Biz Icon 2023-Banking: Elizabeth Carlos-Timbol

 

FIRST KAPAMPANGAN and third woman president of the Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines (RBAP), her 2020-2021 incumbency could not have come at a worse time – Covid-19 at its dreariest, deadliest worst – immediately earning her the designation “pandemic president.”

Unfazed, Elizabeth Carlos Timbol took the challenge squarely, her being born and raised in countryside banking and her personal advocacies rising to the fore in the 3-point agenda of her presidency: strengthening programs for rural banks, capacity building and digitalization, and women empowerment. Their application specially targeted at farmers and the MSMEs.

The Asia Leaders Awards’ Woman of the Year for Countryside Development in 2021 makes a fitting testament to her leadership of the RBAP and an affirmation of her continuing contribution to the socio-economic uplift of rural communities, having been bestowed the same recognition in 2019.

Past the presidency, Ms. Timbol assumed the chairmanship of the Rural Bankers Research and Development Foundation. Inc where continued her agenda of service, establishing and enabling RBAP’s new generation of bankers aged 40 and below to solve the concerns of succession planning of rural banks in the country.

A most significant achievement was her successful organization and delivery of impactful webinars to rural banks, providing them with valuable knowledge and insights. Equally noteworthy was her leading the crafting of generic manuals that served as helpful guideposts in the rural bankers’ day-to-day operations.

In 2023, the Italian Chamber of Commerce Leadership Award’s Woman in Business of the Year was bestowed upon Ms. Timbol.

For 2024, Ms. Timbol serves as a trustee of RBRDFI and committee chair for training, and RBAP director and committee chair for compliance and internal audit, upholding continuous professional education and training for all rural bankers.

Fittingly, the poster girl of rural banking – with her 33 years in the business principally contributing to GRBank consistently ranking Number 1 family-owned bank in the country.

GRBank has long grown from the typical deposit-withdraw-loan-on-the-side system of rural banking into diversified financial products and services previously the exclusives of commercial banks, like dollar deposits, and even lending up to P350 million to single borrowers owing to its high securities-based lending.  

A core service of the bank is the promotion of financial literacy among its clientele, especially those in the agriculture sector to help them “save wisely or invest their hard-earned money and capacitate them to keep everyone well-fed.”

Beyond banking, Ms. Timbol served as president of the Metro Angeles Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. where, again, she proved her leadership excellence: The premier business organization hailed as Most Outstanding Chamber in the Philippines (Region Category) for two consecutive years, 2022 and 2023. With no less than President Ferdinand E. Marcos Jr. himself handing the recognition to her during the 48^th Philippine Business Conference and Expo at The Manila Hotel, on Oct. 20, 2022.

MACCII was cited primarily for its advocacies for countryside development, principally in mentoring start-ups hewing to its advocacy: It’s SIMPLE -- Sustainable, Inclusive, Mentorship, Partnership, Linkages – to be MACCII.

A countryside mindset, Ms. Timbol says she has kept ever since, be it in banking or in every business organization she has found association with. “I support empowering the countryside and develop inclusiveness in matters of development.”

“We can make Pampanga as an alternative place to do business outside of Metro Manila other than Batangas and Laguna. More investors mean greater income, more success, and more opportunities will open and continue for entrepreneurs resulting to higher employment,” she says with bullish confidence.

As we prepare to close this article, some breaking news – Ms. Timbol has been hailed “Asia’s Influential and Inspirational Female Business Innovator” at the Asia’s Influential Leader Awards held Feb. 16 at the Grand Ballroom, Okada Manila.

The business icon shines on. The Editor

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biz Icon 2023-Real Estate: Eloisa L. Valerio

 

A SUNRISE industry right at its inception, Solanaland Development Inc., true to the very meaning of its name, has since been unceasing in spreading sunshine wherever it homes in.  

Richmond Homes. Sunshine Homes–San Fernando. La Vista Solana. Two Solana.

Solana Country Homes. La Tierra Solana 1 and 2. Solana Frontera. Solana Zaragoza. Sunshine Homes–Angeles 1 and 2. Solana Casa Real. Twelve affordable, as well as premium, subdivisions developed in Pampanga alone, each evolving into a vibrant community.

Easily serving as template for other developers is its flagship project Solana Casa Real: A 43-hectare development along the Jose Abad Santos Avenue in Bacolor town comprising a chapel and function hall; pocket parks, pools and playground; and a commercial plaza housing grocery and hardware stores, a bank, pharmacy and wellness shops, a dental clinic, and eateries.

