Denying dynasties

IT COULD not have transitioned to anywhere else. All that presidential blabber about dismantling the oligarchy naturally flowing to a confluence with the current of dynasties, political, as a matter of course.

Postulated Sen. Franklin Drilon: “The lack of an anti-dynasty system or provision in our system would allow oligarchy to continue... Oligarchy is bad for our governance, and therefore, as a policy, yes, we should adopt policies to prevent or dismantle these oligarchies.”

If only to impress the imperative of the task at hand, Drilon expressed willingness to cross political lines “to sit down with whoever the administration designates to work on and examine all laws, especially in governance, in order that the opportunity for oligarchy will be removed or minimized.”

Emphasizing: “One of those is the lack of anti-dynasty law.”

Anti-dynasty law. So, how many times has this been pushed in Congress, only to be pulled out, if not fall by the wayside, at each try?

Here’s a take nearly seven years ago, Nov. 25, 2013 to be exact, in this same corner – A voice most ungodly:

“TODAY IS a historic moment, if only because for the first time, this was approved at the committee level.”

So declared Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Neri Colmenares of Nov. 20, 2013, the day the Anti-Political Dynasty Bill (APDB) was approved – unanimously – by the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms.

A consolidation of three bills, the approved measure seeks to prohibit relatives up to the second degree of consanguinity to hold or run for both national and local office in "successive, simultaneous, or overlapping terms."

It also provides for the Commission on Elections to decide through lottery who in the clan would be permitted to run in the election in case none of the candidates in the same family refuses to withdraw.

The first attempt to legislate a solution to what has been deemed the scourge of Philippine politics was 18 years ago, a fact all too clear to those who are now ecstatic over the passage of the bill, if only at the committee level.

"The State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service, and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law." So, it is enshrined in Article II Section 26 of the 1987 Constitution.

All attempts to just cobble an enabling law, aborted at their very conception, the legislative bodies as much dynastic in their composition as the other layers of government.

So, what difference will it make this time?

"Power, both economic and political should not be held by just a few. We need to give a chance to others who are equally capable but do not have the opportunity."  

Estrada

So spake eloquently Senator JV Ejercito, author of the Senate version of the APDB, his motives readily suspect given his being a dynast himself: son of the deposed, convicted, pardoned President Joseph Estrada, now mayor of Manila, and former actress Guia Gomez, now mayor of San Juan; half-brother to Senator Jinggoy Estrada and uncle to the latter’s daughter, San Juan Councilor Janella Ejercito Estrada; cousin to Laguna Governor ER Ejercito and Quezon Province Board Member Gary Estrada.

Matter-of-factly thus, JV conceded that passing an anti-political dynasty law "may not be an easy legislative task."

"I'd like to make a stand as me because I'm after all the leader of everybody here and I want to be as hands off as possible and not try to push anybody. I'm in favor of it...I'm in favor of it if only because the Constitution says it."

Circuitous locution on the APDB there from House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. constrained as he is with a dynasty of his own:  only daughter Josefina aka Joy is the incumbent vice mayor of Quezon City, nephew Jose Christopher aka Kit is the city’s 6^th district representative.

"I want to put it on record that if there's, let's say, a situation where it's either she or me, I will yield...Let the youth take over.”  

That situation’s long time passing, Sir.

"I believe (APDB) will experience rough sailing but you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. We have already put up a big stone. It already passed in the committee level and I think that is something to be happy about but it's still a long way."

Belmonte dishing out a consuelo de bobo.

Binay

Senator Nancy Binay though takes to a different application of the anti-dynasty measure. Rather than family members in elective positions – being there by the sovereign will of the people and divine grace, it is those in appointive positions – merely serving at the pleasure of the powers-that-be, that should be subjected to the anti-dynasty scrutiny.

Binay says: “Dapat mas bantayan natin yung appointing members of one family in key and high positions of government." A not-so-cloaked reference to the Abads in positions of power -- Budget Secretary Butch Abad whose daughter Julia is head of the Presidential Management Staff. Not to mention his wife, Henedina representing the lone district of tiny Batanes but reportedly getting more priority development assistance funds than House Speaker Belmonte. 

No hypocritical civility but in-your-face bluntness becomes Binay when, invoking the supreme law of the land, she argued the APDB "may limit what the Constitution says about who can run.”

Articulating thus: “…if the person is elected then that is already the voice of the people. And what is the constitution about but the voice of the people. So why deprive the people of their voice."

