Freedom

As a country, we are just 109 years old. We were supposed to have been the first republic in Asia on 12 June 1898. But the freedom our first revolutionary heroes fought for and won from the Spaniards, who controlled our minds and souls for more than 300 years, was short-lived. The Americans came to wrest the freedom we just won.

One tragedy in our history is that we have been turned over from one colonial master to another. The Spaniards and the Americans finally left, but we have yet to free ourselves from the enslaving impacts of colonization.

Now we are still struggling to free ourselves from the impact of being cloistered in a convent for almost four centuries and for being bombarded with Hollywood for almost a century, not to mention decades of IMF and the World Bank.

But within and among us, we have yet to free ourselves from other forms of slavery and subjugation. We have to liberate ourselves from ghosts of the past, which were never exorcised and which continue to resurrect and haunt us.

Very much around us is the ghost of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, whose martial law regime brought a climate of fear. Such climate still remains and no other than Supreme Court Justice Renato Puno had expressed concern and alarm over the still many unsolved political killings and other human indignities still happening in a supposed democracy.

Puno cited other ghosts – the ghosts of Garci and the ghosts of poverty. Even as Garci continues to haunt us, another Garci incarnate surnamed Bedol has come out to make us puke.

Puno was right about poverty. While top officials thump their breasts and congratulate themselves for what they claim is a booming economy, the poor continue not to feel the impact of so-called economic growth. A tank of liquefied petroleum gas remains expensive at P550. No wonder my neighbors, in search of firewood, continue to cut the branches of the trees in our neighborhood, threatening the remaining trees in our village.

There are other various forms of slavery from which we should free ourselves. We still have to outgrow and transcend our bigotry, prejudices and intolerance.

As we have said in past columns, the world is better seen from the prism of a rainbow. But many of us still view the world in black and white.

And there’s our slavery from our own materialist and consumerist ways. We think the planet is something we can squeeze like a lemon for our greed. Now the planet is getting warmer and our climate is changing, bringing disasters of catastrophic proportions.

With the way things are, we have yet to win our real freedom, individually and collectively.

Environmental Blues

We pay lip service to the environment each time we celebrate World Environment Day on June 5 or World Earth Day on April 23 in the same way that we do to health during World No-Smoking Day. And we get to see ceremonial tree-planting here and there by officials under the glare of news cameras.

In fairness, the seedlings, which officials plant -- even if done for the cameras -- may yet grow to become tall, proud trees on which birds could nest. This is if the seedlings are planted in June, the start of the rainy season. Otherwise, any ceremonial tree planting done during the dry months is just for photo opportunities.

Yes, we need to plant more trees rather than build more and more gasoline stations or concrete pine trees and arches. We need to plant all those seedlings before summer sets in again.

And we need to protect the mountainsides where we planted our seedlings. One irony in this country is that we plant seedlings on our mountainsides during the rainy season but we burn them down during summer. Worse, these tree-planting efforts may have been funded by multi-million-dollar loans from the World Bank.

Given the reported hectares upon hectares of mountainsides reforested through World Bank funding in the 1980s and 1990s, the country must be turning lush green again. But we have yet to see a forest that resurrected through these World Bank loans. In this country, there are ghost forests as there are ghost employees and ghost voters.

But if forests have become ghosts, this is not so with our garbage and the thick smog that we have to wrestle with each day. Our garbage is mounting as our air is becoming thicker and thicker with pollutants. Just expose yourself at the busy streets of Baguio’s heart and belly and your head aches after getting exposed to all those fumes from passenger jeeps and taxis.

We need not be surprised if our city’s garbage is mounting. Much of the central business district’s solid wastes come from the Styrofoam and plastic containers used by fast-food chains. That’s why I still bow my head to all the old-style restaurants, which use porcelain plates and other dishes that need the services of a dishwasher.

Much of the threats and damage to our environment and to Mother Earth as a whole actually comes from a highly consumerist and throw-away lifestyle. The biggest polluter in the world, for instance, is the US because it is the biggest consumer of fossil fuels.

Baguio, especially its central business district, has poor air quality, according to a World Bank study. This is not surprising. Given its small area, Baguio has one of the most numbers of taxis and passenger jeeps in the country.

So how do we reduce our fuel consumption? On a collective and individual level, the less fuel we consume, the better for our community and our planet. From using plastics and Styrofoam to giving out franchises to taxi and passenger jeep applicants in such a small city as Baguio, we can seek the wisdom of the sages who admonish us that “less is more.”

Less is more also means simple living and high thinking and being able to choose the more essential to the gross and vain.

Health Hazard

On national television we saw the mess and violence that accompanied the special elections in some parts of Mindanao. Supporters pulled each other’s hair as they raged in shouting matches while guns were tucked in the waists of some men. These guns didn’t include the long firearms of soldiers who seemed helpless in keeping the peace and order during the special elections there.

This lack of order and discipline, the alleged vote-shaving and vote-padding, and the reported manipulated vote for sale from some COMELEC officials there make us sick. The news reports about all these make us puke. All these raise our blood pressure, giving more reasons for other Filipinos to leave this cursed country for good.

Small wonder election commissioner Rene Sarmiento, who was assigned to supervise the special elections in Maguindanao, resigned for “health reasons.” Among the few credible persons within the Comelec, Sarmiento was sent to Maguindanao to help give credence to the special elections. But apparently he could not stomach what he personally saw and got sick in the process.

Also sick and tired of all these mess and chaos in those parts in southern Philippines, one commentator suggested that these communities be segregated from the country and be called “Command Votes Territory.” Similarly, some quarters here in the Cordillera proposed that Abra, where some towns become a Wild Wild West during elections, be deleted from the Cordillera Administrative Region.

Of course, such suggestion doesn’t help. But it shows a growing frustration over why the Comelec and other concerned authorities failed to institute a credible way of electing our officials.

With all the mess and violence accompanying elections in other parts, I began to appreciate and value the discipline and good manners and right conduct of voters in my hometown of Kibungan in Benguet. There, we would queue up and we would even let the elderly vote first. Yes, in Kibungan, we still respect our elders. This is most common in Benguet and other parts of the Cordillera.

The mess in Mindanao all the more suggests that we need to modernize our stone-age electoral system.

But even if we computerize our electoral system, we are not sure if the violence and anomalies that accompany our elections will automatically disappear. Maybe the next irregularities will be more high-tech. Maybe they won’t burn ballot boxes, but CPUs. And watch out for computer hackers.