Location, location, location. The real estate agent’s mantra most manifest in Solanaland’s achievements, is as much a testament to the visionary entrepreneurship of Ms. Eloisa L. Valerio.

As company president, her presence impacts on every Solanaland project from its conception to its completion: taking charge of the design with a team of architects, and the construction with the engineers and builders. And even to marketing where she is hands-on too.

More than 5,000 housing units built to date, and the counting continues. No mean feat, indeed, for Solanaland since being rebranded from PMV Homebuilders Inc. established in 2006. The initials there referencing to life partner Primo M. Valerio. The couple holds 100% proprietorship of E.L. Valerio Realty engaged in the real estate development and marketing (medium scale) of townhouses, condominiums, and subdivision housing and development.           

It comes a surprise to developers and other realty stakeholders that the now celebrated lady of the Solana manor was not to the estate born – real estate, that is.  

With a BSBA degree – cum laude – from the University of the East, Manila and subsequently acing the CPA Licensure Examination, Ms. Valerio’s very first job was with the premier accountancy firm in the Philippines, SGV – Sycip Gorres Velayo. 

Thence, followed IT-focused posts at the Asia Computer Services Inc. and Union Carbide Phils. Inc., onto government – the Office of the Executive Secretary’s development management staff, Philippine Aerospace Development Corp. where she rose to vice-president level at the age of 26, and Tourist Duty Free Shops as general manager and COO.

Next stop: the luxury market. VP for marketing and planning of Rustan’s Commercial Corp., and GM of Stores Specialists, Inc., the country’s largest specialty retailer of signature brands including Salvatore Ferragamo, Polo Ralph Lauren, Cole Haan, Lacoste, Anne Klein, Nine West, and Marks and Spencer. And managing director of Bright Glory Stores, Inc., the operator of Chomel, a leading fashion jewelry and accessories brand retailer in Singapore.

Transitioning to entrepreneurship as co-owner of Tradex Innovations Corp. which is engaged in bank consulting and documentation services; and franchising three Greenwich Pizza parlors. Finally, into real estate as marketing director of Bes Minds Land Development Corp.

Ms. Valerio’s multi-faceted career is buttressed by equally myriad specialized studies: Executive, Leadership and Management Course from the Development Academy of the Philippines; Air Transport Management Course from the Asian Institute of Management; Risk Management and Insurance, Study and Observation Tour, International Risk Management Corp. and Lloyds of London, England; and various seminars on credit and collection, international trading, and foreign exchange risk management.

Even as she excelled in the retail industry, she “moonlighted” in housing build-and-sell which could have caused her to take the Real Estate Licensure Board Examinations where she emerged Top 2.

With her husband and another couple as business partners, Ms. Valerio’s first take on real estate was Earthrise Condominium, a mid-rise condo close to pasong Tamo in Makati that sold fast. The next, the Valerio couple did on their own – a subdivision for mid-income groups and OFWs in Muntinlupa City which, to their delight, sold as fast. Then, they decided to move to Pampanga.

And the rest, as cliched, is the continuing Solanaland saga.

Advocacies

It is not all about subdivisions though. Spreading sunshine inhered in its very name finds definition too in Solanaland’s corporate social responsibility and the Valerio family’s advocacy.

A story holds that while her husband built homes for the poor, Ms. Valerio, as senior member of the Couples for Christ established the Kapitbahayan Program for the ANCOP-Gawad Kalinga villages in Bagong Silang and Tala Leprosarium of livelihood programs for women like candle-making, doormat-weaving, cooking, and the establishment of a talipapa operated by a cooperative.

Ms. Valerio is co-founder of three foundations.

The Solanaland Foundation Inc. provides scholarship grants to children of Solanaland employees especially the construction workers. It also undertakes regular feeding programs for malnourished children in schools and in poverty-stricken areas, and in Aeta communities in Floridablanca and Porac, as well as medical care programs in far-flung Pampanga barangays.

At the time of the pandemic, it provided funds for the livelihood of displaced jeepney and tricycle drivers due in one Pampanga parish.

The foundation has even reached out to communities in distress outside Pampanga: donating and building homes in Marawi after the siege, donating artesian wells to a remote community in Nueva Ecija, providing solar lights to an isolated tribe in Mindoro.

Pampanga High School 1965 Foundation Inc. which, over the years, supported 350 high school students from 1^st to 4^th year high school, and some 200 scholars to UP, PUP, and universities in Pampanga. Beneficiaries also included batchmates funded for masteral degrees, and those financially challenged were provided 10 row houses for free. It also engaged in medical-dental missions and feeding programs in elementary schools in and around Pampanga.

