

Random Thoughts

By Emil B. Justimbaste

Copyright 2010 by Emil B. Justimbaste

Smashwords Edition

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Introduction

This idea of having some sort of a commentary corner came up the other day - that was really months ago before I started blogging during a discussion with my wife. As usual, I was blurting out my criticisms on what is happening in this city and, as usual, my sole audience was slowly getting irritated by my sustained barrage against what I believe was wrong about a lot of things here. So here I am, hoping to find a bigger audience and a more diverse market.

I don't expect to be always approved by my readers. As any commentator worth his mettle, I must be prepared to face rude, biting and unsavory feedbacks. I understand that risk and am willing to take it. So long as the feedbacks are stated objectively and with no personal rancor, it's just going to be fine. When these came out in my blog, there was no ordered sequence.

Blogs are usually written as spontaneous reactions to news events as they happened. In this configuration, the author simply categorized the short essays but left the content raw and unedited. So here goes.

Resurrectus sum

After many, many months of hibernation, I am finally back. This time, with lessons from involvement in the last elections. Our group got clobbered for believing that we could do it without shelling a cent to facilitate votes. The last time I got this much involved, we made the same "mistakes" and got exactly the same results. We should have anticipated this, but we thought people were now ready for this new brand of politics, given the quality of public servants we have. "Magbag-o na ta!" was the statement often heard during frequent tricycle rides and encounters at the market. Voices that seemed to reflect a general sentiment, a mood for change. How easily could one get deluded!

Now I know it's difficult to be objective when one is passionately involved. First, one tends to be selective in sorting out information. Comments unfavorable are eliminated, and only those that are favorable are considered. "Kusog lagi ta." We heard that too often from people in the field. And they were not bragging.

There were many indicators. Reception of our candidates was warm, enthusiastic. They certainly cheered us on. Attendance on evening rallies was often good.. Sometimes these went beyond expectations. People came to listen to the candidates' speeches. Moreover, we were tops in the mock polls done in early April, about a month before elections. Here we tried to be as scientific as we could, having been unable to hire the professional services of some academic groups that do it.

That was easy to do and very inexpensive. I was convinced that reflected the real sentiments of the people in the barrios. There was no way we could have lost....But we did!

There was one factor that could not be indicated in the mock polls - money. That changed the whole picture at crunch time. On the eve of election day, our barangay leaders started to look for the "budget". While our rivals were busy dispatching their budget to their leaders, we were content in our conviction that this time, money would not be a factor. So we had none of that. In fact, the organizational structure was not designed to distribute sums of money.

Earlier, we told them we were not going to buy votes. This time, we reminded them again buying votes was not our kind of thing So I think many of our leaders simply folded up or told their own network "budget" was not in the group's political vocabulary. Hours later, we had the shocking results. Only our strongest bet survived the money onslaught, while the rest of the group stayed outside the magic ten. But they were not exactly crushed since the votes they got did not spell a large difference from those of the winners. At least now we know our brand of politics can count on several thousands of adherents, and that if we can double this number in three years, we'll probably taste victory in 2013.

The clock of change can only be turned a few degrees at a time. My mistake was to assume that we could turn it by 360 degrees.

The marvels of FB and the war that is politics

Ormoc is truly coming of age, embracing a state-of-the-art networking application in establishing ties with long-lost friends and relatives, and finding ones one never thought existed. I have just recently opened a Facebook account and, wonder of wonders, I now have more than 90 friends and relatives in my account. And I still have lots of them waiting to be tagged as friends. It has made several of my old friends "addicts" in more ways than one. The more mature ones keep tabs of their events and travels, others their moods and feelings, and a lot more are putting random thoughts in that small text box so temptingly reserved for precisely that.

Some of my younger relatives and friends have taken on Farmville and Mafia, waging virtual wars with each other, eventually tiring themselves out and settling for espousing all sorts of social causes and advocacies.

But the latest that hit Ormoc like a thunderbolt is an account that calls itself "a better Ormoc movement" which an obviously politically oriented Ormocanon has opened up. I saw it first just last Thursday already having 192 friends, but as I write this piece this Saturday afternoon, the account had 814 friends and growing almost by the minute.

Obviously, what is making this account interesting is its political orientation, highlighted by online polls opened in another blog, so that the voter is untraceable. Sly and clever. The owner of the account appears to be non-partisan but wants Ormocanons to get out of their shells, expose the truths and involve themselves in some political action. Fence setting is taboo, so are the trapos. Both Winnie C.and Richard G are fair game for comments, that is, if you happen to be fearless and aware. There are no sacred cows here, not the "C" or the "L", if you're familiar with these letters. If you're a resident here, you should be.

Politics is always an interesting game both for the players and the non-players. This is especially so in Ormoc today. Last Thursday the mayor, his council and other city officials gathered for a presscon to officially answer charges being aired in one radio station, in the hope of dousing issues that have cropped up. Some of these issues were also heard by administration supporters in the sorties of Richard and Macoy, that had turned into mini political rallies. The latter reportedly spared no words to spring his charges against the administration.

To me that signaled the start of the political season here, which is always an exciting and provocative period. After all, politics is war. Its battlefield are the hearts and minds of the electorate which, in Ormoc, numbered some 88,000 back in 2007. It is a bigger battlefield today as new voters have flocked to the Comelec office to register. Whoever manages to convince the most wins the war. But who says war is fair? Most politicos use money, guns, goons and a bagful of tricks, the likes of which we heard reportedly happened in far Maguindanao.

Only few have the decency to try explaining things in the good old fashioned ways, a method that is getting to be scarce. Panlilio and Padaca are exceptions to the general rule, and Noynoy appears to be in that same track. I think our case here will follow the winning formula. Money is expected to flow.

Rumors are rife that goons have already been deployed . One saw segments of them riding the pick-up of one would-be candidate, moving around the city, apparently in a show of force. On the other hand, the other camp seems to rely on the magic of stardom, hoping to convert the ahhs and the ommphs of adulation into votes come May next year. Strange weapons of war that will definitely titillate us to no end.

At the moment, I am still trying to make sense of these developments in my head.

Forms of Corruption

Being a probinsyano and one who likes to stay on a hill close to the clouds, I am probably not updated these days on the diverse ways our politicos use the system to enrich themselves and their buddies. Still I am coming up with a tentative list, hoping some of my readers here can add more of their own observations. This stock of knowledge should make us more watchful of the ways that bureaucrats practice their devious craft.

Kickbacks, commissions and bribery are probably the most common. The infamous case of lamp posts bought during the Asean Summit in Cebu stands out as one of the worst so far, involving the DPWH, the Cebu provincial government and its engineers and private contractors. That it was recently dismissed by the Sandigan leads us to another fresh angle where high-stakes bribery could be involved.

The PDEA drug case involving the so-called Alabang Boys has faded from the limelight and appears to be lost from the public eye. So have the fertilizers cases involving top officials of the Department of Agriculture. Well, Jocjoc Bolante is being hounded at the Senate, but I suppose he is just a fall guy, a stand-in for somebody bigger or higher in the pecking order. With new scams coming out almost on a daily basis and grabbing the headlines,

I would not be surprised if this, too, goes the way of the dinosaurs. Even in our small city, one smells of smaller scams that do not make headlines, but these are scams nonetheless. It shows in the way contracts for public works are being handed out. Dummies are often selected but they make sure the necessary sand and gravel, steel bars, cement and similar hardware are bought from designated suppliers.

Of course, it is difficult to establish evidence of these as transactions are often legal, but you know from the names of the contractors who these people are and who they are beholden to.

The choice of programs that our bureaucrats follow indicates the kind of mindset inhabiting our local bureaucrats. If this is where money can be made abundantly and reputation built instantly as political capital, then this is how budget is allocated. On the other hand, programs that involve education for the underprivileged, housing, livelihood and women and children issues take the backseat. After all, these things neither make them rich nor enhance their political capital.

Stealing from government coffers is not always too obvious. It can happen when 15-30 employees get paid for jobs they have not done or sign hours they have not worked for. It shows when too many workers fill up vacancies for non-existent jobs, depriving the constituency of much needed resources for more urgent social projects. It is amply shown when some favored individuals can take their pick for more permanent positions, even if their skills and talents simply don't match with the job requirements.

Or it can happen when the employees make use of government time playing'tong-its,' sleeping and getting drunk – as in the case of some lowly 'job order' workers once assigned to work in a tree planting project near our farm.

I guess corruption is a sickness of the soul, but one that infects and contaminates others as well. It happens because, for one thing, government lacks any ideology and its bureaucrats lack the right attitude of service. Rather it's this pervasive and all-consuming self-interest that determines how our bureaucrats behave, make the laws and execute them. Generally, these are the sort of people that our 'righteous warriors' of the new politics will be confronted with once they themselves assume power. In all likelihood, their righteousness will be tested to the hilt, and they'll suffer all the more if they have not spelled out their own ideology in clear, concrete terms.

The color of money

Since I started voting (I have been boycotting elections in my early years), I can't remember an instant when money didn't play a pivotal role in the voters' decision-making process.. The last elections has been most instructive. Money. Money. Money. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred. Without money, a candidate was doomed.

In some towns, the amounts were simply staggering. A thousand for one vote. The more voters in a household, the richer it became on election eve. All one had to do was make sure he was in the list of A1s or A2s, the ward leaders who reported to the BCCs or the barangay captains, the bagmen on the eve of elections. That was how the money flowed, that was how the organization was structured.

For years now, the elections in our place have been predictable. Politicians had been using this unerring formula, the sure-fire path to victory at the polls. Decision-making, or whatever is left of it, is now a function of money.It stops on election day, so that when the winners assume their posts, voters do not see themselves participating in governance. That is supposed to be work of elected officials.

In their experience, elected officials are generally no different from one another. They show their faces in the barangays only during campaign periods. When they are in office, they forget to go back to the barangays to consult with their constituency. Hence, when candidates ask for their votes, these must come with a price tag. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred. A thousand. That is how they value their votes.

Thus, a buy-no-vote campaign is difficult for the voters to understand, especially since most candidates are total strangers to them. Our group ran this type of campaign and lost. We thought a two-hour seminar for the leaders would change that mindset. We thought our nice-sounding programs and advocacies would alter their perception of the electoral process and governance. We thought the preachings of Catholic groups, like the BEC and the PPCRV, had sank deep into the consciousness of our voters.

The results proved us wrong. Until people understand that the value of their votes is bigger, loftier than a thousand peso bill, we cannot expect changes at the polls. Elections will always be determined by the color of money.

Forms of cheating

Ever since the results of the local elections came out, several questions have been nagging me. I guess these these won't keep quiet until I put them on paper or share these with the rest of humanity. In the old days, the cheating was more evident, more garapal. But in these days of automation, the cheating has become more refined, less perceptible to those unfamiliar with the new technology.There are fewer conspirators in the game and fewer people to pay off, even if the stakes have increased tremendously.

The recent allegations at a congressional hearing chaired by the brilliant - if hot tempered - and fiery Teddy Locsin has confirmed my own suspicions of systematic cheating in our local polls. The experience of Gov. Ace Barbers of Surigao highlights what to me are clear circumstances of cheating. He and his party mates - from the governor, three congressmen and 21 mayors - suffered crushing defeat at the hands of relatively unknown opponents in areas long known to be Barbers' bailiwicks. This after he rejected offers of an IT practitioner to rig the results for a cool 50 M.

In my opinion, these are the possibilities of fraud:

a. The changing of flash cards a few days before the elections and their fixing right before the polls was highly irregular. The IT experts could have easily switched pre-programmed cards right under the noses of Comelec officials and other watchdogs who knew next to nothing about programming flashcards.

b. The non-utilization of passwords (digital signatures) made it possible for IT experts to send reports from sources other than the designated PCOS machines. These passwords were supposed to authenticate the sources of data.

c. The neglect of date and time in the transmission of results provides ample leeway for the transmission of data from sources other than the clustered precincts. In any computer-generated data, the time stamp is almost as important as the data itself. Without it, the data could have been transmitted days before or days after the elections.

d. In the case of Ormoc, 19 clustered precincts are not shown in the Comelec site. It says "No data available." These data were supposed to have been transmitted immediately after the voting ended. Now 15 days have passed and data is still not available. No one will ever know if the data have not been tampered or doctored, so that the results will be favorable to the proclaimed winners.

Now I find this highly irregular. In the interest of truth, don't you think we should explore these possibilities?

More on election fraud

As I write this, Congress is still mulling over automation issues, with the Smartmatic guy, Ceasar Flores, trying to explain a highly technical matter before a crowd of congressmen and other officials who, I see, can't seem to grasp the technology. Sen. Nene Pimentel is asking about the process of "reconfiguring" the CF cards by the DOST, who were supposed to do it in behalf of Smartmatic IT experts who who were in Cabuyao, Laguna.

At any rate, let me go back to the issue here in Ormoc which was more obvious being less "techy". I did not witness the canvassing of votes but my sources tell me (some of them lawyers who were present) that the canvassing was done by precincts, not by clusters. One lawyer friend said he noted that there was something wrong in that procedure but he could not pinpoint it. I told him the BEIs could not have read the results from the ERs because these results were from clusters, not individual precincts. Where in heaven's name did the BEIs get their data?

No wonder Macoy and his group are protesting, claiming that the results (ERs) sent automatically to the Comelec national server do not quite jibe with the canvassed results as read by our local BEIs. hat's where the cheating came in, that's what the watchers and lawyers failed to see during the canvassing.
Organizing the upper middle class

People simply call them rich. They are moneyed, have flashy cars, live in palatial homes, eat gourmet food, have a lot of helpers, can send their children to the most expensive schools without thinking of the costs, and do not concern themselves with the problems of survival the way most of us do. They may not have millions in their bank accounts, but most of their problems have to do with how to increase those bank deposits or find new fields of investments.

In the heyday of the Marcos years when student activism resounded in the streets and the corridors at the university were full of DGs and teach-ins, it was almost a mortal sin to simply classify the rich as "rich". There were apt terms for them, like "upper class" or "upper middle class" or "national bourgeoisie". These were the more "scientific", "politically correct" terms that one had to use, lest one fall into the pit of "revisionism" or "cleric fascism".

Now some 30 years later, one is back on the prowl cavorting with the upper middle class in an attempt to have them elected to positions of power. If some of my friends were around, I would probably be accused of becoming a "capitalist renegade" or, worse, an agent of the bourgeoisie. Whatever.

Truth to tell, I think a scientific approach to organizing the middle class would have resulted in fewer errors in strategy and tactics. I would have better understood their thought processes, the way they saw realities, their reactions and their responses to certain issues. I would have understood their conservatism and hesitation to confront issues and tendencies to compromise. I could have easily understood their vacillation and inconsistencies, their failure to live up to articulated values....These, after all, are typical middle class attitudes that result directly from their normal social environment.

It was a mistake to even think that these middle-class elements could be in the forefront of a sweeping political change. I remember the term used here: "Wishful thinking." . Not much hope for idealists There's not much hope for idealists and believers under the present political processes.

First, you can't win elections with good platforms, good rhetoric, and sweet promises.In the first place, to most voters, politicians are no different from one another. The idealist neophyte is just as trapo as the seasoned politico who shakes your hand, pats your back, hugs your kids and pays respects to your oldies.

There's an undefeated politico who frequently makes a slip-of-the-tongue in his short oral deliveries, but people do not take those slips against him. Indeed, it makes himall the more human for it, errors and all, and on election day, his rivals get routed even if they shell out loads of money to buy votes. All he does is shake people's hands, calling people by their first names, and goes to their kitchen whenever the opportunity arises. He makes himself at home in every home he enters, the shoddier the house, the more he feels at home. He was born of that class, whose surroundings are familiar to him, one he never seems to forget, even if now he is wallowing in millions.

For sure, there are apt lessons every politician must learn from this populist old man of politics, such as the simple back-patting and hand-shaking routine. But to the upper middle class candidate brought up in comfortable beds and genteel surroundings, .the hand-shaking and back-patting routine feels awkward, just as the humble abodes of the masa must look like an unfamiliar territory. It is certainly difficult to feel at home in such surroundings. Thus, simple as these lessons are, our middle class candidate would have to have crash courses in the art of "mass integration".

Unfortunately, they don't quite see the need for it. In fact, they would prefer to talk to a crowd of people about their visions and dreams and platforms, rather than go around and shake hands or engage in some drinking session with tambays in the barangay. They would prefer an intellectual exchange with the locals than go around and dine inside somebody's kitchen. From the start, our candidates have been crippled by their own middle class hangups, refusing to learn the lessons that their opposites offered.

They wanted to raise the campaign to a "higher level", an uncharted territory as far as local politics is concerned. Their staggering loss may have brought them to the realization that people are not quite ready for that kind of serious politics, and that it is still the seasoned politico who pats you on the back, hugs your kids and shells out a few pesos on election day that wins the ballgame,.

To be in serious contention in 2013, they have to start now. They have to start building personal relationships with their prospective voters, slowly inching their way into the hearts and minds of the electorate. This, I think, would be the best way to do it in exchange for the millions of money budgeted on the eve of election day.

However, the problem with my middle class friends is that most of them have retreated into lethargy. It seems politics happens only during election season. They think that building cores of principled leaders can be accomplished overnight. Now they are enjoying their vacation, trying to erase the stigma of that nightmarish defeat. Can you expect them to win?

Information and governance

It is just past 4 in the morning, and already I am seated in front of this infernal screen trying to unload my thoughts. A while ago, they kept me from going back to sleep. Maybe it has something to do with aging. One needs to sleep less as one grows older, so I've heard. Maybe this writing habit is getting to be therapeutic because once unloaded, these thoughts cease to be a nuisance.

It's this business of governance really. In a few days, those whom we have elected to govern will be sworn in to do their duties, some to make laws, a few to implement them. I suspect most of them will be using that old formula - more visible projects, more impact, more money to spend and earn, ample proofs to talk about in the next round of campaign. In our small city, there is an abundance of this kind of governance as we witness our narrow streets undergoing reconstruction. The price and proof of progress and prosperity, the monuments that keep our public officials in the public mind now and in the future.

In the list of our priorities, concreted streets are a far second because there are a lot of other problems that need attending to, such as jobs and employment. But these issues seem unrelated to governance in the minds of those who sit in power. The only employment that they know is the employment of casuals designed to placate political supporters and keep them happy for 15 days or so, after which they are replaced with another batch of supporters. This cycle goes on the whole year round for the next three years, so that by the end of one's term, the politician enjoys the support of a political base which will fight tooth and nail for him.

I can't understand why those in power can't think of more serious programs that will keep the thousands of unemployed in permanent jobs. Do they even understand the extent of this problem? I have this suspicion that they don't. If you try to get information from the planning office, they don't have data on unemployment. In fact, they don't have data on a lot of things - population, jobs, education, productivity in agriculture, housing and its shortages, etc. Information that should serve as basis for making relevant policies, programs, decisions, projects.

In more developed countries of the world, this state of affairs would probably be un-thinkable. After all, we have computers and the technology that should enable them to do data storage and retrieval and even analysis in a jiffy. There's a lot of database technologies in the market, both licensed and open source. Oracle, Delphi, MYSQL, MS Access, Crystal Reports to name a few. There are a lot of experts in this field of data crunching. Yet how come our system of governance is rooted in stone-age technologies?

No wonder we can't lick poverty and employment issues. No wonder we can't have solutions to simple marketing and productivity problems of our farmers. No wonder we can't match our skills with jobs that are available - we don't even have a list of unemployed and skilled citizens. GRRRRRR...!

Not enough to be righteous

In the last few days, one of the egroups I joined has been deluged with emails, calling for 'moral restoration' and urging people to unite to elect 'righteous people' into office from the presidency down to the lowest barangay councilman. Most of these letters are well-written and inspired, and they sound much like battle cries. As you probably suspect, these are written by priests and former seminarians whose pens have been sharpened to the finest edge by their mentors and the years devoted to practicing their skills.

Their thesis can be reduced into less verbiage: Corruption has become endemic in government. This is the reason why services are not being delivered and why so much money is wasted. This is also being blamed for the poverty of the people. To solve these problems, let's change those in government with morally upright individuals. While I do not disagree with putting righteous people in government, I strongly disagree with the assumption that morally upright people will do the right thing once in government. It is simply not enough to be incorruptible to be able to run the affairs of government. You need more than moral uprightness and good intentions to perform the complicated functions of governance.

First, you need to have the right direction, hence, the correct analysis of issues that give rise to poverty, unemployment, incompetence, corruption, nepotism and all the other–isms that make life miserable for our people. Without such an analysis, even morally righteous people won't go a long way. They will only get lost in the convoluted bureaucracy that has become our government. Worse, they might even be coopted in the process.

At the moment, I don't see this analysis in the statements issued so far. Not one has even made an attempt to issue their position on certain critical issues of concern. Well, there were lame and undefined references to sustainable agriculture and environment, as if mentioning these would suffice. To be blunt about it, I think these guys have not seriously thought about these issues – otherwise they would bother to make themselves clear...And to think that these are not the only issues the group must make a stand on.

