Two mayors, security concerns and empty headlines

Secretary Leila De Lima was reported to have ordered the National Bureau of Investigation to investigate the shooting of a mayor, his wife and two others at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. That shouldn’t merit a headline, really, for it implies that without such an order, the NBI will not do anything about the incident. They’re the National Bureau of INVESTIGATION, caps mine, and that’s exactly what they’re supposed to do, with or without a special directive from anybody.

It’s the same whenever we read headlines that says “President orders the police to solve case,” “Mayor directs POSD to clear sidewalks of illegal vendors,” they’re redundant, they’re empty.

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That incident offered a lot of angles that are worth looking deeper into. I always feel a bit apprehensive when entering an airport – whether as a traveller or even just to bring or pick up someone from there. Security’s always tight, and the sight of so many armed men, heck, even just one armed man, never fails to make me feel anxious.

Hearing of a mayor, in a country where most government officials are known to go over the top when it comes to security details, being assassinated right there is a cause for alarm. Out of all their other options, the assassins felt that attacking their target right at the airport is the easiest and safest way for them to perpetuate their crime. What does that say of NAIA?

This isn’t meant to take the focus away from the main issue here: the killing of a public official, his wife and two innocent bystanders, but it’s also time we give attention to the pathetic state of the country’s gateway to the rest of the world.

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And then there’s Mayor Binay of Makati and the incident between him, his bodyguards and the Makati police on the one hand and the security personnel of Dasmarinas Village on the other. The incident once again brought to the fore the misguided belief of a lot of our public officials that their office, instead of placing the responsibility of enforcing the laws of the land on their shoulders, puts them above it.

Junjun Binay, Mayor of Makati, son of Vice President Jejomar Binay, brother of Senator Nancy Binay, lived most if not all of his life in Makati. He probably knows the city like the back of his hand. He knows that Ayala Avenue is impossibly clogged during rush hour; that Gil Puyat Avenue gets flooded when it rains hard, that certain roads are one-way at certain hours; he definitely knows that exclusive subdivisions like Dasmarinas Village have very strict policies on non-residents entering and exiting their area.

I don’t believe he didn’t know that the gate where he was prevented by guards from passing through is closed to non-residents at that time of the night. I’m quite sure he knew that, being a Makati boy. But being a Mayor, he believed that he was above the law. Can’t blame him entirely, his father, the vice president, already came to his defense saying that as mayor he should’ve been accorded some courtesy ( read: special treatment). Of course it didn’t occur to this presidential wanna-be that as Mayor, his son should lead by example.

We gave too much power to the wrong family, apparently. It’s time we took that anti-political dynasty bill more seriously.

Aeneas' palsiit

He had one before, bought from the market. But after hearing me tell stories about how we made our sling shots from scratch as children, he wanted one just like what I had as a kid. So he tagged along with me on one of my trips to the market again to buy a couple of strips of rubber and a strip of leather and we looked for that branch on one of the guava trees in the yard that would have the appropriate y-shape.

He went to bed clutching his new sling shot...

Victory on Luneta Hill

It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.” - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

I write about this now because I still receive inquiries about the SM expansion plan issue. At the end of this month, it would be two years since I and my family last set foot inside SM City Baguio. I used to get invited a lot to mount performances there before the issue if the expansion plan arose. Over the years, we’ve performed musical revues and even plays there, something other theatre artists frowned upon, but something I saw as an opportunity to reach people who would otherwise not find themselves inside a theatre to a watch play.

I find it ironic that the last event we staged there was an exhibit called “City Beautiful?” Yes, with a question mark. It was to honor Daniel Burnham and his Plan of Baguio. The exhibit featured photographs of the early development of Baguio along with Burnham’s actual blueprints for the then budding hill station for health and recreation. My documentary on the history of Baguio, “Portrait of a Hill Station,” was screened at the exhibit opening, and our group performed original songs about Baguio in between the segments of the documentary.

The question posed at the end of that documentary – “We inherited a beautiful Baguio from the city’s pioneers. What kind of Baguio are we passing on to the next generation?”

A few months later, SM announced their plan to remove 182 trees on the hill for a parking and commercial building. Out on the street, we screamed at the top of our lungs, “No!” SM, in turn, screamed in various press releases, that they’re actually doing a public service by providing a parking facility in the city’s central business district. This sentiment was echoed by City Hall. Never mind that access to the parking facility wasn’t going to be free and SM was posed to earn millions from its operations.

I printed placards the day before that first rally, “It’s not what you’ll build, but what you’ll kill to build it.”

