mounted by the PGKM has remained constant.

Conceding though that it is this alleged cabal of Bedans that has brought the worst misery to Clark. 

Cruzada de caridad

“AQUI en la Pampanga hay mucha piedad pero poca caridad.”

For the sake of those indios pobresitos ignorantes en la lengua de Madre España, we ilustrados y insulares take that to mean “in Pampanga, there is much piety but little charity.”
Fifty-nine years ago, Bishop Cesar Ma. Guerrero, the first to occupy the bishopric of San Fernando, uttered those words in lamentation over “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 knocking “at the very gates of Manila.”
Denounced as apostates, damned as atheists pursuing the establishment of a “godless society,” the Huks naturally had to be stopped, and their ideology uprooted to “save the country and Mother Church.”

A strategic policy of the Cold War placed the Church at the bulwark of the war against communism in Asia, especially so with the Philippines being the only Christian nation in this part of the globe.
Thus, 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. Unrepentant communists would readily see it as the affirmation of the 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 parishes were they stayed for days, the faithful seeking their intercession and intervention through non-stop 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 unrepentant Marxist instantly finding there one more affirmation of religion as “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.”

But as the Good Bishop Guerrero discerned, the road to the heavenly gates is not all about piety. The charity end of the crusade – lamac – was institutionalized – all the barrio folk shared some goods, even the poorest of them the little they could afford, that would accompany the images to their next destination and given to the neediest there.
Thus the hymn goes: “Ding sablang pisamban ampon ding bisitas / a quecang delawan O virgen a maslag / ding anggang memalen pigdala mung lamac / metula lang dacal, queca pasalamat / casalpantayanan miunlad, milablab / iIng pamicalugud agad linaganap (All the churches and chapels / visited by you O virgin most radiant / all the people whom you gifted / rejoice and offer their thanksgiving / their faith increased, rekindled / their love spread.) Again forgive the literal translation.  

In effect, the Cruzada 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.
Fifty-nine years hence, “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” still obtain in Pampanga, though to a much lesser critical degree than at the birth of the Cruzada, what with the spectre of communism exorcised with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s yet.

With the same conditions still extant, a new spectre has come to haunt humanity: that which Pope Francis defined the "allure of a materialism that stifles authentic spiritual and cultural values and the spirit of unbridled competition which generates selfishness and strife."

“We see signs of an idolatry of wealth, power and pleasure, which come at a high cost to human lives,” the Pontiff said.

We see signs there of the very temptations laid down by the devil before Christ Himself.

The Cruzada of penance and charity enters a new field of battle. Onward Christian soldiers…  

 (Updated from my Free Zone published in the now-defunct Pampanga News issue of July 6-12, 2006)

Tugade, at best

"I'VE BEEN in this job for more than 20 years as PEZA director general and I've seen presidents of CDC come and go, but the current one is the best."

No simple praise but a panegyric heaped by Philippine Economic Zone Authority Director General Atty. Lilia De Lima on Clark Development Corp. President-CEO Atty. Arthur P. Tugade at the groundbreaking rites for the $10-million expansion project of Texas Instruments last week.

Forgive De Lima for her utter ignorance, quipped a long-time CDC insider, as she was apparently blinded by the $$$$$S$ of the project. Something she has been missing in the doldrums that swept her domains, whatever our CDC guy meant there. Yeah, he requested for anonymity, in dread of the mercurial and pugnacious “maton ng Tatalon.” His words, not mine.

Tugade the best CDC president ever, from the context of the $10-million TI expansion?

Laughably ridiculous. No, that’s not me talking, but our CDC guy still.

Said he: $10 million is but a drop in the bucket of the total S1 billion TI investment for its manufacturing facilities in the Clark Freeport. And Tugade had absolutely nothing to do with the enticement of TI to come to Clark.

Recall: It was during the CDC presidency of Tony Ng that negotiations with TI commenced and were concluded, with his successor Levy P. Laus inking the official lease agreement and doing actual spadework at the site.

Got to do some fact-checking there though with the CDC archivists, or better yet with my compadre Councilor Max Sangil who served as CDC director for many years, those times included. Max has this knack of having history at his fingertips.    

Anyways, Tugade the best CDC president ever? Highly debatable, even contemptible, comparisons being always odious.

And by what parameters?

Tito Henson as the first CDC president had the unenviable job of digging the former American bastion of imperialism in the Asia-Pacific region out of the depths of Mount Pinatubo debris.

Gen. Romy David spurred the infra frenzy that expanded the freeport’s main highway and road networks that presaged the celebration of the centennial of Philippine Independence at the Expo Pilipino which was built precisely for that purpose.

The General, it was too, that built the then ridiculed “bridge to nowhere” which now proves to be the very gateway to the Clark Green City dream.     

Don Rufo Colayco credited for “blue-chip investments” though I associate most with the Kalangitan sanitary landfill, and post-CDC, with the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway project.

Atty. Manny Angeles, failing in his dream to build the biggest sundial in the world, made good with SM City Clark and Bayanihan Park.   

Atty. Ping Remollo made Clark a sports destination, primarily for softball, baseball, rugby and football.

Leaving little, if any, impact to the Freeport, the few others who sat as CDC president unremembered.    

So, Tugade the best CDC president ever?