Motherhood statements and battle cries that have so far been floating around would be probably good for those in the academe and the middleclass, but not to the sectors that earn their daily bread, like the farmers, fisherfolk and workers. Things have to be clear to them, otherwise you can't rally them with you. I can understand that uniting people on similar goals can be tedious and difficult, but it makes more sense than simply issuing motherhood statements.
Questions to ask aspirants

Preparations for 2010 are really getting frenzied as each of the so-called "presidentiables" is vying for a big slice of the popular consciousness. After all, it's still a game of personalities, and he who remains in the public mind longer has the bigger chance of winning. It doesn't matter if the presidentiable doesn't make any stand on any issue. That's not part of the formula for winning.

Media is very much part of this ball game. Yesterday we read in the PDI that a communications class in UP did a survey to find out who's leading in the public consciousness. As expected, they discovered that those who were more in the news were more popular than those who had exposure in the entertainment industry. Whatever. That doesn't veer away from the equation that politics equals personality equals winnability. Last week, a group of NGOs from all over the Visayas met in Cebu to talk on what they called as "politics change." While there were attempts to discuss the relevant issues, it was still a liberal, free-wheeling type of discussions that seemed to lack focus. So nothing concrete was resolved, except the idea of organizing for political change. It was at best a drum beating exercise.

So I have decided to write down a few notes with a lot of questions with the hope that these might help clarify a few things...if I don't muddle them up altogether. I have divided this piece into two major categories – the economic and political. Hopefully, my discussion will not be overtaken by the 2010 elections. To those who bother to read, consider these as starting points for further discussion. In the academe, they call it a discussion paper. But let's not be too formal about it.

For all the hype about the Philippines being on the threshold of rapid economic growth, the fact about our being an agricultural country is undeniable. The sooner we admit this, the better for our health. We produce rice, corn, coconuts, abaca, sugar and a lot of fruits, using around 65 percent of our labor force in this endeavor. Since the 70's in the heyday of Imelda and the Green Revolution, our farmers have been hooked to production technologies, the likes of which we see in large plantations. So they produce single crops in large contiguous areas, using generous amounts of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides for a market over which they have no control.

Why technology has so far failed to uplift the farmer from crippling poverty, despite financial assistance and incentives, is an issue that has not been seriously addressed. The Department of Agriculture has so much money to waste that instead of liberating the farmers from poverty, the department has overtaken the DPWH in its record of scams in the last two years.

Really, there is one simple question we'd like to pose before these presidentiables: What do we do in our agricultural sector? Do you have more viable alternatives to the present farming system?

A good answer to that would improve the lives of 65 percent of the population, create a local market for emerging local industries, free farmers from being over-dependent on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, ensure food for this huge chunk of the population, empower them, and make farming a more lasting and sustainable way of life.
More questions

I have just come from a day-long brainstorming conference with some professors of the Leyte State University (ViSCA, to many) over research issues related to organic farming. As expected, it was a tiring exercise but a good one especially for a hermit like me who has found kinship talking to goats and the dog at the farm and the cats here in the office. That might sound a bit crazy but try doing it. You can actually unload your thoughts to these creatures and they'll just keep on nudging you or make some purring sounds, as if they'd like to say something. Well, at least I can sense a reaction.

But here interaction is a rarity. It's like a whiff of fresh air on a tepid summer afternoon, even if it can be unsettling sometimes. No, I'm not referring to my friend's comment on the previous blog. I guess he has grown tired of so much discussion and he desperately wants to replace the bad guys with the good guys so that the latter can govern this country decently and morally. He is certainly entitled to that opinion.

But I'll have none of that sort sitting in the corridors of power. I'd like my president to know what he's doing and not be a puppet following the dictates of his technocrats. I'd like to have his mind made up on certain crucial issues even before the idea of becoming a president goes to his head. That's why he has to be able answer some questions people will be asking. In some countries, that's called 'party ideology.'

In our country, that seemed to be non-existent ever since elections came to be at the turn of the 20th century in the early days of the American occupation. Previous to that, gobernadorcillos were elected only by 12 principales and the incumbent gobernadorcillo. The parish priest presided over elections and blessed their results. These gobernadorcillos did not have to explain themselves or their stand on issues. They were elected based on their own merits and abilities, and their closeness to the powers-that-be often proved to be advantageous.

The elections under the American tutelage – and all subsequent elections for that matter – followed no ideological moorings. These were not needed for they were just puppets following the colonizers' whims and interests. Thus, the idea of letting candidates explain themselves today may sound un-traditional, unconventional, unusual or absurd. But how else will we know if the pretender to the throne is not leading us to hell and perdition? In the first place, I'd like to understand his mindset. Is he tradition-bound, uncritical and bookish? Does he know the problems at hand? Or does he – like Erap, the movie star – rely on the advice of his cohorts and friends?

I have started with some simple questions related to agriculture. We can continue asking questions related to industrialization, foreign trade and foreign exchange, employment and OFW issues, labor, land reform, inflation...and his answers will tell us if the candidate is a worthy one or a dullard. Indeed, the position of President is the highest one in the land and we, the people, shouldn't make it too easy for anyone to covet the position, no matter what his religious and moral convictions are.

American brand of democracy won't do

As most evenings go, I treated myself to a movie the other night from one of those pirated DVDs peddled by Muslim vendors along our sidewalks. You've probably seen it, "Gods and Generals". The year was 1861, the time of the civil war. Virginians had to make their decision whether to secede from the union and fight against their own countrymen, or send its regiments to help the stars and stripes. In one of the scenes, one witnessed how people made their decisions and arrived at consensus. Prior discussion was thorough and verged on the philosophical. There was homegrown social awareness that laid down the premises and, in a society that was largely middleclass, consensus making of this sort was grounded on American tradition. That defined their brand of democracy.

Forty years later, they brought the same concepts to the Philippines in their neo-colonial adventure and instituted that very brand of democracy in the first popular elections which naturally resulted in disaster. In the first place, there was no large middle class that took pains to discuss and explain issues. We had instead a thin layer of principalia or prominent citizens who traditionally served as gobernadorcillos or alcaldes, and a large section of unshod peasants who barely left their farms and generally remained ignorant of what was going on around them.

Thus, the first American-sponsored popular elections were manipulated by the principalia who practiced dagdag-bawas and inflated the counts of votes. In Leyte, elections had to be repeated in several pueblos because of electoral protests. The practice went on despite these failures and in time the principalia found the need to organize political parties whose membership consisted mainly of their own class.

The middle class concept of democracy simply could not work because of the large social divide. The peasants could not be made to participate in meaningful discussion of issues not because they were uneducated and stupid but because they were left out of the information train. The peasants remained in their farms and went down to the pueblos only to trade their surplus, isolated and far removed from the issues of governance and politics. They also came down to vote during elections.

Today, the peasants are still denied information crucial to making intelligent choices and decisions. While the radio and TV have reached the farthest corners of the archipelago, the quality of information reaching them borders on the trivial and inconsequential. Radios are inevitably tuned in to soap operas the whole day, and where TVs exist, the main fares are noontime shows of eitherEat Bulaga or Wowowie where sexy starlets entertain their audiences with their gyrating torsos and provocative boobs.

Even if assuming we have clean, honest and computerized elections, what good will these do if the consciousness of the majority border on the irrelevant and inconsequential?

For whom the bell tolls

In a country that is fast gaining notoriety as the killing field of journalists, the brazen murder of Dr. Jerry Ortega no longer comes as a shock. According to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), Ortega is the 142nd journalist to fall – and the union is still counting.

Ortega's alleged murderer was caught, thanks to concerned witnesses and the local police, and the murder weapon seized. It is said to be licensed to the Palawan provincial administrator, one of Ortega's targets in his anti-mining tirades over the radio. By some fateful coincidence, the killing comes after the confession of the alleged killer of another journalist from Davao del Sur, Nestor Denolido who was killed sometime in June last year. The alleged killer has pinpointed another top local official as the mastermind of the killing, Davao del Sur Governor Douglas Cagas.

Cagas, who is no stranger to controversies, has of course denied his involvement, saying he was attending a seminar in Manila when the killing happened, proof of which can easily be provided. But being the alleged mastermind, does one have to be on the murder scene when it happened? A rabid anti-communist who has partnered with Jun Alcober, Cagas has been involved in anti-communist activities years ago when the frenzy seized Davao, and many of their victims, many of whom were innocent bystanders, floated down the river near Agdao which earned the moniker "Nicaragdao".

In a TV interview, Cagas also takes a swipe at the late Denolido, saying the guy was not really a journalist because he didn't even know his grammar. Well, Mr. Cagas may claim perfection in his use of the King's English being an honor student once and a bar topnotcher at that, but that's a different story altogether.

Lawyer and erstwhile senatorial candidate Adel Tamano seems positive he can nail the perpetrators of the crime with the alleged killer's confession. Let's hope Tamano's posturing is for real.

Ortega's murder is still very recent. It may take a few more days before formal charges can be filed against the alleged perpetrator. For now, only the provincial administrator is being pinpointed being the owner of the gun, but he can always say it was stolen from him or used without his permission. But the circumstances are very evident. Ortega has attacked him in his radio commentaries – and he gets killed with the gun licensed to the administrator.

The court can always have its own opinion but in my mind, it is crystal clear who are the killers of Denolido and Ortega.

To borrow a quote from John Doone: "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

Murder and megalomania

Some people find it hard to accept that their honorable mayor or governor could be involved in a heinous crime like murder. I don't. Murder is an important component in the politico's arsenal whose desired end is the perpetuation of the politico in power. After all, lo politico has usurped power not by fair play or honest election but by fraud, intimidation, cheating, vote buying and, of course, a lot of money. He must ensure his hold on to power by whatever possible means at his disposal, including the organization of private armies, the use of threat and intimidation, harassment or blackmail and murder.

In fact this case is not unique in our country. Since the start of civilized societies, these political weapons have been used extensively by those in power. Take the case of Julius Cesar who used his legions to crown himself Roman emperor. Other members of the Senate who did not approve the idea, wasted no time in debates but took matters into their own hands. Led by Cesar's friend, Brutus, they took turns in stabbing him to death in the Senate hall, plunging the empire into years of turmoil and civil war.

In Germany, the diminutive Austrian Adolf Hitler murdered his political enemies and exterminated millions of Jews in gas chambers in what is now known as the "final solution."

In Russia, Stalin launched the dreaded purge and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of suspected enemies and revisionists.

In the US, several of its presidents declared wars on recalcitrant nations like Iraq, Vietnam and Afghanistan, leaving millions dead or dying. Like President William MacKinley, they even invoke their inspiration from Divine destiny for their interventionism.

In the Latin American continent, political dictators propped up by the US routinely executed civilians suspected of being rebels. We have seen the likes of Idi Amin of Uganda and "Papa Doc" Duvalier shocking the world with their atrocities. Our own Marcos was a bit too tame compared to those two for the guy still had some scruples. His Catholic upbringing probably kept reminding him of the fires of hell.

Those of who us who have not experienced the headiness associated with holding an elective position probably can't figure out how politicians think and feel. Still the symptoms of megalomania are evident. As one sits longer in office, the politician no longer thinks of retiring. He wants to sit there forever. He and members of his family.

Thus we have dynasties sprouting everywhere inspite of the law against it. You simply can't fight megalomania, the headiness of power. Power intoxicates and rubs off all reason. Politicians readily use alibis for reason. They do that all the time. As I said earlier, murder is just one of the weapons employed by politicos to perpetuate their regime – and you'd better believe that so you won't be shocked when assassins come barging to your door to shoot your head off. They did that to Denolido and Ortega.

What makes you think they won't do that to you?

Two kinds of justice

There are two kinds of justice systems in this country, as most Filipinos are probably aware of. There's one for the rich and one for the poor. If you're with the poor as in the case of the Morong 43 health workers, you spend months in jail without the benefit of lawyers or the courts of law. But if you're like Gen. Carlos Garcia who was caught amassing P303.27 million in ill-gotten wealth, you get to bargain your freedom and have your cased reduced to a petty crime, instead of the plunder charges. No thanks to a sympathetic Ombudsman who also happens to be the person behind the dismissal of the plunder charges against GMA in the NBN-ZTE deal.

In the words of Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, the plea bargain is "illegal and unconscionable", but is there anything the government can do? She added that it was "manifestly disadvantageous' to the government and smacks of some collusion somewhere. She said "there is a clear violation of the rules of court on plea bargaining."

It doesn't take to be a lawyer to see the faulty logic of the Ombudsman's move. Since Garcia has been able to post P60,000 for his temporary liberty, that means he no longer faces a plunder rap, which is non-bailable, but something lower. But given the evidence against Garcia in the plunder case, would it be proper for the Ombudsman to simply lower the case without somehow involving the Sandigan? That's like saying the Ombudsman is appropriating the powers of the Sandigan, right?

De Lima has assured everyone that she will be filing charges against Dep. Ombudsman Wendell Barreras-Sulit and her team for the "deplorable abdication of their duty to prosecute criminals, especially those accused of stealing from the nation's coffers." Now that makes the problem more lively but complicated. Will that mean the replacement of Sulit in the Garcia case? Incidentally, this was the Sulit who dismissed the plunder raps against GMA in the NBN-ZTE deal.

Now according to Section 8 of the Ombudsman Act of 1989, the special prosecutor may be removed from office by the President for any grounds, including betrayal of public trust. Will P.Noy now exercise that vaunted political will? Or will he continue to cower in fear of the sinister forces that surround his cabinet?

Garcia, who was in charge of disbursement of military funds when he was comptroller of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), is by far the highest-ranked military official undergoing trial by the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court for the crime of plunder, or graft and corruption on a massive scale. He is a member of the Philippine Military Academy Class of 1971, whose other prominent members include Senators Gregorio Honasan and Panfilo Lacson.

Living in style

In the meantime, Garcia's family is living it up in style in New York's Park Avenue. Timothy Mark Garcia, 23, who, during the interview, was decked in designer clothes and is said to be spending his nights in Gucci jackets and YSL boots. Garcia, who works as publicist of designer Marc Jacob, lives in a swank apartment in the gilded Trump Plaza on 502 Park Avenue in New York City, said writer Peter Davis if the US news website "The Daily Beast."

Based on the report, Garcia said his mother bought his apartment for $765,000 in cash in 2003. But the case against the older Garcia has somehow restricted his movements. The report says Garcia as complaining of the gadget attached to him by US authorities to monitor his movement and location while he is out on bail.

Garcia and his two brothers, Juan Pablo, 27, and Ian Karl, 20, as well as their mother Clarita are out on bail of $1 million each after the US government filed in court charges of money laundering against them. They are also the subject of extradition proceedings from the Philippine government.

In the report, even the bed for Garcia's dog, Cartier, is a mohair bed done by Gucci. The family's trouble started when Timothy Mark and his younger brother Ian Carl were arrested by US customs authorities on December 19, 2003 at the San Francisco Airport in California for carrying $100,000 in cash

Their arrest would later unravel their father's alleged financial scam while serving as the military comptroller which, in turn, led to his detention, trial and conviction by court martial.
Mendoza's testimony on the Garcia plunder case

As we go deeper into the Carlos Garcia plunder case, we are beginning to see a web of conspiracy reaching as far as the Commission on Audit (COA) which initially fielded a large team of accountants, only to fold up later when the case against Garcia got stronger. In an interview with ABS-CBN, COA auditor Heidi Mendoza says she resigned from her career after she could not swallow what they were telling her to do – stop gathering evidence against Garcia.This after Ombudsman lawyer Simeon Marcelo, the guy who asked her to help him, resigned for "health reasons."

But the 20-year veteran of COA Mendoza says she is still willing to serve as witness in the Garcia plunder case if they call her to testify in court. This means top people at COA have been involved. Part of Garcia's loot went to them because how come senior management of COA "blatantly refused" her request to continue her investigation?

In her testimony, Mendoza said she unearthed a suspicious transfer of funds from the AFP's Land Bank account to a private bank. Which bank she did not say. The payee was the AFP Inter-Agency Trust Fund, involving P200 million. This happened on November 28, 2002.

In that private bank, "it was made to appear that the amount was deposited in only one account. However, the account had two passbooks, one which showed a deposit of P100 million, and the other, P50 million." The P50 million entry was not however machine- validated but only typewritten. And what happened to the other P50 million? In that transaction, P100 million was lost.

Moreover, the inter-agency account in the private bank "was not booked," and, hence, "the transfer of cash was not reflected in the AFP's books of accounts," Mendoza said.

Mendoza also disclosed that after Marcelo left government service, she was asked to return case documents to the offices she took them from. Now prosecutors are saying there is not enough evidence to convict Garcia. Following the conspiracy theory, they, too, could be part of the dressing down of Garcia's case, which allowed him to post bail.

Refuting the prosecutors who claim that the funds are intact, Mendoza says that while prosecutors said the funds have been accounted, "they did not say that no funds are missing." This does not mean that graft did not take place, she said. "They said that funds have been accounted, for it is just due to late recording.

Come on! Everyone who practices accounting knows that --and I can testify on this--if there's a late recording, it's basically a condition that bridges opportunity for misappropriation. This is what exactly I'm saying," she explained.

The delay is not one month or six months but two years. "You're doing a bank reconciliation after 2 years! This means you are also opening the books to misappropriation, it is subject to fraud," asserts Mendoza.

Well, I guess we'll be having long, drawn-out war against corruption in this Garcia case. And we're facing a Mafia-like conspiracy here. Carry on, Heidi. We're right behind you.

They should face the firing squad!

Now the web of conspiracy in the Carlos Garcia plunder case is getting wider and wider as military men who were in the know are coming out to the open – hoping to gain some reprieve for their own misdeeds. Ret. Army Col. George Rabusa, a former budget officer of the AFP, who was earlier charged with three counts of perjury and unlawfully acquiring property and vehicles amounting to more than P43 million despite only having an annual salary of P275,000, is now saying his boss, erstwhile AFP chief of staff Angelo Reyes, received P50 million as pabaon for his retirement in 2001.

The revelations came during the Senate Thursday hearing on the controversial plea bargain agreement entered into by former AFP comptroller Maj. General Carlos Garcia and the Office of the Ombudsman. Rabusa admitted he and then AFP comptroller Lt. Gen. Jacinto Ligot, his superior, personally brought the money to Reyes at the AFP chief of staff quarters. Since it was "very bulky" to carry the P50 million, they had it converted to dollars, he said. Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) spokesman Brig. Gen. Jose Mabanta did not deny the practice but said that no longer exists. Mabanta seemed nonchalant about the matter, shrugging it off like it was best to forget the issue.

Others on the take included the vice chief of staff, who allegedly received P1.5 million; deputy chief of staff, P1.5 million; secretary of joint staff, P1 million); personnel of the House legislative office, retired generals, and members of the Defense Press Corps, Rabusa said.

Moreover, the chiefs of staff also get around P10 million monthly while in service, half of which supposedly went to their pockets, added Rabusa. Representation allowance daw.

Among those who enjoyed this P10-million monthly privilege were former AFP chiefs of staff Gen. Diomedio Villanueva and Gen. Roy Cimatu, he said.

Now we know why retirable generals want to retire as chief of staff. We know why the so-called modernization program of the AFP can't seem to take off, why soldiers going to battle have battered shoes and socks, or they end up eating sardines and dried fish in their patrols, and why they terrorize the civilian population while they rampage for rice and chickens.

At least we know some of the reasons why soldiers and their junior officers mutinied at Oakwood years ago. Really, these so-called military leaders should be lined up against the wall before murderous marksmen.
Or perhaps the guillotine?

The unwritten laws of war should apply to these bastards in the military. In the old days, while the axiom "to the victor, the spoils" was a widespread practice by rampaging armies until the Second World War, modern armies forbid looting in conquered places. Violators are shot on sight or arrested, court-martialed and meted their due punishment. No time is lost in hearings where lawyers have a field day displaying their oratory and debating skills, supposedly in the interest of justice and fair play. That is only for civilian courts.

People in the military establishment are supposed to exercise the highest ideals of service to God, country and people. They are sworn to these ideals on the pain of death. Treason and cowardice are both punishable by death. So is looting and plunder.

During peacetime when plunder is just a matter of transferring bank accounts and altering records, the sin doubles in gravity in direct proportion to the ease with which it is committed. This time, the axiom should be "To the vanquished, the firing squad!" Or would you prefer the "guillotine?"

A puppy cowering in fear

Rabusa seemed like a puppy cowering in fear during yesterday's morning program of ABS-CBN "Headstart" hosted by Karen Davila. Tuta na ang buntot ay naka-ipit sa dalawang paa sa likod. Hay, naku, nakorner na nga, ayaw pang sabihin ang lahat. Nahihiya daw dahil masyadong personal. This when asked how much went to the boys on a night out. But he could not parry the barrage of questions thrown by Davila. At length, he admitted saying it was only P8,000 each. Meaning for the women and drinks at those clubs where nothing is left to the imagination. Nakakahiya nga naman dahil kasama siya doon sa mga outings. Everybody enjoyed the treat - thanks to the millions that flowed into the AFP's coffers. Pero maliit ata ang P8,000. What do you think, guys?

