The hero in everyone

MERELY PAYING tribute to Rizal and Bonifacio, Mabini and Jacinto, Jaena, the Lunas and the del Pilars, Sakay, onto Abad Santos and Aquino, and all those who consecrated their lives to this nation hardly draws out the meaning of the National Heroes Day celebrations.

To take the full measure of the day, it is not enough that we commemorate what our heroes did. It is a requisite that we imbibe their spirit. It is a must that we match their deeds with our own.
No, I do not mean we should all die like them. As a smart-aleck once said: “There is one thing about heroes and saints that I don’t aspire to be – that is their being dead.”
Aye, heroism has since become the subject of humor, even the object of derision, in these unheroic times. As that common caution to the heroic goes: “Huwag ka nang magpakabayani. Binabaril yan sa Luneta.”
We don’t have to die, if only to emulate our heroes. They have done the fighting and the dying for our country. Our task is to live for our country. The song of our heroes for the Motherland is “ang mamatay nang dahil sa iyo.” Our song for her is “ang mabuhay para sa iyo.”
Dying for the country is the stuff of heroism. Living for the country is the essence of civic responsibility. Living for the country is our sacred call to duty.
Yes, Ninoy Aquino was right: “The Filipino is worth dying for.”
So are we equally correct: “The Filipino is worth living for.”
So how well have we responded to that call? How well have we served, and still serve our people?
For those in government, that call to duty assumes an even greater magnitude.
It is not uncommon to find in government people who value themselves as privileged by virtue of a padrino’s influence imposed on their behalf. Consequently, they feel no obligation to serve the public, or if they do so, they seek additional consideration as an entitlement.
It is not uncommon among government people to see a government post as a sinecure, an office that requires no work but pays off most handsomely.
It is not uncommon for government leaders to value themselves as Providentially-appointed and thus bequeathed with divine rights to wrong their constituencies.
With such misgiven commonalities in government, what service can still be rendered to the public?
For the public at large, the so-called civil society most specially, living-for-the-country goes beyond the perfunctory relief-giving in times of calamities, way beyond the routinary round-table discussions of issues besetting the people, way beyond the television soundbytes of commitment to the poor and the marginalized. Living-for-the-people is pure will found manifest in the act of tangibilities: of real service.
No, we are not called upon to render the supreme act of heroism. We are called to be true and faithful to our civic responsibility.

Good citizenship is the essence of heroism.

A DIGRESSION…
So what does it take to be a hero?
A foremost exercise in dialectics of my makibaka-‘wag-matakot youth was the question: Are heroes born or made?
Is heroism inherent in a person or does it rise out of circumstance? The latter has traditionally been the preferred position buttressed by historical epochs.
Without the American Revolution would there be a Washington? Without the Civil War, a Lincoln? Or Napoleon absent the excesses of the French Revolution? Could Turkey’s Ataturk have arisen without the Ottoman persecution? Or Lenin sans the Romanov’s enslavement of Russia?

At times, the heroic situation even reduced to the clash of human representations: Mao to Chiang, Farouk to Nasser, Batista to Castro, and yes, Marcos Sr. to Aquino Jr.
If memory serves right, I think it was Arnold Toynbee that provided the synthesis to hero-born versus hero-made contradiction, to quote liberally (from faded memory): “When he has in him to give, and the situation demands of him to give, he has no other recourse but to give.”
The essence of heroism inheres in the person and is drawn out from him by the circumstance. Both born and made is the hero then.
Even if one possesses all elements of heroism in him – generally thought of as intelligence, honor and integrity, courage, selflessness and commitment to a cause, self-sacrifice and love for others, if there is no situation that will warrant the extraction and expression of these elements – a triggering mechanism of sort – the hero will not come out of him.
That is the lamentation expressed in Gray’s Elegy in a church courtyard: “…Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air…”

Or Whittier’s grief: “For all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’”
(Extracts from past Zona columns on heroism)

Worth dying for?

TIME FOR some lookback for the meaning of this day, the 41^st year of the martyrdom of Ninoy Aquino. Here’s Part V of an essay on The Hero in History that appeared in my column Ingkung Milio in The Voice from late 1983 to early 1984.

