Baguio must revisit its climate science commitments

ven under the best circumstances, hardly anyone is still paying any attention to climate issues in Baguio City. The campaign fever in the runup to the May 2022 election seems to NOT have changed that situation.

To me, it shows two things: (1) elections have remained personality contests rather than a battle for the soundest policy agenda, and (2) government at all levels is still failing to communicate the relevance of climate science and the urgency of what it is compelling us to do.

The Philippines is a signatory to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. We signed it on April 22, 2016, ratified by our Senate a year later on March 23, 2017. It binds us to reduce our greenhouse gas emission levels by a humble 0.34%--that’s less than one percent—as our contribution to keep global temperature increase to below 2-degrees Celsius above pre-industrial level by the end of THIS century, with a further objective to reduce it to 1.5 degrees.

Talk to anyone on the street today and NOBODY knows about this—and nobody should. How could they? Nobody is telling them anything.

Despite numerous studies showing the direct causal relationship between global warming and severe weather events, reinforced by our actually experiencing those weather events, many people in Baguio still demonstrate a pitiful lack of, if not outright hostility, towards climate science.

Someone has to spell out in explicit terms how global warming is affecting the lives of Baguio people—and it’s very difficult to do that on cold mornings of 10 or 11 degrees Celsius.

So let me say it: the effect of global warming is NOT something you can feel on your skin. It’s something you can feel on your wallet.

An increase in global temperature by just ONE-HALF degree Celsius melts about 2.5% of all the world’s sea ice. That’s about six trillion gallons of water added back to the ocean, raising sea levels by as much as EIGHTEEN INCHES—a foot and a half—above the high water mark at LOW TIDE.

Multiply that five times during high tide and you’ll understand why the government is bracing for the need to permanently evacuate around eight coastal barangays in Cavite alone, six in Bulacan, four in Zambales and Bataan and three in Pangasinan.

Where will people living in these places go? Remember, in coastal communities if you lose your house you lose your livelihood too. You can’t fish from too far inland. So where will these suddenly-jobless people go?

Why, to the CITIES, of course, where else. There you can find jobs that are not affected by sea level rises, mostly in the manpower sector, some in trading or maybe the support industries around tourism. When the sea turns menacing and the temperature gets unbearable, guess where tourists run to: BAGUIO.

Ergo you have traffic jams, a housing boom, accelerated urbanization (read, massive tree-cutting and land-clearing), congestion, pollution, solid waste glut, faltering water supply, strained availability and coverage of utility services (Baguio has one of the slowest internet speeds in the country)—all of which translates to higher costs in order to compensate or counter these effects.

But that’s not all. Complaints of “Why is it raining jn December?!” are not as innocent as they sound. Changing climates is radically altering seasonal patterns, something EVERYBODY have begun to notice in recent years: there is no clearly delineated “rainy season” or “summers” anymore.

Have you ever tried sleeping regularly in the daytime? Your circadian cycle fights it. The disruption of seasons is nothing to ignore. PLANTS are fighting it. The unpredictable rain pattern has eliminated the bio-agricultural difference between planting, growing and harvesting seasons. That's why crops have been consistently failing, resulting in plummeting farm yields. Don’t look know, but were importing RICE again, something the Philippines has never done since 1980 “just” 40 years ago. Not only rice, but now were beginning to import garlic, onions, potatoes, tomatoes--all upland crops growing in Cordilleran farms increasingly affected by severe weather on both ends: dessicating droughts and leaf-bursting frosts.

But what is Baguio’s response—to traffic, for example? We widened our roads, increasing our capacity to accomodate higher vehicular loads, inviting more cars into the city—and generally contributing to increased car-buying sentiment among consumers.

In short, instead of raising our sights and gunning for net-zero emission levels within our lifetime, we are violating our commitment under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement! We are working hard to INCREASE greenhouse emission levels in Baguio. I have not seen a single electric car in Baguio—not counting golf carts—not even one. Why would there be, there’s not a single charging station, nor any plan or even a mere forward-looking study to prepare for an electric future.

It’s the OPPOSITE, in fact.

There’s an active effort to grab BENECO, Baguio and Benguet’s one and only electric utility—the one that will play the most crucial role in securing Baguio’s clean energy future.

But besides passing a non-binding resolution declaring the purveyors of the failed invasion persona non grata, the political leadership has NOT regarded the issue enough as nothing short of what it is: an EXISTENTIAL THREAT to the very existence and welfare of future generations of Baguio City residents.

They have not directly and officially castigated NEA. They have not summoned leaders of the banking sector to demand for valid answers why they are enabling the active sabotage effort against BENECO. These banks are all doing business under the tolerance, regulation and permission of the local government. If they act as enablers to an effort that is subversive of the public interest, shouldn't they be held accountable? Some of these banks PREVENT your electric cooperative from accessing the money YOU paid and you do NOTHING?