No, no, Reyes did not receive only P50 million as pabaon because the total amount that Radbusa withdrew from the bank was P164 M. It was coursed through Carlos Garcia, at one time his boss, and Reyes received P150M. The balance, suggested Rabusa, must have gone to Garcia. The withdrawals were arranged with the bank manager para hindi kagulat-gulat.

The wives of the generals were also included in the scandalous fare. For Mrs. Reyes, it was P30,000 to P200,000 for local trips and $10,000 to $20,000 for trips abroad. Kasama na doon ang mga bata..

In yesterday afternoon's interview of former chief of staff and Senator Rodolfo Biazon, he said Rabusa would be a credible witness because he was privy to a lot of such financial transactions in the AFP. His revelations should tell us more on the extent of this network of corruption in the AFP. Harinawa!

In a parting statement, Rabusa implored: " Sana mapatawad ako ng taong bayan kasi I was part of the rotten systen." ...Everyone must pay his due, right? I guess he should ask that forgiveness from the thousands of soldiers in the AFP who had to suffer as a consequence of the abuses of their superior officers.
Senseless plea bargain

Sandigan's granting of Carlos Garcia's plea bargain doesn't make any sense. The guy is accused of amassing hundreds of millions at the expense of the Filipino people, the case was accepted by the SB, and he returns about half the amount in exchange for his temporary freedom. That act of returning the amount is an admission of his guilt – and he is absolved because he has admitted his guilt. Plunder is supposedly non-bailable, but what sort of hocus-pocus is the Ombudsman trying to cook up to make us believe in this horseshit? Gosh, ang kapal talaga!

Imagine a certified magnanakaw who took off with hundreds of millions from our coffers and there he is, scot-free, strutting about like a fattened calf and sneering at his accusers as if to say, "Wala kayong magawa, ano."

This is going to be a dangerous precedent for present and future crooks in government. Now they can go on plundering our coffers so long as they don't get caught and don't leave a paper trail. But if ever they do, they'll just do a Carlos Garcia - return half of what they steal and file a plea bargain. Like Garcia, they can go scot-free and enjoy the other half of their loot for the rest of their thieving lives in blissful retirement. Never mind the honor and dignity. That won't buy you a trip to Las Vegas or a mansion in Alabang. This is the signal that this plea bargain is sending.

Kaya kayong mga magnanakaw sa gobyerno d'yan, gayahin n'yo si Garcia. I'm sure there are very few Heidi Mendozas out there who'll risk their jobs and their health to testify against the likes of Garcia. Even if they have not received a cent, they will keep their mouths shut or bury their heads in the ground like an Ostrich, pretending they don't know a thing. They will keep quiet in the name of self-preservation, a perfectly normal instinctive reaction. .

Oh, yes, we grit our teeth when a street punk pokes his ice pick against our ribs so he can rub us of our cellphone, wristwatch and wallet. We are mad when a snatcher picks our pockets or runs away with our mother's bag. We rain them with kicks and blows to the body when we catch them with their loot. We shout, curse and throw all sorts of invectives when thieves ransack our homes and take off with our prized possessions.

But here comes the master thief of them all, stashing our millions in his bank accounts here and abroad, and we are not even shouting invectives to high heavens. Here comes that fattened general, admitting to robbing us of millions and we let him go scot-free - no thanks to Aling Merceditas. Really, I find that difficult to understand.

Mahina daw ang kaso. What about those documented bank transfers? What about the signed slips that showed releases from the AFP treasury? What about the sworn admissions of Garcia's wife Clarita who said she was regularly bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the US - amounts that could not be justified by Garcia's monthly income alone? Napakahina daw, that's why they had to apply pressures on Mendoza and Simeon Marcelo to make them stop gathering evidence against the fat general.

Hay, naku. I am starting to wonder what's going to happen to this case. As more and more malefactors are brought into the scene and the network of corruption is unraveled, the lawyers are celebrating their good fortune. Senate hearing: Ligot squirms in his seat

I thoroughly enjoyed the way Sen. Jiggoy Estrada was throwing his questions at the beleaguered Gen. Jacinto Ligot who, for the most part, was squirming in his seat and turning reddish (probably from embarrassment), while his lawyer kept on mentoring him to say nothing. Ligot was a good study of a liar who was caught with his pants down.

He certainly didn't expect Estrada to do his homework – and a good amount of legwork –so that when the crucial questions came, his denials crumbled.

First he said he didn't know that his wife was a well-traveled lady having been gone to places outside the country at least 42 times, 13 of which were with the wife of Gen. Angelo Reyes, Teresita. He didn't even know that Teresita Reyes and Erlinda Ligot are such good friends or that the latter belongs to that small circle of friends of Teresita who was receiving thousands of dollars in allowances from the AFP funds while on travel abroad.

Oh, yes, Ligot has such a fading memory that he even forgot his salary as a brigadier general or that his salary could have never afforded his wife the numerous travels abroad. So forgetful was Ligot that he didn't know his wife had at least two houses in the US.

When asked by Estrada if he knew about the properties, he pointedly said he didn't, only to admit later that that was part of the information submitted by the Ombudsman in a case he is facing at the Sandigan.

But these travels are well documented. So are the houses of Erlinda Ligot in Anaheim and the City of Buena Park. So there is no way Ligot can deny these – unless a doctor can certify on his amnesia or Alzheimer's Disease. But from the hearing this morning at the Senate, Ligot appeared to be hale and healthy. Well, Jinggoy's bombshells may have jolted him a bit, but like Carlos Garcia, mukhang wala na 'atang konsensya. They seem to have consigned themselves to the prospect that for the rest of their lives, they will be living in shame for having stolen millions from the Filipino people.
The bigger crooks

It appears that the big crooks were not the chiefs of staffs. So far, records would show that the bigger ones were the comptrollers who had absolute control over AFP's financial resources, both from internal as well as external sources. Gen. Carlos Garcia had P303 million stashed in several banks, while Jacinto Ligot, the lousy liar, had kept P704 million in several local banks.

The chiefs of staff, according to whistle blower Col George Rabusa, each had P50 million for their pabaon, although Diomedio Villanueva was said to have received P150 million if Garcia made good his promise to give the amount to him. Not one of them would admit taking the amount, even when onfronted with documents at the Senate hearing Friday. Both Garcia and Ligot always had a convenient way out: "I invoke my right against self-incrimination."

A plunder case was filed at the Sandigan against Garcia, while Ligot faces only a forfeiture case of two houses in California and a bank deposit worth more than P70 million. He had withdrawn the bigger part of the loot before the Anti-Money Laundering Act Council came in. Where that loot is, nobody knows except Ligot himself and maybe a few members of his family.

And Ligot won't tell, of course. He is a wily old fox who can lie with a straight face. Lies and deception are some of the man's weapons of plunder to enrich himself enormously.

There's a wealth of evidence that the Ombudsman can use against him for plunder, tax evasion, questionable wealth, perjury (for lying under oath in a Senate inquiry). Let's see if the Ombudsman takes these up against the most devious crook so far in the history of the military establishment.

Don't forget the eight other houses that Senator Drilon mentioned, belonging to Ligot or his jet-setting wife, Erlinda. I can't wait to see this woman during this week's Senate hearing. I'm sure Jinggoy would be throwing his bombshells again - and enjoying himself.
Coining words from "plunder"

Since I started to write about plunder, I have thought of nothing with as much intensity as this, and I guess in much of my waking hours, the word hovers around like the wretched smell of my cat's dung lying hidden somewhere. No, it refuses to leave that this noon, I finally took a pen and started to write derivatives of the word, much as they do in the German language which combines nouns, and, pronto, a new concept emerges.

You'll be pleasantly surprised to find that a lot of these coined terms can be used as we cover these plunder stories. I managed to draw up 17 derivatives and, since this is a free country, you can add your own and together probably we can come up with a dictionary.So here they are.

Let's start with Plunderous. An adjective to describe acts leading to plunder.

Plunderful - just like wonderful. Just substitute 'plunder' for 'wonder' and you have your meaning.

Plunderfest - the feast that comes from plunder money. As in Oktoberfest.

Plunderville - a village or subdivision built with plundered money.

Plunderloot - that one is self-explanatory.

Plunderlies - when you lie like Ligot or Garcia during investigations, those are

plunderlies.

Plunderjets - jets bought with plunder money.

Plunderbagman - not me, said Rabusa. He said he was the 'central bank'.

Plundergeneral \- like Gens. Ligot, Garcia, and the other chiefs of staff involved.

Plunderplea - the plea bargain obtained from the Ombudsman with plundered money .

Plunderguilt - that one drove somebody to commit harakiri. Both Ligot and Garcia don't seem to have this. Mga kapal muks kasi.

Plunderlust - as in wanderlust. The lust for plunder.

Plunderhaus - the houses of Erlinda Ligot in California.

Plunderheist - if you rob the houses of Garcia and Ligot, that's plunderheist.

Plundernest - like a love nest. The nest that the plunderer builds for his querida.

Plunderbank - a bank that stashes plunderloot.

Plunderfiles - the files of Garcia, Ligot etal. Like X-files.
The plunderer shows guile

In military parlance, it's called a 'decoy'. That seems to be the role of Edgardo Yambao, brother of Erlinda Y. Ligot, in Jacinto Ligot's gameplan. So much loot was involved, and he had already P740 million stashed in several bank accounts. But there was still a lot to be looted from the AFP's rich coffers. There was Edgardo, jobless and with nothing to do, who would readily act as a front man. He seemed perfect for the role, although too closely related. But what could he do? Who could he trust?

So Edgardo becomes the willing dupe in the multi-million looting that is probably the first of its kind in this country. He won't stand close scrutiny, of course, but who would suspect it would come to this? Ligot had covered himself well. Money was coursed through the ISAFP channels, a COA woman ensured things would run smoothly in the paper trial, the budget officer was part of the team, so were the chiefs of staffs. There were all conspirators who had millions deposited in safe bank accounts. So Ligot could do as hepleased.

The problem with this scheme is that his front man was a weak spot because he won't stand a chance before the likes of Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, Franklin Drilon or TG Guingona in the Senate. Drilon had called Yambao a 'mystery man' who could afford to buy a condo unit worth P25 million, luxury cars and have bank deposits worth several hundred millions – despite the fact that he was jobless and filed no income tax on the years that he acquired these riches. How would he explain his millions? This is probably why he did not show up for the hearing despite the subpoena.

Moreover, he did not have any address. In the purchase of the condo, he used Ligot's own address. He seemed to have disappeared. Like his brother, Erlinda did not show up too for medical reasons. She had checked into the Veterans Hospital two days before the Thursday hearing and an excuse letter, with a doctor's certificate, explained her absence.

Others like Generals Cimatu and Villanueva, former chiefs of staff who were pinpointed by Rabusa in the pasalubong-pabaon rites also claimed they were suffering from ailments. Cimatu for arthritic pains and Villanueva for kidney trouble. In other words, some principals in the case had cooked up excuses for their absence. A coincidence or part of a plan to foil the Senate?

But Ligot and Garcia, erstwhile AFP comptrollers and found to have hundreds of millions in bank deposits, were present in their usual confident demeanor. Both seemed to have weathered the shame and dishonor of the recent public disclosures, but it was Ligot who persisted in his denials, despite documented evidences to the contrary. He denied he knew about the P25-million condominium, just as he denied knowledge about his wife's purchases of houses in California when he was still the comptroller.

"Nabuking ka na nga, ayaw mo pa rin aminin," remarked Drilon.

"Your honor, I beg to invoke my right...." Was Igot's usual line.

I suppose shamelessness has its limits, but in the case of Ligot, he has conditioned himself to lie and lie, and no amount of public pressure is too heavy to resist. I suppose lying is like second nature to him.
Aling Merceditas should go

This might sound cruel for someone who wants to retire in peace come 2012, but her record of inaction in a government agency that is supposed to champion good governance leaves a yawning gap that can be very difficult to explain to the Filipino people. Yesterday's .Congressional hearing on allegations of ineptitude, incompetence and criminal neglect, bolstered by thick documentary evidences, presented by the camps of Akbayan and Bayan Muna leaves no room for dilly-dallying.

How will she explain, for instance, that during her first year of office, she made a claim that her performance shot up by 70 percent. But according to the Akbayan witness, Aling Merceditas was lying through her teeth. Actually only three people were convicted, having among them several cases. The three were small fries, and one of them was even accused of stealing P200 – which was dismissed by the Sandigan for its ridiculous imputations. In her four years, Merceditas was only able to secure conviction of 4 cases, or a dismal record of one case a year.

Cases involving large-scale theft involving high government officials remained in limbo or were not simply taken up. On the other hand, some 800 cases already filed with the Sandigan were withdrawn by the Ombudsman. These cases were settled amicably. In her testimony, former Akbayan Representative Risa Hontiverso Baraquel said that Merceditas was "very selective" in her choice of cases, saying cases that involved big government officials were not given due course. In the words of former solicitor general

Frank Chavez, the Ombudsman has been "under sedation" for the last seven years. She has created a "mere cobweb to catch the flies and small insects", not the bigger predators. Chavez cited the fertilizer scams during the Arroyo administration and the Megapacific Automation contract of Comelec commissioner Benjamin Abalos as two large cases that the Ombudsman refused to act on. He said besides the P728 million scam allegedly perpetrated by DA Usec Jocjoc Bolante, there was another P1.1 billion cases filed with the Ombudsman which the latter also refused to act on.

This despite the fact that the Senate in its hearings declared there was sufficientevidence. As of Feb. 25, 2011 ,no case has been filed by the Ombusman – seven years after the information was filed.

In the Mega Pacific Automation contract entered by Abalos, again the Ombusdman refused to filed the case even if the contract was nullified by the Supreme Court. Instead, the Ombudsman has absolved the Comelec in the anomalous transaction. In the P1.1 billion fertilizer scam, the Ombudsman has ignored the Senate findings, the COA report on this and even the reports of its own field offices. Chavez has named several congressman involved this scam. He was pressed by Rep. Fariñas to disclose the names, but the latter backtracked when Chavez was preparing to read the names of the congressmen.

Now if these evidences presented by the two groups on the alleged criminal neglect of the Ombudsman does not end in the dismissal of Aling Merceditas, we will hold the Congress committee on justice responsible for the continuing corruption in the top levels of the bureaucracy.
Edgardo Yambao does a Ligot

I was expecting some drama in the Senate hearing today, with Mrs. Erlinda Ligot present, she being the emotional, crying type. But too bad that never happened. Even while Sen. Jinggoy Estrada was preparing to ask Mrs. Ligot about her trips abroad and her houses in the US, her blood pressure shot up to 180 over something. She had to be wheeled out of the room and stayed in the clinic with doctors hovering around in case something happened.

Jinggoy, not wanting to have a load on his conscience, postponed the questioning for some other time. When that will be is still a big question. Unlike her husband, Erlinda looks frail and shaken up. She might just break down and be hysterical. Probably she never expected in her jet-setting days that life would suddenly come to this, when millions of Filipino people would stare at her in the boob tube and, in their minds, pronounced her guilty of the charges imputed on her. I wonder what it feels to be stripped of one's dignity in front of a crowd who knew she had no choice but to lie.

After all, documents had proven that she had traveled with Gen. Reyes' wife 42 times in several places all over the world, with money she probably didn't know was looted at that time. Probably she thought those were the privileges of a comptroller's wife and the wives of other generals. No, never had she dreamed that one day she would be questioned where all that money came from because she must have been assured by her husband that things were alright. She could not condition herself to lie...unlike hubby Jacinto.

But her brother Edgardo appeared to have been properly coached by his counsels. And so he even managed to throw a few quips to Sen. Drilon in the inquiry. Like Jacinto, he had memorized his lines well, refused to answer when pressed for answers, invoking his right against self-incrimination. He would not even admit that the bank deposits worth P255 million distributed in three banks were his. Maybe some rich benefactor had deposited those millions in his account. But when Drilon pursued the issue and challenged him to forfeit his claim on the accounts, he refused.

From his own income, Edgardo could not have amassed such wealth in so short a time – unless he was involved in big time business, which he was not, or some illicit activ-ity, like drug dealing. He told the Senate he was in a mere trading firm that sold confectionaries to stores like Rustan's and SM. Certainly, that was not a multi-million business that enabled him to deposit hundreds of millions in dollars and pesos in three banks.

It was during the years that his brod-in-law Jacinto was comptroller that Edgardo made his deposits, bought three luxury cars in three years and acquired a P25 million condo unity in Bonifacio. And during these years, he was jobless, his business had closed because it was losing, and he declared no income with the BIR. The amount amassed could have built more than 1,000 school rooms, Drilon said, as if Edgardo would have a troubled conscience afterwards.

Bigtime crooks, who have been used to looting the coffers of government agencies, are not expected to lead moral and exemplary lives. Lies are part of their game plan, and conspiracy a part of their modus. That much is evident in this Senate inquiry. Other than documents already gathered by the Anti-Money Laundering Council, crooks like Garcia and Ligot and now Yambao are not expected to tell the truth "and nothing but the truth."

I just hope our present Ombudsman gets the ax, is replaced with someone worthy of our trust and confidence, and then probably we can watch with glee when these crooks will finally bite the bullet or will walk to the guillotine.
Raffy, the third Tulfo, faces a P60M libel suit

Tulfo has decidedly followed the footsteps of his older brother, Ramon: arrogant, brash, self-righteous. Their father was a PC officer in Tacloban and, like most law enforcement agents connected to that agency, liked to flaunt their power in their turf. Tacloban was a small city then where everybody did not want to hurt anybody, and any small excesses were waived aside  for the sake of "peace and harmony."

How the Tulfos ended up with the media, despite their military orientation, is a story that might be worth looking into. Raffy's erroneous reportage appears to be a manifestation of this fundamental lack of any journalistic skills. His brother's undue interference in the hostage crisis shows a confusion of roles: does the guy want to be an 007, a hostage negotiator that one often sees in the movies? Or does he want to be another Ruther Batuigas, his idol?

Does Raffy know the people he is dealing with in his latest caper in mis-reporting? Apparently he does not. PAX stands for Philippine Alliance of Ex-seminarians. Directly translated for Mr. Tulfo, Pax means "peace". The groups involved here are former seminarians from all over the country who have chosen the life of laymen but still grounded in the strong beliefs and values honed in the hallowed halls of their respective seminaries, under the strict rules of discipline, spirituality and academic excellence.

Thus to be an ex-seminarian in the secular world was to stay head and shoulders above the crowd, even without meaning to. Pax Grill was conceived to reunite former seminarians in Manila and provide them a venue for their unending debates and discussions amidst bottles of San Miguel and some juicy pulutan. Occasionally, the group stopped arguing, retreated to one corner where a live band played favorites, and took the microphone, showing off their well-modulated voices learned from choirs of long ago.

To accuse this group of resorting to the cheap entertainment of Mr. Tulfo is just as absurd as it is stupid. GROs and go-go dancers in their skimpy bikinis is not their idea of expressing their sexuality. If this is Mr. Tulfo's way of being a journalist, it is a slap on his face. A journalist should check his facts first before blurting out. Apparently, he does none of that. Apparently he gets his way in Channel TV 5.

I have my own strong suspicion about this incident. Journalists in the likes of Mr. Tulfo must have had too much of the heady brew – not you favorite San Mig, I suppose.

On the night of February 9, he was probably making his rounds of the long Commonwealth Ave. And then in his loaded mind, he saw agogo dancers and GROs in Pax Grill, not bothering to check if indeed it was the Pax Grill. For lack of any other news on that morning show on February 10, he blurted out from his muddled brain that PAX Grill is another sex bar.

Those familiar with the members of PAX would not believe a word of Tulfo's news. They knew Tulfo had committed a mortal sin, one that would put him in the deepest part of hell for all eternity. The group asked that he retract his statements and ask forgiveness. But he would not. The unrepentant Tulfo persists in his hard-headedness, stupidity and indifference to what is right and what is wrong. He is like a loose cannon ball, a member of the ac-dc tribe of media practitioners who thrive on their innocent victims, a mens insane in corpore sano. Or a tabula rasa, if you will. No, I won't translate these for you. Look for a Latin dictionary, Mr. Tulfo.

Today, PAX will file at the Quezon City Hall of Justice a P60million libel suit against TV5 and Mr. Raffy Tulfo. Separate suits will likewise be simultaneously filed in different parts of the country - Marikina, Makati, Cebu,Davao, Bulacan, C de Oro, Leyte, among others. Tulfo must understand that he is up against people with untainted ideals and sheer disregard for misguided symbols of authority. Indeed, he is a disgrace to his profession and, in all likelihood, a lot of journalists will spat on his brazen face.