Macoy or Ninoy?

THE IDEAL conclusion of revolutions is the liberation of the people. This liberation can come in various forms: from foreign or home-grown oppressors, from want and fear, from repressions of the basic rights of free speech, press, assembly, etcetera,
Now, if we believe that the ideals started by the Revolution of 1898 were continued and bore fruition in 1972;
If we believe that our people’s liberation was effected by Martial Law;
If we believe that President Marcos assumed all the ideals and aspirations of our people in his declaration of Martial Law;
Then, it is logical to conclude that Marcos is the Filipino Hero in History.
But do we believe in any of those basic premises?
For more than a decade we have been led to believe that everything around us is “the true, the good and the beautiful.” Thanks to the controlled media, we were spared the sordid realities of life in these islands where Asia wears a smile. Thanks to the manipulated press, our vision of this country for that period was constricted by high-rise hotels, networks of superhighways, beautiful edifices. The “development” of the City of Man was simply awe-inspiring, so mind-boggling that we were mesmerized to believe all that emanated from the Palace by the Pasig.

On account of these and more mind-bending bordering already on mass brainwashing, the general mass developed short-sightedness, rather, a myopic mindset – the people refusing to think beyond Marcos, failing to envision any alternative to the Marcosian thought, seeing impossibility to find any leader other than Marcos.
In a way, the ruling elite’s boast of no-alternative-to-Marcos was more hallowed than hollow. For the Opposition behaves like a bunch of Boy Scouts lost in the woods, each one wanting to take the whole troop to his chosen direction.
There was indeed a great need to unite the Opposition and subsequently form a common front against the regime. This by coming out with an alternative to Marcos. The more important thing though was to convince the people of the soundness of their alternative for their acceptance, and ultimately, support.
The call for national reconciliation by itself would have served as a call to arms. Its enhancement by the martyrdom of its firmest believer and foremost proponent adds the dimension of spirituality to it. By the assassination of Ninyo Aquino, national reconciliation transcended political lines.
To say that Ninoy’s martyrdom awakened the people is an understatement. It would be most fitting to state that Ninoy assumed the role of a political Christ whose Calvary did not only open the eyes of the Filipino people to realities but heightened their senses, strengthened their hearts and firmed up their resolve to attain liberation.
Events consequential to August 21 likewise provided an antithesis to the long-held Marxist thesis of class struggles. Current movement towards freedom, democracy and justice transcends status: plebeians and patricians, workers and capitalists – the traditionally warring factions have united in Ninoy.
All the rallies, political discussions and heightened conscientization of the people point to the direction of Ninoy in the process of being the Filipino Hero in History. Inasmuch as the process has no guarantee of successfully meeting its desired end, i.e. total liberation of the Filipino from oppression as catalyzed by Ninoy’s martyrdom, we cannot at this time say that Ninoy is our Hero in History. A hero in the company of Rizal, Bonifacio, Sakay, Abad Santos, he definitely is already.
Some years from now perhaps, history will pass a definitive judgment on Ninoy. As it shall pass the same on Marcos.
But even at that future time, the basic questions shall remain:
Who woke up the people from their deep slumber?
Who freed the people’s minds from imposed fixations?
Who liberated the Filipino from fear, from silence, from despair?
Who led the Filipinos to think, act Filipino?
Who brought back the dignity of the Filipino before the world?
A lot more are to be asked, countless questions shall crop up begging for answers. But there shall only be one answer, of two choices: Marcos or Aquino.
Take your pick: Ninoy or Macoy?
I already did.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx
A SHORT two years after this piece saw print, EDSA came. And the rest is history. Ninoy’s. And Cory’s.

Alas, it was not to be. The vicious cycle is unto our people anew. Santayana, indeed, of a people unlearning of its history condemned to repeat it.

Aye, a people dumbed is a nation damned.

 

Wanted: CSF flood czar

 

First responder at the damaged bridge in St. Jude Village, Engr. Marni Castro during Typhoon Ompong in Sept. 2018. 

DAYTIME OF July 25, the City of San Fernando downtown and the peripheral areas were waterlogged with torrential rains wrought by Typhoon Carina and the southwest monsoon.