One big step forward is to clean up the Comelec. Remove the likes of Ben Abalos and his ilk, who have made the Comelec very partisan. Putting in credible persons like Sarmiento won’t help. Like the Supreme Court, the Comelec should be beyond question.

Even if we put fresh tomatoes in a basket of rotten ones, the fresh, good ones will also rot. We put some good, credible men like Sarmiento in a ‘Hello Garci’-infested Comelec, but they, like Yoyoy Villame, would end up wailing, “O Mother, Mother I’m sick, O call the doctor very quick. Doctor, doctor shall I die? O tell my mama do not cry.”

As Sarmiento found out, working with Abalos’ Comelec is hazardous to a credible person’s health.

Winners and Losers

In life we win some, we lose some. In the last elections, more aspirants lost than those who won. There were more who lost because there simply were just too many candidates vying for few positions. This reminds us of the hordes of jobless applicants, who would queue up for a single vacant job position in a government or private outfit.

Victory in the elections is definitely as sweet and as ecstatic as the triumphant joy of a winning soccer team in the World Cup. But for those who won in the last election, victory can be genuinely sweet if they won cleanly and honestly. Otherwise, their victory is as bogus as the pirated CDs and DVDs that now litter our sidewalks.

For those who lost, don't despair. Loss or failure can still be turned into victory. Abraham Lincoln failed several times before he was finally elected president of the United States. Those who lost in the last political exercise now have three years to assess and re-examine themselves and to device strategies for the next elections. That is if they'll make politics their career or vocation. Otherwise, God may have other purposes for them, a realization that the likes of Manny Pacquiao must reflect on.

The biggest losers in the last elections are actually not the losing candidates. The biggest losers are the families of those who lost their lives while serving as members of the election board of inspectors. We mourn with the families of Leticia Ramos and Nelly Banaag, the teachers of Taysan, Batangas who were burned to death as they protected ballot boxes from the evil intent of those who sent five masked men who torched two classrooms of the Pinagbayanan Elementary School there.

Many lives were lost before, during and after the elections, which police and election officials have described as “generally peaceful.” The generally-peaceful assessment of the last elections was based on comparative figures of casualties in the 2004 and May 14 elections.

A Catholic Media Network priest-commentator noted that the shooting spree of a deranged youth that claimed 32 lives at Virginia Tech in the US was considered a “massacre” while a stampede during a Manila noontime show where scores were killed and wounded was described as a “tragedy.” Ironically, amid election-related killings that reached more than 100, a top police official and even COMELEC officials had declared that the last elections were “generally peaceful,” the priest-commentator pointed.

We are lucky in Baguio and Benguet because -- unlike in some Wild, Wild, West towns of Abra and in Mindanao -- our board of inspectors and canvassers need not cower in fear as they manually count and tally votes. Despite allegations of vote-buying, Baguio and Benguet are some of the lucky places where losing candidates would immediately reconcile with and hug their political opponents. Except Abra, the elections in the Cordillera were indeed generally peaceful.

But the total picture shows that our country is still run like hell.

The elections are the means by which ordinary citizens participate in a supposedly democratic process of choosing men and women to represent them. But the widespread reports of vote-shaving, vote-padding, and other irregularities plus the accompanying violence and terror all show that we still have a long way to go as a democracy.

We may not even qualify as a democracy because the names of persons, which we write on the ballot every election, are not always correctly counted and tallied. In some towns, a candidate may have won through the ballot, but he may not survive his political rival’s bullet.

That a few powerful people continue to make a mockery of our elections prevents us from evolving as a true democracy. It is this mockery that continues to send more and more brothers and sisters to leave the country for good. The big losers in the process are us, ordinary folk, who are forced to bear the consequences and curse of misrule and bad governance.

War is over, but not the Battle

By midnight on May 12, we expect that all will be quiet and calm – no more blaring loudspeakers with tired political jingles, no more annoying TV and radio commercials, and no more boring speeches of politicians courting our precious votes. By that time there will be no more printed campaign materials littering our streets and backyards. By that time only tweeting birds, singing crickets, croaking frogs, crowing roosters, barking dogs, pounding carpenters’ hammers and children’s laughter will reverberate in our otherwise quiet neighborhood.

We are glad the war of all the political candidates to win our hearts and minds is over. It’s time for all of us to rest from all the noise pollution of campaign promises, which didn’t only deafen our ears but also nagged us to death. It’s time no more papers are wasted on campaign materials so we can save on trees. It is better that these papers be used for our school children’s textbooks in June.

But while the war of our political candidates -- be they losers or winners -- is over, our battle as citizens will again begin. Our battle starts on the day of election. The battle starts from our choices as we enter the voting precincts. Making a choice is sometimes a tyranny in itself because we are forced to choose from among lesser evils, not from among good men and women, who are as rare as the monkey-eating eagle.

After we made our choices, we are asked to guard our ballots. We are asked to keep vigil over the counting and canvassing of our votes. So we are asked not to sleep until we are assured that our votes are counted correctly. Why? Can’t the commission mandated to count our votes master their simple arithmetic? Don’t they know their addition? They don’t have to solve algebra or trigonometry problems, do they?

There was this effort to computerize our electoral process. But the election commission screwed up the effort towards computerization. It wanted to stick to the antiquated manual counting, which is vulnerable to dagdag-bawas (vote-padding) anomalies.

We had learned about bad precedents, which continue to haunt, hound and threaten our so-called democracy. The ghost of the “hello Garci” fiasco has yet to be exorcised. So we are asked to watch out and guard against this ghost.

And granting that our votes are correctly counted, we are also asked to do another task: to monitor whether or not our elected officials fulfill the promises they made before us when they were politely but persistently courting our votes. Some of them may even have signed covenants arranged by church and civil society leaders.

For us, ordinary citizens, the war won’t be over after May 14. For us, the war continues and so we have to always gear up for battle in this country, which is still a babe in the woods in terms of democracy.

Farewell to a Village Folk's Midwife

From the early 1960s up to 1971, she was the midwife of almost every family in Poblacion, Kibungan and in neighboring villages. All of my younger siblings who were born from 1963 up to 1971 were delivered at home with the help of Flora Wachina-Lagdao, the municipal midwife my relatives and town mates would never forget for her dedicated service.