And went a step higher to lay her case before the supreme being: “It may also go against the principle of vox populi, vox Dei.”

The voice of Makati, most precisely, given the premier city’s being a Binay fiefdom since the Marcos ouster, breeding the current Vice President of the Philippines who was many times city mayor, his wife who was once mayor, his son who is current mayor, his other daughter who is representative of the city’s second district and this senator daughter.

Ganyan sila sa Makati, ganyan din sa buong Pilipinas.

A matter of vox Makatii, vox dei there to me. As the voice of the people Binay referred to may well be the voice – not of God – but of their gods. Their god of goons, their lord of numbers, their lord of celluloid illusion, at one time their glorious goddess of the tapes, and of currency, the almighty epal.
Hear then this caveat all the way out of the 8^th century from the English scholar and theologian Alcuin: “And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”
Yeah, most fitting to the Philippine praxis of democrazy.  

INDEED, SO how fare today the dynasts referenced in this piece?

Not one of the Estradas survived the elections of 2019, losing even the family’s political heirloom that was San Juan.

The Abads long wiped out too, coterminous as they were with their patron, the BS Aquino III.

The Belmontes still have Joy in QC and Kit in the House.

Of the Binays, Nancy still sits in the Senate and Abby is inheritor of Makati, triumphant over brother Jun-Jun in a bitter sibling rivalry. Jejomar, failing in his presidential run in 2016 and in his congressional try in 2019.

So, how many other political families were deprived of their long-held turfs in 2019 alone?

And how many have survived, indeed, even enlarged their domain?

Come easily to mind here: Duterte, Cayetano, Villar.

Which only goes to show that dynasties rise and fall on their own merits, or lack thereof. The people – enlightened and resolute – ultimately deciding their fate, denying their perpetuity.

No, I am not the least implying there’s no need for any anti-dynasty law.

I am just leaning on the pragmatic side of things political here.

Deconstructing oligarchy

“GANUN NILA nilaro ang bayan ko. Kaya ako mamatay, mahulog ang eroplano… I am very happy. Alam mo bakit?... without declaring martial law, I dismantled the oligarchy that controlled the economy and the Filipino people.”

So, President Duterte triumphantly trumpeted in a taped speech before soldiers in Jolo, Sulu aired Tuesday by government TV.

Coming in the wake of the House of Cayetano denying ABS-CBN a fresh franchise, at least two implications can be drawn immediately from the president’s remark: one, it was the Lopezes that he referenced as “the oligarchy,” and two, he did his hero one better – Marcos had to go to the full measure of declaring martial law to (ir)rationalize the shutdown of ABS-CBN, Duterte did it on a whim. That Congress most expeditiously obliged. Verily, Rodrigo’s wish is Alan Peter’s command.   

On the first deduction, quick was presidential blow horn Harry Roque to finger Lucio Tan, Manny V. Pangilinan, and the Ayala clan as the “oligarchy” his boss said he “dismantled.” Not the ABS-CBN owners.

On the second, Harry apparently had no clue.

Anyways, Roque’s blowby makes Duterte’s trumpeting for all that it really is – all hot air.

LT Group has not budged a millimeter from its interests in tobacco, spirits, banking, property development, aviation, etc.

MVP sits supreme over conglomerates in telecommunications, power distribution, energy, water concessions, tollways, hospitals and health services, mining, and media.  
The Ayalas’ eponymous empire of malls, real estate and land development is established throughout the country, so are their interests in banking, water and telecommunications.

Absent the slightest totter, as much financially as physically, in all three, pray, tell, what or who has Duterte dismantled?

Oligarchs "take advantage of their political power," Duterte also said in his taped speech.

We cannot agree more with Duterte there. Seeing the proofs positive all around him – drumroll please…  

The Villars – Cynthia the senator, Camille the congresswoman, Mark the overlord of Build, Build, Build, and ex-House speaker and ex-Senate president Manny the billionaire.

The Cayetanos – Pia the senator, House speaker Alan Peter and wife Cong. Lani of the same home but separate districts, and Lino the mayor.

The Marcoses and Romualdezes.

And, not the least, the Dutertes themselves and their cronies.   

Now, if there are oligarchs that really need deconstructing, the president may look no farther than the tip of his nose.

"Every election noon o sa ngayon o bukas sabihin nila sa isang kuwarto lang ‘yan, ‘O ‘adre, sinong kandidato natin ngayon? O ikaw diyan, ikaw ang bahala sa ano ha, you raise the funds.'" Aye, Duterte knows whereof he speaks. All too well.