Climate affects the environment, affecting economic activity, motivating greed, breeding corruption--the dots are NOT that hard to connect, really.

The problem is all on the mentality Climate issue? Sigh. It’s too complicated to understand, let alone translate into an action plan.

“So let’s just sweep it under the rug for now, shall we?”

I'm advocating for the planting of more PINE TREES only

llow me to clarify.

I am not advocating the planting of trees all over Baguio.

I am advocating the planting of PINE TREES all over Baguio.

No offense to all other tree lovers. But I’m not trying to attain food self-sufficiency. I am not motivated by biodiversity. And I am not trying to produce lumber. Like I said, almost ANY tree can grow in Baguio. I don’t want to plant almost any tree, not even the ones that grow fast and easy. I want to plant—and I do plant—pine trees. Only.

You will eat guavas from your own guava tree three times in a year, or maybe even less. For the most part, you will just want to LOOK at your guava tree. For some, especially those tracing their roots from the lowlands, it reminds them of “home.” Well, then, you shouldn’t have any problem understanding why I want to plant pine trees—for that very same reason.

If I ever moved to the lowlands, I will plant pine trees there too. Of course, they will keep dying and i'll keep trying--and people will wonder why I persist. They will mock me, for the same reason I wonder why they insist on transforming their part of Baguio into their own little “pocket lowlands.”

When I was editor of the Gold Ore in the 1990s, Fil-Estate developers boasted at a press conference, after they bagged the contract to “re-develop” Camp John Hay, that they would “add more color” to Camp John Hay. They would introduce other tree species to “break the monotony of an all-pine tree landscape.”

Without creating a scene or any commotion, I quietly slipped out of that press conference. I grabbed a taxicab to the Main Gate of Camp John Hay—the one across Hotel Nevada which was still in ruins then. I walked up along Sheridan Drive (you won’t even remember that road if you’re not from Baguio) and based on the “development schematics” that I saw at that press conference, I sat before a thick stand of tall pine trees that I knew for sure would not survive the impending makeover.

I spent a few moments with them, touching their rough barks, sniffing the sweet-smelling resin that oozed out of them. One of them dropped me a small perfect pine cone which I picked up. I was glad those trees couldn’t talk because if they could I know they would have asked, “isn’t there anything you can do to save us?” There was none—nothing that could be said, nothing that could be done. So finally I just softly said goodbye and cried.

All those trees are no longer there today.

In fact if you go to Camp John Hay today, it’s no longer there. They just keep calling that place Camp John Hay.

Fil-Estate was successful in introducing “more color” to the landscape. But they were not--they will never succeed in preserving those pine trees—they will all eventually die.

They don’t understand pine trees. Pine trees don’t like other trees. There are no mixed pine tree forests anywhere in the world. There are only pine forests, period.

Benguet pine trees know their identity. More than some iBenguets themselves, even.

That’s what makes it so difficult to grow pine trees “in captivity.” Haven’t you noticed you can only grow pine trees in clusters, but not individually? The reason is “bio-social”—clusters of pine trees protect one another. If you want to grow a single pine tree, you must be willing to guard it with same amount of protection it would have gotten from a forest. So you can grow one, but it’s a mission.

Pine trees live long and will build a lifetime relationship with you where both of you must stick around. You just don’t plant a pine tree and run. They will not go for a one-night stand. You must be committed to it. A pine tree is not cheap.

That’s why I plant pine trees. I’m not going to eat my pine tree, and I will not feel bad that I can’t. I will not begrudge the fact that these pine trees don’t bring me any economic benefit. I want these pine trees to grow for themselves, not for me. I want them to grow for Baguio.

So I am not looking to join a peer society of plantitos and plantitas. I don’t want to build a Japanese garden or my own private little ecopark. I just want to rekindle the comeback of this species that attracted me, and many others, to come to Baguio in the first place, and made me swear to never ever leave this city--except horizontally in a pinebox.

BAGUIO CENTRAL SCHOOL MEMORIES 5

hat is this “cancel culture” thing?

Stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle (he played Kevin Jackson, bookstore manager of FOX Books in the 1998 love story movie “You’ve Got Mail”) is in trouble today because he joked that cancel culture has gotten so bad in America that “you can get away with murdering a black guy but, ooh don’t you dare hurt a gay person’s feelings!”

If you got offended just reading that line, then save some time and don’t bother reading the rest of this piece. Miss a great story.

First let me lay out my credentials. I started wearing eyeglasses at age three. I’m still wearing them now. I went to public elementary school where I earned such aliases as “Four Eyes”, “Kuwago”and “Telescope.”