For the alma mater, two infirmaries with medical supplies and beds; two toilets of 10 cubicles each; drinking fountains, books, and computers for the library; classrooms through donations solicited from the Chinese-Filipino Chamber of Commerce, and four rooms as center for livelihood for OSYs.

BES HNS Foundation Inc. comprising Beta Epsilon Sigma fraternity brothers and Hiyas ng Silangan sorority sisters – all UE alumni – principally aimed at providing scholarship grants, leadership training and improvement of written and verbal communications among its scholars. It also provides them assistance in their CPA Licensure Exams, and in job placements after graduation.

On her own, Ms. Valerio is a major contributor to scholarships for financially challenged but brilliant students primarily of PUP, UE-Manila, and UE Caloocan. The Editor

Biz Icon 2023-Fashion: Casa Moda by Mich Viray

HER CRAFT. Her name. One and indivisible. Famously loveable.

The toast of wedding events and bridal fairs, Angeles City’s couturier du jour Mich Viray is top of mind with the aisle-bound near and far.   

Established in 2009, Casa Moda self-described as ““wholly-owned Filipino garment business specializing in the design and manufacture of staple wedding attires and wardrobe for special occasions (bridal gowns and robes, entourage gowns, debut, evening and mestiza gowns, barong, tuxedo and formal wear); and has successfully expanded the business into diverse and comprehensive range of products and services such as hair and make-up, and dry cleaning.”

An all-too-modest generic profiling of the modista that made the cover of Wedding Essentials several times and featured in NOW Magazine, celebrating the sartorial splendor Casa Moda by Mich Viray bestows upon every wedding party it attired.  

Truly, an understatement on the couture atelier that has clothed beauty royalties the likes of Pia Wurtzbach, Gazini Ganados, Emma Tiglao, Leren Mae Bautista, Samantha Mae Bernardo, Aya Abesamis, Bea Patricia Magtanong, and Samantha Ashley Lo, as well as celebrities in entertainment, business, and politics.  

Innate modesty grounds Mich Viray even amid the exhilaration, if not intoxication, that success invariably brings – in the fashion industry most tellingly.  

While honored to have dressed up the stars to the nines, it is designing for the everyday woman – and man – that has given her even more valuable lessons and enriching experiences.

In the 2021 Wedding Essentials cover story, Mich says: “More than these iconic personalities, I also learned a lot in the process of dressing common people who trusted me wholeheartedly. They are the ones who taught me to be versatile and highly adaptable in the field of fashion.”

Furthering: “This is the reason why despite being in the industry for more than a decade now, I am still eager to innovate, unlearn traditions that are no longer applicable, and relearn modern contemporary designs that resonate with the Casa Moda brand.”

From classic sophistication to contemporary chic and everything in between, elegance defines Casa Moda couture – manifesting the skills, the craft, the meticulousness, indeed, the mindfulness devoted to every piece of work. Most of all, Mich’s investment of herself from the design to the delivery.

“It’s more than just a gown, it’s your persona.” Mich gets up close and personal with each client, spending time and attention to get to know not only their taste and preferences in style, but their very person. In the process, developing a vast client base and, more important, lasting friendships.

Mi casa es su casa. Casa Moda by Mich Viray has truly become as much for her work force as for her clients and customers. 

Mich speaks

AS A fashion designer, I advocate for the empowerment of women through my craft, especially mothers and those with a nurturing spirit, by providing opportunities for them to learn and earn at Casa Moda.

Balancing my roles as a wife, mother, and businesswoman, I strive to set an example of how women can pursue their dreams while managing multiple responsibilities. My advocacy focuses on creating a supportive and inclusive environment in the fashion industry, where women can thrive both professionally and personally, all the while making clients feel beautiful in the attires we make for them, helping to boost their confidence.

As well, I have dedicated myself to promoting inclusivity and diversity within the fashion sector, which ought to mirror a rich tapestry of our global community that embraces individuals from diverse backgrounds, sizes, and identities. My aim is to challenge the traditional beauty norms through my designs and creations in order to create an environment of greater inclusion and empowerment for the fashion industry.

 

 

 

 

Biz Icon 2023-Transportation: Riza A. Moises

 

SEAMLESS, HASSLE-FREE travel experience – as much a blurb appropriated for the Clark International Airport as a matter of fact to Genesis Transport Services Inc., the company that pioneered the premium P2P – point-to-point – bus service at the airport in 2017.