Once tragedy, now farce

AY, THE curse of dotage could have started setting upon one, this fast ageing one. Current issues warranting fresh and forward macro perspectives almost always  get retro views through the prism of micro memories.

One starts to write. Into the third paragraph, he stops: Haven’t I written, even rewritten, something akin to this issue before?     

So, one digs into his memory bank – what the brain failed to keep, thankfully the hard drive and the blog faithfully store, fresh as the day posted.

Like, the Anti-Terrorism Act now likened to the Marcosian martial law, thus – from December 7, 2009:  

YOU DON’T use a .45 to kill a fly.
I remember reading that from a mimeographed sheet that came out of Fort Bonifacio in 1972 shortly after Ferdinand Marcos put the entire archipelago under martial law. The statement was supposed to have come from the incarcerated Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino.
Ninoy’s contention was that martial law was an inappropriate reaction, nay, an overkill, to the socio-economic and political problems besetting the country.
Summed up Proclamation 1081: “…WHEREAS, the rebellion and armed action undertaken by these lawless elements of the communist and other armed aggrupations organized to overthrow the Republic of the Philippines by armed violence and force have assumed the magnitude of an actual state of war against our people and the Republic of the Philippines;
NOW, THEREFORE, I, FERDINAND E. MARCOS, President of the Philippines, by virtue of the powers vested upon me by Article VII, Section 10, Paragraph ('2) of the Constitution, do hereby place the entire Philippines as defined in Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution under martial law and, in my capacity as their commander-in-chief, do hereby command the armed forces of the Philippines, to maintain law and order throughout the Philippines, prevent or suppress all forms of lawless violence as well as any act of insurrection or rebellion and to enforce obedience to all the laws and decrees, orders and regulations promulgated by me personally or upon my direction…”
“An actual state of war” against the republic, Marcos justified his martial law. A perpetuation of himself in power, so Marcos did with martial law...

Don’t the premises for martial law bear uncanny, terrifying, resemblance to the grounds upon which the Anti-Terrorism Law is grounded?  

Invoked as justification is the rule of law: As with Proclamation No. 1081, so too with the RA 11479.  

Of this, what has one to say he has written in January 2006, not here in Punto! but in the long Pampanga News, thus:

…THE RULE of law. How many crimes have been inflicted upon the people in its name? To prevent anarchy in the streets and restore the rule of law, so Marcos’ proclaimed martial law. To prevent disruptive rallies and restore the rule of law, so Macapagal-Arroyo issued those EOs...
… the “rule of law” that was invoked by a compliant, if not kowtowing Congress, was a rule, yes, but not of Law. It was simply the rule of numbers.
Consider these universal givens:
Stripped to its essentials, Law is a “function of Reason,” as Aquinas put it. Kant furthered: “the expression of the Reason common to all.”
Law is “the rational or ethical will” of the body politic; “…the principal and most perfect branch of ethics,” as the British jurist Sir William Blackstone wrote in his Commentaries.
… the subsumption of a moral inquiry, nay, its nullification on mere technicality, no matter how “legal,” is a travesty of Law. As factored in the above-given “truths.”
Aquinas, still in Summa Theologica: “Laws enacted by men are either just or unjust. If they are just, they have a binding force in the court of conscience from the Eternal Law, whence they are derived…Unjust laws are not binding in the court of conscience, except, perhaps, for the avoiding of scandal and turmoil.” Touche. But, really now, has conscience a place in Philippine political praxis?
The “rule of law” in its application hereabouts takes primary place among those that a forgotten jurist said were “…laws of comfort adopted by free agents in pursuit of their advantage.”
Time for us all to reflect on “the doctrine that the universe is governed in all things by Law, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.”
And to those misnomered solons: “To interpret the Law, and to bring it into harmony with the varying conditions of human society is the highest task of the legislator.”

Aye, the lessons of history, if only in quotes, long committed to memory still persisting --

There is no present or future – only the past happening over and over again – now. – Eugene O’Neill.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  – George Santayana.

And, to the point in matters Marcosian and Dutertian: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. – Karl Marx.

PAGLILINAW: Opo, ako po ay aktibista noong martial law. Periodista naman po ako ngayong Anti-Terrorism Law. Nguni’t kailan man po ay hindi ako naging terorista.

.

Bond of brothers

FERVENT HOPE and ardent wish to see a son become a priest.