I still remember those times when we had to knock at the door of the Lagdaos even in the dead of night when my expectant mother was in labor. Like a girl scout, Auntie Flora would immediately pack her black rectangular leather bag, which contained a stethoscope and other medical gadgets, and we would hie off to our house to help my mother deliver another “visitor” (as my lolo and lola called a newly born member of the family).

To my big family and to my village mates in Poblacion, Kibungan, Auntie Flora was the midwife of every home who helped deliver a new child into the world to the delight of parents and grandparents ready to celebrate the coming of another blessing. In Kibungan, children are considered blessings from the heavens. Auntie Flora had helped ensure that these blessings would successfully arrive with their loud, shrill cries amidst the night's sound of silence.

Auntie Flora was well-loved even by former pupils of the Kibungan Elementary School. During the regular vaccination for school children, many of us would hope and pray that Auntie Flora would be the one to administer the vaccination and not the other Rural Health Unit personnel. For most of us then, the vaccination injection was less painful and less scary through Auntie Flora than through the others.

A doctor rarely visited our upland town. But we were lucky to have Auntie Flora, who, along with the late Hencio Monte, our municipal sanitary inspector, were always on call to help attend to our health and medical needs.

A native of Natonin, Mountain Province, Auntie Flora was married to my uncle, Pepito Lagdao, a public school teacher who rose to become a principal until he died of a lingering illness in the 1980s.

In 1971, Auntie Flora went to Germany where the pastures for midwives were greener. She worked and lived there until she retired, coming over to the Philippines from time to time to visit her children and relatives. Finally last April in Germany, Auntie Flora succumbed to a heart ailment. She was 70.

Auntie Flora's remains were cremated in Germany and brought home here last April 29 before the ashes were interred at the Pyramid Memorial Park in Kias, PMA, Baguio City last May 1.

From the wake until the burial, not only Auntie Flora's relatives from Natonin, but many of her late husband's relatives and town mates from Kibungan came over to pay their last respects. They came to thank the midwife who helped secure the lives of home-delivered babies in a town, which used to have only an RHU (rural health unit), which we called a dispensary.

Auntie Flora is survived by her children – Jeryl Marie, Jurgenson, Rhea Joy, and Leilani; daughter-in-law Eulina; and grandchildren – Samantha, Yvonne, Yorg, Liam and Desiree.

To the well-loved midwife who became part of our lives in Kibungan, goodbye. But we'll continue to thank you as we remember you through every shrill, loud cries of the babies of parents, who used to be the babies you helped deliver into the world.

Wedding Magic

The sitio (sub-village) of Tamog-o in the village of Poblacion in Kibungan, Benguet was the happiest place on earth last April 14, at least for the people gathered there. In Tamog-o, throngs of community people and guests from as far as Bicol and Apayao shared lunch together and established and renewed ties after a young man and a young woman exchanged “I do’s.” For the new couple, their families and for the community itself, that day was most historic.

Under a blistering summer mid-morning sun that second Saturday of April, Epifanio ‘Jhun’ Macario, Jr. and Loyda ‘Loydz’ Malanes exchanged marriage vows at the grounds of the Kibungan municipal hall. Officiated by pastors from the Free Believers in Christ Fellowship, the wedding transformed the municipal hall compound into hallowed ground as well-wishers participated in a lively praise and worship that accompanied the wedding rites.

The praise and worship were even more enlivened by local and “imported” singing talents from the mining community of Philex in Acupan, Itogon town, whose golden voices were accompanied by electric guitars and drums. Even the shy or reluctant, who were used to often drab traditional church hymns, were enticed to clap their hands as they swayed their hips to the upbeat rhythm of the praise songs.

Weddings are usually held in churches or cathedrals. And weddings become unusual when a couple decide to wed under water or inside a jungle. But Jhun and Loydz’s wedding was equally unusual in a way.

That it was held at the municipal grounds made the wedding distinct. Other couples get married under civil rites at the municipal hall with the mayor or municipal judge officiating. But a religious wedding rite at the municipal hall ground was something new for the community folk of Kibungan.

Courtesy of supporters, flowers, palm leaves, banana plants, and ferns adorned the wedding venue. Instead of a red carpet, the path through which the new couple and the whole wedding entourage walked was blanketed with green moss and ferns.

The shaded main entrance to the municipal hall was transformed into an altar where its backdrop announces in a mural the wedding rites of two young adults who finally decided to bid goodbye to single-blessedness. Besides announcing the Macario-Malanes Nuptial of Jhun and Loidz, the mural also carried “Heaven knows I treasure you in my life” and a painting of two flying white doves about to kiss each other.

For the simple Kankanaey folk of Kibungan, the transformation of the municipal hall grounds into a wedding resort, even for half a day, was a spectacular, if not dramatic, event, which they would talk about for weeks.

After the wedding rites, the community folk and guests were treated to lunch at the Malanes’ ancestral home in Tamog-o. The celebration continued after lunch as messages of best wishes and advices from elders and more golden voices and drama talents pre-occupied the whole afternoon. Some people stayed on until the night, singing and dancing under the peaceful Kibungan sky.

The wedding of Jhun and Loydz in a way had broken the monotony of rural life in a sleepy town, which becomes noisy only during electoral campaigns or during the town’s founding anniversary in November.

But most important of all is how weddings help establish ties between in-laws and next of kin. Because of the wedding, the sisters and other relatives of Jhun Macario’s mother, who hails from Bicol, came over to witness the recent historic event. Loydz’s grandfather (the uncle of her mother) and uncles and cousins from as far as Apayao (where they migrated) and other relatives also sacrificed their time to also witness the wedding and reunite with their long lost kinfolk in Kibungan.

Such is the magical impact of weddings, which also help make us closer as a people. We don’t only improve our genetic make-up as a people through inter-marriages. Through inter-marriages, we are also building bridges and so we are in a way helping promote peace and harmony in a world still divided by walls.

Political Maturity

For their supposed “political immaturity,” Filipino voters are often easily blamed for electing people who end up making public office a public mistrust. But this is tantamount to blaming the victims of a tragedy for what befell them rather than what or who caused the tragedy.

I tend to agree with a friend’s assertion that most Filipino voters today have reached a certain level of political maturity. The problem, my friend says, is that even if they vote with their conscience and vote for principled candidates, voters are not assured if their votes get counted correctly.