The amount may not be commensurate to the damage his has done, but it will probably teach him some lessons in hitting former seminarians below the belt.PAX ups the ante to P100 M

Hinamon pa ang mga members ng PAX na huwag daw iurong ang libel case. Akala seguro n'ya aatras ang grupo in the face of his bullying threats. Well, hindi naman umurong. Dinagdagan pa nga. From an initial P60 million, the libel case is now actually for P100 million! Mag-isip-isip na si Tulfo kung saan siya maghahanap nang ganun kalaking pera. Suggestion ko, makipasabwatan na siya kina Carlos Garcia at Jacinto

After all, they have the same criminal mindsets. Pero itong si Raffy Tulfo ay medyo mahinang klase dahil ang kanyang kinagigiliwan ay mga small time. Remember in 2006 he was convicted by the Court of Appeals, he and his pals Abante Tonite publisher Allen Macasaet and Managing editor Nicolas Quijano. The court ordered each of the three to pay lawyer Carlos So, officer-in-charge of Customs Intelligence Investigation Service (CIIS), 6,000 pesos for each count or 84,000 and 50,000 in exemplary damages also for each count or 700,000 pesos. They were also ordered to jointly pay 500,000 pesos for each count for moral damages and another 500,000 for each count for compensation for a total of 140 million pesos.

According to the decision, the complainant Carlos So, a former Bureau of Customs intelligence officer, was pictured as an extortionist, smuggler, grafter, corrupt public official, womanizer and a violator of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, among others. Tulfo was shamelessly imputing his own vices on his innocent victims. Ang kapal talaga ng apog!

It seems, Tulfo does not learn his lessons. Now he is venting his extortion skills on small fries, like the Pax Grill, a small, native bar where one can unwind not far away from the maddening crowd. Little did Tulfo suspect that the small fries he is picking on are people with big hearts and principled minds, the type who don't cower from a principled war. Oh, yes, the images of the group uploaded this morning is heart-warming. I see a lot of familiar faces – Mano Unding, Charlie Avila, Fr. Ed. Panlilio, our bidang-bida Pais Ricky who, definitely, has the heart of his pulahan ancestors. (You should invite Darth Vader to Jaro, to a bahalina session. Maybe he won't last an hour, with his yabang.! Matatakdul gud.)Those are all happy faces, all raring to slit the throat of the person who would defame a decent place for a few pieces of silver. They are like a basketball team who want to go for the fastbreak – but for the so-called due process which cautions them to do things the rational way.

I can't say that of Tulfo though. He is one of those bastardos who don't deserve to go through the due process. He is the Judas Escariot of the journalism profession. He is a social blight who can't be cleansed except by fire and brimstone.
Signs of the times

The signs are getting clearer. The looming economic crisis which seemed like a distant shadow last year has finally struck down its first casualty this year in the closure of the Intel plant in Gen. Trias, Cavite, causing more than 4,000 workers to become jobless. The news comes as a shock to us here who have so far viewed the crisis as something farfetched. This means more than 4,000 families will be a lot poorer, business will certainly suffer, and so will schools which could experience reduction in student population.

In the municipality where Intel has a plant, income will be lesser by at least P50 million a year, announced the mayor. And if Gen. Trias behaves like other municipalities where money is usually spent to hire political protégés, this means a good number of employees will be out of jobs, and services will be severely affected.

Now that's just Intel. Think of other firms that supply Intel its raw materials and other services. Another semi-conductor firm operating in Baguio, Texas Instruments, earlie laid off 450 workers when it closed shop. In the other electronics sectors, we are told that workers from Samsung, Yazaki, F-Tech, Fujitsu, NEC, TDK, and Matsushita are facing lay-offs in the first quarter this year. In September 2008, Amkor wiped out all its 3,000 contractual women workers. These are Korean and Japanese firms.

Overall, more than 60,000 workers in this sector will be out of jobs. Now if this isn't depressing, I wonder what isn't. What comes to mind at this point is the Export Processing Zone in Cebu, many of whose occupants are in one way or another related to the micro processing business, supplying other goods and services the way Intel does. Our news sources tell us two export companies in Lapu-Lapu City have started retrenching their workers due to the global economic slowdown. A furniture company in Mandaue City has declared a temporary closure, displacing over 300 workers.

Giardini del Sole Wooden Furniture Inc., which exported furniture to the US and Europe, filed a notice of closure with the Department of Labor and Employment in Central Visayas (DOLE-7) last December 17. The company finally closed its gates last Monday. In the car industry sector, Toyota Motor Philippines implemented this month a Monday-no-production day and it announced to "temporarily" get rid of its 500 contractual workers and on-the-job trainees by March. Nissan Motors laid off 40 regular employees in December and plans to retrench an additional 70 more this February. Keihin Philippines plans to implement a four-day work month this February. Ford now maintains only 18 employees out of the previously 400 workforce. Isuzu Philippines will soon follow the steps of its mother company, which displaced 30,000 Japanese employees.

In far away US of A, we also read that Microsoft, the giant software company that has created Windows and several other companion software, is also closing some of its operations, laying off some 5,000 workers. I expect other software companies will also downsize their working force if they want to weather this storm and come out intact.

Our economic planners and policy makers probably did not expect that this 'globalization' phenomenon would come to this. They always thought it was the best thing that could happen to us, so that even our own politicians never failed to include this in their agenda. Little did they suspect that the complex interrelatedness that globalization entails has its downside that would trouble us sooner or later. Unhappily, it has arrived sooner than everybody expected.

The question now is, how do we, in developing countries, surmount the crisis? Surely, there are jobs that will be severely affected, and these are especially in companies that cater to high end markets. (We read that Gap will be closing down some 100 stores and Starbucks 600 of its own because of the expected reduction in sales.) We can expect layoffs in this job market. But those in the health sector, like many of our nurses and physical therapists abroad, will continue to enjoy their high pay as their services will even increase with the entry of the baby boomers into the retirement zone. At least that's what many economists predict.

To those of us living in the provinces where government is the major employer and very few are with the private sector, the crisis may not be that bad. But it will be sorely felt by those dependent on their relatives working abroad employed by firms affected by the crisis. However, being closer to the farms where food is more available and the lifestyle does not make too many demands, the crisis may be easier to bear, what with our capacity to suffer and make adjustments being almost legendary.

I fear that it is in large urban centers where the crisis can generate all sorts of negative impacts, like an increase in daylight robberies and holdups and the emergence of antisocial groups that will take advantage of the situation. I just hope a lot of our brothers and sisters will have enough sense to return to their roots in the provinces – just like what our forefathers did during the war.
'Signs' sequel

The long brownout in our part of the city yesterday has kept me away from the computer and my books and mulling over this global economic recession. Like one possessed, I went over the possibilities of how we, in the provinces, could possibly be insulated against its ravages since most of our rural residents either farm or fish, while those in the towns thrive on uncertain and irregular jobs.

Where I live, there are thousands of drivers and dispatchers, pier workers and cargadores, vendors and hawkers, sales workers, GROs, plain housewives and freelance sex workers, illegal drug peddlers and shady underworld operators. Name it and we have them in the city that has been their easy playground in the past few years. Economists have classified them all as belonging to the 'underground economy', their practitioners being perennially tax exempt.

Add in a few thousand more factory workers, white collar executives and government employees, and we have a composite population that is found in other Philippine cities in their varying quantities and undesirable qualities, that sometimes you'll have second thoughts about the wisdom of keeping them alive.

I'm pretty sure those in government will weather the storm so long as their political fortunes do not change or their protectors do not change their minds about their protégés. Government cannot be expected to go bankrupt considering its parasitic nature, its tendency to squeeze the population dry with onerous taxation and propensity to borrow when its coffers are empty. Like the Catholic clergy, government functionaries can only become richer and richer even when crisis suffocates the rest of the population. Thus, all those in one way or another earning their daily bread from either of these two sources can't fare too badly.

Farmers and fishermen have been used to survival techniques since childhood. For centuries, in fact. If they have been able to survive unscathed for 20 or more years, they'll come out with flying colors in the next few years, while the rest of the world will be howling about the recession and unemployment and the falling of stock markets and the Dow Jones averages. Farmers will keep on producing food in times of scarcity. I have seen this in my almost daily trek to the farm where sloping hills by the roadside have been planted to upland rice and corn when the rice shortages forced long lines of buyers outside NFA retailers. These slopes used to be devoted to flowers and vegetables.

Like their inland counterparts, fishermen will always go out to sea when weather permits and the sea does not look too rough for their small boats. The assorted fishes sold at the market are proof to their unflagging industry and tireless search for food. Happily for them, the price of fish rises in inverse proportion to our increasing miseries.

Those employed in the private sector – sales workers, drivers, bookkeepers and accountants, clerks, janitors and delivery boys – can't fare too badly either because the enterprises that they serve sell basic goods (food and consumer items) and services. These are goods people can't do without – and you can safely include cell phones in your list. I can only think of call center agents as the possible victims of this recession, dependent as they are on global connections. But since most agents are highly talented people, they can easily find new jobs elsewhere. So why worry about them?

This leaves us with the sector operating in the underground economy, the sector that thrives on sheer wits and a little capital, on native ingenuity and knowledge of the marketplace, on a keen sense of supply and demand that the more educated classes can't see, and on a boundless capacity to endure adversities, honed as they are on the edges of survival.

This is the sector that has eluded government accountants and collectors, a sector that counts its income and expense not with calculators but with their heads. This is the sector that keeps our city's economy alive at night, where transactions are made underneath folding umbrellas, dingy bars and barbecue stands, and a host of adventures take place unseen. This sector should be the least of our worries because recession or not, it will keep on thriving.
Letter to a quixotic friend - part 1

(I wrote this to a quixotic friend who wants to run as vice-governor of Leyte as an addendum to his motherhood statements that seem so detached from our social realities here. The guy has two masters degrees – one in philosophy and another in business management.)

Government always tries to adopt a positive attitude when it talks about the economy. In its 2004 NEDA report of Leyte's economy, it says: "Both positive and negative signals about the economy were eminent during the period. Taking all things together, the economy continued to be productive." Still it courageously admits in later sentences: " Its growth was however dampened by higher prices, increase in criminality and decline in major outputs in the services sector... business was slow. Financial institutions experienced low deposits and had fewer loans granted to beneficiaries. Livestock and poultry industry was sluggish. "

Moreover, unemployment had increased, so had inflation and crime. It is difficult to understand this attitude of seeming optimism amidst a clear picture of an impending disaster. That was 2004. Today, the picture can only be far worse in the light of the recent global recession, although we do not have data to support this contention.

I do not want to go into the usual macro economic analysis that government uses, plotting demand and supply figures and finding out if things even up on a bigger scale. I'd like to have a clearer picture of the different sectors and the roles that each play in the entire picture. This for me is the more realistic approach. Despite avowals that the province is moving fast into the 21st century with the development of an IT hub in the regional center, I still maintain that Leyte is basically an agricultural country. Its population largely survives on products from their land and the sea, supplementing this with the earnings of family kin who work in factories outside the province, private and public offices, employment with government, and other non-formal jobs in the so-called underground economy.

Other sectors are still minimal, except probably for trade and commerce which are concentrated in the capital city and other large towns. We see an economy that has not fundamentally changed since 50 or 60 years ago, an economy that thrives on rice, corn, coconuts and abaca. We are still selling our desiccated coconuts and raw abaca fiber to processors outside the province, and we have not learned to extensively process these raw materials into finished forms, except maybe produce samples of abaca-made bags and ginit hats. In fact, this is probably the reason why government employment has become a lucrative career and engagement in electoral politics an attractive investment.

Now if 60 to 65 percent of our people are in this sector, I think the focus of development efforts should be here. Before making drastic proposals, let's try to figure out why our farmers continue to tread on the path of poverty. Except for Ormoc which still remains an hacienda country, the rest of the province do not have large tenurial issues, often pointed out as the kink in agricultural development. Large tenancy issues are practically non-existent in the eastern and central parts of the province. I won't say that the major issue here is productivity although government technicians and other functionaries like to think so. They measure development using standards of productivity per unit area, so that when a piece of property looks underproductive, their reflex action is to recommend higher farm inputs to remedy the so-called problem.

Government has so conditioned the minds of farmers to producing for the market that they forget that the main reason why farmers are farming is to feed their own families first. This market-driven target has taken precedence over the need for food security. In the present scheme of things, farmers are made to follow certain standards, to buy certain kinds of seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, disregarding the costs, the risk on their health, the damage to the soil and the environment or the future of their children. So at the beginning of the planting season, farmers troop to informal money lenders to borrow money to buy farm inputs, and during the harvest season, they troop back to pay their debts and interests, leaving barely enough for their families' survival. Add in the usual bad habits of lavish spending in the season of plenty and you have a perfect example of a vicious and never-ending cycle of poverty that starts from the moment the farmer is born into this world and stops only when he stops breathing.

For me, this market-driven direction has derailed he farmer from his principal mission, which is to produce food to feed his own family. Now he is producing so that others may eat and profit from him. Note how some palay traders ironically prosper amidst impoverished palay farmers. You know where they get their wealth or who enables them to live their flashy lifestyles.

The agricultural program of the government, starting with that infamous Green Revolution, is responsible for this malady. Before that, the farmers were better off. They could eat three times a day, have meat on Sundays and even attend Sunday cockpits. Now eating three meals a day is considered miraculous and meat comes as a treat only on fiestas. What we face today is even worse than Green Revolution because even seeds, the hybrid varieties, have to be bought. Farmers can no longer keep on producing the very food that they eat unless they buy its seeds. Worse, they must also buy chemical fertilizers and pesticides otherwise the seeds won't grow. These conditions have become like heavy chains on the hands and feet of our impoverished farmers. Some 65 percent of Leyte's population unhappily belong to this sector. If there is any sector that we should focus our development efforts on, this is it.

How? First change the farming framework – from one that is market-driven to one that focuses on food security and self-sustenance, from one that is fueled by harmful chemicals to one that is in harmony with the natural processes, from one that is monocropped to one that is diversified, from one that is unsustainable and destructive in the long run to one that is restorative and healthy. I think we should recognize the prerogative of the farmer to produce more than what they can consume so other sectors can eat, but I don't see that as a problem because since time immemorial, farmers always tended to produce more than what they could consume so that they could buy or trade something else from their surplus. This market-driven orientation is just a concoction of our so-called economists so that they can fiddle with their supply-demand figures. But we know for a fact that that has only made the lives of countless farmers miserable. I don't want to elaborate on this any further. Suffice to say that such a reorientation in the farming system framework is a sine qua non in our efforts to change the face of rural Leyte
Letter to a quixotic friend - part 2

In the first article, I was dealing mainly with lowland farmers involved in the commercial production of rice. The same arguments may hold true for vegetable farmers who produce mainly for the market, use hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, borrowing high-interest capital for producing because obviously they cannot afford the expensive inputs, and end up penniless and foodless on harvest time. We have not touched on the situation of coconut and abaca farmers, whose resources doubtless contribute millions to the coffers of the province and the general well being of their owners and producers.

Since the turn of the last century, both copra and abaca constituted as the island's (Leyte's) main export crops. In the national picture, Leyte was next to Bicol in production, producing as our ancestors did bales upon bales of the commodity. The early Spanish Basque traders in the island – the Aboitizes, Morazas, Muertiguis, Escanos – traded in abaca and grew rich in time. When the Americans arrived in 1901, they seized control of the trading in Tacloban in their early exercise of colonial prerogatives. Since then, farmers grew the crop and copra, harvested them and traded them raw. Since then, the traders always controlled the market and its prices, while the farmers and producers silently suffered the eternal price fluctuations, blaming fate and misfortune when the prices went down and celebrating with their neighbors over rounds of tuba when the prices went up.

This picture has not changed in the last century, only the actors did. The mode of production has remained the same, and even the trading patterns have survived time. In the recent years, there had been attempts to develop the abaca industry, using it as the material base for the production of native bags, placemats and other curio items principally for the export market. In Baybay, a foreign investor has put up a plant to process it into a paper money reportedly used in Japan.

As for coconuts, there are two plants here producing vegetable oil. Also, several enterprising individuals have ventured into bahalina production, trying to hit the export market. But I think the scale of production has not reached a dramatic level to warrant boasting about

By and large, abaca and copra are still being bought by foreign traders as raw materials as the amount of local processing has not surpassed supply levels. If we are to increase income and employment in this sector, I think government must vigorously support private initiatives that make use of abaca and copra as raw materials. Any viable industrialization program must utilize local materials and avoid the import substitution scheme that is the craze in many export processing zones. They may appear nice on paper but their dependence on external resources and technology makes them unstable. Many of these firms are now folding up, affected as they are by the global recession.
Letter to a quixotic friend - part 3

Before we tackle the IT issue, let me delve a little on the commerce and trade centered in Tacloban, the regional and provincial hub. The city derives its existence mainly on the high density of government employees and student population here. Consider the employees of the city government, the province and the regional offices, and note the amount of cash being put into circulation every 15th day of the month, this being spent in the markets, stores and emerging malls, the various little eateries you can see sprouting everywhere. Add the tens of thousands of student population coming from all parts of the region and the allowances they spend on food, clothing, school items and various other small items, and you'll have a vibrant commerce and assorted services rising to meet the demand, starting from the barbecue stalls to the huge shopping mall. Owned by the Gokongwei family, that's being constructed in Marasbaras.

In this kind of setup, no new values are created or added because no industries have resulted from the demand. Local merchants are content with selling goods made elsewhere and adding a few percentages for their services and profit. Here is a perfect example of money being circulated or passed on from one hand to another, without anything new being produced. The look of prosperity is all on the surface, and people are easily led to believe in illusions of prosperity with the new rising malls and their air-conditioned ambience, the fast food chains like Jollibee, MacDonald, Wimpy's, Dunkin' and the rest of chicken-serving eateries. While these stores may be paying real estate taxes to the city government, their net effect is to siphon off hard cash elsewhere. The reality is, every 15 days, the local economy suffers from cash shortages to the tune of several hundreds of millions.

This is where the local IT industry – the outsourced call centers and the typing jobs – are being bragged about as the wave of the future, the inexorable path to 21st century progress. For sure it's earning a lot of dollars from clients abroad, giving some of our most talented young men and men ample opportunities to earn five digit figures, serving clientele born and bred in the king's English, in cozy cub holes where time zones merge and get lost in the convoluted twang of an alien culture. Yes, these dollars will feed the thousands of extended family members that still cling to their high-earning brods and sis and get to shop in the city's emerging entrepots.

But the "IT" tag is nothing but a misplaced name. For one, information here is neither gathered, stored, processed nor retrieved using technology. What people do is memorize information and pass it on to others who are either too lazy to read handbooks or too dumb to understand them, answering relevant questions as they come and trying to sound as cool and relaxed in the nuances of the language they were trained for. This is what call centers are and this is what they do.

You would expect that our local governments and its agencies would be armed with the latest database technologies, but on closer look one discovers computers are utilized as mere typewriters, with additional capabilities to play music and video games most useful during breaks or when the boss is gallivanting somewhere. Data are still stored in the good old filing cabinets, gathering dust and termites with misuse or the lack thereof. When elsewhere in the world database technologies process information in seconds for local executives and policy makers to act on, here in the province our data are found in 10-year old folders typewritten on brittle bond paper now brownish with age. Indeed, we should store these in museums and archives where these will be put to better use by historians and anthropologists.

Evidently our local executives do not appreciate the value of computerized data, accustomed as they are to govern by guesswork. Our local executives routinely make decisions about what projects to implement, and viability or importance are not even part of the criteria. Projects have become political issues to be determined by the amount of largesse they get and the number of protégés that can be employed in the process. Development issues are far from their minds.

Thus, having accurate data would make no sense to them, let alone storing them in some sophisticated, state-of-the-art technology.

So "IT" in the province refers to that outsourcing business and call centers. It has in no way influenced the way government institutions process their data or make intelligent decisions. Such kind of enterprise can never be rightfully called the "wave of the future". Its contribution to the local economy consist in a little more than the six-digit figures earned by its workers, its sustainability dependent on the temper of the world elsewhere. It cannot be depended on to survive the onslaught of the financial disaster gripping other parts of the world, and at any moment's notice, it could close down its operations.

Our strongest weapon against foreign-induced crisis is still that part of our agriculture that produces our food, assuming that we cut off our dependence on genetically modified seeds (hybrid varieties), on chemical fertilizers and pesticides and on farming systems that set the market as the focus of production. Otherwise, we fall back into the pitfalls of that infamous "green revolution" that has consigned majority of our farmers in the vicious cycle of perpetual indebtedness and grinding poverty.
Commercialization of Agriculture and Poverty

The recent increases in the prices of oil and its by-products have led many farmers in the upland barangays of Ormoc to rethink their farming systems. Now a field of tomatoes in a plot 20 x 20 square meters big can only be more expensive to maintain, especially since most of these farmers are heavy users of chemical fertilizers and pesticides which were directly hit by the oil price hikes.

But apart from the issue of economics, there are other issues that need to be understood by the farmers themselves. Foremost among these is sustainability. Farming cannot be sustainable if it continues to depend on hybrid, non-self-pollinating varieties, inorganic fertilizers and pesticides that are derived from our disappearing fossil fuels. Any agricultural system that depends on such external sources for its continued sustenance is bound to be self-destructive. It will reach a level whereby producing food becomes impossible without the support of such fertilizers and pesticides. There will come a time when farmers will no longer be able to plant the seeds from their produce.