That, every Kapampangan mother – Catholic naturally – held so dearly, up to my generation, at the least.
It took all reasons to send a boy to the seminary: the most prayerful in the brood, the most well-behaved among siblings. And unreason too: the least good-looking, warranting unattractiveness to women, and therefore deliverance, nay, preclusion from temptation.
The Cursillo Movement in the ‘60s stirred nascent vocation in most men through the three-day rigorous rollos-prayers-mananitas-meditation spiritual package, including that ritual called dos-por-dos: one-on-one encounter with the image of the crucified Christ in a darkened room where the hardest of hearts melted in repentant tears, absolved in penitential wails.
Invariably, new men aborning from the De Colores experience exhibited the evangelical zeal of Paul, post-Damascus Gate. Disqualified automatically by celibacy, these fathers turned to their sons to pursue their sudden epiphanies. Hence in 1967, a total of 72 young boys entered Infima Class at the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary in San Fernando, the biggest batch ever, none coming anywhere near it since.
Inured – not simply exercised – in the Greek ideal of mens sana in corpore
sano, boys morphed to men: the intellect honed in rhetorics and mathematics, in the sciences and the classics with the liturgical lingua of Latin taking all of four years through Ars Latina, De Bello Gallico, Cicero, onto Aeneid and Ars Poetica; and the body made fit in daily ball games, in regular long hikes called ambulatios and periodic Mount Arayat climbs.
The nobility of menial work celebrated in and inculcated through manualia and laborandum – regular clean-up of the chapel, dormitory, lavatories, classrooms, and the seminary grounds.
And, but of course, the spiritual formation: the cries of “Benedicamus Domino” answered with “Deo gracias” upon waking, lauds in early morning followed by the Holy Mass, recitation of the rosary at noon, the Angelus at dusk, vespers and reflection after dinner, capped by Salve Regina which came to be regarded as the seminarian’s lullaby. All these in a day. Every day, throughout the five years of minor seminary...

I AM my brother’s keeper.
That may well define the relationship among former seminarians of the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary in the City of San Fernando, Pampanga. It is a relationship that cuts across generations of the many who were called and the few who were chosen to spend their formative years “beneath the mantle blue” of the Indu ning Mayap a Usuk: whether it was in Guagua, where the then Mater Boni Consilii Seminarium was birthed in 1950, in Apalit where it relocated, and – in 1963 – in its final and present site as the Anglicized MGCS.
Togetherness – in prayer, in study, at play, even in sleep in a common dormitory – provides the thread with which the beautiful quilt of that relationship is knitted. No matter the stiffness of competition for scholastic honors. Notwithstanding the physicality of contact sports like basketball, and in our time – thanks to Bruce Lee – the martial arts.
A fraternity – but not in the sense of the Greek-lettered kind – ours is a brotherhood that traces its lineage to one single mother: Our Lady of Good Counsel, to whom we profess a life-long devotion.
From “infancy” at MGCS – that is Infima for the first year, the brotherhood is established when a senior seminarian serves as an “angel” to the newcomer called the “soul,” the former teaching, guiding and helping the latter adjust to seminary life.
Seminarians may not remember their “souls” – one may have as many as four in his stretch of five years at the minor seminary, from his second year or Media onward to Suprema, Poetry, and Rhetorics. But they most certainly will not forget their “angels.”
Rising out of this angel-soul affair is yet another familial tie-in, the Big Boy-Small Boy kinship. All seminarians senior to one are big boys; all the juniors, small boys. The latter are fated to follow the orders of the former. The pecking order of things is strictly followed even today among inter-generational groups of former seminarians, wherever they may gather.
From this bonding naturally evolved a strong support system among the “ex-sems,” whether here in the Philippines or in the United States where the alumni associations are most vibrant.
Acquiesce consiliis meis. Follow my advice. More than a motto inscribed upon the seal of the MGCS, it is at the very core of our devotion to our Mother.
Every alumnus takes to heart the hymn of his youth, especially that part: “…in my doubt, I fly to thee for guidance/Mother, tell me what am I to do.”
In times of differences and misunderstandings, even in instances of conflict among us, it is to our Mother, the mediatrix that she is, that we appeal for resolution.
Aye, the opening strains of Salve Regina, are enough to cool the hottest of passions, and by the time we reach the lines “Eia ergo, Advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte..” all pain is soothed, all emotions calmed, and everything is right. Indeed, “O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria.”
Aye, owing to our Mother, ours is no mere band but a bond of brothers.