A parallelism, indeed, a symbiosis in growth obtains between the CRK and Genesis. In 2003, passenger traffic commenced at the CRK with chartered flights via Asiana. In 2004, Genesis already established a shuttle service between CRK-NAIA – this, during the airport’s fledgling years, when flights were few and far between.

And there was no looking back for both since. Not even during the Covid-19 travel restrictions, albeit on the barest minimal operations. The new CRK terminal opened in May 2022, mainly to overseas Filipinos repatriated by the pandemic. Genesis buses – subjected to all health protocols – provided the way from the airport to home, hospitals, or the quarantine sites. 

2023. Post-pandemic travel revenge bringing in more flights at CRK, Genesis ably serving increased passenger traffic, landside that is. At the nexus of it, Ms. Riza A. Moises, president and GM of Genesis.

Beyond P2P, Genesis operates three terminals in Metro Manila – Cubao, Avenida, and Pasay – with destinations in the provinces of Aurora, Bataan, Cavite, Nueva Ecija, and Pampanga, and Baguio City. Currently, it has a fleet of 600 buses with 150 more set to be delivered in 2024.

Genesis’ current stature as one of the 10 biggest bus companies in the Philippines belies its humblest beginning – in 1991 with all but five buses, readily ridiculed as “salagubang” (beetle) by the then well-established bus firms serving the Metro Manila-Central Luzon routes.  

Small as it was and constrained to save time in transporting passengers from Manila to their provincial terminus, Genesis dispensed with the MacArthur Highway and used the North Luzon Expressway avoiding the requisite stops in Bulacan and Pampanga towns enroute to Bataan. There, aptly if unintentionally, the genesis of P2P.   

How the salagubang has grown into a dragon in the transport industry – acquiring in 2010 Saulog Transit, the biggest bus firm in Luzon at Genesis’ inception, and in 2015 taking a slice of Dagupan Bus Co. it rebranded to North Genesis; even launching a premium carrier, JoyBus – bespeaks of the business acumen and executive leadership, aye, the hands-on entrepreneurship, of Ms. Moises who conceived, birthed, nurtured, grew, and still grows Genesis to even more flourish.

That Ms. Riza did not take even rudimentary units in a business course – she graduated with a mass communications degree from Maryknoll – makes the Genesis success story all the more impressive. 

In fact, she recalls with much amusement now, how in a clan of topnotch lawyers and doctors she was always deemed “the least likely to succeed.”

“You really don’t know how God can touch your life. Just have faith,” Ms. Riza says. “And share the blessings that come your way.”

Her mother’s daughter, the once intrepid journalist and local paper publisher has truly become – Mrs. Leticia Angara-Moises was for a long time director of the Department of Social Welfare and Development in Central Luzon, and retired as undersecretary.

Genesis established the Good Foundation in 2010 as its CSR arm. It is engaged in providing scholarship grants up to the tertiary level primarily to children of its employees.

At the time of the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions, when mass dismissal of employees became management mode for companies to stay afloat, Genesis kept its workforce intact on rotation basis, and provided for their most basic needs.

“The pandemic afforded us greater time for introspection not only on company business but even on our inter-relationships. We engaged in values re-orientation sessions for management and rank-and-file and have since incorporated these in our corporate life,” she shared.

More of paying it forward than a payback is Genesis’s donations of buses to local government units where it operates. To date, Pampanga and Bataan had received two units each, Baler and Borongan, Samar with one each.

Niched as it is in central and northern Luzon, Genesis sees no expansion in the immediate future elsewhere.  

“Our heart is well kept in Clark. Tremendous opportunities obtain here,” Ms. Moises said. “And New Clark City beckons.”   

 

Woman of the Year: Lourdes Josephine Gotianun-Yap

 

“THE FILINVEST Group expects to invest over P20 billion [in Clark] in the next five years.”

Less an optimistic expectancy than a given certainty did Filinvest Land, Inc. CEO and President Lourdes Josephine Gotianun-Yap declare as she broke ground in May 2019 for the first phase of the group’s 288-hectare township development, Filinvest New Clark City, envisaged as “an agent of change in shaping a stronger economy.”

“We see this as one of our most ambitious developments to date. We are determined to build a smart and innovative township that we believe will integrate a variety of industries and lifestyles, local and foreign,” averred Mrs. Gotianun-Yap.

Enthused then-BCDA president-CEO Vince Dizon: “Filinvest is one of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority’s pioneer and integral partners in NCC, as we share the vision of creating opportunities in a modern, smart, and green metropolis. We look forward to seeing this new project come to life.”