This is now happening in rice where hybrid varieties are being promoted to increase yield. Rice farmers in Ormoc and elsewhere in the country now have to buy expensive hybrid seeds so that they can plant rice. And since hybrid rice cannot thrive without maximum fertilizer application, the farmer must likewise buy enough bags of fertilizers. By design, hybrid rice varieties are symbiotic with massive fertilizer application. Other crops will follow suit. Tomatoes, eggplants, sweet pepper and other greens, like cabbages, lettuce, Chinese cabbage and pechay seeds must be bought from seed suppliers, which are mostly foreign companies. Because of such dependence, they will also learn to borrow from other business sectors because they will need capital to start up their farms, this at exhorbitant interest rates.

Fertilizer impact on the soil can only lead to its continued degradation since these fertilizers are provided with acid base that destroys soil micro-organisms and the nutrients important to soil fertility. The more farmers use such inputs, the more the soil is depleted. We can cite plenty of cases where the soil has become so acidic that the farmers have to buy powdered lime stones in order to lessen the soil's acidity. For instance, Carigara (Leyte) farmers have been for years buying crushed lime stones from Brgy. San Juan, Ormoc City, in order to neutralize their acidic soil. In some cases, the soil had simply hardened after it had lost all traces of humus.

The constant use of chemical pesticides that is intended to wipe out all field insects ends up destroying the ecosystem and causing serious imbalances and harmful consequences. This is apart from their impact on human health. Plants and other field crops become easy prey to plant eating insects, which had in the meantime proliferated in the absence of predators that did not survive the pesticides. In some cases, pests develop an immunity to the medicine that they return in greater ferocity and number to one's crops, oblivious of the pesticidal spraying. This is happening in Brgy. Kabentan, which is known as the salad bowl of Region 8. Large contiguous areas here have been converted to vegetable plantations, the perfect examples of market-driven mono-cropping farming systems.

Of course, the use of chemical pesticides does not augur well for the health of consumers. Toxic chemicals in pesticides usually leave traces of poison on the plants on which they are applied, and these are ingested by farmers. No wonder we hear of so many toxin-related ailments affecting internal organs of many farmers and sending them to hospitals or their deathbeds. There are several undocumented cases of damages of internal organs, the skin as well as eyesight in that barangay that have so far escaped official notice. At the back of this farming system is the orientation that has been nurtured in the farmers' consciousness – that they must produce for the market. This is the rationale why they are engaged in farming. Producing for family becomes secondary. Many times this is even left out in the haste to make quick profits in the marketplace.

This market-driven farming system promotes a mono-cropping scheme adopted by large plantations, a scheme that violates all the laws of environmental sciences. Indeed, agriculture today is devoid of all science but has shifted its concerns to profit and agribusiness. First, plantations thrive only when the land is cleared of all weeds and grasses because these are presumed to be harmful to the crops. Sometimes, these are even burned on the ground to further rid the soil of "harmful" micro-organisms. Because our farmers have been born and raised on this kind of orientation, even their small plots of tomatoes and other vegetables follow this mono-cropping routine.

The farmers are never told that from the moment they plow the land and thoroughly clean it up for their crops, they are removing important insect host plants and habitats and that such a practice is a step towards the infertility of the soil. Plowing and thorough land preparation removes plants sources of or micro-organisms to thrive on. They are not told that the land can be replenished only if the dead plants are allowed to rot on the soil whence they came from, aided by micro organisms that function as digesters of these dead plants and that convert these into essential soil nutrients, like nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and other minerals. Indeed, the practice of burning dead plants is not scientifically sound and does not help in making the land sustainable. Yet such unsound practices are being promoted by government extension workers in the barangays along with the massive application inorganic fertilizers and pesticides.

Worse, government is offering all kinds of inducements, inviting small farmers to the global arena when it cannot even give adequate market data on the local scene. It cannot even provide the necessary information that will enable farmers to decide what crops to plant and when to harvest them. Instead they are often left to their own devices when marketing their produce. Thus, even at the local market, some commodities are in oversupply while others are scarce. In cases when there is glut, prices tumble and the poor farmer goes home to his farm with a heavy heart. On the other hand, the vegetable traders and suppliers of farm inputs gloat with glee. And all the time, government officials shrug their shoulders, dismissing the phenomenon as something over which they have no control.

"Market forces," they say. So why produce for the market in the first place? Why induce the small farmer to go global? The reasons are pretty obvious: it's all for the sake of agri-business, of course. The small farmers are left out of this equation.

This market-driven farming system appears to be the root of the problem of poverty among a lot of farmers. The haste to make quick profits at the market in the plantation of short-term crops forces the farmers to borrow capital for labor and other expensive farm inputs to plant a hectare or two to a single crop. Their losses usually occur in two ways. When the season is not favourable and they take trouble to plant, the risks are enormous. We have witnessed many small farmers go bankrupt overnight when heavy rains struck their plants, destroying their plots and draining them of top soil through massive erosion.

In times when the season is favourable, the tragedy occurs at the market when prices fall way below their expectations.

Because of this mono-cropping scheme, nothing is left for the farmer's family to consume at the table. A lot of farmers go hungry this way. Those who have made loans – and the majority of them do – are even worse off. They not only go hungry; they are saddled with loans with high interest rates, loans that they must pay in the next cropping season.

At no time is this more evident than on the rainy months of October to December. In the upland areas where Pagtinabangay Foundation operates, it is common to hear of farmers not eating three times a day. In the absence of any viable alternative to the mono-cropping craze, many of them have simply abandoned their plots or converted them into abaca plantations where the chances for making money are more apparent.

An alternative

Farmers must shift their orientation about farming if they want to avoid the consequences of hunger and extreme deprivation. Instead of planting for the market, they must plant for their own family's consumption – which is actually a lot easier to do. For one, this calls for the total abandonment of the mono-cropping scheme in favor of diversified cropping. Instead of planting only tomatoes, eggplant or Chinese cabbage, they should plant more vegetables, and that should be in lesser quantities since family consumption is a lot lesser and a lot easier to determine than the demand of a market which they know nothing about. A family of five members will definitely consume a very limited amount of each vegetable. Now if they want to sell a little of their produce so that they can buy their other needs, all they have to do is double their production efforts and, presto, they have a surplus which they can trade off to buy rice, fish, soap, salt, meat.

Labor requirements will therefore be much lesser. In contrast to the market-driven agriculture that requires hired labor, production for family consumption will only require family labor. Hence, labor cost will be minimal.

In terms of seed requirements, a pack of seeds for each vegetable item can be seeded three or four times following the scheme of producing for family consumption. In a case like this, farmers no longer need to buy fertilizers or pesticides. The soil can be easily restored if the plants that grown on it are allowed to rot in place rather than burned. This process will eventually restore the land to its original fertile state. In a highly diversified system, pests are not likely to thrive in dangerous levels since a diversity of insects are also encouraged. Hence, for every pest, there will always be a predator that is likely to gobble it up. This is an immutable natural law that operates without fail under a diversified system. Thus, pesticides will become useless. The vegetables that are produced will be poison-free and safe to eat.

Since the space or area needed for this system will be small initially, the planting schedule can be arranged on a staggered or phases-by-phase basis. One's one-hectare farm, for instance, can be subdivided into three or four zones. Each zone will be a miniature diversified farm, producing enough to sustain the family requirements for a month. After the first zone is planted, the second zone will start seeding and, after a week, planted.

The first is duplicated. Then the third zone follows. The cycle is repeated when harvest in the first zone starts as soon as the harvested plants start to rot. Under this scheme, a family will be harvesting daily or weekly or as their table requirements dictate. Hunger will be a thing of the past. So will debt that has only worsened their already miserable, impoverished lives. Now they will always have food on the table and a little surplus to sell or exchange for other needs which the farm cannot produce.

No, they will not become extremely rich as the hacienderos in town. Their lifestyle may not even reach the level of the middle class urban dwellers. But they will have food in abundance, food that is healthy and safe. They won't have to worry about food shortages or price fluctuations in food items because any increase in the prices of rice and vegetables can only be beneficial to them.

Will they be able to send their children to school? If they produce enough surplus, why not? Public elementary and high schools are supposed to be free, and children only need money for transportation, school supplies and other miscellaneous needs. Dropout rates are high because of food concerns as rural children are often tapped by their parents to work in the farm to augment family income. With the problem of food shortage met, the dropout problem should reduce.

This shift in farming systems however is a cultural problem and, as such, requires time to take roots in the consciousness of farmers.
Dark clouds over Lake Danao ecotourism

Lake Danao is decidedly one of the coolest places to be in the country especially during summer months and hot weekends. Its 148-hectare guitar-like shape lie in the midst of forested mountains some 700 meters above sea level, and, on any day, its deep and dark mysterious waters never fail to attract nature lovers, adventure-seekers, hikers and even cyclists who see the place as their mecca of a long hard climb on lazy Saturdays or Sundays.

This is apparently one of the reasons why the Department of Tourism has selected the lake as one of its few ecotourist destinations in region 8. Lake Danao has largely maintained its unspoiled look, and photography enthusiasts among its stream of visitors always manage to bring home souvenir photos, one of their favorite themes being scenes of its shimmering water ranged against a background of dark blue forested mountains. These photos eventually find their way to the internet for the entire world to see. Now one hears of Europeans planning a trip to the place to experience it and bask in its deep mysteries.

Yet there is an evolving drama arising from among its human stakeholders that could spoil its game plan as a top ecotourist attraction. These conflicts, if unresolved, might just dampen this plan and delay its development for several more years. At the moment, the stakeholders have come to a stalemate, with neither one of the protagonists giving way to the other and nary a resolution in sight.

According to the National Integrated Protected Area Systems (NIPAS) Law enacted in 1998, the management of the Lake Danao Park is supposed to be under a Protected Area Management Board or PAMB composed of the DENR, the LGU, Philippine National Oil Company, people's organizations and the barangay local government and some NGOs.

The law has designated a number of representatives from each group and the Ormoc City government is entitled to only one seat.
City wants more seats

Since the PAMB was convened some years ago, its DENR representatives have been quite liberal about the number of participants attending meetings and participating in the group's deliberations – until some weeks ago when top a DENR official from the regional office, Protected Area and Wildlife Division Chief Cora Makabenta presented the approved list of representatives from the DENR central office per papers submitted to the office. Now two city kagawads, Jose Alfaro Jr., an avowed environmentalist, and Sotero Pepito can no longer sit in PAMB deliberations because, according to the DENR document, the city is entitled to only one representative, not two, much less three.

The city could not accept that, of course, and would not take the issue sitting down. Apparently, it wants to ensure that its own tourism plans are not compromised. For one, it has already started widening the circumferential road and putting concrete slabs on a trail near the lake so that, obviously, trekkers will get no muddy feet afterwards. According to PAMB plans, it was only going to re-establish a trail, not a pathwalk with concrete slabs.

Earlier, the city hired a private contractor to build a viewing deck near the old DENR office. Whether or not such a deck was approved by PAMB is now immaterial. The deck exists, looking like a white ghost of concrete amidst green surroundings. With this deck, the city also constructed a number of comfort rooms to the tune of more than a million pesos. Now these comfort rooms cannot be used because, ironically, the place has no water system. Visitors have to pee against trees or hide behind bushes to unload their gall bladder.

The city has not disclosed its other tourism plans for the lake. It would not do so in a board that is dominated by POs and NGOs anyway. Its unconcealed bias against NGO presence came out in Kagawad Alfaro's asking why there were more NGOs in the board than LGU representatives. But there are loose talks of plans to relocate the barangay site to a place outside the lake's immediate vicinity.
Ecoli in the lake

The local residents have been largely, though unofficially, blamed for the presence of ecoli bateria, an indicator of unsanitary dumping of human wastes to the lake. This is especially alarming to the water consumers of the eastern part of Leyte who derived their drinking water from this lake's overflow. The ecoli could likewise result from improper waste throwing by raft users inside a small cubicle that serve as comfort rooms. The probability of such contamination is not farfetched. Some raft users are bound to experience gastric discomforts after hours of laz ing around and gorging on half-cooked fish or roasted meat in the comfort of the floating raft.

Fish kills have been likewise reported in the vicinity of the barangay elementary school where a garbage dump, a hole in the ground, has been seen to overflow on rainy days.

The ecoli argument provides enough ammunition for the city to implementation its hush-hush relocation scheme, but so far no activity has been seen towards this. This issue is no laughing matter but one that is politically loaded. It could stir up the dormant wellspring of emotions and muddle up the issue of ecotourism all the more.
A bit of history

Long before the NIPAS Law was enacted in 1998, several families living near the lake had staked their claims on the fertile slopes around the lake, clearing its forests and burning felled trees to make way for small patches of kaingin farms. These claims, though untitled, range from a few hectares to some 400 hectares filed by an old family in the area. Evicting them from the site could be interpreted as evicting them from their old claims, their sources of income. Apparently, the local government does not want to touch that sensitive issue. Neither does the DENR or the PNOC for that matter.

And so the rape of the forests around the lake continues almost unperturbed. One simply has to go beyond the lush exterior of the forest cover to find fresh clearings and new kaingin farms, young and old trees laid to waste. The city agricultural office can offer them no viable alternative, except urge them to plant cash crops for the market, using loads of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In lieu of cash crops, the city wanted the Fiber Development Authority to put up an abaca stripping machine in the area to encourage the farmers to plant abaca.

The PNOC has likewise latched on to the abaca idea, organizing resident farmers in Lake Danao, financing their abaca nursery and helping them in their small abaca plantations. With the failure of cash crops, many farmers have converted their kaingins into profitable abaca plantations, in the process, cementing their claims on lands that are supposed to be protected conservation sites.
Unresolved issues

Now the DENR feels helpless. The problems of the farmers have made their task more complicated as it does not have any influence on the barangay residents. Technical director Ricardo Tomol himself has admitted that the DENR has to partner with the city to manage the Lake Danao natural park. In fact, a draft of a co-management agreement has been written down but its discussion has been deferred because of the representation issue brought up earlier by city council representatives Alfaro and Pepito. Will Tomol, in his bid for co-management, buckle down to give way to the city's demand for more representation? Will the city even consider the idea of co-management, knowing that it has its own tourism plans for the lake? Can there be a viable ecotourism program when the rape of Lake Danao's forests continues unperturbed?

As it is, dark clouds hang ominously over Lake Danao that could easily prove disastrous to its ecotourism program.
Ondoy and Uring parallelism

Ondoy reminds me very much of Typhoon Uring 18 years ago when Ormoc was devastated by a horrendous flood that took thousands of lives and destroyed millions worth of property. Like Uring, Ondoy was estimated to be a minor typhoon that had a center wind of 55 kph, moving at the speed of 12 kph. Uring was moving at thespeed of 11 kph. Pag-asa's announcement didn't create much stir because the figures were not threatening enough.

Thus, people were caught by surprised when Ondoy brought torrents of rainfall that broke records, flooding entire cities that spared no one. Rich and poor alike share similar fate. While Uring left thousands killed and wiped out entire families, Ondoy devastated properties that left hundreds of thousands homeless and nowhere to go. Its flood didn't subside until days later, and hundreds could not be rescued because the waters had not subsided. Uring's flood lasted only for 30 minutes, leaving sprawled bodies in their agonies of death.

But Uring's flood was not caused by heavy rainfall. In fact, there was only a slight drizzle in the city. The heavy rain fell in the upstream sections of the two river systems, Anilao and Malbasag rivers, cascading down to the city in a rampage that caught those living along the riverbanks swimming for dear life. In Ondoy's case, the heavy rains fell on the helpless population and on cities built near the riverbanks of Marikina, Cainta and Pasig, flooding even middle class subdivisions once thought to be immune to floods.

The cities' drainage systems simply could not cope with so much rain water. This was made worse by the clogging of water ways and esteros caused by human settlements Add in the climate change factor, a phenomenon recognized only recently, and you have a perfect recipe for disaster. The media called the event a "deluge", comparable to the Biblical Noah's great flood. It is a shocking wake-up call to the realities of climate change especially to those who treated issue as an academic one. All along, a lot of people thought that the issue was still debatable and that its impact would not reach our shores until decades later.

But Ondoy is probably just a precursor of things to come. To me the Metropolitan Manila is a disaster waiting to happen. It is simply too congested, and its infrastructures are bound to give way under extreme conditions. Millions work and live in areas unfit for human habitation - near riverbanks, under bridges, in squatter colonies in makeshift hovels, over esteros - clogging waterways with tons of wastes and plastics, so that drainage systems malfunction and flooding occurs even during slight rainfalls. All of these because factories, offices and schools are all in the big cities, attracting hordes of migrants from the country's rural areas.

I used to live in the big city for 11 years in the '70s, and even then, I thought Manila needed to decongest itself of its factories and schools. Now more than 30 years later, the congestion continues as Metropolitan Manila continues to attract job hunters and fortune seekers. I have not heard of any government policy encouraging manufacturing firms and offices to relocate themselves to the poorer, less developed but labor-rich provinces.

Maybe Ondoy is that alarm call telling our government policy makers to heed the call of nature. In the light of the climate change phenomenon, maybe government should rethink its policies. Maybe, just maybe, it's time for an exodus from the big city.
Decongesting the big city

You can treat this as a sequel to the previous article "Ondoy and Uring Parallelism" which suggested an exodus from the big city after that great deluge spawned by Ondoy. Just this morning, ABS-CBN was airing an interview with Eastern Samar Governor Ben Evardone who is supporting a "balik-probinsiya" program that encourages Samarenos to return to their home province.

If you are residing near riverbanks and lake shore areas of Laguna, which up to now are still flooded, going back to a devastated home is not simply an option. Not when everything that you've saved for is gone. Not when your erstwhile abode is still underwater and a lot of your neighbors are dying from leptospirosis. The only reason why evacuees are still are the evacuation centers is that they have nowhere to return to.

Evardone's program is so far the most sensible one that I've heard from government officials who, up to now, are more inclined to looking for ways to rehabilitate the areas destroyed by the flood. While some are capitalizing on the relief to advertise themselves as in the case of Sen. Manny Villar, others are using their positions in government to "investigate for purposes of legislation" the causes of the flood – for similar ends: media mileage.

Loren Legarda, for instance, has called for an investigation of the Napocor officials who opened the gates of Napocor dams in Central Luzon. Great for media exposure but for what else?

The Samar governor is intent on providing transportation money for those who avail of the program and extending some capital assistance for housing and livelihood once the beneficiaries are in place. To those who earn their keep in the big city in the informal sector (like the vendors, porters, laborers, construction workers and similar odd jobs), the invitation would be a welcome alternative. As one ABS-CBN guest said, "sariwa ang hangin sa probinsiya." But those who have regular jobs in factories and the service sectors, it could mean leaving a regular source of income which could help their families survive in these critical times. The latter would have second thoughts before taken on

Evardone's suggestion and starting a new life in the province. There's only one way this balik-probinsiya program could succeed. The deconges- tion must start from the relocation of factories to the provinces – which is not welcome for these factories because of the huge expenses that will be incurred and the financial viability of the move. Manila has always been the center of the country's trade and industry, an assumption which nobody has dared to question. But in the '70s, Marcos began establishing industrial hubs in the hope of redistributing the boons of development. Cebu and Cagayan de Oro were the direct offshoots of this move. Now there are several other industrial and trade centers developing elsewhere (like Davao, Gen San, Subic), opening up job opportunities and new hubs of trade and commerce. These only show that relocation of job sources – which is the migrants' attraction to the big city – is not only viable but desirable as well.

But does government have the political will to implement such a scheme? That seems to be the issue right now. In a season when political aspirants are jockeying to be in the limelight, when media exposure becomes the immediate, short-term objective, these aspirants may not have enough courage to suggest something as unpopular as decongesting the big city and relocating the sources of jobs and opportunities.

As of now, this grand scheme may have to be tabled for a more opportune time. But when? After the typhoon season when, heaven forbid, our urban villages shall have survived the next floods?

I dread to see the day when we will have nothing more to say except, "Too late the hero, sigh."
Environmental Congress at UP Tacloban

I was late. When I arrived, the opening ceremonies were through and the keynote speaker, Dr. Nereus Acosta, had been on the podium for some 20 minutes or so. His mixed audience from the academe, NGOs, POs and the government inside the airconditioned conference hall of UP Tacloban were rapt in attention, listening to everyword, every sentence, every utterance of the Obama-like Dr. Acosta, who, I learned later, was also a former congressman from Bukidnon.

What? A Ph. D. congressman? Was I getting it right? We don't usually associate PhD's with politicians, right? PhD's are supposed to be in the academe, lecturing to classes, doing research, or engaging themselves in some serious intellectual banter.

Yes, I got it right, Acosta was a congressman and he authored the Clean Air Act and did a lot of lobbying with fellow politicians on issues related to the environment. Since he belonged to the Liberal party, he was also part of the group who signed the first impeachmentpetitions against the present occupant of Malacañang.

From then on, he was a marked man. He received no pork barrel for his district and got booted out of the committee on the environment in the Lower House. Today, the former congressman teaches at the Asian Institute of Management where he is in his element.