(Past writings on seminary life blended in time for the 70^th Foundation Anniversary of the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary this July 4.)

Cong, forever

He would have been 86 this June 28, and certainly happiest celebrating it with his Carmelo Jr. at the Angeles City hall, and his Carmelo II representing the first district of Pampanga in the House, both positions he alternately held for multiple terms.  

The simultaneous triumph at the May 2019 polls of his two sons, five months after his death, is -- to most, if not all political observers here – grounded on the legacy of Carmelo “Tarzan” Lazatin. A sketch of which I dared to draw in this piece published June 27, 2016, exactly four years ago today which in turn cited an even earlier column dated June 12, 2011.    

NO OTHER representative of Pampanga, past and present, has earned the title “Cong” as much as Tarzan Lazatin. Fact is, he has virtually exercised proprietary right over that honorific, that even out of the House, he is still hailed as Cong Tarzan.

Why, even in his incumbency as mayor of Angeles City for three terms, he was addressed as Cong. Not that his executive performance paled in comparison with his legislative record. It was but the way it was. Or maybe, some subconscious interplay there, given that Tarzan perfect in his five congressional campaigns – 1987, 1992, 1995, 2007 and 2010 – suffered his two electoral losses in the city mayoral contest – in his first political foray in 1980, and in his last try in 2013.

Did I say last? So, sorry. At 82, this June 28, Cong Tarzan has already set his sights on the chairmanship of the city’s premier barangay of Balibago this October. (He won, but of course.)

Should the city brace itself for Barangay Captain Cong then?

Whatever, the Cong will surely remain an essential constant in Tarzan. As I may have predicated, rather than predicted, in this Zona of June 12, 2011 titled The compleat Cong:

PERMANENT CHAIR of the comite de silencio in Congress.
That long-time ridicule from his political rivals ironically birthed the sublime in Pampanga 1st District Rep. Carmelo Lazatin.
That by his deeds, Cong Tarzan eloquently speaks is most manifest in his three terms in the House from 1987, his three terms at the Angeles City hall from 1998, and his current second term back at the House. Political longevity not even his close ally, the term-limit-busting Mayor Boking Morales of Mabalacat, could come close to.
That, indeed, “solon” goes beyond mere honorific to assume its essential meaning in Cong Tarzan is affirmed in his elevation to a hall of fame of outstanding congressmen by Congress Magazine and the Global News Network.
No mean feat that in but one term, Cong Tarzan authored and co-authored 187 house bills, seven of which were enacted into law: RA 9513, the Renewable Energy Act; RA 9502, the Cheaper Medicine Act; RA 9497, the Act Crating the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines; RA 9645, Commemoration of the Founding Anniversary of the Iglesia ni Cristo Act; RA 9779, the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009; RA 9729, the Climate Change Act of 2009; and RA 9710, the Magna Carta for Women.
And more of the same, impact bills, a year into his second term.
House Bill 4370, An Act Causing the Construction of Sanitary Landfill in Every Province of the Country, the Lifting of the Ban on Incinerators, Amending RA 9003 and RA 8749.
“The creation of landfills is a long-term solution to the growing waste problem, while incinerators provide immediate and medium-term solutions,” Cong Tarzan said in his explanatory note, stressing that the incinerators should be “at par with those used in Japan…zero emission of harmful gas coming from the burning of garbage.”

Curbing cybersex

House Bill 1444, the Anti-Cybersex Act which seeks to check the widespread incidence of prostitution and pornography in the Philippines that reaches every part of the globe through cyberspace.
“Unless rigid measures are founded against these abuses, society will bear the social costs since proliferation of obscene and pornographic materials and rampant exhibition of lewd shows in our midst have threatened the moral fibers of our society…“Amidst all of these are the youth who are the heaviest users and primary audience of mass media. If left unrepressed, these obscene practices will impose their detrimental effects psychologically, morally and physically. Hence, there is an urgent need to intensify the campaign against cybersex given the numerous studies that point out to higher correlation of exposure to pornography, prostitution and incidence of sex crimes.”
So presented Cong Tarzan the rationale of his bill that also proposed punishment with penalty of not less than P.5 million but not more than P1 million and imprisonment ranging from 20 years to 30 years for the producer, financer, promoter and manager of cybersex operations; and by not more than P250,000 and imprisonment ranging from three to six years on performers and exhibitors of cybersex.
No less than the Most Rev. Pablo Virgilio David, auxiliary bishop of San Fernando, hailed the legislative action: “It’s a welcome move to stop cybersex with the house bill. It’s a global problem. We need consolidated efforts. Any move against cybersex is laudable.”
House Bill 6644, Act Limiting the Amount of Bags Carried by Children in School and Implementing Measures to Protect School Children’s Health from the Adverse Effects of Heavy School Bags.
“Pupils are supposed to listen to their teachers in school, and read their textbooks at home. In the end, having pupils carry heavy load to school will be counterproductive, with many of them physically deformed as adults. Heavy load in school could be one reason why so many now suffer from spinal injuries, including slipped discs.” So Cong Tarzan said citing various studies including those of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) on the ill effects of making school children carry bags more than 15 per cent of their body weight.
As his bill remained pending, Cong Tarzan appealed to school officials throughout the country to abide by it as the school year opens next week.