The ensuing Covid-19 pandemic notwithstanding, Filinvest Innovation Park (FIP)-NCC opened in October 2023 to locators, particularly companies involved in the fields of logistics, e-commerce, light manufacturing, and data center operations as it inaugurated its two-storey administration building and RBF (ready-built factories) zone. Earlier, in July, it already welcomed its first locator – Australian EV battery manufacturer StBattalion.

Echoed current-BCDA chief Joshua Bingcang: “Filinvest is one of the first to believe in NCC’s potential as the next economic hub of the Philippines. We are confident that in months and years to come, more locators will see the potential of FIP and the whole of NCC.”

Huge as its investments in NCC are, by no means are they the only blue-chip interests the Filinvest Group holds in Clark that “will definitely bring in a lot of employment that will benefit even residents outside the Clark corridor.”

There is the 201-hectare Mimosa+ Leisure City where sit Quest+ Conference Center and the famed Mimosa+ Golf Course; and currently in various stages of construction are a lifestyle mall, four residential towers, a retail strip, and a high-end residential project.

It was Mrs. Gotianun-Yap that led the Filinvest Group to the leisure and hospitality industry, starting its hotel business with the launch of the Crimson and Quest hotel brands - Crimson Resort and Spa Mactan in 2010 and Quest Hotel and Conference Center in Cebu in 2012, and subsequently Quest+ Clark.

There too is the Clark International Airport (CRK) which formal certificate of Notice to Start O&M (operations and maintenance) and the Operating Franchise Certificate were awarded to Luzon International Premier Airport Development Corp. at the time Mrs. Gotianun-Yap was president-CEO of Filinvest Development Corp., serving as lead consortium member of LIPAD, alongside JG Summit Holdings, Inc., Philippine Airport Ground Support Solutions, and Changi Airport Philippines Pte. Ltd.

In November 2023, CRK was hailed as one of the 24 World’s Most Beautiful Airports by the prestigious Prix Versailles, World Architecture Award. By the yearend, CRK logged in nearly 2 million passengers in 14,892 flights covering 11 international and 10 domestic destinations.

Only this February, CRK won the Routes Asia Marketing Awards 2024 for the Under 5 Million Passenger Airport category, besting contenders Cairns Airport, Australia; GMR Goa International Airport, India; Hat Yai International Airport, Thailand; and Sendai International Airport, Japan.

Spirit of RA 7227

Filinvest New Clark City. Mimosa+ Leisure City. CRK. With these, the Filinvest Group verily fulfilled – and continues fulfilling even more – the letter and spirit of Republic Act 7227 which created the BCDA and birthed Clark – then special economic, now freeport zone: The transformation of the former US military base into an airport-driven investment hub generating employment to spur parallel development among the contiguous communities and the greater Central Luzon region.   

At the center of these developments stood Mrs. Gotianun-Yap – the singular achievement defining her as Punto! Central Luzon’s Woman of the Year.

Indeed, a woman of myriad achievements way beyond this paper’s parochial Clarkview is the highly accomplished business professional with a career spanning over three decades since earning her Master's Degree in Business Administration from the University of Chicago in 1977 – by itself an achievement.

Woman of substance

Cliched as it is, Mrs. Gotianun-Yap fleshes out the full meaning of that compliment – of power, performance, positive influence and impact in a chosen field of endeavor. That she has accomplished much in the various key leadership roles in the Filinvest Group is thus an understatement.  

Among the most noteworthy was when, with her at the helm, Filinvest Land Inc.’s consolidated revenues grew 16% to P25.67 billion in 2019.

As FDC president and CEO, Mrs. Gotianun-Yap landed a spot in Forbes Asia magazine's 2013 list of Asia's 50 Businesswomen in The Mix, highlighting a select group of women who lead profitable companies.

Under her leadership, Filinvest was included among the top 10 companies in the world led by women CEOs and with the highest percentage of women executives, reported the Corporate Women Directors International, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.

Much earlier, in year 2000, she spearheaded the group that started the first IT campus in the country and Northgate Cyberzone was among the pioneers in the Philippine Economic Zone Authority that fueled the growth of the BPO industry.

Her sustainability efforts in partnership with Engie, a global energy and service company, established the country’s largest district cooling plant in Filinvest City which reduces carbon emission by up to 40%.