If you had seen Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth," you'd love to listen to Acosta's Philippine version – and you'll get all the more depressed afterwards. Because, as it is, the state of our environment doesn't look too good. Add to that the rampant violation of our laws regarding the environment and the lousy governance that's supposed to lead us out of our perdition, and you have a disaster that's waiting to happen.
Geology 101

Scientists are not exactly the best of speakers, and it's not because they are artless creatures who concern themselves chiefly with heavy, often ponderous subjects. Earth sciences are not exactly my cup of tea especially on afternoons inside the airconditioned conference hall during the Environmental Congress at UP Tacloban. Such a combination is simply perfect for dozing off.

But Dr. Renato Solidum, a Phivocs director, delivered his technical subject matter in perfectly understandable laymen's terms that I could not help but stay awake during his hour-long discussion of issues related to geological disasters, like earthquakes, and the hazards of living within the ring of fire, putting past incidents in the right scientific perspective. Only then was I able to understand the Ginsaugon landslide in Southern Leyte a few years ago, the Cherry Hill Subdivision landslide several years ago, the tectonic plates of the earth and the pressures they create on the land and sea, the different kinds of tsunamis and why earthquakes occur, and the reasons why landslides could still occur in heavily forested areas. It was a crash course in Geology alright.

He said Ginsaugon was a disaster waiting to happen as its residents resided in an area that had a history of landslides. In fact, he said, there were indications in its vegetation that the landslide was going to take place soon. But since the farmers who saw these manifestations could not interpret them, they did not think of leaving their residences.

Their ignorance led to the death of hundreds. His logic was sharp, his humor often caustic, and some of his quips were simply funny. On introducing his agency, he said it has two major divisions: the heavenly and the earth-bound. He meant Pag-asa and Phivocs.

One funny quip had to do with language, like how would you translate "tailend of a cold front into Pilipino?"

"Buntot sa hulihan sa malamig na harapan,"

Solidum denied me my precious siesta. How could I doze off when the guy kept throwing adlibs like that?
Angel Alcala's Prognosis

The last time I saw him was 16 years ago during an environmental conference we organized in Ormoc after the tragic 1991 flood. Even then he was already sporting white hairs, looked stocky and was deeply tanned. Last week, he did not seem to have changed. Even his manner of speaking remained frozen, as it were, although one could see his range of knowledge about the marine life and the ocean, his specialty, may be called encyclopedic. That was evident when he started to discuss the impact of climate change on marine life.

I have read in several articles previous to the environmental congress in Tacloban about the effects of climate change on sea levels. The melting of ice caps in the northern hemisphere could easily increase the quantity of water in our oceans and inundate our coastal towns. But hearing it from an authority like Alcala was like a confirmation of what is inevitable. This means that 80 percent of our towns, which are lying along the coasts, will be severely affected and will have to seriously think about moving to higher ground. I could only think of our own towns and cities in the region: Tacloban, Tanauan, Tolosa, Dulag, the entire Southern and western Leyte coast, including Ormoc, the towns in Maqueda Bay, Samar and those facing the eastern seaboard. We could wake up one day floating on the shores and trying to retrieve our prized possessions and precious mementos in the sea, especially since nobody seems to be thinking seriously about the problem now.

One other imminent disaster that's waiting to happen is the impact of increased ocean temperature on marine life. Alcala said phytoplanktons, which are food to small fishes, will die when the temperature rises to 35 degrees Celsius. When this disappears in the food chain, other bigger fishes will also disappear or will probably move to other areas where food is still available.

For us in the region, which prides itself as a rich source of fish, this could easily spell disaster. Our fishermen will have to move to colder regions so that they can continue fishing or find other sources of living. Good heavens, we might have to import of fish from Japan by then.

Include the stronger super typhoons resulting from higher sea temperatures, and we'll have hellish disasters coming our way. Fasten your seatbelts, guys, and make the sign of the cross.
The beds of roses in Milagro

Ormocanons are familiar with Milagro. The place sits on an elevation of about 600 meters above sea level. One can easily feel the change in the climate at this elevation on one's skin in varying degrees. When it's hot down in the city, it's still cool up there. But when it rains, it's really chilly up there and you have to have that ukay-ukay sweater on your body.

Because of its marvelous weather, the place has attracted Cebuano settlers from Brgy. Busay, farmers who are experts in flower culture. They have began to settle in the area, leasing portions of the lands along the road and some near the Anilao river where they use motor-driven water pumps to water their beds of flowers. From the looks of it, these farmers have been successful. Some of them have acquired vehicles and rebuilt their huts along the road with hollow blocks and galvanized iron roof. A few have become barangay officials. In a way, they have really settled down here.

Now Milagro's original settlers are following their example. Supported and financed by PNOC, the local farmers organized themselves into a cooperative and carved their own beds of roses from one hillside. The beds follow the natural contour of the land and, on warm days, the beds of roses look dazzling. On wet days, however, you can see the soil being washed down to the road below and farther down into the river. Apparently, the PNOC community organizers failed to warn their beneficiaries about the dangers of soil erosion.

I usually go home from our farm on late afternoons as school children are starting to trek back to their homes in the hills. Since it gets cooler, I can also smell the air around me and, you know what? I don't smell the fragrance of flowers but the smell of death – of malathion and decis, both potent killers of insects and men (and women). The scent is often mixed with that of ammonia-laden chicken dung, which is just as suffocating. Ironic, isn't it?

I can understand why the Cebuanos do it. That's the only way they know how to do it. But those PNOC people are supposed to know better than to plot their beds following the contour of the hill. They should know better than to use generous amounts of harmful pesticides and fertilizers. I thought PNOC is for environmental conservation and advocates the sustainable use of resources.
15 farmers to go natural

Fifteen is a good number to most people for it means payday. In this month of December, there's additional pay for employees on the 15th, and that's cause enough for riotous celebration, especially for beer drinkers, gin enthusiasts and rum guzzlers.

But I have my reasons to celebrate after a three-day discussion with veteran vegetable farmers from Cabintan, the acknowledged salad bowl hereabouts, the source of incredibly spotless cabbages (laced with pesticidal and homicidal chemicals, of course), large greenish-red tomatoes and Chinese cabbages and an assortment of naturally grown sayote and squash planted in newly opened forests.

For those not familiar with the area, Cabintan sits is a basin-like valley in the middle of thickly forested mountains some 800 meters above sea level. In a way, its climate is like Tagaytay, perhaps only a little better because of the forest that you can still see around. Many of their farmers are perilously on the edge of the forest zone, which probably explains why the temptation to open new frontiers is simply irresistible. Their farms are expanding, no doubt, and the PNOC, which is the guardian of these forests, has found it extremely difficult to contain the expansion as the farms continue to be degraded and barren.

Farmers here have been in the business of raising high-value crops because these seem to be the only viable way to make a living. Theirs are not small garden plots in their backyards but acres of single crops planted on thoroughly pulverized soil patterned after large plantations. They are, of course, diehard users of chemical fertilizer, weed killers and systemic pesticides. On any day, you can smell the suffocating odor of Decis, Malathion, Cymbush or some of the more recent decoctions of Bayer and a host of other chemical firms which are in the business of killing insects.

Those with asthma had better avoid the place. Here one sees young men and women with bloodshot eyes and yellowish skin, the result of improper spraying. Some of them have been to hospitals because of mysterious ailments in their internal organs. A few have died.

The 15 who attended the training that we conducted at the PFI farmhouse in Sityo Quarry were of this mould: market-driven, mono-crop practitioners who had been farming since they were children in the only way that they knew how, the way that government and hordes of agricultural technicians from the agribusiness have been teaching them to. For three days we talked about the issues on plantation systems and their impact on farmers' income, perennial indebtedness, fertilizer and pesticide use, their impact on soil fertility and microorganisms, the natural cycles of carbon, nitrogen, water, phosphorous and energy flow, plant cycle, food chain, pests and their natural predators, habitats of predators....until they were finally convinced that it's time to change their farming system if they want to continue living, time to go natural if they want to keep on harvesting weekly and have incomes of five figures every month under a minimum tillage, natural farming system.

They were able to draw up individual farm plans, the first time that they did in their whole life. In two months, Cabintan will be seeing flowers planted side by side with vegetables. Yes, flowers. In case you don't know, some of these flowers function as habitats and sources of food (nectar for the meat-eating wasps) for pests' predators, the carnivores preying on the herbivores that prey on your delicious, crunchy cabbage. In two months, they'll be harvesting healthy, more nutritious food. Ain't that enough reason to celebrate?
Splendor in the grass

That's what I fondly call my plants and their fruits, profusely growing in harmony with the grasses and weeds on the soil. Farmers and their counterparts in government and academe usually look at weeds and grasses as harmful to the plants that we cultivate that they are normally plowed, uprooted and sometimes burned. Some teachers at one famous agricultural university here say these grasses emit chemicals harmful to the plants, justifying the act of grass-burning and thoroughgoing clean-up of the soil. But my recent experience has shown these assumptions to be false and misleading.

The images below only demonstrate that my vegetables have not been deprived of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, as shown by the green, healthy-looking crops. Quite the opposite is true. These plants thrive in harmony with the grasses and, so far, have remained untouched by insect herbivores.

My thesis is that the existence of the grasses have provided ample shelter to the various carnivore insects preying on the herbivores, like the praying mantis and the spiders, to name just two of them. Because nature has been virtually left untouched, I have not driven away the worms and other soil micro-organisms with plowing, nor have I caused the soil to erode. Thus, I have preserved the soil's fertility, and this will be enhanced as I will allow the dead plants to rot in place so that the nutrients will return to the soil.
Church power

Since the Roman Emperor Constantine in the first century declared Christianity as the official religion of the empire, its officials and dignitaries have always enjoyed positions of influence in the courts of kings and emperors in Europe, sometimes dictating the affairs of state, at other times acting as official advisers to the powers-that-be, but never to be left out of crucial decisions.

Here in our country, we have experienced Church power played out during the 400 years of Spanish colonial rule that our national hero so graphically illustrates in his two great novels. In both examples, the Church has identified herself with the rich and powerful, infinitely different from her humble origins among the fishermen of Galilee. It was only quite lately that her top clergy have began to associate themselves with the poor and downtrodden or taken a stand on social issues where the rights of the poor were at stake. The late Cardinal Sin has set the trend during the first EDSA uprising, serving as a point of convergence of the enraged masses who, after 20 years, wanted to do away with the dictatorship.

Today, Sin is still the standard against which any clergy or bishop, taking stand on critical social issues, is measured. So far, no bishop has measured up to that standard, and it's not because the opportunities are absent or that the present crop of bishops are lacking in firmness and talent. The fact is, millions of landless farmers today depend on their support to pressure the Lower House and the Senate as they deliberate on their respective Bills that will end the comprehensive agrarian reform program. It is easy to understand why our representatives in Congress will want to end CARP. Most of its members have close links to the landed classes in the provinces or they themselves are members of the hacendero class.

Leftists claimed Congress is the bastion of feudalism, and they were right. Evidently, it still is. Hence, the need to apply pressure politics with the gathering of affected peasants, supported by the good bishops and other middle sectors. In a meeting with involved laymen and clergy at the parish convent yesterday, we were given a copy of the statement of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines drawn up after the national congress last July. But this came out on January 29. In this statement, it assured that it will continue its "engagement in the legislation and implementation of social justice measures", particularly in asking for CARP extension. Now is the period of reckoning for our bishops. The priest in attendance yesterday, Fr. Gani, said the archbishop was going to "send off" the delegation of some 200 farmers going to Manila on Monday. The archbishop is going to attend a forum-cum-dialogue to "give his blessings."

That's officially saying he's supporting their cause. Thank you, monsignor. You truly are the shepherd of your flock. What about the other bishops? What about the rest of us? We'll see on Monday. Making money from the children's park

The plaza in front of the Sts. Peter and Paul church in Ormoc used to be spared of the trading frenzy that invades our public plazas come fiesta time or the Christmas season. It used to be a clean place where children could play on weekends for such was its design. It was meant for children and I guess one time it was appropriately called the children's park.

But that era seems to have disappeared. Nowadays, money making appears to be more important than keeping children happy. The children's plaza has followed the fate of our other plazas, converted as it is into a site where they sell ukay-ukay and various other household goods that you can also find in the market.

Is the church also suffering from economic recession? That I doubt. The Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church is immune to all that recession. It is even immune to the misfortunes of war, insulated as it is from political conflicts. No, it was never a loser in any war, not even when Mussolini, the Italian dictator, suffered defeat in the hands of the allies during World War II.

In war and peace, in economic recession or prosperity, the church collects tithes and contributions both from the victors as well as the vanquished. In fact, the greater the recession, the bigger the collections. Faithful churchgoers, no matter their social status, will always tend to offer more prayers in direct proportion to their tribulations and miseries in this world, and with the prayers come the contributions and the alms.

And so why the conversion of the children's park into an ukay-ukay trading site? That I can't understand. Maybe the church is raising funds in addition to its huge collections. But I haven't heard of it being engaged in services for the poor or the needy. That concern seems to have been forgotten in the frenzied infrastructure build-up like the multi-million altar that would probably have scandalized the Lord Jesus Himself. Why, didn't he castigate the Pharisees and scribes for allowing their temple to become a commercial hub?

I'm just thinking out loud.
Ugly, deep and gaping

A couple of months ago when they began digging holes across our city streets, we kept our mouths shut thinking that the inconvenience was only temporary. Dali ra seguro na. Maybe in a month's time, things would be fixed and we would be back to our normal, smooth city driving. But now several months later, we are still faced with the same ugly, deep and gaping canals across our streets, proving more and more disastrous to the small cars and three wheeled cabs that ply these streets 24 hours each dusty day.

Months ago, it used to be just a few streets, not it's all over. In many of these streets, traffic is one-way without any warning sign to show. The problem is heightened early mornings when students hurry to school and in the afternoons when people start going home. It's beginning to tax many a taxpayer's patience and causing many blood pressures to rise because in all honesty, there's absolutely no technical sense why this business of laying pipes in these canals should take too long.

Assuming that it's a two-inch lead pipe that you put there, the process does not require a lot of engineering aptitude. After you dig the canal, you put the pipe, put back the gravel and sand over the pipe and pour concrete over the area, covering it with a thick steel plate to allow vehicles to cross. You can finish several holes in one night this way so that it's business as usual during day time. You work one street at a time so that you won't put too much stress on traffic and on people's nerves.

But the guys who are working on this contract – and I heard it's several hundreds of millions – seem to relish on the idea that it's better to dig canals all over the streets one after the other and later on lay own the pipes one after the other too. They can't seem to realize the monstrous inconvenience they have been causing the general public since months ago and they don't care. There's not even a sign posted on these canals saying, "Sorry for the temporary inconvenience. This project is for your...blah, blah, blah." Or a warning, "Beware of street holes". At least drivers would be aware what they would be up to if they drive into these holes.

At least with the proper signs noting who the contractors are, what this project is all about and the contract price shown, people would be in a better position to understand and less prone to stress. In the absence of these signs, however, one gets the feeling that everybody knows what this digging is all about... Or is that part of the contract to keep taxpayers guessing?

Consider this the first in a series on this issue. There's more to come.
Driving tips in the land of sweet pineapple

You need lots of energy to endure, lots of patience, a good pair of eyes, protective mask for your nose, an airtight pair of driving glasses, excellent brakes and shock absorbers that can take tons of punishment. Already many cab drivers are complaining their poor shocks made strictly for smooth roads are taking the toll and may soon need a visit to the shop. I guess two-wheeled creatures, like the bicycles and motorcycles, are laughing at their four-wheeled brethren these days. They have been weaving around those bungling four-wheelers in the last few months, and I can almost see their drivers sneering at those consigned to driving the bigger demons-on-wheels.

For those uninformed readers, Ormoc is upgrading its water system and readying itself for high-rise tenements, never mind if the current system needs very little upgrading in the urban areas. A multi-million project is now being implemented by a contractor that keeps on digging those canals (where the pipes are supposed to be buried) and covering them with sand and gravel (sans the water pipe). The pipe laying has to wait. In the meantime, the holes keep getting bigger and deeper, especially since the canals are not properly maintained.

Why the program of work is designed thus is hard to understand. What is evident is the stupidity of it all and the utter lack of concern for public welfare. The government or its agencies, which are supposed to supervise these things, have kept their distance, like they don't want to get involved in this mess or be blamed for this horrendous state of affairs. A responsive government is supposed to take an active hand in this mess, but as of the moment, it is cold and indifferent to the silent and suffering drivers and commuters here. Or it prefers to look the other way even when the problem is quite apparent. So in my own little way, I have prepared some driving tips for guys out there who think everything is alright in this land of sweet pineapples.

1. Be sure your shock absorber can take the shocks...unless you want to visit the shop from time to time.

2. Always slow down. The ideal speed is 5 km per hour. Stop right at the canal and let your front wheel slide into the hole as you step into low gear.

3. Use a mask to cover your nose. It's bad especially if you're asthmatic.

4. Use airtight protective glasses. The dust particles are so minute that they can be embedded in your eyes.

5. Don't curse when you go through these obstacles. Your cursing can open your mouth to the circulating dust particles.

6. Always pray for rains because when it comes, the dust problem gets solved. God surely has a simple way of solving complicated problems.

7. If you're the type who gets sleepy driving at 5 km an hour, let your son (armed with a student driver's license) take over. He can't miss the finer points in the road that remain passable.

8. Better still, play a rock tune from the '70s. They sound better with all those holes and bumps in our road system.

9. Think one-way. Some parts of the road are now single lanes.

10. Get a dose of tranquilizers or an ice pack before driving. Patience is absolute here. Or check your blood pressure first before venturing into these streets...unless you want to land in the hospital.

These are but a few driving tips I can share with you guys. I'm sure you have a few ideas too.
It's raining but no water in the faucet!

A few years ago, we used to sneer at Tacloban's water problem. Now we have to take that back because the curse is on us, Ormocanons. Today every time it rains – and it rained hard yesterday – our old faucets run dry. Apparently, that's the unwritten policy here. If you're not connected to their multimillion water system, you don't get a drop on rainy days.

It stopped last night and, up to this time, 8:45, there's not a drop at our place. We're fortunate because our student is already in Cebu in college, but the thousands of other residents may not be that lucky. It's usually mornings that water becomes most useful as people have to take a bath, cook their rice, wash some clothes or simply go to the bathroom to relieve themselves. Except for the cooking, I had to forego all that and suffer the misery of holding back a bellyful of wastes. It's good that we were able to store a few bottles of Agua Dulce water, that enabled us to cook our rice for this morning's repast. I'm still wondering how we'll cook our rice for lunch without water. Any brilliant suggestions there?

Going back to our water system, no one knows why in heaven's name there's no water in the faucet when it's raining hard. So far, the water department has not offered any sensible explanation. But I think I can venture a guess. Since this new water system gets its water from open sources and these get turbid on rainy days, they can't allow that kind of water to flow. Meaning their filtering system is inadequate to cope with the situation. They have to wait till the water settles down before they allow it to flow into the system. What happened to the millions the city invested on the system?

Now here comes the city government wanting to increase taxation on practically everything. How does it expect us ordinary consumers to respond to that positively, when it cannot even attend to a most basic social service it owes its constituency? This is the department that has recently asked for another P12 million this year – that in the face of its inability and unwillingness to show the public how its hundreds of millions worth of water infrastructure has been spent!

I have this sneaking suspicion that the old filtration system has been transferred to the new system because how come the good old system becomes dysfunctional , while the new system gets all the water when it rains? I think Orwasa owes the public an explanation – and it had better include its expenditures involved in the new system. It's past 9:00 and there's still no water in our faucet!
No water again!

This is really unbelievable. A first class city with more than a billion pesos income from its own tax collection, but its old water system that used to be fully functional a year ago now can't provide us water every time it rains. This happened two days ago and today, a Sunday when one is supposed to be bathed and dressed up for the Sunday mass, one can't even take a peep out of one's house lest one's smell suffocates our wellheeled neighbors. This is ghastly. Makalagot jud! It's past 4:00 and the water situation here has been unchanged since 8:00 this morning.

Now I'm beginning to smell something really fishy here. Last year when it was only the old water system operating, the water service was just fine. Troubles like this were almost non-existent. You don't hear neighbors cursing to high heavens and shouting TUBIG!! at the top of their lungs. But now it seems the only civilized thing to do because people at the city hall aren't listening. The only system that's functioning now is the new multi-million water system. What happened to the good old one? Nobody knows. Orwasa won't tell us. One thing they are telling us is to get connected to the new one so we will have water when it rains. Diay, ha?

No, no, this is not entirely Orwasa's fault. Especially not the employees who are just obeying orders. It's the top people in that office whose heads should roll for this great disservice. Imagine on a Sunday when you are supposing to be dressing up for the Sunday mass and no water comes out of your faucet. After that mass, one is supposed to be planning something that's good for any Sunday, one's only day of rest after a week of wracking one's brains and nerves to make a living.