Fathering cityhood

What can well be the landmark legislation in Cong Tarzan’s second term, arguably in his whole career as representative, is House Bill 2509, Act Converting the Municipality of Mabalacat into a Component City to be Known as Mabalacat City.” Of these, much has been written about. And we shall leave it at that. (Yes, Mabalacat became a city – by the grace of God, by the sovereign will of the people – and by the act of Tarzan, if we may add – to paraphrase the ejaculation of then Mayor Boking Morales.)
Beyond his legislative duties, Cong Tarzan is hands-on in looking after the welfare of his constituents. A random rundown now of recent benefits that came their way: 25 service vehicles worth P7.1 million “to ensure mobility of our leaders who are tasked to serve their people,” and more coming until all 85 barangays in the 1st District have one; and the P29-million Sapang Balen-Bical Road in Mabalacat; increase in the number of Lazatin scholars.
Equally at work in the House and in his district, the quiet achiever goes. So ingrained in his constituents is Cong Tarzan that all it takes for him to win in any election is for them to know that he’s running.

And more

EVEN ALREADY out of the House in 2013, Cong Tarzan continued delivering. His pet bills: House Bill No. 4450 – seeking the conversion of the Pampanga Agricultural College (PAC) in Magalang town into a state university – signed into law by President BS Aquino as Republic Act 10605 – with the former PAC now known as the Pampanga State Agricultural University; and Republic Act 10582 – creating six additional branches of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Angeles City, rising out of a bill he filed on January 29, 2013 requesting for the creation of the courts, which on that very day was  referred to the Committee on Rules, a Committee Report was made, and then calendared for reading.

And went on a smooth sailing that in five months was enacted into a law. No mean feat for legislative work there. But Lazatin is no Tarzan if not for this.

As the Cong is wont to say, En seguida, ahora mismo, larga!

   

Pinatubo's forgotten hero

BY CALAMITY defined.

No, not for having caused the calamity but for facing it, taking its full brunt, and rising above it. Thus, Mayor Roy David of Porac, Pampanga found his defining moment in the Mount Pinatubo devastations consequent to the eruptions.

Buried in the volcano’s vomit, besieged by the onslaught of lahar rampages, Porac turned into a ghost town, ready to be abandoned by the national government as catch basin for all pyroclastic flows from Pinatubo. A sacrifice worthy of a holocaust to appease nature’s deity, in this case the Aetas’ Apo Namalyari, for the salvation of the rest of Pampanga.

But no, David would have none of all the talks to “let nature take its course,” and with it, give up all hopes for Porac.

The town cut off from its then-principal economic lifeline that was Angeles City by the chasm that the Pasig-Potrero River had become, David made the impossible passable in a variety of ingenuous means as the truck-mounted metal contraption euphemized as the “London Bridge” (as in the song, “falling down, falling down” sans a fair lady in sight though); the lined-up, sandbag-filled container vans serving as bridges; the sugarcane trucks providing piggy-back rides to smaller vehicles; as well as the immediate scraping and dredging of the riverbed after each lahar passing. Earning for the mayor the uncontested moniker “Lahar Fighter.”

Beyond the devastation of his town, David saw the impending swamping of the municipalities downstream from what he then called “the vantage point of geography and mandated by the law of gravity” – the elevation of Porac higher than that of San Fernando, Bacolor, Guagua, down to the even lower lying towns of Sto. Tomas, Masantol, Macabebe, and Sasmoan.