This brings us to an uneasy feeling once some administration national candidates who, even if they are faring poorly in poll surveys, boast of making it on election day because of what they claim as the comparative edge of government machinery.

With the “hello Garci” scandal still fresh in the public memory, we couldn’t help but suspect that the machinery that some government bets boast about also refers to machinery, which can turn around what voters actually write on their ballots.

Machinery also includes money. And there’s no doubt, government has the advantage of disbursing funds to aid or influence election results. The “fertilizer scam,” for example, is also still fresh in the public memory, at least for those who don’t have amnesia. The “fertilizer funds” disbursed during the 2004 presidential campaigns became scandalous and questionable after it was found out that congress representatives in non-agricultural districts were also given millions in fertilizer funds.

Additional pork barrel funds are often released and increase in government workers’ pay is often announced during the electoral campaigns. These are part of government machinery.

This early, meanwhile, no less than Department of Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales pledged to give barangay (village) captains in Ilo-ilo P10,000 each if they give a clean sweep for the administration’s 12 senatorial bets. Even if the P10,000 for each barangay captain would come from Gonzales’ own pocket, the controversial promise from Gonzales tells much about how government is using its machinery of which Gonzales’ office is a part.

Since Gonzales’ offer has already been out in the open, our hope is that the barangay captains won’t play Judas. Let’s hope these barangay captains and the electorate of Ilo-ilo won’t be blinded by a few pieces of silver.

So I often cringe each time the electorate, including you and me, are often blamed for our “political immaturity” in electing candidates who end up squeezing us like lemons.

After the Marcoses were ousted in February 1986, one of our aspirations was that the electoral institution in this country would unfold as one of the true pillars of democracy. But election commissioners, with backing from some top guns, screwed up the public clamor to computerize our elections. The commission prefers our antiquated election system, which is vulnerable to irregularities such as vote-padding.

So are Filipino voters immature? Tell that to the marines.

Prayers and Topping the Bar

Lawyers swear the bar is the most difficult, if not the most torturous, exam on earth. The torture starts during the preparation until the actual exams. The Latin words that they have to memorize and the volumes of books they have to read is torture enough. Reading is important for everybody who values continuing education. “Reading,” Francis Bacon says, “maketh a man.” But reading volumes of books to the point that one deprives himself of required sleep, leisure, and other activities for mind-body-and-soul balance is torture indeed.

The torture continues during the exams staggered on four Sundays. After the exams, the examinees cannot just sit back and relax. Waiting for the results, which get released after five to six months, is part of the agony. I know somebody who secluded himself in his wife’s village while waiting for the bar results. He showed up in town only when the result of the bar came out and he was one of those who passed.

Under this torturous situation, the best weapon, as new bar topnotcher Noel Neil Malimban of the University of the Cordilleras proved, was prayer. Having reviewed all by himself in a one-room space, Malimban would have been likened to a prisoner in solitary confinement. But he was not alone in that single room. Besides his law books, he had company from an infinite resource, which he tapped through prayers.

Prayers and meditation have long been part of the lives of sages, spiritual teachers and practitioners of all various faiths. One spiritual teacher says prayers and meditation help cleanse the mind from all the confusion and illusion of this material world in the same way that water and soap can cleanse one’s physical body from dirt. So a prayerful and meditative person, the spiritual teacher says, can think clearly and can say what he means and means what he says. It thus follows that if one thinks clearly, one can act accordingly.

After using some brain wave devices on Buddhist monks, scientists recently have conceded that prayers and meditations have a positive impact on a person’s mental and physical well-being. Of course, the sages and spiritual teachers have long known this fact besides other phenomena, which scientists have not yet discovered through their gadgets.

In resorting to prayers, Malimban had actually tapped an infinite resource, which actually helped him through the torturous road toward becoming a bar topnotcher. Prayers and meditation must have helped cleanse the dust from Malimban’s mind so he could think clearly as he remembered clearly what his law professors at the University of the Cordillera had taught him.

It is thus not surprising that when he was taking the bar exams, Malimban felt it was lawyer Reynaldo Agranzamendez, UC acting president and law dean, who formulated the questions in the exams. All the tips from Agranzamendez and other law professors came into play when Malimban was reviewing for and taking the bar exams. Malimban clearly remembered the advice that he must be straight to the point and concise in his answers to the questions.

There was no doubt that Malimban studied hard and had an excellent discipline as he was also a working student. He definitely needed a lot of stamina and multi-vitamins on which, he said, he probably overdosed. But he also prayed hard. This must be his secret, and his topping the bar exams was a good testimony on the strength and power of prayers.

Water and Life

When we moved to our new place in a sub-village of Baguio City three years ago, we had no access to any piped water. But all our neighbors had their water tapped from a nearby spring and creek and conveyed to their houses through PVC pipes. They told us not to worry and that we could also look for some spring to access about 300 to 500 meters away from where we live.

Tired of fetching water from a neighbor, I ushered in my three brothers from the neighboring town of La Trinidad to help me explore a spring to which we could connect our own PVC pipe. My three brothers and I distributed ourselves over a Y-shaped creek above our sub-village. And presto, just before noon one Saturday more than three years ago, one of my brothers discovered a small spring, which other neighbors had ignored.

As we dug a well around the spring, we found a couple of vigilant mountain crabs, which – with their claws ready -- declared to us that they were the original and rightful inhabitants of that small water system. The presence of the dominantly orange-red creatures also made us understand that the spring was a living one, part of an oasis of life.

With stones, we built a terrace around the small well, which now catches the spring oozing from the grass- and reed-covered hill where an alnus tree and an endemic water-bearing tree proudly stand. From the well, we laid out a five-meter half-inch-diameter PVC pipe connected to a more than a cubic-meter rubberized plastic drum. Just a few inches lower in elevation than the water level of the well around the spring, this drum now serves as our main tank from which a 250-meter half-inch-diameter PVC pipe conveys water right into our yard.

That spring had provided our water needs for the last more than three years. On dry months starting February to May, however, the spring would shrink. So I’ve to readjust the flow of water from the well to the plastic drum tank. Through trial and error, I discovered that the rate of water flow to the tank must be equivalent with the rate of water coming out from the foothill spring.

How do I adjust the rate of water flow? During the rainy season, I can lower the end of the pipe connected to the tank. But during summer I’ve to elevate the other end of the pipe so even if the water flowing is as small as a rat’s tail, we are still assured that water continues to flow into the tank.