Evening of August 1, sans any typhoon but with a two-hour downpour habagat alone precipitated, the city went down deeper and wider – Jose Abad Santos Avenue a virtual sea sorely in need of a Moses to part so vehicles could pass, MacArthur Highway a wading pool, Capitol Avenue a jetskier’s delight, Lazatin Boulevard a surfer’s paradise.

Yeah, the complete transformation of Pampanga’s capital city into a waterworld in just two hours of continuous rainfall.

Admittedly, the city has never been flood-free. But the breadth and depth of the floodwaters this week, not to say the frequency, is something that has not been seen or felt in years. So, what gives?

Alas, we remember Marni Castro – and weep. Grieving his demise in October 2021 yet, at this city’s every flooding since. Here’s Citizen Marni published in Punto! on Sept. 17, 2018.      

NO FLOODBUSTER, literally – his official moniker “anti-flood tsar” of the City of San Fernando at the time of the now much missed Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez notwithstanding – still, it’s Engineer Marni Castro that city residents in the know have come to turn to at every coming storm or heavy monsoon rain.

Thus, Saturday past with Typhoon Ompong still unleashing intermittent rains, Marni it was that I texted after a quick look-see at developing cracks on the small bridge to Phase 3 of St. Jude Village where I am domiciled.  

Marni had already assessed the bridge situation – the northern approach had caved in, onrushing water and mud already spilling on the flooded streets every which way, the nearby (uninhabited?) house of Mayor Edwin Santiago unspared – by the time I returned from an errand with the wife to a nearby drugstore. I found him coordinating immediate response on his mobile – mobilizing a backhoe and dump trucks to take out tons of debris that impacted the bridge, sending advisories to city officials, etc.

Affected residents and a team from CLTV 36 were milling around Marni with myriad fearful concerns over the situation when Mayor Santiago and VM Jimmy Lazatin arrived at the site less than an hour later.

The mayor readily deferring to Marni’s recommendations on the immediate to-do’s about the bridge just showed how much confidence the city government has invested in its premier volunteer worker.

Indeed, a volunteer of the highest order Marni makes, shooting to prominence – of the selfless kind – in the lahar aftermath of the Mount Pinatubo eruptions.

His off-roading skills were put to good use in rescue-relief operations at each onslaught of lahar from Porac to Bacolor. And even broadened now: at the onset of every typhoon or habagat, he mobilizes his off-roader groups to be on-call for rescue operations.

He went beyond being among the strongest advocates for the FVR megadike systems to actually monitoring – daily – its construction from the digging stage, to the filling and the armoring. No, he did not wangle any contract in any phase of the megadike erection. Why, up to this time he routinely takes the megadike road just to check its condition.

Marni was likewise among the brain trust that birthed the San Fernando-Sto. Tomas-Minalin taildike that helped saved the southern part of the city and the two towns from more destructive inundations. As in the megadike, he now pushes for the taildike to serve as a major road to from the capital city to Minalin, thereby easing traffic at the old provincial road through Sto. Tomas.

For a number of summers now, Marni has quietly coordinated the declogging of waterways linking San Fernando and the two mentioned towns to immediate, though, as yet incomplete, results – floods are much lower and subside faster in the city.            

That Marni has done much for the city – and Pampanga too – at all cost to him and none to the government and the people is beyond an iota of doubt. Unreasonable, otherwise.

His mantra says it all: “I live for a cause, not for applause.”

Come to think of it, what has he got for it?       

This then is but an affirmation of the badge of citizenship long bestowed on Marni Castro. Can anything be more honorable than this?   

ALAS, MARNI is no more and we all suffer the loss. Alack, the City of San Fernando has not found any need to find someone that can even just approximate him. To our torrential sufferance.

 

 

On CIAC Piracy: Arrey's arrogant alibi

 

                                                                    Photo: CIAC FB page

By The Editor

“CIAC IS proud to conceive of this project with the inspiration of the likes of the rising San Diego Sports Arena in California, as presented at the second Clark Technical Working Group on the Enhancement of the Utilization of Clark International Airport meeting.”