Guiao

Sharing his insights during a meeting of mayors and Gov. Bren Z. Guiao, David was readily ridiculed as the boy who cried wolf for his insistence that lahar, which within the first months of the eruptions have already devastated his whole town, would ultimately inundate the capital town and all areas downstream Pasig-Potrero.

“E mu ke piyabe-yabe keng problema mu,” was how the mayors dismissed David’s alarums.

It was about this time too that Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology director Raymundo Punongbayan broached the foreboding scenario of a Pampanga buried in lahar, duly reported by Ding Cervantes in the Philippine Star.

Only to be abruptly denied by Punongbayan after some closed-door encounter with Guiao and the local businessmen, thereafter issuing certification of the capital as “safe from lahar.” This, so as not to panic incoming investors and those transferring from Angeles City which bore the brunt of the initial eruptions.  

Left veritably alone to fend for his townspeople, David thereafter found an ally in his townmate then-Vice Gov. Manuel “Lito” Lapid who shared the same sentiment of saving Porac from physical obliteration at all cost. This turned into the cause that sparked Lapid’s gubernatorial run that subsequently buried Guiao in an avalanche never before seen in Pampanga politics. But that is another, if closely related, story.

Diking, dying

“To dike is to die.” Came the cry that reverberated across the province, reaching Imperial Manila, in spirited opposition of the townsfolk against the enclosure of Porac within a diking system that would have buried the whole town.

And with the highly popular Lapid at the Capitol, the wholesale consignment of his town to oblivion was stayed.

This, even as David’s warnings proved prescient with the first lahar flows reaching villages in Bacolor, right at the fringes of the capital town.  

It was the turn of the mayors and the businessmen to raise the alarm – crying “Time to Panic” they mobilized rallies and marches in San Fernando, one virtually on the eve of the Cabalantian tragedy of October 1, 1995 that turned panic into raw terror.

“To dike or to die.” So morphed the cry of Porac with its arrogation by the Save San Fernando Movement to themselves, joined in by the other towns’ copycatting  save movements as well as the province’s own.

This time, the object of their supplication being a megadike system that shall effectively contain and control lahar movement in the Pasig-Potrero River.

Credits

To give full credit to the save movements, notably San Fernando’s, for the erection of the FVR megadike – as what contemporary narratives have come to tell, the accolades getting grander at every retelling – is not only to revise history but to halve the truth. It is to deny the contribution of the hundreds of other individuals and groups that worked as hard and long, if not even harder and longer, for the megadike to come to concretion, literally and metaphorically.

There were the people of Bacolor led by Mayor Ananias Canlas Jr. and parish priest Rev. Fr. Sol Gabriel who made the most sacrifice with the greater part of the megadike occupying their town.  

There was the Mount Pinatubo Commission led by its executive director Tony Fernando. The public works people from Secretary Greg Vigilar to his Pinatubo point man Florante Soriquez and his engineers Sev Enriquez and Lita Manalo – whatever unsavory things may have been written about them – and yes, Rafael “Pye” Yabut.

There were the “good” contractors and constructors that did not come short of, but even exceeded, the specifications of construction. Yes, Marni Castro – dubbed Mr. Megadike, distinct and separate from the movement he was member of – for doggedly making sure the constructors did as programmed.

There was Sen. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Cong. Oscar Rodriguez who took the cudgels for Pampanga in both Houses. San Fernando Mayor Rey Aquino, Angeles Mayor Ed Pamintuan and Cong. Tarzan Lazatin too. Lest we forget, Cong. Zeny Ducut, Pampanga Mayors League president Lubao Mayor Lilia "Baby" Pineda, Vice Gov. Cielo Macapagal-Salgado.

There was by then former Governor Guiao, in situ in Malacanang as chair of some movement called Kabisig, within earshot of the President.  

There was Lapid with his famous impassioned “sardinas” plea to President Ramos – a euphemism for the P555 million to start the construction of the megadike. (555 Sardines, anyone?). And then there was – backstopping and brain trusting Lapid in anything and everything that had to do with Pinatubo at that time – none other than Mayor Roy David.

And most assuredly, there were even more.

“To dike or to die.” So was the collective cry.

The dike was built. The Kapampangan did not die.

Comes then the bitterest sadness at every commemoration of this much-hyped “triumph of the Kapampangan spirit” when the usual limelight-hoggers are celebrated the most while the many who worked harder, sacrificed more, are barely recognized, if even remembered.  