Almost two years, countless rallies and several court hearings later, SM announced that after taking into consideration the issues raised by the protest movement, that they are re-designing the expansion plan reducing it to almost half of the floor area of the original design. Instead of building all the way from the edge of the existing building to the edge of Gov. Pack Road, much of the earth space will be spared. The redesigned plan will also be saving as many as 115 trees out of the 133 that still stand on Luneta Hill. With that much space, we asked if they could then bring back the number of trees to 182, if not even go beyond that number. They said yes. Nay, they, in fact, committed to it. Hey also committed to turning that space into a nature park that will be open to the public, whether they’re customers of the mall or not.

I personally welcomed this development – the thought of having more than a hundred trees spared by their backhoes gave me hope that we could still instil in the minds of the corporate kind and the politicians that enable them to rape the environment the concept of sustainable development.

Another interesting proposal forwarded by SM was their desire to work with the protest movement. How will they go about the nature park? What are better mitigating efforts can they put in place?

I personally do not like malls. While they do offer certain conveniences, I still prefer buying from the neighborhood bookstore or my favorite fishmonger at the market. My outstanding balance of my terminated account with an internet service provider has gotten higher because it’s taking that long to settle my account without having to go inside that mall. Yes, I will continue to boycott SM, despite their proposal to redesign their expansion plan.

If SM went ahead with their original plan, and there’s nothing that’s stopping them from doing so right now, we would have lost all those 133 remaining trees on Luneta Hill. And while Save 182 has helped spread the concept of environmental protection and sustainable development to, losing the battle for the trees on Luneta Hill would have been a great setback. Had we won the environmental case we filed against SM, all the trees would have remained untouched. But would that really be a victory?

What do we gain if a corporate giant like SM remains an adversary instead of an ally in preserving and enhancing the environment? How would they go about their other development projects in other areas if they continue to view advocates of the environment as enemies?

If we’re able to help them have a change of heart, change their mindset, and make them take their impact on the environment, and in fact, on the lives of the people in the communities where they operate into consideration in every step they take, that to me is a sweeter victory.

O Christmas Tree

I don’t know what Wikipedia says about it, but to me a Christmas tree must, first and foremost, inspire. Certain Western theories say that it is a symbol of hope – during winter, at a time when most trees are devoid of leaves, a verdant Christmas tree represents Christ, a saviour appearing in a world filled with strife. I agree with that too.

And give hope. That’s what our Christmas tree at home stirs in me, a sense of hope. That despite all the troubles of the year that’s about to end, a new beginning is on the horizon with its promises that tomorrow will be better and we’ll be happier.

I used to ask our good neighbor for permission to prune their cypress tree towards late November. The cuttings I used to cover a conical frame I usually fashion with wood and chicken wire. For a few years that was a tradition and the scent of cypress was a reminder that Christmas, the season of love, of joy and happiness, was just around the corner. Christmas was, and is, always the happiest time of the year at home.

My wife is at her happiest during Christmas, the happiness springs from making the rest of the family happy. No matter what our financial situation is, everyone would have a few gifts to unwrap. She’s wonderful that way. Christmas is about that, making every single member of the family feel that they’re special. After all, Christmas is about one man who died for every single one of us.

We did not open gifts at twelve midnight. On Christmas Eve, we dressed up and went to hear mass, after which we would head straight back home for a late dinner. We went to bed after telling stories and sharing laughter at the dining table, with the children hardly able to stop themselves from sneaking under the Christmas tree of cypress needles and chicken wire to unwrap boxes with their names on it, and hopefully, to finally catch Santa. But we only had to remind them that Santa is paying extra attention right then for some last minute revisions in that list of children who deserved a special gift from him, and they would immediately forget about risking losing that one special gift from Santa.

We would wake up the next morning to the sound of our children’s shouts of joy upon discovering the gifts that Santa had left for them. There was that one Christmas when Santa actually left a trail of ashy footprints just next to the fireplace and towards the window. Whatever we, the parents, were able to get them for Christmas, Santa always gave the best gifts. And he never forgot to leave a note too for the children – reminders about how they’ve been the whole year and advise on how to be even better children the rest of the New Year.

A few years ago, after moving quite far away from our neighbor with a cypress tree, we finally bought a Christmas tree with a steel frame covered with faux-pine needles made of plastic in green and silver. We still tried to spruce it up with some real cypress needles to make it appear thicker, but we know that we had to have those cypress leaves for their aroma. The smell of Christmas.

We’ve been going through a rough patch lately, and when my wife put up the tree just a couple of nights ago, immediately the sense of despair, and anger, and hopelessness, and uncertainty vanished. It’s not an extravagant tree, with just the right amount of lights, and trinkets that tell the history of our young family. Cross-stitched pin cushions. A few Christmas balls in red, green and silver. Some figurines bought garage sales and ukay-ukay stores. Some object that a son or a daughter insisted on hanging on the tree. My wife turned on the lights, the kids said their goodnights, and I stayed up for a little while longer, staring at that tree. I went to bed with a sigh and knowing that everything’s going to be alright.