But something happened just this February. A neighbor dug a well just two feet away from my own well. Since the new well my neighbor dug was lower, the water supplying my well decreased. I could have complained but I just shrugged my shoulders, fully understanding that my neighbor was also in dire need of water. In other communities, this could have led to a fist fight or even a tribal war.

In our sub-village, we feel blessed for having free water. But as our neighborhood is growing, it would not be advisable for every new neighbor to dig his own well. The wisest thing is to have one big reservoir and equally distribute the water to all households. But this needs more logistics and members of the neighborhood have to be organized. This can be a prospective community project in coordination with the Barangay (village) captain and with some government or donor agency.

In the meantime my family and I still try to conserve water as much as possible. We close our faucet when our drum is full. It is better that what overflows is the tank that catches water from the spring because what overflows also goes to the creek where farmers have tapped their irrigation source. The water used to wash dishes can be used to water the plants and the water used for laundry can be used to flush the toilet.

While others welcome summer, I dread it because this is a time of uncertainty for our water source. But thanks to a recent cold front, it has rained recently for three days, including during the World Day of Water on March 22; thus reinforcing our spring, our source of living water, and one of our intimate links to our dear Mother Earth.

Power Shift and Big If

The landed and other top economic elites, many of them in extractive industries, have lorded it over our electoral politics since after World War II. Economic wealth for a long time has been the twin of political power in this country.

Although we have seen in recent years the rise of relatively poor politicians like former Senator Juan Flavier and Sen. Joker Arroyo (now seeking reelection), political power in this country remains largely in the hands of economic elites.

So I don’t mind really if movie stars, some of whom had started small before reaching stardom, are now entering electoral politics. They could use their popularity to invade a realm, which used to be monopolized by the traditional political big guns.

By sincerely putting to heart the interests of their thousands of fans, who include the ordinary masses, these movie stars seeking electoral positions may yet make a difference. As more movie and television personalities enter politics, political power in this country may yet shift from the landed and other wealthy elites to the hands of movie and television stars-turned-politicians.

But movie stars entering politics may have to educate themselves about the sanctity of a public office as a public trust. Former president Joseph Estrada had proved that movie stardom could pave one’s way to the top electoral position. Something, however, went wrong along the way, which had something to do with violating the sanctity of a public office. He may have started with sincere, good intentions. But he became infected with the usual politician’s disease in which absolute power could absolutely corrupt even the best of intentions.

So here’s an unsolicited advice to Goma, Cesar Montano and other movie idols entering politics: learn legislation and governance not from the usual traditional politicians, but from other models. Japanese politicians may yet offer some tips. Because the values of honor, accountability and integrity are part of Japanese political behavior, some Japanese politicians would rather commit hara-kiri if they could not stomach a wrongdoing they committed.

Not in the Philippines. Many Filipino politicians are known, if not perceived, as the most thick-skinned species in the animal kingdom. They can go around town promising the moon and the stars when they are courting for our votes but continue rob us dry when they get elected.

With the proper moral formation coupled with sufficient capacity-building in governance, movie stars turned politicians, as they do on screen, may yet help rescue the suffering and downtrodden from the villains who, with forked tongues, have long deceived us.

And if the new breed of politicians from the movie world really put the general interests of their lowly fans above theirs, the process of a shift of political power from the usual traditional political dynasties to this new breed may have begun. Be cautioned, however, that this is still a BIG IF.

Making Decisions

Two major sections of our population have to make major decisions at this point. They are our graduating high school students and our voting population.

Many graduating high school students already may have made up their minds in choosing what to pursue in college. They may have based their choices on aptitude tests or college entrance examinations they have already taken. Or they may have based their choices on what they, as children, have long dreamed of doing during the rest of their lives. But there still are many who have yet to decide on what to pursue.

Under our current situation, one major factor that influences the choice of young people is the global job market. The growing job market for nurses, for example, in recent years has led to the rise in enrolment of those taking up nursing. Like herds of animals lured by the scent of greener grazing land, hordes of our young people have been enrolling in nursing schools, prompting many colleges and universities to open up new departments for nursing students. This herd does not include physicians, lawyers, and other professionals who had enrolled and continue to enroll in nursing schools.

I don’t know if the job market should be the overlying force to help young people choose what to pursue. But given our current situation in which young people are left with few choices, choosing a college course that will most likely enable them to land a job in the future is probably the most practical to consider.

Ideally, young people should choose a career path in which they can fully develop their potentials as total persons, and not simply as an employee or OFW. One, for example, can opt to become a farmer who at the same time can teach others about farm and business management and who can promote his products through his own website and who, on the side, can sing songs he himself composed to the accompaniment of a violin or bamboo instrument.

To enable young people to be able to have wider choices may yet need a rethinking of our educational system. For a long time, our educational system has been geared towards producing employees and workers. We have yet to have schools that train young people to become employers and business tycoons. And most of those who get to become business magnates did not learn the ropes of managing businesses in school. Many of these successful entrepreneurs were those who learned what it meant to “get out of the box.”

We had cited before Narda Capuyan who would jokingly say she learned her trade from the non-existent University of Besao. Another is Jack Dulnuan, a successful businessman, whose secrets of success didn’t come from a university but from experience and sheer hard work.

Amidst the limited choices and opportunities we have for our young people in this country of our hopes and dreams, we now have politicians bombarding us with advertised promises to help fulfill our dreams once they get elected. This brings us to another major decision, which we have to make through our ballots on May 14.

In choosing whom to vote for in May, Adrian Cristobal’s advice that the biblical Ten Commandments should be the practical guide for voters may yet work. The first commandment, for example, forbids idolatry. But even candidates who claim to be “pro-God” are relying on the idolatry of machinery and money to win the elections. So we must be wary of those who make machinery and money their idols as they court us for our votes.

The other commandments that forbid killing, stealing, coveting your neighbor’s wife and goods can also guide us in choosing whom to vote for. Killing does not only mean extra-judicially snuffing out lives through the barrels of guns. Killing is also making life harder for some people so much so that they die from the slow death of poverty or from the murderous threats of environmental destruction as a result of legal or illegal logging or other destructive extractive industries. The impact of these destructive industries is magnified during the typhoon season when flashfloods and mudflows bury whole communities. And the culprits conveniently blame nature for the tragedies in which they actually have blood in their hands.