If this happens tomorrow, a Monday, we'd be having a disaster. Lots of kids will be going to school without a bath, office workers will be splashing their bodies with precious alcohol so they won't smell obnoxious when they go to their offices, dishes will be unwashed, so will dirty clothes. In a city that's claiming to be first class, this is sheer monstrosity. Whoever heard of a first class city with no water in its old faucets?

Grrrrrr...*&^%$#+!!!
It's the same old rant....

Whoever said that necessity is the mother of invention must be making a lot of sense. Look at what's happening when the old water faucets run dry on very wet days. My partner has invented a nice contraption which \- if she does not protest - I will be submitting to the inventions body for a patent.

No, nothing fancy here. See, there's a 3-inch PVC pipe that stops about a foot from the ground, where water comes out profusely. She tied a funnel borrowed temporarily (but she's telling me to buy a new one) from our kitchen, connected this to a half-inch hose that runs to a pail and, presto! we have lots of free and clean running water from the roof. So I guess I should stop my whining and pretend the problem is non-existent, right?

Wrong! When I went out this morning, my neighbors already had their pails, drums and plastic basins trying to catch water from the roof but nothing like the contraption that my partner has devised. Now I'm not worrying where I'll be getting water for my next meal or bath. I just have to use a little muscle power to bring the pail full of water to the bathroom for today's bathe.

No, my rage against the tyrants of the multi-million water system has not subsided. I am just containing it in a sort of a dam that's ready to burst anytime against the perpetrators of this nightmare.
Gibuyagan tingali ko

It happened last Thursday, Oct 23. I just returned to the farm from a trip to the market. We were in the kitchen at the farm's training house, preparing our supper when I noticed my right ear getting heavier and heavier. Morag ninglaylay, said our farm help for he noticed it too. I must have been bitten by a bokot, a local name for a wasp that carries a powerful toxin. In a few minutes, the swelling had spread to my thyroid gland and the back of my neck.

My, this bokot really carried some sting, I was telling myself in my head while finishing the chores in the kitchen. I wanted to hurry up and go to be bed. The swelling was getting uncomfortable, and the swollen parts were getting warmer, feverish. What was strange, there was little pain. It was just something one felt under one's skin, swelling like an infection. Oftentimes, the farm help was explaining, the sting of the bokot could cause one to be feverish - something which I was feeling then.

The discomfort was spreading to the back of my head to the top of my skull, like my skin was being pulled apart. I wanted to hurry up eating but couldn't leave the kitchen chores to the farm help and his family. We were hosting a meeting at the training house.

Everything had to be in order before closing the evening. Thankfully we had some paracetamol and anti-swelling capsules which I gulped down with a glass full of water. I felt a little relief after an hour and thought I had solved the problem. We had a few rounds of our favorite punch that night, a mixture of calamansi, rhum, sugar and water which made me a bit tipsy enough to fall asleep. Well, I did for an hour or so. The alcohol took its measure on my gall bladder, driving me to the men's room every hour or so, with the swelling in my right ears and at the back of my head getting no better. To make it worse, I was shivering with cold. Literally.

My fever would subside accompanied with the usual perspiration but the swelling continued its cephalic path around my head. From the top to the left side, going to the front. In the next few days I felt like my head was being pulled on its skin or stretched apart. My forehead were swelling in three patches, small, meaningless and shining mounds of flesh that protruded forward, reddish in parts, feeling tight but almost painless.

In the meantime, I had shifted from from anti-swelling to anti-allergy tablets. The pharmacist at the Mercury Drug where I bought the tablets at first had doubts about my condition since the swelling was not itchy. On the third day, the swelling tour around my head had almost completed a 360-degree turn and, except for the fever which had thankfully gone without the paracetamol, the discomfort and the swollen patches were still all over, despite the anti-allergy tablets.
My trip to the tambalan

Despite the anti-allergy pills and the anti-swelling capsule I took, the swelling in my head persisted. The ones in the forehead - those shiny little mounds that gave me a boxer's look - were like trophies from a sparring with Pacquiao. So there was no other choice but the traditional faith healer, the village tambalan who seem to pop out of every part of rural Philippines, practicing their craft like it was a precious gift from divine sources, healing the sick with astonishing consistency, without fail.

Junie works as a capataz in the ranch of one family who owns the pastohan of cows and horses in the heart of Tongonan, yes, our geothermal source. The man's reputation had long exceded his own geographical boundaries, going as far as the mountain villages south of his village, for he had been the healer of many a sick men, women and children. From where I came, at least four others had visited him and were healed. One was our farm hand, a young man of about 19 years, who visited him twice for two complaints.

First, his face was swollen and his lips grew three times their normal size, almost like ripened tomatoes. He got it after singing out loud inside the bathroom of our first farm house. Junie warned him not to go back to the place but the unbelieving guy went back and contracted another ailment. This time, his testicles were swollen and his penis grew to the size of a fully grown eggplant. After that, he never visited the house again even if his family lived just a few meters away down the hill.

A few months later, it was his cousin's turn. They were working on the second house when suddenly he felt like being kicked in the butt. The next day, he could barely walk, much less work. It took him a week before he finally decided to visit Junie. He, too, was told that he must have done something to offend the spirit dwellers of the place. He was able to work again two days after his visit.

I have long reconciled myself to the idea that we, humans, are not the only dwellers of this earth. Not all of us have this gift of seeing or sensing these spirit dwellers, but they are there, watching us, living their own lives in their own separate world, with mysterious powers over us. They know us, we don't know them. In places where they are seen or felt, we can only try to be as likable or less destructive. There are stories of people who tried to defy them or defile their suspected living places - with tragic results.

So that Friday morning, I came to Junie's house in Tongonan armed with this belief and the mysterious powers of tambalans who had, for ages, driven away sicknesses and plagues with their prayers and incantations. In our history, they were our babaylans, priestesses who brewed roots and herbs into potent medicines in combination with prayers and incantations.

Junie has a small altar with the icon of the Sacred Heart and a single lighted candle in one dark corner of the living room. He bid me to sit down in front of the image as he started to pray, making the sign of the cross and saying the Our Father. The other prayers I couldn't make out because he was saying them in whispers. Then he blew softly against the various parts of my head that were swwelling, from the top of my head to my neck and forehead, continuing his prayers while so doing.

Finally, he filled an empty litro of Coke with water which he prayed over and offered before the icon of the Sacred Heart, putting inside a torn piece of an old prayer book which was eventually dissolved in the water. I say dissolved because I saw no traces of it inside. I was supposed to drink this, wipe my swollen part with a tissue or cloth dipped in that water and leave it open in our own altar back home. This I did for two two days until the swelling had subsided and my face was back to its normal creases.

Thank God, the swelling mysteriously disappeared as it had mysteriously wrecked havoc on my head a week ago.
Donah, the village fool

The first time she went up to the farm house, I thought she was normal like the rest of us for she was talking sense. But it did not take long before she flipped. Suddenly, she was claiming that she owned the place and that she had plenty of vehicles with drivers to boot. Ryan, our first farm hand, grinned at me and made the turnillo sign with his forefinger. But I continued our conversation, bolstering her claims and added absurd details till she stopped talking and went down the hill. Probably she thought I was more crazy than she was.

Donah is forty-ish, reed-thin but has never been known to be sick. She lives in the sitio in a wooden house that appeared to have tasted some paint in its better days. Now it is said to be leaking and has full of holes. I still don't know how she manages to survive and raise a 12-year old daughter, but both of them appear to be healthy. Does she cook her own food? Where does she get her sustenance? These are questions that often pop up in my head because I haven't heard of neighbors bringing her something to eat. They probably do, I just don't know.

Sometimes I pass her on the road in my multicab, carrying something but she never stops me or asks for a ride, continuing her leisurely and unhurried walk and absorbed in her own thoughts.

Danny, our present farm hand, told me once that Donah was a victim of battering by her husband, a drunkard who abandoned her at the time of her daughter's birth. She must have had such a beating to go crazy after that. Or maybe that was when she finally flipped after being battered for a long, long time.

The DSWD? I don't think the agency even knows of her existence. The village has come to accept her in such condition, tolerating her perks and sometimes feisty remarks because sometimes she provides a pleasant diversion from their own little tragedies. At least for Donah, her worrying has stopped because even surviving doesn't seem to be a problem anymore. We, the so-called normal beings, worry a lot about that....plus a lot of other silly little things. And the tragic thing is some of us actually kill ourselves in the process.
The Treasures of Calbiga

My trip to Calbiga town west of Samar island the other day turned out to be a smooth ride on its newly asphalted highway, almost the exact opposite of the same highway from Calbiga to Calbayog. This part is now said to be full of holes and mini canals that makes travel a torture. When I alighted near the police checkpoint at Unding's village two and a half kilometers away from the town proper, Nalding, his younger brod and also our 'pais", was waiting about 50 meters away, thinking I would follow Unding's instructions. I saw Unding and some others waving from the top of the hill and, thankfully, Nalding came to my rescue.

The group - consisting of Unding, Nalding, Lumen, a younger brother and fellow ex-seminarian and his cousin, the famous ballet dancer, Nonoy Froilan – was having a little party with sinugbang isda, tinolang isda, shrimp, binakhaw and, of course, our favourite bahalina. They were in a small unfinished shed separate from the house of Lumen, comfortably seated on wooden benches, with Nalding doing the role of a tangero (the guy who makes sure your glass is always full).

As soon as the introductions were done, Nalding and Nonoy were animatedly relating the organizing work they were doing for Calbiga's cultural council. For a small town to have such a council involving some prominent people, it was a comforting thought. That would have been unbelievable a few years ago when Nonoy and Unding were in their prime and at the height of their respective careers.

Nonoy was one of the favorite male dancers of the Cultural Center of the Philippines who had gone to places here and abroad to promote his art. Unding, on the other hand, was a top gun in the advertising industry who had honed his artistic gifts in big advertising firms as well as the media in Manila. When you are at that stage in your life, it is easy to forget your roots and think only of your own future.

But now, after having been at their pinnacle, the two have joined hands to help the town organize its first cultural council which will kick off on the last week of this month with a small conference, with a rooster of speakers that reads like a who's who in the cultural scene. Thanks to Nonoy's efforts, they are coming to Calbiga to share their expertise gratis et amore.

Since our seminary days, Unding was always known to be very active in the art scene, his skills employed in the seminary's occasional cultural affairs. He had notions to becoming a great artist one day, studied architecture when he left the seminary, but didn't finish it for economic reasons. But that didn't deter him from carving his niche in the advertising industry's creative department.

Besides art, Unding, unknown to many, is also a poet, although he refuses to consider himself as such. He says he only writes poems in the vernacular (Waray-waray) where has shown mastery and, one time, even won in a poetry writing contest. Except for the white hairs, he is still the same Unding bubbling with enthusiasm and youthful exuberance, which belies his advancing years.

Both Unding and Nonoy are some of Calbiga's priceless treasurers in the cultural scene. I just hope their selfless dedication becomes a model for the younger set of Calbiga to follow.
Myths in Calbiga

I guess every small town has its own stories of duwendes and unseen spirits living in large beautiful houses in "cities" whose gateways are often large trees in the middle of nowhere. Some people have gone to them or were brought to such "cities" by their spirit "friends", while a few of these never return or are never seen alive again. Stories like these abound in Calbiga, but these are not tales invented by unlettered folk but real experiences told by those who came in contact with these spirits.

A well known site is found along the barangay road that starts from Calbiga's "taboan" (market) site, the road we took that late Wednesday afternoon. The trip was unexpected. Another pais, Mario, who sits as the mayor's trusted aide, arrived at Luman's place as we were about to finish half of the galloon of our favorite brew. He said he and the mayor were going to inspect the portion of the road that was lately filled up with gravel, ready for cementing. At the end of that little inspection, we were going to continue our "session" at a sing-along joint. I didn't expect that that road has its share of tales that skeptics would label as "tall tales."

The stories did not come out until the next morning when we were having breakfast at the ancestral home of Unding's wife. Unding opened it up. There was one young student who appeared to be "possessed" but was actually being "dragged" by the spirits to go with them to their "house" passing through the famous narra trees. Nonoy even took video shots of one of her "seizures" and managed to ask her who the beings were and how they looked like. The girl only looked behind the puzzled Nonoy, indicating with her eyes that these beings were just behind him. The visits of the invisible beings stopped after a faith healer intervened.

One time the Samar Electric Cooperative received an application for connection from a stranger who claimed he lived in the area where the large narra tree was located. The stranger wore a hat and a pair of boots. Dutifully, Samelco's personnel visited the place and set up an electrical connection. The puzzled personnel, of course, saw nothing but the large narra tree, but they set up the connection just the same because the stranger had paid the required fees.

A large portion of the road is already concreted today, but years ago when it was still in bad shape, locals who used to spend evenings on the roadside in their habitual drinking sessions could see beautiful cars passing by, undaunted by the bumpy, unpaved road. Later they would shake their heads in wonderment when the cars never returned. The road was at a dead end.

Stories like these abound in Calbiga but it seems nobody has written about the phenomena, as if these are silly stories. Maybe. But I told Nonoy these are part of the local culture that visitors would love to listen to, part of the lore that gives a place like Calbiga its unique character. I wish somebody would take time to write these stories down.
Sunday ritual

Sunday mornings at the Ormoc market have become almost like ritual to me, something which I do rain or shine. It is my weekly marketing trip, and I have even established a parking space and a route from the parking area through its labyrinth of stalls of vegetables and assorted food items, through the meat stalls where the sight of blood and slaughtered animal flesh keeps me wondering what happened to Gil's campaign for animal rights. (I hope Gil doesn't puke when he reads this.) Had those animals been pets of their owners, I'm sure they would have sympathized with Gil, but unfortunately the market is a business place where sympathy for animals is simply out of place and animal rights unheard of.

Pork chop, sir, nipis og tambok! Tiyan, sir, humba! The tinderas that line these stalls call out when I pass by them, knowing my preferences. I have visited practically all their stalls and inspected their meat like a trained cook in the years that I have been doing my weekly marketing trips. Now they know the cuts that I want and the exact sizes of the humba that I prefer. Or which part of the chicken I like better. I have become a regular customer to many of them, a suki whom they must treat with respect because I won't patronize them if they don't. I suppose that is how relationships are defined between buyers and sellers.

I have also established a few friendships along my route with whom I exchange banter from time to time. There is Ian, a young meat stall operator who claims affinity to Che Guevarra, the Latin American visionary who was murdered by the CIA. I don't know if Ian is serious about his claim, although his mother is surnamed Guevarra, but he looks very Filipino to me, probably with very little Spanish blood in his veins. However, I admit that Ian thinks a bit like his revolutionary cousin, as he often rants and rages against corruption in government and the ineptitudes of the system. We agree on a lot of things but we can't seem to do anything about it. So our short banters often end up with either one of us being frustrated.

In the neighboring stall is Calcal, who used to be a youth organizer in the 90s in Alegria, one of our urban communities. He is still sharp as ever but now topped with a balding head and thinning hair. He gives me small discounts and assures me his vegetable oil exactly measures a lapad, but I know it is always a little short. He agrees with Guevarra's henchman, especially on issues affecting us, like the oil price hikes and the small rollback given by the oil industry, but shakes his head in frustration most of the time. I see in both of them a creeping attitude of desperation and pessimism.

One feels the pulse of the city here at the market place because one does not only see sections of the middle class stripped to their shorts, sandos and slippers wading through the mass of sweating humanity and counting out wads of bills for choice meat cuts and fresh sea foods. (These sections do not seem to trust their cooking to their helpers that they have usurped the marketing chores that used to be the helper's duty.)

But if it is any consolation, one sees countless small vendors lining up the sidewalks in the market, farmers who turn fruit and vegetable compradors on Sundays, selling products of other farmers in Ormoc's uplands. "Laray" is the term used to describe them here, meaning to "line up." I see in them a thriving agricultural economy that can withstand global economic recessions. They'll keep on producing camote, bananas, assorted root crops, beans, okra, eggplants, pechay, tomatoes in total disregard of any global phenomenon, and they'll keep on selling these items so long as Ormoc's residents have money to buy. This is the sector that won't go hungry, no matter what global recession they'll throw at us.
When former seminarians meet

The drinking and story telling never fails to elicit guffaws of laughter. In the early days, hard drinks were popular because they were cheap and took us to a different plane in a matter of minutes. But as we grew older, the drinks mellowed down to bahalina, our seminary favorite (smuggled, of course, and drank out of the prefect's sights).

There were geographical reasons for that preference because the seminary grounds were on the outskirts of Palo,Leyte, built on a wartime airport, and the town was the original source of that brew that never failed to blow our young minds to stupor.

These days, however, the bahalina functions like a drug that stirs up fading memories of our seminary glory days, and transports us several years back in time when we were young, crazy and fearless. Last Sunday's mini-reunion held at Seabreeze, a small resort in Cambalading, Albuera whose caretaker is Beb's Reforzado's younger brod, took on that festive reminiscing as paisanos in their '50s gamely feasted on kinilaw, sinugba, calderita and Jun Estrera's lechon earlier destined for the September seminary reunion.

Besides Estrera and Reforzado, Arnel Genobiagon, Cristobal Alkuino, Ando Conejos, Danny Caputol, Poping Gaquit and his son, the sons of Caputol and Estrera who are also ex-seminarians, Goody Lapinid, our "adopted" member, and myself were present, finishing several gallons of bahalina in an afternoon of jokes and laughter, with Bebs' arsenal of "clerical" jokes.

We could see Jun Estrera's disappoinment as the aging paisanos barely touched his lechon. But Fiscal Bebs gamely took on the job of matancero, so we could bring home huge chunks of meat to be cooked later into the more delicious paksiw-na-lechon. It was a day to remember, something which the group resolved to repeat next month. The excuse? A despedida for Usec Conejos' departure for Brussels as ambassador.

Come November 2 or 3, Teban will be joining us in another feast, this time with no more lechon. An array of fruits and lots of fish, promised Estrera.
Going loco over lotto

The thought of winning hundreds of millions of pesos in times of scarcity and want can drive any desperate man crazy. But with the odds stacked heavily against you – they say it's 1 in 27 million combinations? – can send one's hopes crashing down to earth. The odds are much, much better at the sabongan where your odds can be as high as 75 percent.

What makes lotto tick? What keeps people going back to the queue at the lotto ticket outlets to bet on their numbers? I really don't know but I think I can guess. It's that flicker of hope that miracles still do happen in this age of unbelief and apostasy, that somehow luck can strike at any moment and, when it does, one had better be there holding those numbers with your signature of ownership.

They say it's alright to dream because dreams are free. Not at the lotto station though where dreams start at a P20 bet and are often multiplied several times that amount in one inspired moment or one last desperate attempt to beat the odds. Regular bettors that I know hold on to selected numbers: their birthdays, birthdays of sons or daughters, important dates. Sometimes, a number or two come out as if to tell you you're on the right betting track but you must keep on buying those numbers. So far, none of them has hit the jackpot, and they are not even counting their investments.

I'm sure there are millions of guys like them, buying their numbers week after week and not counting their losses, holding on to their dreams and hoping lady luck will smile on them one day. Lotto is alive because of them, and a few get rich, thanks to such stupid dreams

I once had this crazy idea that beating the odds in lotto may not be that difficult. I have had this fascination for probabilities when I was in college, tried it out in Jai-Alai and went home a winner most of the time. It was easy with Jai-Alai because it's a game of skills. There are elements of luck and deceit involved sometimes, but I studied the numbers, calculated the chances and the prize for each game and found that if you follow the skilled player in several games and paired them with the rest in several events, you'll end up with two or three winning combinations, and enough winnings to tide over your little invest- ment. Not big money but enough to add to my meager allowance and buy a few drinks on boring weekends.

Two weeks ago, I tested what I remember about frequency counts in lotto numbers in results that came out in 383 days of the super lotto draws. The results of my three days of working on the numbers turned out to be fascinating. In that span of time, the range of frequencies for the 49 numbers were not too far apart and that, in fact, several numbers had the same frequencies. What this means is that the numbers are picked out almost with equal chances as the number of events increases to infinity.

From these numbers, I was able to pick out twelve numbers that came out with the lowest frequencies in the 383 draws and surmised that in the next draws, these numbers will have more chances of coming out than the ones that already came out. Of course, since these are only probabilities and not certainties, you may also bet on the other numbers with higher frequency counts.

Than I came out with several number combinations of the 12 numbers that I picked and started monitoring whether my numbers came out or not in the next draws. So far, the results are just as interesting, but I have abstained from going to the lotto station to place my P20, preferring to observe the results some more days.