I walked by the gigantic, garish Christmas tree at the top of Session Road the other night. It felt empty and soul-less. It just didn’t have that same magic our humble tree had. Could it be the design? The amount of money spent?

None of that. I believe it’s all about the intention of the one who put up the tree – that, everyone can see and feel.

The News Weekly

Pigeon Lobien, erstwhile de facto editor in chief of Cordillera Today, just launched his own paper. Simply called The News Weekly. I have a column there with the same title as this blog.

He missed the photo I sent him for the column, but I'm starting to like it just like that... blank. 

Congratulations, Pigeon!

Rich man, poor man

The vehicle reduction ordinance, or the number coding scheme, has been suspended in Baguio for the duration of the on-going Fil-am Golf Tournament. “Why?” My son asked on our way to school today, a Friday, the day we’re not supposed to bring our car to town for our plate ends in 9. For the benefit of more than a thousand golfers and their families and friends who are here for the annual Fil-Am Golf Tournament, I answered.

What’s wrong with making it easy for visitors to our beautiful city to go around town without having to worry about getting their SUVs stopped for having that particular last digit on their license plate on a particular day? It actually makes sense and I am sure that it was easy for the mayor to make the decision.

You know, like how easy it was for them to think of a way to ease the traffic along General Luna Street during the morning rush hour - ban public utility jeeps from passing there. You know, just like it was easy for them to grant SM the permit to mow down a whole forest so they can make the biggest mall in Baguio even bigger, and earn more money in the process. Just like it was easy for them to surrender our streets to Jadewell before, and the market to Uniwide – so that these businesses can do more business and earn more money.

Those who have less in life must have more in law. That’s not the case in our city. Here, those who have more in life are given even more in law and everything else. They don’t see anything wrong in looking the other way when it comes to the concerns of the moneyed.

Thousands have been clamoring to pedestrianize Session Road to help clean the air in the city’s central business district and provide the masses a some relief from carbon monoxide, but since it faced stiff opposition from the business owners in the area, the idea has been shelved. The welfare of a few against that of the greater majority, and for the powers-that-be, the former’s always trumps the latter’s.

Jeepneys carrying two dozens of the city’s children from the eastern part of Baguio on their way to school in the morning must walk the extra couple of hundred meters or so because their ride’s not allowed to enter General Luna Street, so that those comfortably in their cars can be dropped off right at their school’s doorstep. If traffic was the main concern for the decision, then ban the private cars instead and allow the jeeps in, for they carry more people.

What I don’t understand, I shared with my son, is why they find it very easy to make decisions that would benefit those who already have more in life, more often at the expense of those who have less?

In the meantime, be careful when crossing Session Road for the duration of the Fil-Am Golf Tournament: they’ve neglected to paint the pedestrian lanes with stripes for people on foot, and a golfer’s SUV is on its way.

Ana’s bonfire (and her father’s portrait of Tacloban)

When she noticed that water was flowing ankle deep into their home, she told everyone in the room, her family, that it was time to leave. She made her way to the door and as she opened it, the water started rising and her along with it. She grabbed on to a branch to avoid getting swept away by the current. She recalled how painful the wind was on her face. She stayed floating for a few minutes, and as rapidly as it rose, it started receding. She didn’t let go of the branch and in just a matter of a couple of minutes, from being in danger of drowning in floodwaters, she realized that she was in danger of falling to her death from her perch on the topmost branch up a kaimito tree some thirty feet up. She looked around and was relieved to see most of her family members grabbing on to the branches of the same tree. But not everyone was there.

Soon after the Typhoon Yolanda left, Jun Fernandez received the news in Baguio – his wife, a daughter and two grandchildren who lived in Tacloban were missing, and were presumed dead, according to eyewitnesses who last saw them. There was no way they could have survived after being swept away by a series of storm surges that brought tree-high waves. His younger daughter was determined, she told her father that she will travel to Tacloban that same night to look for her mother, her Ate and the two children, aged six and four. There was news that the body of her Ate Eva has been found, and Ana wanted to see for herself if the news was true.

Ana would call her father in Baguio after seeing the body of the woman she was told could have been that of her sister. “It’s not her,” she told her father.

After hearing of the situation in Tacloban in the days that followed, and realizing that Ana herself could be putting herself in harm’s way by going there, Jun decided to follow. He has accepted the loss, but wanted to make sure that his daughter Ana was safe. He arrived in Tacloban four days after Ana did. As they prepared to cook some food that night, Ana, together with her aunt who was saved by that kaimito tree, told Jun that the last time they received some relief goods was on the day Ana arrived four days earlier, they have had to stretch that small amount of rice and couple of canned food for four days. A cousin was able to buy rice in between, at P100 per kilo and only after walking for kilometers for hours on end in search of food.