Sans an iota of remorse, all arrogance is the alibi to Arrey Perez, president of the Clark International Airport Corp., being caught red-handed in a virtual act of piracy – appropriating an image of Midway Rising – a mixed-use development in San Diego, California USA by SafdieRabines Architects – for the so-called planned Clark Arena “to be Taylor Swift-ready by 2028.”

CIAC’s pilferage was first called out by the country’s “premier architecture and design discussion group on Facebook,” Arki-Talk Pilipinas, subsequently going viral and landing a space in Punto! under the head Piracy becomes CIAC on July 14.

“There was no copyright infringement intended in the course of presenting the benchmarks of our project development process to like minds and peers among national leaders and private sector stakeholders,” CIAC continued in its FB post.

Pure Machiavellian goes CIAC here – “The end justifies the means.”

Inspiration and intention, in this instance, exculpating Perez’s piracy. Which, by no means hold any ground in logic or in law. And yes, ain’t it long been a truism that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”?     

If indeed, the “San Diego Sports Arena” formed part of the inspirations to the Clark Arena project, why was it not cited during Perez’s presentation? Why was the CIAC logo appended to its image used as the backdrop, without any reference to its origin?

And no copyright infringement “to like minds and peers among national leaders and private sector stakeholders” present during Perez’s presentation?

Piracy. Plagiarism. Infringement. Determined in the misdeed, not in the mind, Sir. 

Still, CIAC may have spoken too early, if inclusively.

DOT disassociates from Perez

The Department of Tourism on July 14 clarified what it called an "erroneous information" going viral that, it said, wrongly attributed the image used in the presentation of Perez to Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco, who happened to be photographed seated in front of the pirated image during the presentation.

“Neither the DOT nor Secretary Frasco were (sic) involved in the creation or delivery of these plans made and presented by Mr. Perez,” the DOT said, asking CIAC to confirm its assertion.

The DOT’s disassociation from any involvement in Perez’s plans and presentation may be coming from Frasco’s own traumatic experience with a similar incident of viral piracy about same time last year. 

July 2023 – the DOT generated global opprobrium with its tourism campaign video Love the Philippines using stock shots of rice terraces in Bali, sand dunes in the United Arab Emirates, and an aircraft landing in Switzerland passing them off as taken in the Philippines.

Incidentally, a DOT faux pas went virtual again this weekend with a travel poster at the NAIA mislocating the Banaue Rice Terraces in Benguet. The world wonder is actually in Ifugao.

As quick in apologizing for the misconduct of the ad agency DBB Philippines in its video campaign, the DOT has taken down the poster.

But not Perez. Bokya na, humihirit pa, as the tambay-kanto is wont to say.   

Give it to this CIAC top honcho though. The enthusiasm with which he sells the Clark civil aviation complex eclipses those of his predecessors combined.

Ardent, Perez definitely is. But not exactly frank and honest, alas!   

13 new flights at CRK 

Only this February 2024, in an event in Taguig where he was the featured guest, Perez announced the Clark International Airport would introduce new local and international routes during the year. These, he said, included Taipei, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Narita, Macau, Cheongju, Coron, Bacolod, Iloilo, Davao, General Santos, Cagayan de Oro, and Puerto Princesa.
Perez’s announcement was lapped up in the national media – Clark airport to open up 13 new routes (PDI-Feb. 3, 2024), Clark airport to open 13 new destinations this year (Financial District-Feb. 3, 2024), Clark airport wants to double passenger volume to 4M in 2024 (PNA-Feb. 2, 2024), to name a few. 

The editors should have known better than to oblige Perez’s canard. They could have easily clicked the same headlines and found that 25 days to a full year ago – Feb. 28, 2023 – Cebu Pacific expanded its operations at CRK with a combined 13 domestic and international flights: namely, Taipei, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Narita, Macau, Cheongju, Coron, Bacolod, Iloilo, Davao, General Santos, Cagayan de Oro, and Puerto Princesa.

The country’s leading airline even offered bookings on Feb. 27 to March 1, 2023, for as low as PHP1 one-way base fare, exclusive of surcharges and fees. Travel period is from April 21 to Oct. 29, 2023.  

What Cebu Pacific already accomplished, Perez, in effect, brought back to the future. Where had he been all year? Clueless over what has long happened in his own backyard.