At the time of the pandemic in 2020, Mrs. Gotianun-Yap was recognized as one of the early movers from the private sector. She directed the contribution of the data warehouse by Filinvest to provide the dashboard tracking Covid numbers and locations. She served as a member of the IATF and contributed to the T3 (Trace, Test, and Treat) Program.

In 2021, Mrs. Gotianun-Yap made a bold call to go ahead with a listing of a REIT (real estate investment trust). As a result, at $236 million, Filinvest REIT Corp.’s IPO became one of the largest ever attempted on the Philippine stock exchange.

“I really had confidence in the portfolio, and it has proven to be most resilient, and it survived the pandemic,” she noted.

In 2022, property guru Philippines Property Awards hailed Mrs. Gotianun-Yap as the Philippines Real Estate Personality of the Year, the first female to be accorded the recognition.

"This is a testament to the decades of hard work and passion that Filinvest dream builders have poured into the growth of our businesses," she said of the accolade.  "It inspires us to double our efforts because we value the trust of every Filipino family who chose to build their dream with us.”

Indeed, Clark could not have chosen a better builder. And the greater Central and Northern Luzon area could not have been any happier.  

Notes from JGY

Sustainability is at the forefront of our developments, and we are grateful that Filinvest excelled in the Sustainable Development category…

Being the first Property Woman of the Year is also an honor, and highlights the importance of inclusivity, another hallmark of our company mission.

In the property industry, a large portion of both the development and the sales workforce are women. I believe that having a woman in the team can help understand individual needs and issues related to being working mothers and wives. [On being the first female Philippines Real Estate Personality of the Year].

He believes in surrounding himself with people who are smarter than him. And whether that person is male or female, it doesn’t matter, as long as they can deliver. [On her father espousing a culture of equality that she credited for her election as FDC president and CEO in 2003].

In a crisis where the enemy is not only invincible but unfamiliar, you need to be one step ahead. [On the pandemic].     

The goal of the Filinvest Group is to build sustainable businesses anchored on our vision of empowering Filipinos to attain their dreams…

We will maintain our strategic direction towards establishing synergies across our different business units and explore new but allied to the segments where we are currently invested in…

We are privileged to witness effective leadership in action, and we are encouraged to provide more recommendations being confident that they will not fall on deaf ears. [On private-public partnership].

We look upon the next decade as one of transformation and change - led by younger leadership, formed by new mindsets, inspired by ESG (environmental, social, and governance factors) goals, and facilitated by the new digital world…

 

CSF dishonors Oscar Rodriguez

ON MONDAY, Feb. 26, in what can be the culmination of the celebration of its Kaganapan 2024, the city government “bestowed upon San Fernando’s ‘Cityhood Heroes’ a day of recognition to honor ‘their significant contributions in the Cityhood journey.’”

“Leading the roster of awardees was former Mayor and Congressman Dr. Jesus Reynaldo “Rey” Aquino, who spent a certain three years of his life as a local chief executive campaigning non-stop in the Congress and the Senate for San Fernando’s cityhood.” So read the post in the social media page of the city information office, naming some significant others who were accorded due recognition.

“Atty. Oscar Rodriguez, who likewise served as San Fernando Mayor and Pampanga Third District Congressman, was also one of the awardees…” the post noted. Thereby, the city government utterly dishonored Rodriguez; relegating him to a mere footnote of the history he himself crafted.

Oscar Samson Rodriguez did not merely serve as city mayor and Pampanga 3^rd District congressman but can rightfully claim paternity over the cityhood of San Fernando.

Short in memory – it has been only 23 years since, and long in ignorance is the city government of an epochal instance in the history of San Fernando. It ought to hang its head in shame!

Against the caution of a well-meaning friend who said the collective intelligence at city hall today could be contained on the head of a pin, hence the futility of any discussion, I would still share this definitive narrative on the cityhood saga of San Fernando lifted from my book Oca: A Story of Struggle published in 2005.  

Fathering the City

ABORTED BY the threat of lahar after its very conception in 1995, miscarried – induced by the financial crisis – in 1997, and stillborn because of the 1998 elections. That was the wringer the dream of cityhood for Pampanga’s capital town went through.

“But for the persistence and dogged determination of Congressman Oscar S. Rodriguez, there would have been no birthing to the City of San Fernando,” says Redgie Salas-Szal, a member of the legislative staff that prepared the paperwork for cityhood.

Soon as the din of the 1995 elections died down, Oca, fresh from electoral victory, took with characteristic boldness the preparatory steps to the realization of his dream by immediately buckling down to work in preparing the bill at the House of Representatives to start the municipality’s campaign for cityhood.