So beware of those who promise to fulfill our dreams. The multi-million funds for a sweet-talking politician’s campaign may have come not from blood diamonds (because obviously diamonds are found in abundance only in Sierra Leone and other parts of Africa), but from blood logs and blood gold.

Another challenge, however, to our decision-making process as citizens is that there actually are a few candidates to choose from. If the Ten Commandments are strictly followed as guide for voters, there might be no one to choose at all. So we have to settle for the choosing-the-lesser-evil formula.

But let’s hope whoever we choose to write on our ballot gets counted correctly by the election commission, which, upon the manipulation of some top guns, has become notorious for not knowing how to count.

21 Years Ago

Twenty one years ago this Sunday, Filipinos became a proud race after they ousted a dictator who ruled the country for more than 20 years, 14 years of which were under martial law.

Ruled by the barrels of guns, Filipinos could only say yes and amen to the dictates of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos and his generals. Those who dared to say no and defied him, including the late Senators Benigno Aquino and Jose Diokno and many others who included journalists, were thrown into cold prison cells. Worse, many were also tortured and summarily killed, if not made to disappear without a trace. Those were the days when we first heard of extrajudicial killing, which the military termed as “salvaging.”

The critical situation at that time prompted many youths to become activists. Some chose the extreme – they went underground and took up arms.

When Marcos was finally ousted through what has become popularly known as the EDSA Revolution (which others say was actually a people-backed military revolt), many Filipinos thought the country would become a paradise regained. We all were upbeat about our country and its future as we were able to elect our officials and as the press regained its freedom.

But after four presidents took turns to govern us, the ghost of martial law apparently continues to haunt and hound us. We thought extrajudicial killings, for example, were things inherent only under a military regime. But these continue up to now when we are supposed to be more concerned about democracy, responsible governance, and civil liberties.

The European Union, international human rights groups and church organizations, and the UN are now alarmed about how human life has become cheap in this country as activists, journalists, church workers and judges are being eliminated from the face of the earth. The Philippines now ranks second to Iraq, as the most dangerous place for journalists. Just recently, a community editor from southern Philippines was shot to death while taking his early morning coffee. He was the 50^th journalists to be killed since 2001.

Charges of libel also continue to send chills in the spines of many journalists, who dared to expose what the public needed to know about the shenanigans and excesses of some top guns in government.

That extrajudicial killings and threats to journalists continue under a supposed democracy only shows that the country, to paraphrase UN human rights special rapporteur Philip Alston, still has a very long way to go.

So instead of celebrating the return of democracy through that People Power Revolution in 1986, we now have confused and mixed feelings. The difficult and dangerous situation we are in prompts us to extend our mourning and grieving, which we thought ended in February 1986. We still have a very long way to go, indeed.

Send in the Clowns

One senatorial candidate is now being advertised as “gulay ng buhay (vegetable of life)” so “itanim natin siya sa Senado (let’s plant him in the Senate).” This and other political commercials now mix it up with commercials for shampoo, ladies’ napkin, facial oil and lotion, detergents, coffee, liquor, diapers, and other products.

Obviously, the political commercials seek to target the millions of TV viewers who may finally write on their ballots that name on May 14, which they can recall from the repetitive commercial bombardments. And people may just write on their ballots that name that they remember from corny, if not non-sense, political advertisements.

The political commercials don’t necessarily talk about platforms or advocacies. Some commercials just play on the candidates’ names and how they rhyme with senado, for example. With repetition as the strategy, the commercials might work for many voters who don’t really know the capacity and qualities of many candidates. Let’s just hope voters during the election won’t write on their ballots the brand of an underwear or facial oil.

In their commercials, candidates also appear nice, approachable, concerned and sincere. They project themselves as selfless servants with only country and people as their top priority. But that’s alright even if we know that the candidates’ projection is just a put-on since many other commercial products and services are advertised that way anyway.

So we are now in an age when candidates are being marketed like any other commercial product. And viewers may yet judge how much wealth a candidate has by the frequency of his or her commercials. This creates a problem.

Pity the genuinely capable and worthy, but poor candidate who cannot pay for a TV commercial. So again, it’s only those who can afford who continue to lord it over our political landscape.

Apparently, candidates now are pinning their hopes on their TV exposure via commercials after popular TV and movie personalities and basketball stars wormed their way into politics. After a noontime TV show personality first won a seat in the Senate some years ago, for example, Butch Abad of Batanes, who was being endorsed then to run for the Senate, said he should first join a TV show before launching a career in the Senate. He said this when there was only one TV personality in the Senate. Now the Senate is more showbiz-bound than ever.

So now we have what one Manila newspaper described as a political circus. In a circus, the clowns take us for a ride and we are amused while the clowns are (well) clowning around. While the clowns are clowning around, we laugh together with them as we forget that they are making a fool out of us.

Karmic Effect

Many people are now talking about climate change after Al Gore came out with his An Inconvenient Truth documentary. In graphic detail, Gore demonstrated how a 20-foot (6m) rise in the sea level would inundate much of Florida, Shanghai and Holland.

Some environmentalists claim that most of the scenarios in Gore’s documentary were exaggerated. They cite the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent report, which noted an average of 38.5cm sea level rise.

These environmentalists say that the exaggerated scenarios in Gore’s documentary may yet win him an Academy Award. But they say the scenarios have no basis in science. Still, they admitted that sea level rise and global warming are things we should all be concerned about.

Exaggerated or not, rising sea levels, global warming and climate change are as real as the unusual super typhoons the Philippines has experienced in recent years and the unusual floods that submerged New Orleans and recently Jakarta and other parts of Indonesia. Canada and other countries in the Arctic region are now experiencing shorter winters while other parts of the world are reeling from heat waves.

Our planet is getting warmer, say scientists, because of a hole in the ozone layer. There’s a hole there because of too much gas emissions from fossil fuels. The Kyoto Protocol on climate change is supposed to help address this, but the world’s biggest oil consumer and polluter that is the US, refused to sign it. And those who signed it have difficulty reducing their fossil fuel consumption.

Through its space program, the US may yet find another planet where it can evacuate its people. In anticipation of sea levels rising in the future, Japan is now building underwater cities.

In a world ruled by the strong and the mighty in terms of technological and economic capacity, the less fortunate and poor countries may yet perish during the next Great Deluge.