Wearing glasses told playground bullies you were “fragile” and can be pushed around. So I got pushed around plenty in countless confrontations between me and some hefty uppergrader that resembled a matchup between Mike Tyson and Mr. Bean. I always stood up against all bullies and, man, did I show them how. They’ve never seen a boy bounce off the wall and ricochet around the classroom so much and still stay alive to try and fix his broken glasses.

Have I ever been mistreated, discriminated against, minoritized, marginalized and victimized? You don’t know the half of it. And that just in elementary school.

There were three boys in my class who were gay. For some reason, gays in my generation were always scions of wealthy families. And even if they were average, their doting parents (especially moms) pampered and spoiled them rotten. They dressed well—in boy attire, mind you, nobody crossdressed yet then—and their pocketmoney always consisted of paper bills. Mine was coins. Always coins.

We, “normal boys” watched these gay boys mingle with, laugh with, casually kiss and put their arms around the prettiest girls that we often wondered if it was possible to fake it—to “play gay.”

I honestly don’t remember if I tried. Just as well, because psychologists would later prove that gay was NOT a choice. People don’t choose to be gay. They just are.

What Dave Chapelle touched bad was not the raw nerve of being gay per se. It’s the insinuation that gay people are fragile—even if he only meant emotionally oversensitive. Dave Chapelle is my generation, but we belong to different cultures and societies.

Back in the 1970s in Baguio Central School, gay boys cried (but who didn’t at that age?). But I wouldn’t say they were vulnerable. In fact, one of them could rough up any of the bullies anytime.

Rather, it seemed to me it was those macho ruffians in my day who couldn’t handle the least dose of embarrassment or adversity, if we talk about emotional fragility. One bully was yelling the Tarzan yodel while swinging on a rope in gym class when the rope snapped. Everybody laughed hard but Mr. Bully chose ME to vent his frustration on. Holding me by the scruff of the neck, he gave me a couple of loving smacks to the face then introduced his elbow to my nose before walking away.

Everybody scampered away, which is what you did if there was a raging bull in a china shop. So I lay on the ground alone bleeding when another classmate Jimmy Patacsil happened by. “What happened?” In between mumbles, I told him what Mr. Bully did. Jimmy took out his handkerchief and started wiping the blood in my nose. When I screamed that it was broken, I saw a look of urgency in his eyes.

He picked me up, slung me over his shoulders and sprinted the fifty yards to the school clinic. The school nurse, Mrs. Warren, was aghast, “What happened?” Jimmy had to retell the story I told him. Because the nurse was working alone, it was Jimmy who had to rummage through cabinets, handing over the cotton, bandages, alcohol and such to Mrs. Warren who was fixing my nose. Then Jimmy ran back to retrieve pieces of my broken glasses, and gathered my books and notebooks that were strewn all over.

While I was slung over Jimmy’s shoulder and he was running to the clinic, carrying me, I remember thinking, “how can any boy be so strong?”

To be more specific, how can any boy WEARING NAIL POLISH be so strong?

Jimmy was gay.

And wherever you are today, Jimmy, God bless your golden heart. I pray that somebody forwards this to you.

To Dave Chappelle, shove it.

Coming of age as Martial Law was imposed in 1972

was in Grade 2 when martial law was declared in 1972. At age 8, I had no idea what it meant. What little I could glean about politics, I got from observing what the adults did and listening to what they talked about.

These are mainly my parents and substitute parents, teachers, community elders and such. Our ‘capitan del barrio’ in Barangay Upper Rock Quarry and Lower Lourdes then was ‘Ka Vidal’ Fonseca. He was a kind old man who spoke puritanical Tagalog and served as a deacon for the Iglesia ni Kristo, lokal ng Magsaysay Avenue.

He was all praises for President Ferdinand Marcos. Because of his moral ascendancy, others in the barangay who didn’t really have any opinion about Marcos and martial law were content enough to just copy his.

He had a son, Moises, who was my contemporary and street playmate. He and I soon learned the lyrics of the martial law theme song “Bagong Lipunan” and took pride in that we had memorized the song, and could sing it in any key, even in two-part harmony that we made up ourselves as toothy 8-year-olds.

In school, we were systematically indoctrinated to regard Marcos as a national hero--at par with Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Apolinario Mabini, Gregorio del Pilar and all the other ‘Avengers’ circa 1898.

In fact, we were taught that the Marcos gene was uniquely adapted to embody Filipino greatness: his mother Josefa Edralin was like a fairy-godmother of some kind, his father Mariano was the precursor of Obi Wan Kenobi, his brother and sister—they were all gods and goddesses in the pantheon of superheroes headquartered somewhere in Sarrat, Laoag, Ilocos Norte. And his wife Imelda—ooooh, she was like the Philippines’ answer to Cleopatra, or the counterpart of America’s Jacqueline Kennedy. We memorized all these details to get a perfect score in a daily “know the Philippines” quiz during Social Studies, which was the subject immediately preceding recess.