Disaster came in October that year, with lahar rampages that buried Barrio Cabalantian, Bacolor and hit San Pedro Cutud, Sto. Nino, San Juan and threatened the very center of San Fernando.

The exigency of San Fernando’s very survival took paramouncy, and the preparations for the cityhood bill had to be shelved, albeit temporarily.

Battling, if not belittling the scepticism of national government officials – they that cried to “let nature take its course”” and called for the abandonment of the province – Oca maximized his efforts in saving Pampanga and San Fernando from the onslaught of lahar, mobilizing citizen participation in lobbying government for engineering interventions. The FVR Megadike stands today as a solid testament to these efforts.

Towards the end of 1996, when the province was assured of relative safety from lahar, Oca picked up anew the pursuit of cityhood. Alas, lack of support from the municipal government took the wind out of the cityhood sails.

Priority was still anti-lahar infrastructure and flood-mitigating measures. The all-important requirements for cityhood took the back seat in the municipal government. Eventually, the cityhood bill gathered dust at the House Committee on Local Government where it was referred after its filing.

Then in January 1997, intense pressure from a cross-section of the San Fernando community prodded the Sangguniang Bayan to pass Resolution No. 97-001 – sponsored by Councilors Eduardo Quiambao and Ceferino Laus – requesting the Congress of the Philippine through Rep. Oscar S. Rodriguez to convert the municipality of San Fernando into a component city.

A separate resolution for the Senate was unanimously approved by the SB a month later.

On April 23, 1997, Oca filed HB9267, “An Act Converting the Municipality of San Fernando into a Component City to be known as the City of San Fernando.”

But as the cityhood movement gained renewed momentum, the election season came. And as is the way of things in the Philippines, everything stops to give way to politics. Cityhood was lost in the cacophony of the election campaign.

Still, Oca would not just be denied: of his re-election, and his cityhood dream. He lost no time refiling the cityhood bill as HB1397, this time ensuring that the municipal government met all the prerequisites for cityhood, starting with the town’s barangay councils passing resolutions “strongly” endorsing the transformation of San Fernando into a city.

In a letter on July 6, 1998, Mayor Rey Aquino urged the SB to pass a resolution endorsing the conversion of the municipality into a city. Two short days after, Resolution No. 98-001, sponsored by Councilor Dennis Dizon, was unanimously approved. The cityhood resolution was endorsed to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan which subsequently made its own endorsement.       

San Fernando had no problem in meeting the other prerequisites to cityhood. It had a minimum population of 193,000 inhabitants at that time as certified by the National Statistics Office and the latest annual registered income of at least P53 million, based on 1998 prices as certified by the Department of Finance.

Oca very well knew that with cityhood, San Fernando’s annual income would further improve and basic services to the Fernandinos would be greatly enhanced.

Aside from the additional income and expanded services, Oca saw in the city greater local autonomy and lesser supervision from the national government. And the subsequent, if not consequent, independence from the province as a highly urbanized city and its entitlement to a separate legislative district in Congress.

For his part, Mayor Aquino formed an ad-hoc committee with Engr. Mike Quizon as head, and then started a town-wide cityhood information drive.

And then a new setback: the penny-pinching policy of the new Estrada administration dictated by international financial institutions for the country to cope with the Asian financial crisis.

Budgetary constraints forced the House of Representatives to suspend all impending conversion of municipalities into cities. Oca’s bill was not spared from the freezer; the city of his dream, on-hold in suspended animation.

But Oca’s tough-as-nails persistence just would not give up. Drawing from the wellspring of goodwill he cultivated through his years in Congress, and with the evangelical zeal of a Dominican on his first foreign mission, Oca moved his peers to see and share his dream. On third and final reading, March 9, 1999, the House approved HB6766 converting the municipality of San Fernando into a component city.

Transmitted to the Senate and presented to public hearing by the Senate Majority Floor Leader at the Senate Committee on Local Government, it took all of 13 days for Senate Bill No. 2192 converting the Municipality of San Fernando into a city to be approved.

On January 5, 2001, a historic event took place in Malacanang Palace upon the signing of Republic Act No. 8990 by His Excellency, President Joseph E. Estrada, creating the independent component city of San Fernando.

But the birthing pains persisted.

The usually warring local politicians, vested interest groups and cause-oriented militants succeeded in forming a tenuous alliance to mount opposition to San Fernando’s cityhood. Their main arguments of increased taxes, prohibitive social costs and dreary urban blights did not dull the sheen of cosmopolitan appeal of a San Fernando City. Never mind the “No more flooding, Yes to cityhood” inanity of the Mayor Aquino campaign.