But even if they can land on the moon or can send a rover on Mars, the Americans may not be able to escape from the worst consequence of global warming. Neither can Japan even with its underwater cities. We are still on the same troubled titanic spaceship called planet Earth.

Scientists now acknowledged that the destruction of the ozone and its consequence such as global warming and rising sea levels are not natural phenomena but man-made. Such acknowledgment is an admission of guilt. This is good because we cannot correct a wrong unless we recognize and admit it.

We have abused the only planet we have got through our abusive and consumerist lifestyles and our greed. Now we are reaping the karmic effect of our collective sin.

The World as Rainbow

Multi-awarded script writer Ricky Lee often tells his students or participants of his workshops that there are various routes to Quiapo, a business district in Manila. It was his way of stressing that there’s no single formula in coming out with an excellent story for the movie or TV screen.

Lee’s advice practically applies to all aspects of human life and human relations. It also applies to how we relate with our planet and to how we attempt to reach ideal goals such as changing the world.

Take the case of the cause for the environment. There actually are various shades of environmentalism as there are diverse species in a forest ecosystem. Some environmentalists focus on campaigns such as dramatizing protests against destructive industries, genetically-engineered organisms, and against adverse laws and policies.

Some engage and wrestle with policy-makers, seeking to influence the outcomes of laws or policies so these become friendlier to communities and to the planet as a whole.

Still others work within communities, establishing seedling nurseries and seed banks and helping communities plant seedlings as they seek to recover vanishing tree and traditional food crop species.

Some environmental organizations try to combine various thrusts. But a single organization can only do so much. It actually takes various kinds of organizations to make a dent on the environment.

The same applies with how we view the world. There’s no single worldview, which can explain everything. The world is not black and white; it’s actually a rainbow.

One of the greatest sins of Hitler was that he thought and believed there was only one race that deserved to exist in the world – the Aryan race. So racism and all these other forms of discrimination begin from the thought and belief that one’s race or ethnic origin or one’s worldview or religion is the most superior.

Although his country suffered from the racial discrimination of the white colonialists under apartheid rule, Nelson Mandela, when he took over South Africa, did not order the execution of his country’s tormentors. With the advice of Bishop Desmond Tutu, Mandela instead pursued the way of peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. Mandela and Tutu asserted that they should not fall into the trap of replicating the sins of their colonial tormentors. This, they said, would only start a new cycle of violence, discrimination and suffering. Mandela instead declared that South Africa would become a “Rainbow Nation” where people of all colors could live “in harmony with equal opportunities.”

So the world is not black and white. Some of us maybe excused for still thinking it is. But that was the time when we still had black and white television. The world’s beauty and splendor can be viewed better from the various colors of a rainbow.

Slowing Down and Thinking Small

We live in an age of fast foods and fast lanes. We also hear our technocrats talk about fast-tracking growth and development. Jet planes faster than sound and the information superhighway have made the world smaller, but not necessarily closer as we have yet to close various gaps that still separate members of the human family – poverty, unequal access to information and to basic services, etc. And there are the barriers that now separate us from our planet earth and its various ecosystems. Urban kids, for instance, think cabbages grow on supermarkets and water comes from the tap or from a dispenser.

As we ponder about New Year’s resolutions and instituting changes, we might as well heed the Buddhists’ advice of slowing down and thinking small. The good news is that a counter-current to the fast food and fast lane mentality is emerging. Some people are now advocating for slow food, for example.

While technocrats push for mega and super structures such as mega-dams, some people are quietly pushing for micro-hydro electric projects in which damming rivers becomes unnecessary. Initially aided by a church, a development NGO and a small grants program of the UNDP, a small community of Mabaka folk in Apayao, for example, now manages their own 7.5 kw microhydro-electric power independent of the Luzon grid. A Mabaka household pays an average of P35 monthly bill, part of which is allotted for maintenance while the rest is set aside to help procure basic medicines for the remote village in Conner town. This is obviously far cheaper than our Beneco bill where we pay a long list of added costs, which include service to multi-million dollar foreign loans.

The late British E. F. Schumacher has noted that super structures such as mega-dams and other mega-projects concentrate wealth in the hands of a few while smaller and decentralized structures distribute not only wealth but power as well. And this is what community-managed micro-hydro projects have proved. The Mabaka community does not have high-paying managers and board of directors because officers of the community association, which oversees the project, are volunteers. In return for their volunteerism, the whole community benefits.

As we move forward into the 21^st century, we are now reaping the karmic effect of our obsession for things fast and big. Global warming, for example, is the result of gas emissions now threatening the ozone layer. The biggest fuel consumer, of course, is the US, the world’s lone superpower that is ever-ready to wage war for oil.

With global warming, our seas and oceans are rising and one-meter high islands such as those in the Pacific are in danger of being wiped out from the map.

It’s time to rethink our madness and the way out is for us to slow down and think small, at least in the way we use our resources.

Christmas, Family, and Hope

For many nations, including the Philippines, Christmas helps boost the economy. Christmas is the season when overseas Filipino workers remit dollars to their families. This explains why the peso has been quite strong since September. But bankers say we can expect the peso to weaken starting February.

From all the material stuff and goodies that they dangle this season, both big entrepreneurs and small street hawkers are cashing in on Christmas. And they really earn as everybody rushes to buy gifts and as each family prepares special meals on the eve of Christmas. It is that time of year when wage-earning folk really spend after getting their 13^th month pay and bonus. More money circulates and that big mall can have all your money as you buy what they have got all for you.

But despite its commercialization, Christmas is an opportune time to strengthen and renew family ties. Normally, sons and daughters, who have been away because of work or college education, would go home to celebrate Christmas with their parents. Overseas Filipino workers usually go home to be with their families before leaving again to bear the loneliness of working overseas in quiet desperation.

In Benguet in recent years, the Christmas break is also usually the time for clan reunions and weddings.

So the relationships and ties that we renew and strengthen as we break bread together either as a family or as a clan is one beauty of Christmas. Definitely, Christmas is not about the material gifts that we receive. It's obviously about the love and compassion we express through our gifts or through our sincere best wishes for others.