I'll place my bets probably when the inspiration strikes me. When I do, it will not be testing my luck as testing some laws of probability as they apply in super lotto. An interview with Ditas, socialite of a bygone era

I've done a lot of interviews before when I was still active in the papers, doing news and feature stories, and they always leave me gasping for breath as I take down hurried notes in my illegible scrawl which, later, I cannot read. So I have to rely on my memory much of the time. But being poor of memory, I try to retain a picture of the subject in my mind, imagine how they speak and gesture, listening to their words in my mind, hoping that I can at least do justice to my subjects. So far, not one of them has accused me of putting the wrong words in their mouth or painting a bad picture of them. Well, at least, I've always tried to be fair and sympathetic to them,

My subject this afternoon is one of the few living witness of the period in Ormoc's history that may be considered the starting point in its modernization. This is was the heyday of the sugar industry when the sugar mill in Brgy. Ipil was incessantly churning out refined sugar and making sugar cane planters rich beyond their wildest dreams. At the turn of the 20th century, Ormoc produced abaca, with much of its lands planted to the crop. When the sugar mill was built in the '20s, the lands were converted into sugar cane plantations, following the example of Negros island.

Into this emerging scene arrived one day in June 1952 a beautiful 19-year old wife of a 23-year old scion of a Negrense sugar baron, Carlos Rivilla. Ditas, as she was popularly called then, recalls they were suddenly shipped here from Manila to take over the management of the sugar mill in Ipil by her father-in-law. They had to learn everything from the scratch since the former manager, a cousin of her husband, had to leave in the middle of the milling season, following a serious disagreement with the owners.

The 19-year old took things in stride and began organizing the social life of Ormoc starting in Ipil, with her much older matrons of sugar planters in tow. She recalls they converted the tennis court of the sugar mill compound into dance floors where they did the boogie and the tango, while their husbands feasted on food and drinks, leaving the dancing to their more fun-loving wives.

I did not finish the interview but promised to come back. After all, she is an important link to that bygone era of the '50s and the '60s when life in Ormoc was at a high point and the future seemed assured. I'm sure she has lots of stories to tell, some of which may not find their way to the history book I'm trying to finish, but which might provide ample material for another book. One never knows. I'm crossing my fingers.
Dada's place

I have just come from Dada's place, a cozy, dim-lighted hangout at the ground floor of the Ormoc superdome right beside the more famous Manina's, scene of an unsolved murder that has stirred up emotions months ago. The place is almost unseen since Manina's tends to be more visible.

But inside Dada's, one feels safer from the maddening crowd, "away from it all," I should say. Here you can converse to your heart's content, with a fitting background music to boot (a few acoustic favorites were being played this afternoon). Here you can bare your heart and soul so to speak and unload whatever it is that is bothering you. Well, nothing was bothering me this afternoon, except that it was one of those times when I simply wanted to drink, and to hell with the conversation.

Oh, Felix, my editor friend, was talking about "desperate wives" and "honesty," and I was listening (or pretending to listen) and nodding my head in complete agreement to whatever he was blabbering about. I knew he wanted an audience, a sounding board. So here I was in that familiar role, enjoying my bottles of San Mig between bites of our delicious pulutan. You may be right there, I told him. Our city has its own share of "desperate" housewives who want to find meaning, fulfillment and happiness in their lives. Their husbands are either philandering or flirting with younger, sexier girls and they - those desperate housewives – think that it is perfectly alright – and even morally justifiable – to find their happiness outside their marital bed.

If people were perfectly honest (and that includes these desperate housewives), then a lot of people would be miserable. That is his thesis in his next editorial, he said. Well, good luck, I said. But he'd better not expect any reaction, I was about to tell him. Reaction or interaction is the last thing you'd expect from readers of the paper that Felix is editing.

They'll read but they'll keep their reactions to themselves. Why bother to write the editor in the first place? Letters to the editor don't solve problems. They'd only make things more complicated. So, indeed, why bother?

At Dada's, you also get to observe a lot of people who find the place a good transition point, where you can rest for a while, drink a little, engage in meaningless prattle and go back to your humdrum day-to-day existence afterwards. There was this large group of schoolmates who played basketball together in high school. Apparently, they have not gotten tired of each other's faces and each other jokes for they were laughing at stories about things that happened 30 years earlier. Only this time they had their wives and children in tow who, unfortunately, could not laugh with their balding fathers. Would you laugh at your old teacher who confused his p and f and who kept mispronouncing his e's and i's?

At a nearby table, we kept overhearing a bespectacled young girl lecturing to two male companions about love and that kind of stuff, acting like she was her friends' love guru. Oh, you can't help but eavesdrop sometimes. It sure is comforting to know that often your neighbors talk more sense than you do. But what the heck, San Mig is still the more potent decoction. Let us drink and be merry!
An afternoon with Rene's 'erotic' pulutan

The Christmas season in the provinces is often synonymous with lots of eating and drinking, the eating portion being the short prelude to the lengthy drinking bouts. I guess we must have inherited the habit from our ancestors who, according to the early Jesuit missionary Padre Pedro Chirino, drank from large containers made of coconut shells as they chanted their tribal histories for several days, never letting up until the ambahan was through. I don't know if they had invented the bahalina then, but if they did, they surely handed us down a lasting, if intoxicating, legacy.

Yesterday, one of my writer friends Rene invited his close associates to his house in Tambulilid for a small celebration. I suspect Rene is preparing to launch his bid for a Congressional seat as a partylist representative for a group which he and his friends are still going to formally register with Comelec. No, he did not exactly spell out his intentions, but it was evident he was cementing old ties and forging new ones. Politics, after all, is numbers. He did mention it in passing, but with Felix, Gerard, me and another visitor around, the topics shifted incessantly, having no single thread.

The fine bahalina which Rene ordered from Barugo made the session all the more vibrant. With some bahalinas, a little Coke is usually added to sweeten the taste, but the brew we had yesterday was of a finer, smoother blend. In wine bottles, they could be easily mistaken for the European vintage.

Add in the exotic (Rene said 'erotic') dishes, such as callos, paklay, fish kinilaw in gata, sinugbang bangus and another delicacy whose name escapes me, we certainly had lots of things to banter about. Our host had to 'import' his brother-in-law, whose skills we could taste in the food, to prepare the dishes.

As in our previous session at Dada's, Felix again started his discourse on 'frustrated housewives', this time, suggesting that he was through with that phase and that he has a bigger, more exciting chase in mind. Rene could only grin mildly but would not venture an opinion because Gigi, his better half, was within earshot. Felix and Rene know Gigi's violent outbursts. Felix, especially. Gigi once struck him with a box of Dunkin' Doughnuts, accusing him of being Rene's 'bad influence'. Neither Rene nor Felix wants to repeat that experience.

At one point, the talk centered on the city's current water system project which has succeeded in creating canals in the middle of the streets because the guys who contracted the job seemed to be fond of digging long canals alongside the streets and across them in apparent disregard for the public's convenience. The canals are often left gaping uncovered as the PVC pipes have yet to be installed. Now vehicles have to stop wherever the canals are lest the shocks in the underchassis are broken. In subdivisions there are humps, but here we have canals.

I have very few drinking buddies because I am quite choosy with the people I spend hours with at the drinking table. I usually go along with people I can easily relate to, with whom conversations would not run dry because of the varied topics and the excitement that they generate. These are people I share common interests with, and I can laugh with them, share a joke or two, throw verbal punches. Rene's slapstick brand of humor and verbal calisthenics add spice to an otherwise serious conversation, momentarily stopping its momentum. He enjoys that role and expects us to laugh with him. Sometimes we do, if only to humor him.

Intermittent rains in the afternoon would not stop the session. Rene has kept the numerous umbrellas issued by his company every year, and these we used to cover our heads as we continued to gorge on the delicious, 'erotic' pulutan and the bottles of that blood-red bahalina he kept on refilling.That was one delightful afternoon, Bay Rene, something which your friends and I will cherish in our memories.

But next time, keep Gigi out of earshot so you can say your piece without fear of her righteous wrath.
Rizal's birthday party at Sabin

To those not quite familiar with the place, Sabin Resort Hotel is a lazy man's unhurried retreat by the sea, its wide open terraces looking down on lagoon-like pools close to the shore. Last night we could actually watch some mermaids in these pools as they tried doing breast strokes unsuccessfully, their male partners eagerly taking photo shots presumably as souvenirs. These pools seem to be the main attractants to Sabin's growing clientele, although its guests prefer watching than taking a dip themselves, and gulping down their frozen San Migs at the tables placed close to the edge of the terrace.

It's this laid back, undisturbed setting where many business plans are concocted and rumor mills grind with stories retold and revised until you can no longer tell what is true and what isn't. For once, it's good to get away from that journalistic crusade for truth and engage in the more creative banter, drowning them in beers and delectable pulutan in such a setting.

It was into this unholy place that we retreated from Rizal's birthday party at the Sabin ballroom last night. Rizal Jefferson, by the way, is a two year old son of a Pakistani who worships our national hero more than our own Rizalistas. Before the sumptuous feast, the guy took time to explain the life and heroics of his son's namesake, with hard copies of his speech distributed at the party tables. Evidently, Pakistan does not have one like our Pepe, a man of many talents who gave his life for his country. It was Rizal 101 alright, quipped my drinking buddy. They should invite the guy to speak on Rizal day celebrations, he added. Indeed, he would put to shame a lot of us who know little about the national hero.

The post-dinner program resumed with the Pakistani's hero worship until finally he belted out an a capella rendition of Happy Birthday for his son who had, in the meantime, bolted free outside the hall, running around the terraces with his panicking yayas chasing him. The song that sometimes strayed off from the original tune provided a relief from his hero worship and kicked off a night of dancing for the adults that remained. About half of the guests that came for dinner had gone, leaving the celebrant's family and his foreigner friends who, I was told, had formed their little community here in Ormoc.

The sight of aging and white-haired Caucasians paired with young and shapely Filipinas is not exactly my idea of romance, but can anyone blame these pinays for latching on to these oldies if it means their survival and well-being? We have OFWs sending their dollars home after slaving themselves in lonely deserts and oil tankers in God knows where in the world. But here at home, these sprightly, shapely young women have succeeded in enticing old pensioners to spend the rest of their lives under their care in peace and comfort, with their own starving families benefiting as well.

Oh, it was their night alright, as some of them danced in abandon, gyrating with the hired DIs and showing off their dancing prowess to their aging hubbies to the beat of the boogie. Two of them looked like they were experienced club dancers and would have been easily mistaken as such were it not for their marital status. Then when the soft, slow music finally came, the oldies and their sprightly women came to the floor to tell everyone it's never too late to be in love.

Well, it sure looked like it was the real thing.
This season of revelers and beggars

Since the first days of December, children in the neighborhood have been trooping to our compound early evenings, singing with their disjointed voices Christmas carols with lyrics you'd find amusing. Sample this: "Joy to da word/ the word is cam/(then some unintelligible gibberish)/ embreem-brem broom, embreem-breem broom/ an heben an natyur sing/ an heben an natyur sing/ an heben, an heben an natyur sing."

In the past years, we always kept loose change for these kids, even if they kept coming back every night, and we knew they would gamble these off in a game of taksi outside our compound. After all, it's Christmas time, and one is not supposed to nurture ill will toward one's neighbors, much less to children who are trying to take advantage of the season and make a few bucks.

But Christmas will be different this year, we told ourselves. No more of those nightly visits and the collection of loose change for those undisciplined brats in the neighborhood. We'd rather give to upland carolers with their pentatonic biblical tales because, to be sure, they'll use the money to buy food and some drinks to celebrate the cold Christmas nights.

An assortment of beggars also take advantage of the season, some with a laminated certification of disability from some authority, with the bearer ironically in tip-top shape and quite far from being a disabled person. A few of them can be demanding. They refuse your cooked food or used but still usable clothes, preferring only cash. Strip them of their rags and you'll find people in perfect health, capable of doing something productive. These are nothing but extortionists and racketeers of the first degree, you wonder why the authorities have not arrested them.

There's a blind balladeer who comes around, Christmas or no Christmas, serenading his customers mostly at daytime. Lately, he has been coming to our place with alarming frequency, that we felt it was time to tell him to go somewhere else. At the rate he was doing his chore, I suppose he was earning more than most of us even if we shelled out only P5 each. No, we did not tell him to back off. We just gave P3 instead of the usual P5. It was our way of telling him we were no longer supporting whatever racket he has. Since then, he has avoided our apartment and kept to his more generous customers.

A motley group of well-dressed young men and women, belonging to a religious sect, has also made inroads to our compound. They do their serenading on Sundays, singing cheerful religious anthems, in exchange for a few bucks to be placed in an envelop. The least you can put inside an envelop is P20. To us who value every cent that we earn, the gesture is absurd especially since the singing is done without harmony. I'd still prefer those upland balladeers with their pentatonic biblical tales. So we politely tell them to move to the next few doors because their occupants might be more generous and have more money to spare.

Let's not forget the Badjaos, those nomadic, boat residents who have, in the last few years, discovered that it's more profitable begging on dry land rather than diving for their coins alongside big inter-island vessels. With children in tow or carried on their backs, they have become more persistent beggars who cannot take no for an answer and who often make it appear that one is obligated to give them a piece of your pie. This Christmas, we expect to see them in our compound. Dealing with these people gives me bad vibes, no less.

Another tribal minority that has adopted this Christian practice of caroling is the Manobo. They come in their native costumes and indigenous drums, traipsing around with their lithe bodies to the beat of these drums. But they show up only on very rare occasions, and it is always a pleasure to listen to the beat of their drums and watch them enact a sample of their tribal dance. Probably among the carolers and others pretending to be carolers, they would be in my list of most liked guests along with the upland folk balladeers.

Merry Christmas!!
Wishes for the new year

As tradition would have it, all of us nurture secret wishes on the eve of the new year, mostly personal or something that would benefit one's family. In a more picturesque simile, the wish comes wrapped like a package one carries before the altar of hope just as the new year emerges. I have long graduated from that stage as my inclinations became more and more social and political in orientation. Although I still wish for a relatively easy and comfortable existence, I know such would remain wishful thinking as I simply don't have the means to make that happen.

On the other hand, the political animal in me has lined up a long list for the coming year, starting with the Supreme Court. Those guys who call themselves eminent and honorable justices have really no business setting there, first, because they have shamelessly and blatantly plagiarized the obra maestra of other judges. Plagiarism is a sin of people who can't think straight or who can't think at all. They'd rather copy than spend sleepless nights writing their piece. They really have no business being in the magistrate which is supposed to be populated with honest and honorable individuals, who know how to use their heads and put their thoughts into intelligible forms. That, plus the fact that they have placed a major obstacle in the investigation of corruption-related cases of the past administration, makes them the number one candidate for termination. With no exception, I would add.

Next in line is the Ombudsman. First, its record of non-performance has put it as suspect in the eyes of the public. Then recently, its move to downgrade the case of Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia from plunder to something bailable leaves a bad taste in the mouth. No wonder it had to issue a gag order on the Garcia bail - and pity those who cannot put up a whimper of protest in some civil disobedience. An earlier decision of the Sandiganbayan has been overturned to accommodate the wishes of Garcia who now roams scot-free with his millions gotten from illicit transactions. Let us see if the DOJ can outmaneuver this.

Next we jump to the local scene. Last December 22 and 23, we were witness to another railroading maneuver of the local government in its moves to collect new taxes and have more money in its coffers. I say "railroading" because how else would you describe the haste in the conduct of the comprehensive revenue code, 120 pages in all and distributed to selected participants a week before? The code requires serious study by all the sectors concerned and, hence, more time should have given to the participants. One week to study 120 pages? There are 12 months in a year and, if those guys in the city wanted to, they could have easily scheduled it earlier so that more time for discussions by the stakeholders was given and a more consultative process ensured. But as it goes, the word "consultative" does not exist in the vocabulary of our honorable SP members. My wish here is simple. Give it more time for deliberation. That is, if the interests of the stakeholders are in you hearts as public officials.

A fourth wish is for our electric bills to go down to reasonable levels. I have personally written Leyeco V about this and, fortunately, they were good enough to respond to my questions. As expected, they were able to explain the various charges in our monthly, including the ones that are passed on from the power suppliers. As if to show that it is not hiding anything, I was also provided with documents that detailed the increases in power rates, as if to tell me, hey, look, this is where your payment is going to.

I have not reviewed these documents yet, but one thing I must do is write the suppliers to find out if Leyeco's figures are right. However, one thing that's bothersome here is the so-called cooperative's declaration of a "zero balance" at the end of each year - which is highly suspicious. In any normal business enterprise, you either make a profit or you lose. "Zero balances" don't exist in business realities. So is Leyeco V trying to pull our leg here?

My wish? That Leyeco V tells its consumers the truth.

My last wish goes back to our city government. The water project has reportedly been finished and yet no one knows (except those in the higher ups) exactly how many millions the city has spent for the project. Remember they used our power royalty from EDC on this project. I wish the city would bare its records to the public. Until now, those involved in the project are my prime suspects.
My cats in this season of love

While we humans exercise some restraint and civility in expressing our emotions, cats make no secret about their lust, their piercing and impassioned cries shattering the night's silence as I was about to doze off the other evening. So irritating in fact were those cries that I resolved to douse cold water over the mating pair. But the female cat scampers as I approach, leaving its male pursuer behind.

The tomcat turns out to be our good old Blite, erstwhile cockroach killer, but now a grizzly uncomely cat, his battle scars all over his dirty face and body, while his front paws and hind legs still sport fresh bite wounds and his neck reddish and smarting from allergic itch. He must have been gorging our neighbor's leftover shrimps and crabs that were casually left in some trash box awaiting the garbage truck.

Oh, yes, our macho cat appears to have fallen for our new neighbor's white feline which looks dandy alright but stupid for taking on our old unwashed Blite.A year ago, we used to cuddle Blite. But now that he has reached full maturity, his voice croaks in that lazy tone of one who appears to be at the top of the pecking order in the neighborhood. We now have four generations of cats in Merca's brood, with Blite as the oldest and now the ugliest. He is followed by Oying, so called because of some orange spots on her fur. She is the least aggressive and runs at the slightest waving of a stick but returns to rub her whiskers against your ankle in demonstrations of unabashed feline loyalty.

Totoy comes next as a third generation cat after Oying. He openly resents Blite's authority, sometimes taunting him but often ending up sprawled on his back, crying helpless against Blite's menacing claws. Poor Totoy pees and poohs involuntarily, leaving the floor littered with his putrid infernal dung.

The youngest fourth generation love child of Merca, Gaming, is the smallest, cutest, most cuddly young tomcat. He wags his tail like a dog but only after he performs his waste removal ritual under the bamboo sofa or beneath one of the desks, that is, when nobody is looking. He seems impossible to train but he is sensitive to the slightest signs of ill temper or flare-ups of irritation.

His lack of toilet manners has earned him his present sleeping quarters at the back of the kitchen outside the apartment, inside an old lavabo, with old cartons as bed covers and three tarpaulin posters as roof. There he sleeps with Oying. On early mornings, I often catch them huddled with each other, sharing each other's warmth. I'm sure when he grows older, he too will be contesting Blite's and Totoy's territorial supremacy claims. When that day comes, I'll be witnessing deadly animal territorial disputes and their infernal dung strewn all over the place.

As usual, Merca, their ageless matriarch disappears for two to three days, then pops up outside the window when she goes home to eat. I'm sure she has a lover somewhere for her tummy has a new bulge - telltale signs of her fifth generation. How I wish she'd stop flirting and grow old in peace.
Blite, the cockroach killer

The name "Blite" is actually the contraction of black and white, the name given to our adolescent male cat who was sired by Merca (for Mercado since she was given by my suki, the banana wholesaler). Nothing fancy or exotic. Just a plain wide-eyed, grey and white feline who seemed to have learned of our ways and habits more than we did his. But among all the feline creatures that have passed our household and spent their growth years before they eloped or were driven out by more aggressive alley cats, Blight appears to be doing what we expect him to do – exterminate all the rats and cockroaches in the apartment. He learned his pleasant ways from his mother, of course, for Merca likes being petted and fondled. She is the only cat who has so far learned to hug my belly in a very endearing way, purring and emitting a soft "meow" while rubbing her whiskers against my skin or my shirt.

Nobody taught her that. It just seemed to be the natural consequence of affectionate caring that we, humans in the household, have shown her. Now she habitually jumps on my lap when I call her or signal to her with my hands. Blite has followed suit but instead of an affectionate hug, he gets playful and uses his paws and mouth to play with my fingers. Blite's function as cockroach exterminator comes handy every morning when cockroaches run about and congregate at the kitchen wastes. He chases one after the other in playful abandon, using his paws and his mouth, until the cockroaches die from sheer exhaustion. Jean follows up the extermination with a broom and a dustpan to deposit the dead or dying cockroaches inside the waste bin.

But Blite's sleeping habits gets the better of me most of the time. Our cats normally sleep after dinner time, then wake up three hours later to play and hunt. By 11 o'clock when I put out the lights and get tucked in bed, the cats sometimes return to sleep or stay outside the house to do their nocturnal hunt

Their body clock probably tells them to wake up when the cocks start to crow in earnest. This is about 4 o'clock. That's when they start to meow at the door when they stay outside. If Blite spends the night inside the house, he sits in front of my face near my bed and starts to meow. His noise gets more persistent when the alarm sounds at 5:15, as if telling me, "Hey, time to wake up!"

These feline creatures, I am told, are supposed to be difficult to train. But given their present habits, who needs training?