Thus, in what amounted to a perfect preview of the May 2001 elections, the cityhood was ratified in the plebiscite of February 4, 2001 – and its father, Oca is given his just and due recognition.

YES, IT does not take too much intelligence to know this milestone in the city’s history. Not unless yours is that of a gnat.

Taking trikes off highways again, again, again

LAST WEEK, the Department of the Interior and Local Government press released its Memorandum Circular No. 2023-195 dated Dec. 6, 2023 enjoining local government units to undertake the reinforcement of the prohibition of tricycles, pedicabs, and motorized pedicabs on national highways.

A recurrent refrain from the DILG there displaying its abject failure at imposing its will on the LGUs.

Only in the previous dispensation, there was then-Interior Secretary Eduardo M. Año issuing a similar order, to wit: ““For safety reasons, no tricycle or pedicab should operate on national highways utilized by four-wheel vehicles greater than four tons and where normal speed exceeds 40 kilometers per hour.”

Año’s DILG Advisory No. 2019-0016 is but an iteration of DILG Memo Circular 2007-001, which in turn sprang out of Section 10 of Presidential Letter of Instruction No. 1482 Series of 1985 – harking back to Marcosian times – 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.”

Yeah, that is how long has this prohibition been ordered. And here I am, ranting and raving just as long at the inutility of all DILG orders putting trikes in their proper places.

Still, trikes lord over the highways – not to mention even the rural dirt roads and urban alleyways. Truly, they are the kings of the road.

A constant in all DILG orders: “Allowing them on main thoroughfares poses hazards to other motor vehicles, the riding public, and even to the drivers themselves.”

Hazards on the road, everyone knows that. Not the least the trike drivers themselves. Still, on any day, any hour of the day in fact:

Tricycles traverse stretches of the national highways in direct violation of the law, being confined only to crossing them.

Tricycles keep to the innermost – and therefore, fast – lane at processional speed holding traffic and raising blood pressures of drivers behind them.

At other times, tricycles – especially the lowered sporty types – turn the national highway into an Indianapolis 5000, unmindful of all other vehicles.

Tricycles are loaded to the roof with passengers and goods as they ply their merry way along the major roads and highways.

Tricycles have made street corners, many times even whole streets as their terminals, complete with sheds and karaokes.   

Include in this group too the padyak-sikels who virtually hold proprietary rights over city streets – making terminals atop bridges, counterflowing traffic at will, do pick-and-drop passengers wherever, whenever.

Want to undertake a study of anarchy in Pampanga’s principal cities?

Go downtown San Fernando from 6:30 in the evening onward and drive through a maze of jeepneys, tricycles and tri-wheelers parked, idling or slowly moving in all directions, in utter contempt of the right of way.

Personally, I have had three brushes with tricycles – each time I am on the right side of the law, but ending up just the same paying for the damages on my cars which ran to tens of thousands of pesos. The trike driver always going scot-free. Little, if perverse, consolation to me that on two occasions, the tricycles were total wrecks. ‘Dana.   

How did this come to pass?

Blame the laxity of law enforcers rising out of their fellowship – in Tagalog, kapalagayang-loob – with the drivers as members of the same socio-economic class.

Blame the timidity of local government units to enforce the law in view of the “solid votes” of the TODAs and JODAs. Which, in actuality, is more myth than might.

Blame that all too ready scapegoat for everything wrong in this country – the culture of impunity. As I extracted from an old piece here (Immunity index, June 21, 2012):   

Culturization though starts small, petty things, which often repeated, graduate to big things. Like the culture of the lie attributed to Goebbels: If a lie is repeated often enough, it becomes the truth.

Hence, if a wrong is done often enough, it becomes not necessarily right, but altogether tolerated, aye accepted as a no-wrong…

…[Jeepney and tricycle drivers] flout the law with nothing more than their stupid grins to flaunt, but nobody dares apprehend them. Not even reprimand them. And these are but the “small folk” far below the ladder of power and influence in local society.

If, in their “lowness” they can get away with these small violations, so can the high and the mighty get away with bigger violations…

…Ending the culture of impunity in this country should be invoked at each unpunished illegality, no matter how seemingly trivial.

Ending the culture of impunity in this country demands the draconian exercise of political will. By all persons in authority. With full respect to the rights of the people, but of course.

Will. Will not. A whale of a difference in the nut.

And we all know who’s that.