CIAC holds oversight functions on the CRK, which is actually operated and maintained by the private consortium LIPAD (Luzon International Premier Airport Development) Corp. Now, how can anyone expect CIAC to pursue even but a modicum of that mandate if its president is oblivious to facts as simple as the coming and going of flights at CRK?

Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. Deceitful in one, deceitful in all. In the two cases of Perez, falsus in duo too. If only for this, Perez makes proof positive of the utter irrelevance of CIAC in the grand scheme of things in Clark.

His antics, but an aggravation of that fact. Made more glaring vis-a-vis the highly tangible accomplishments of LIPAD, Clark Development Corp., and the Bases Conversion and Development Authority in transforming the former bastion of US imperialism in the Far East into an engine of national development and gateway to the world.

 

Piracy becomes CIAC

          CIAC president Arrey Perez presents Clark arena project. Photo: CIAC

“COMMENCEMENT OF PROJECT DEVELOPMENT TAYLOR-SWIFT CONCERT READY BY 2028.”

So, read one backdrop in the power point presentation of Clark International Airport Corp. president Arrey Perez on the sidelines of the “Build Better More” Infrastructure Forum at the New Clark City on July 12.

While Perez has been harping on that 40-hectare P32-billion entertainment and events center as part of the 7-Point Agenda of CIAC for at least a year now, this was the first time that Taylor Swift’s name was connected to the project, instantly sparking speculations the so-called Clark Arena would be inaugurated by a Swift concert in 2028.

Perez, however, clarified with Philstar.com, that Swift’s concert was “is only the standard they will use to design and build the Clark Arena to attract major popstars.”

“I hope by that time when we build our complex ay reading ready na tayo i-host siya (Taylor) because the Philippines has always been a music-loving industry. Whenever there are international concerts laging pumapatok especially with Clark, very easy. Nandiyan lang ‘yung airport,” so Perez was quoted as saying.

Swift dreams, vaporizing as swiftly. Thanks, and no thanks, Arrey.

As though taking Swift’s name in vain were not enough, CIAC/Perez sinned mortally – appropriating an image for its “Taylor Swift-ready” arena and imprinting thereat the CIAC logo. Sans any other accreditation visible.       

It took the the country’s “premier architecture and design discussion group on Facebook,” Arki-Talk Pilipinas to call out this seeming piracy by CIAC.

“It seems that the backdrop is stolen from Midway Rising- a mixed-use development in San Diego California USA by SafdieRabines Architects. Another bad light for the Philippines.” Posted thereat were the CIAC backdrop – with Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco and LIPAD president Noel Manankil seated in front, and the original image watermarked “SafdieRabines Architects.”

                                         Photos grabbed from Arki-Talk Pilipinas FB page)

“Clark really needs also more attractions so that we can really attract more passengers, more airlines to the airport.” So, Perez rationalized his BBM Infra forum presentation.

Not by infringing on the intellectual property rights of others though. That is plain thievery. That is a felony, Sir.  

 

 

What's up in Mabalacat? Picture tells the story

 

Commentary

What’s up in Mabalacat?

MONDAY’S flag-raising ceremony at the Mabalacat City Hall grounds took the sound and fury – okay, electricity – of a “miting de avance” as majority members of the city council took turns in their passionate panegyrics of Mayor Crisostomo Garbo before placard-waving and hurraying city hall employees, JO workers, and capitan-herded barangay folk.

 

Shared vision for the city’s progress. Exemplary governance. Dedication to public service. Commitment to the city’s growth. Upstanding leadership. Positive impact on the city and the Mabalaquenians. Thus, the honorable aldermen veritably canonized, if not apotheosized, Garbo.

What gives? Why this sudden ostentatious obsequiousness to Garbo? When, for all intent and purposes, the mayor has always had the council – save for the filibustering maverick but always outvoted Marcos Castro Jr. – at the very palm of his left hand, with the right for the petting, er, patting. And nothing of this show of force was ever staged in hizzoner’s honor except in his campaign salvoes.  