Particularly needing our help now are those who lost their roofs, livelihoods, and loved ones during a series of unfortunate typhoons in central Philippines and southern Luzon. The good news is that other Filipinos are not lacking in compassion and love when it comes to helping those who encounter misfortunes like typhoons. Baguio and Benguet's "Operation Sayote" is one example in which local folk were able to synchronize efforts to bring sayote to the survivors of the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991 and to other survivors of other disasters in succeeding years. Although once considered a lowly crop, sayote is still a vegetable that can add fiber to the usual government relief goods that consist of instant noodles and sardines.

Another good news is that various churches in Baguio are matching their prayers with actual calls for material help for the survivors of super-typhoon Reming.

As a people, we are not actually lacking in Good Samaritans. This quality of damayan or helping our brothers and sisters in need is what continues to convince us that there's still hope for this country.

Meek Lambs

House Speaker Jose de Venecia was talking tough earlier. He insisted that the only way the country could progress was by changing the Constitution. And this could be done by transforming the legislature into a Con Ass or a Constituent Assembly to amend the country’s fundamental law.

De Venecia was not only tough as an ass, that hardworking beast of burden. He was roaring like a lion, the king of the jungle. But after the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, El Shaddai’s Mike Velarde, and other church leaders spoke against charter-change, the Pangasinan lawmaker known for his traditional politics became a meek lamb.

To save his face, he said he was not insensitive to public opinion so he and other like-minded traditional politicians would now give up on the Con Ass. And instead of Con Ass, De Venecia would agree to a Con Con or Constitutional Convention. But still, he wanted to have his Con Con as fast as he could by challenging the Senate to pass a resolution in 72 hours on 11 December calling for a Con Con. Stressing that the country had more urgent issues and problems to address such as the 2007 national budget, the Senators, however, did not bite his bait.

The public can now see through the motives of De Venecia and other like-minded politicians. Whether through Con Ass or through Con Con, De Venecia, et. al. and Malacañang are really bent on changing the Constitution. By changing the Constitution, the proponents were envisioning a unicameral form of government under which they could stay longer in power.

Then the Church spoke. Some bishops asserted the country’s problem is not the Constitution, but politicians themselves who don’t know how to govern. Church leaders pointed to corrupt governance as the main factor in dragging the country down. Bishop Socrates Villegas particularly cited the politicians’ insistence to change the Constitution as a “primary proof of corrupt governance.”

For the Church, the Constitution is sacred and politicians with self-serving ulterior motives should not toy with it.

To help save its own face for pushing for charter change, Malacañang (the presidential palace) hailed De Venecia’s “statesmanship” in throwing away the Malacañang-backed cha-cha bid via Con Ass. The presidential palace patted De Venecia’s back, appreciating how De Venecia did what he did for the sake of “national unity.” So the presidential palace would now want to paint De Venecia as a hero of some sort. If De Venecia could indeed become a hero in the public’s mind, the presidential palace could also be perceived not as a villain, but as a proponent of national unity.

But the public cannot be fooled. The public can now discern every word traditional politicians utter. For many, traditional politicians don’t mean what they say. So if they say they want to change the Constitution so the country can prosper, the public is not easily convinced. The public may have been fooled many times. But the public cannot be fooled all the time.

"Naked, Chilling Sadism"

The verdict was finally out. US marine Lance Corporal Daniel Smith would get 40 years in jail for the rape of a young Filipina, an act which the court described as “bestial” and “chilling, naked sadism.”

At 21, Smith is so young, and he has a lot to do ahead of him. This includes careers in the US Marine corps and probably raising a family. But alas, he committed something, which, to his innermost conscience, he must have regretted doing in the first place.

Unfortunately, Smith, in trying to defend himself, denied he committed rape. He insisted it was “consensual” sex. But granting this was so, following his own argument, why did Smith and his three other colleagues literally dumped Nicole at a street in the dead of night? Granting it was consensual and he acted as a gentleman, why did he and his colleagues just dump Nicole like garbage? Again, granting that it was consensual, the mere fact that he and his colleagues dumped Nicole out in the cold showed their utilitarian behavior, to say the least. Typical of the consumerist and throw-away mentality common in the West, Smith and colleagues practically threw away Nicole after “using” her.

Fortunately, the court ruled that what happened on that night on 1 November 2005 was not just a case of “using” someone. The Court said it was “morally convinced” that Smith committed the crime as charged or what it described as “bestial acts” and “chilling, naked sadism.” “Thus, a severe penalty is meted out by this state, as parens patriae (father of his country) on this advert crime, to protect the women against the bestiality of persons who cannot control their libidos,” the court said.

The crime of rape is not just about uncontrollable libidos. Rape, as one Manila newspaper editorial noted, is also about abuse of power. In the case of Nicole, she was not just overpowered. At that time, she was practically powerless as she was too intoxicated to defend herself. Smith took advantage of this powerlessness in unleashing his bestiality. And while at this at the back of a van, Smith must have thought that such bestial act would just be one of his one-night stand misadventures, which he could brag about among male colleagues. But it was not to be because Nicole gathered all the strength and courage to complain and cry rape.

Many were happy about the verdict. But some insisted the three other US Marines should have also been punished. Although the three were freed, this did not mean they were innocent. It just so happened that there was not enough evidence presented to pin them down, too.

But anything can happen to Smith. With all its power, the US can move heaven and earth to appeal Smith’s case. For now, legal luminaries are debating on who gets custody of Smith. Still, the bigger issue is when Smith, with the help of Uncle Sam’s might, will be freed after an appeal.

If he remains in jail as sentenced, Smith certainly will lose his future. Now alone in his cell at the Makati jail, he can have all the time in the world to reflect on things that matter and to reexamine his unexamined self. Perhaps, he can reflect on what real happiness means and may yet come to realize that real happiness transcends one-night stand misadventures. Or he can also reflect on karma, the law of action and reaction, the principle that you reap what you sow.

Or better yet, he can have all the time in the world to write a best-seller, which focuses on his confessions and transformation while in jail. There just are a lot of positive possibilities Smith can do while he remains sleepless at the Makati jail.

Nicole, the 23-year old survivor of that bestiality, also has many years ahead of her. After more than a yearlong painful wait for that 4 December verdict, she can now plan her future and move on. Despite what happened to her, Nicole has apparently transcended her pains. And for this, she is grateful to the heavens. She, as the reports said, has acknowledged that “God is good.” With God’s goodness on her side, Nicole can now face the world and may yet advocate for other silent survivors of bestiality to also seek redress and justice.