Yes, I write as much as I witness to all these. Privileged as I am for having covered it all, first as a journalist, then as senior consultant to Governor Lapid in his first term, and back as journalist.  

All photos except the last one from Pinatubo: Triumph of the Kapampangan Spirit 

The Prez vs. The Press

FERDINAND THE Great may have been the worst, but his successors too had had their own impositions of the heft of presidential power on the media. In varying degrees though far removed from the Marcosian extreme.

Why, even the sainted Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino was unchristianly unforgiving of the celebrated columnist Louie Beltran after he wrote Cory had “hidden under the bed” during one of the many coup attempts against her. She, going to the extent of lifting her bed covers to show the physical impossibility of her fitting under it – in her all too literal take of Beltran’s idiomatic usage.

Cory sued for libel and got Beltran convicted. Alas, “His Immensity” – as Beltran was fondly called by peers for his built – did not live long to see the triumph of the press with the reversal of the conviction by the appellate court.

A news photographer was banished from presidential coverages after the publication of his photo of Cory mouth agape while eating with her bare hands in some boodle fight in a remote military camp. 

Cory’s animosity towards certain women journalists, notably Ninez Cacho-Olivarez, was an urban legend that went beyond the confines of media circles.

It was nothing more than presidential pique that pushed President Joseph Ejercito Estrada to launch an advertisers’ boycott of the Philippine Daily Inquirer and his taking the Manila Times to court for libel.

Beset with rumors of military restiveness and one really serious attempt led by coup pals navy officers Antonio Trillanes IV and Nicanor Faeldon, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo went almost Marcosian with her Proclamation 1017 in the wake of the arrest of Scout Rangers commander Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim in February 2006.

Among the grounds of that proclamation was "reckless magnification by certain segments of the national media" of the “destabilizers’ claims” against the government.

Malacanang was quite explicit in its warning to the media: "It will be within the parameters of national security. For example, anonymous callers calling media without basis, or footage showing the formation of the Presidential Security Group, or a situation of media reporting that generals or military units are helping those who want to bring down the government. If media are used or allow

themselves to be used to further the interest of these groups, then government will come in.”

So, the Arroyo government did not merely come in, it barged, sans any search warrant, in the premises of the Daily Tribune in the most ungodly hour of 12:45 a.m. of Feb. 25, 2006 and promptly padlocked the publication. (Come to think of it, Tribune publisher-editor Ninez Cacho-Olivarez holds the distinction of having had not-so-pleasant issues with the two women presidents of the Philippines!).  

Lest we forget, it was during Arroyo’s term that happened the biggest single slaughter of media workers in all the world, in all of history that was the Ampatuan Massacre. 

President Benigno Simeon Aquino III was never shy to publicly show, aye, to verbalize, his displeasure towards anyone he favored not, the now lamented Chief Justice Renato Corona included.

The BS’ in-your-face tirades against then-immediate past vice president broadcaster Noli de Castro while guest speaker at an anniversary event of ABS-CBN Network appears now but a precursor to the more virulent fits of pique at the media by his successor.

Thus, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte who has not had the least civility to mask his utter disdain for the media since the presidential campaign period, forcing its way out at every chance, indeed, finding ways, any way, to spew it out at the least opportunity invariably peppered with expletives.      
Coupled with his open emulation of Marcos, it makes me wonder why his tyrannical antics still get any surprise from all of us.

The shutdown of Rappler and its chilling effect on media but one manifestation of some systematic disordering, if not dismemberment, of the democratic space – integral to the Charter-change being shoved down the people’s throat by the rabid mongrels in Congress, the demonization of the Supreme Court, the bedevilment of the Ombudsman and the Commission on Human Rights, the co-optation of the Commission on Elections pursuant not so much for the dubious ends of federalism as for the installation of a Duterte despotism.

That is the tried, tested, and all-too-tired, way of all tyrants. And this makes Duterte not only different from, but most dangerous, of all the presidents apres-Apo Ferdinand. 

This then is no mere issue of freedom of the press and expression. This constitutes a clear, present, and grave danger to the Republic.  

Marcos, nunquam iterum! Never again!

So, we heed and join the people cry:      
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

SO WAS published in Punto! January 17, 2018 under the same title. Come to think of it now – that first Dutertian flick of the finger on Rappler turning to a solid punch on Maria Ressa, and who knows what or who’s next.

And yes, of all the presidents since Marcos, it was only the military Fidel V. Ramos that did not go ballistic with the press. Ay, some irony there.