This, I have to concede. Tugade is doing much better as CDC chief than the Erap-appointed what’s-his-name who failed to even pass the reglamentary six-month casual period at the CDC presidency: his term wracked by dissension in the CDC,  board dissension, dissatisfaction among locators and investors, even protest action by the local media.

This I have to accept unquestionably, unarguably, indubitably: No CDC president ever can come even close to Tugade in one thing – the mastery, nay, doctorate, in the expletive. With “put…na” and “puk…na” veritably integral to his syntax whomever he is talking to, wherever he is talking, be it in the corporate boardroom, in black-tie or blue-jeans fora, even in flag rites. I would be the least surprised if he does this in eulogies too.       

It is in that aspect that we find this Lilia De Lima – not the heroic Leila of DOJ – correct. Of all the CDC presidents she has seen come and go in 20 years, the current one is the best.  

Yeah, Tugade is best at his worst. Or worst at his best.

Whichever the case, the Tatalonian toughie is in a class all his own.   

Uk…nam.  

Senator De Lima, thanks to INC

FROM THE Justice Department to the Senate.

“…I think it's time you and I bring this journey to the next level, to a higher level, to the next higher level like from point J to point S.” So declared Justice Secretary Leila de Lima of her 2016 political plans last Thursday, on her 56^th birthday.

As she promised, as we expected.

Utterly unforeseen though is De Lima finding the shortest distance between point J and point S in the INC.

Hordes of the Iglesia ni Cristo faithful started camping by the very gates of the DOJ on Padre Faura St. in Manila as De Lima’s birthday party was ongoing, not to wish her many happy returns of the day but to alternately heckle and denounce her for what they charged as violation of the Constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.

This, as a result of De Lima’s action on the complaint of expelled INC minister Isaias Samson Jr. and his family against eight members of the church’s Sanggunian for serious illegal detention. An “internal affair” within the ambit of religious freedom and therefore should have been left to their leadership to resolve, the INC maintained.

Something which the greater number of lawyers, exclusive of the INC’s Ferdinand Topacio, Vice President Jejomar Binay and Sen. Chiz Escudero, considered well within the duty of the state to uphold the rights of its citizens, regardless of creed, gender and politics. Not to mention the seriousness of Samson’s case.

De Lima, succinctly: “…(L)ike in many other things I do, I’m just doing my job here and my motive always is fealty to my sworn duty. I don’t have any other motive.”

Instantly winning enthusiastic support from the INC’s nemesis, Eli Soriano’s Ang Dating Daan, and generating favour from the public at large whose Facebook uploads and tweets veritably broke the Internet these past few days.

“Trending like a pop star on cyberspace.” So reported the Philippine Daily Inquirer of De Lima, enthusing: “It’s De Lima by a landslide for the past 72 hours with the hashtag #DeLimaBringtheTruth, leaving the hashtags #IglesianiCristo and #EDSA on the wayside.

As of Saturday night, the hashtag #DeLimaBringtheTruth, which was pushed by netizens who want the justice secretary to stay put at her post, had 138,000 tweets.

The hashtag #Edsa has 54,600 tweets and #IglesianiCristo, 19,600.”

The INC’s continued post-birthday bashing of De Lima taken to EDSA on Friday and lasting over the weekend gained only the ire of motorists and commuters as it added worse misery to the already miserable traffic gridlock in Metro Manila’s primary road which one netizen tagged as “highway to hell.” What with the “demons” suddenly descending there.  

“Pasensya na po sa mga nata-trapik. Konting pang-unawa at tiyaga. Matatapos din ito.”  That subsequent apology by INC spokesman Edwil Zagala did not help any in appeasing the anger that exploded anew in the Internet with tweets that could have risen only out of deep-seated bigotry towards the INC, such as:  

“In protest to the rally that’s been happening in edsa; iwill eat DINUGUAN! #WITHPUTO #DEARINC,” said fitz, obviously referencing to the INC taboo of eating food with blood from animals.

“Faith vs blind obedience. Wake up, people. Wake up. #ISupportSecDelima #DeLimaBringTheTruth,” posted netizen @imnotbeybi.

And those are but the tamer ones.

Virtual reality now: For every disdain the INC sows upon De Lima, she seems to harvest only the goodwill of the Internet nation. Her publicly perceived principled stand – on the side of law and order – a stark contrast to the obsequious pandering of Binay, Senators Grace Poe, Bongbong Marcos and Escudero to the INC. Especially Poe, disgraced in the web by her “protect the rights of the INC” call in the face of the public’s trampled right to EDSA. 

So not a single one of the bruited-about 1.5 million INC votes will go to De Lima, as some INC members cockily crowed. The heck, as one netizen put it, she has already the votes of the over 2 million EDSA commuters smarting from the troubles created by the INC rally. Plus the hundreds of thousands journeying the Dating Daan of Bro. Eli who have found their champion in De Lima.

Auguring well for De Lima too is the mobilization by some groups to “reverse bloc voting.” Meaning, they shall campaign against presidential, vice-presidential and senatorial candidates endorsed by the INC, and support those who stand up to INC “bullying.”

Yes, the aggressive, rather than affirmative, action taken by the INC on De Lima has made her not simply a viable but a most winnable senatoriable.

Backlash, it is called.