No surprise, most naturally, was Castro’s invisibility at Monday’s event. But very conspicuous in his absence was Vice Mayor Gerald Guttrie P. Aquino, Garbo’s running-mate in his twin triumphs for the mayoralty.

Ay, there’s the rub.

Photo tells the story  

OVER THE weekend, New Media Pampanga posted in its FB page a photograph of renowned businessman-philanthropist Rodolfo “Tatay Bong” Pineda and VM Aquino making the thumbs-up gesture.

The accompanying caption said Tatay invited the vice mayor “for a casual meeting” at the Pineda’s Pradera Verde Golf and Country Club in Lubao town – rubbing in the importance of Aquino, if not the significance of the meetup, with the information that he “was transported via chopper from the Mabalacat City Hall Grounds to Pradera Verde.”

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” So, the truism holds. Hence, New Media Pampanga did not even have to post a caption with the photograph.    

“The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: ‘There is the surface.  Now think — or rather feel, intuit — what is beyond it…’ Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy…” Thus, Susan Sontag in her book On Photography. Hope we put the quotation marks right.

Boundless speculations – from the magnanimous to the malicious, limitless deductions – from the sapient to the senseless did, indeed, the Tatay-Aquino photograph invite.

The most telling being Aquino as the Pinedas’ new niño bonito. Meaning, Garbo’s political patrons have shunted him aside. Meaning, he has run the course of his three-terms, and if he insisted on running for mayor in 2025, will just go the way of his predecessor, once forever Mabalacat Mayor Marino “Boking” Morales unseated from the post he kept for 21 years, his candidacy deemed void ab initio for violating the term limit.

Garbo opting to put up his daughter, board member Win-Win, for the mayoralty with him running for vice mayor is out of the equation, insofar as the Pinedas are concerned. Besides, it smacks of Boking circa 2016 – withdrawing his candidacy in favor of his wife Niña and then substituting for her at the eleventh hour. That very act that sealed Boking’s political damnation.

Garbo giving way to a Win-Win Garbo-Christian Halili tandem will get no Pineda sanction. Aquino is the chosen. No possible motion for reconsideration.

More familial than political are the reasons that factored in Tatay’s adoption of Aquino as Pampanga’s first family’s bet for Mabalacat City. The vice mayor’s mother is Precy Aquino, nee Pineda of the city’s landed gentry.

Garbo’s fall out of the Pinedas’ graces started with the controversies that hounded the city’s multi-billion-peso loan from the Land Bank for a new city hall and city center that even merited a complaint with the Ombudsman and House hearings. Any whiff of corruption is verboten to the Pinedas. Neither can they ever countenance Garbo’s lavish lifestyle.  

Tatay approves, Geld Aquino wins!

“Abac na balen.”  A new day dawning for Mabalacat City.

Ah, what immense power a photograph wields!   

 

That POGO psyche

 

HIGH WALLS. Tall gate opening to a tree-lined driveway. Multi-slot carport. Sprawling well-manicured gardens. Mansion in the middle of a man-made lake.  Rows of villas. Swimming pool. Salon and spa. KTV bar and game rooms. Entertainment center. Helipad. Underground tunnel. Hidden firing range equipped with electronic controls for pistol and rifle targets.

In the movie in our minds, images of a Colombian drug lord’s lair, or an Italian mafioso don’s casa signorile. In the reality of Barangay Señora, Porac, Pampanga, the exclusive enclave of Chinese POGO bosses.

How did it come to this?

In the China of Chairman Mao, these POGO bosses would have been instantly branded “unrepentant bourgeois,” immediately denounced as “capitalist roaders,” and promptly damned and dispatched accordingly for their betrayal of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Alas, Mao’s long dead. Interred in the deepest recesses of his people’s collective memory, his thoughts and quotes hardly remembered.

To make matters worse – in the Maoist context – more emperor than communist party chair is Xi Jinping – indeed, the embodiment of the scourge that the Great Helmsman in his Circular of May 16, 1966: warned his people against: “Those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army and various spheres of culture are a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionists. Once conditions are ripe, they will seize political power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.”

With the sacred socialist creed abandoned, and compulsive capitalist greed enshrined, how else explain these Chinese behaving badly, be they in these POGOs or in the West Philippine Sea?