“It was unreal, unbelievable” was how Jun described the scene before him. The dead lay unclaimed, unattended, survivors were preoccupied trying to stay alive to bother with them. The memory of the sight of the bodies of three infants by the road would haunt him forever, he said. One of the infants had an arm missing, along with much of its face. Nobody could ever be prepared for what Jun shared with us, “what can you do? Dogs were trying to stay alive too.”

The story of how one Iglesia ni Cristo church was closed to non-members of this sect. A sister of Jun’s wife was one of those who tried to seek refuge inside one, and was turned away. But not all churches closed its doors, the other non-Iglesia ni Cristo places of worship provided shelter and saved thousands of lives. Even a softdrink warehouse was opened to the people who needed shelter.

“Did that church close its doors on evacuees too?” Jun wondered as he passed a church with its doors closed. He decided to go closer to try to take a look inside and regretted doing so. Peeping through the gap on the church doors, he saw the whole inside of the church filled with lifeless bodies, piled up to three bodies high. That church, filled with evacuees before the typhoon made landfall, turned out to have been inundated in the blink of an eye, drowning everyone inside.

Ninety percent of the population of Barangay 88, according to what Jun gathered on the ground, died. The death toll could very well breach the initial estimate of 10,000 which top government officials have been trying to deny.

For a time, Tacloban was hamleted – nobody in, nobody out. This was due to the alleged infiltration and looting by rebel forces. In one instance, according to news reports, a military convoy bearing relief goods was ambushed by rebels.

Contrary to the picture of inept and uncaring government personnel that the mainstream media have been forcing us to accept, according to Jun, from where he was, he witnessed heroism and selflessness and portraits of self-sacrifice – he saw soldiers, policemen, government workers, themselves exhausted, wounded, hungry, also grieving, who hardly ate or slept to do all they can to ease the suffering of the survivors. There was enough food to go around, that’s true, but there were not enough hands to get them to the victims fast enough. Soldiers would take a bite or two from their own food rations before passing this on to the nearest survivor begging for food. A brief lull in between carrying sacks and boxes of relief goods or people on their backs was an opportunity to close their eyes for a few minutes to rest. On a regular day, we already know how we don’t have enough policemen and soldiers in this country, how we don’t have enough doctors in every town, what more in times like this when many policemen, soldiers are themselves victims? They don’t need to hear every single day how inefficient they were, how badly or wrong they’re doing their jobs. Specially coming from people who saw nothing more than what Cooper or Sanchez or Failon or Enriquez or Tianco chose to show them, in the warmth and comfort of their own homes swiping on a computer screen or clicking on a mouse. What Tacloban needs are extra pairs of hands.

Photo lifted from Jun Fernandez's Facebook page.

 
In your opinion, based on what you saw, what could’ve prevented this much destruction, or this many deaths? I asked Jun. Nothing except evacuating whole provinces, he said. There was almost no escape, even those living far inland away from the shores were tossed around by floodwaters and strong winds, overwhelmed by unbelievably strong rains. And Jun points to poverty and the resulting illiteracy of many of our countrymen as an added culprit. The warning they received from the local officials was for a typhoon with potential wind speeds of over “300 kph” and the possibility of “storm surges.” “Kung sinabi nilang parang tsunami, o kaya parang dalawang Ondoy, mas naintindihan siguro naming kung ano’ng klaseng bagyo ang parating,” said one survivor. Tsunami they’ve been hearing a lot on the radio and on television, a “storm surge” is a relatively new concept, if not a totally alien term, for most of them. “300 kph” is just a number. As Jun shared with us, we did not speak to them in a language they could have understood better.

Jun would break down in between telling his story, or would try letting a chuckle out after a rather funny anecdote, or forcing a smile – they were all painful to watch.

Ana wanted to stay longer, stand by the shores of Tacloban in the hope that her mother, her ate Eva and her two children would show up. It would take a long time for anybody who lost a loved one or two, or four, or everyone and everything they had, to accept what happened. Jun and Ana got on the next bus out of Tacloban, and decided to start their own journey towards acceptance and healing.

One particularly cold evening after the typhoon, Ana, gathered some damp wood and started a fire. The soldiers have been trying to get one going, in vain, everything around them was drenched. But Ana, a true Baguio girl who can start a bonfire with her eyes closed, soon had a nice, warm fire going. People started gathering around her bonfire, soldiers gathered more wood and placed them in Ana’s able hands.

For one evening, amidst the destruction, the deaths, the despair and feeling of hopelessness, Ana’s small bonfire lighted up her part of the world, and kept people warm, eased their pain, started the healing of broken hearts, and spirits. And most importantly, let everyone around her know that they were not alone, that there are people who can help provide some light in this time of darkness, and keep that fire going until the sun rises again tomorrow.