In short, we were literally martial law babies, spoon-fed a daily diet of Marcos greatness, force-inoculated with mega-calories of Imeldific megalomania. Winning over the hearts and minds of generations raised this way is going to take a whole lot more than just insulting them and calling them all manner of morons.

I’m always in awe and great envy of people who are just my age today who act and talk like they always knew the horror martial law was right from Day One. Either they were REALLY mature eight-year-olds, or went from Grade 2 to graduating from UP Diliman in the same year.

I had to do it the ‘hard way’--living a childhood framed in “Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan” and bathed by the fake glow of the ‘golden age’ that the Philippines supposedly lived through. It was probably just out of laziness to explain, but when we asked adults what it meant to be “anti-Marcos” they simply pointed to the long-haired, smelly and unkempt marijuana-smoking hippies of the 70s and said, “THAT is what lack of discipline will make you to be if you’re stubborn and disobedient.”

The Philippine Constabulary (PC) was raiding “pot sessions” being held in houses all over the city every night and hauling these hippies in their platform shoes and bell-bottomed pants by the truckload. So we thought of being “anti-Marcos” as criminal and decadent.

Whatever ultimate truths I know about Marcos and martial law today, l had to spend the latter half of my life discovering and re-learning by myself. So all my conclusions about the true draconian character of the Marcoses, and the profound social, cultural and economic damage that was wrought upon Philippine society by martial law no one can disabuse me of, or even challenge on the grounds of “You don’t know what you’re talking about” or “You should also know the other half of the martial law story.”

No, no, no—I LIVED that “other half of the story” that you’re talking about. In fact, it’s what completes the big picture for me. The Marcoses were only able to rob this country blind BECAUSE they conditioned us blindly first to look away as they did the robbing in broad daylight.

Marcos stole 98 centavos out of every one peso—and with all those unstolen two centavos put together, he built the Philippine Heart Center, the Cultural Center of the Philippines for the rich and well-heeled elite, the Folks Arts Theater for the slipper-clad masses, the Manila International Film Center for the families of the construction workers buried underneath it who can’t afford to have a mausoleum built in their honor so the Center just had to be IT, the Manila International Airport, the National Kidney Institute so we now have ONE kidney dialysis machine for every SEVEN MILLION Filipinos, and the San Juanico Bridge that cannot take trucks with a gross vehicular weight above five tons. We celebrate these infrastructure milestones because we were conditioned to focus on those two unstolen centavos, and to forget the 98 stolen ones.

The only real Marcos legacy there is that even long after Marcos is gone, that is STILL how our present elected officials steal our money and throw us back some crumbs.

If there’s any Marcos legacy there, it’s that we now accept as totally normal our duty to venerate our congressmen and senators—whose job it is NOT to build infrastructures—for all the “public works projects” they build, funded with our own unstolen two centavos.

If there’s any Marcos legacy he left behind, it’s how we now toast to the success of political dynasties and political families, and regularly check our checklist for each political family: are all the children in office already? How about the wife? The son-in-law? Not yet? What’s wrong with these people??

I cannot “un-live” what I lived through and experienced under martial law. I cannot renounce all the little things I did, from childhood through even much of adulthood before reaching the age of reason, to unwittingly participate in the making of the environment that made martial law tolerable, even benign.

I know the truth now, as do millions of others who will honestly admit with me of knowing only much too late.

I don’t want to lambast any morons out there for not knowing any better. I was a moron like them.

No one can undo what Marcos did. Marcos did not just do an act. He planted a mentality. His ultimate strategy was inception. That mentality still drives many people today who were NOT even martial law babies. They just picked up and read Marcos' textbook on thievery from cover to cover. They even know how to condemn Marcos convincingly--at least at some point in their life of lofty principles before they served as press secretary and such other positions.

Not everybody is Marcos. Most everybody just wants to be and, in true Marcos tradition, without making the unsuspecting people make out anything.

I don't trust any of them. We cannot have a fresh start with old bread. We must go back to a national tabbularazza. I don’t want anything from the past to despoil anything in the future of my country.

That’s why I want LENI ROBREDO to be the next President.

If you believe as I do, I’m happy for you, and I hope you don’t allow anybody to steal that joy. Don’t talk to any Leni Robredo campaigner, they have a job to do and they’re busy enough. Don’t let anyone have to convince you.

Forget that you are a martial law baby. You don't have to renounce that, you don't have to do anything. You are a good person in and of yourself no matter what president you grew up with. You don't have to convince anyone that you have seen the light and repented and such other crap.

You can make the decision to vote for Leni Robredo ALL BY YOURSELF. 

Hoping that CECAP keeps its film archives safe

y political definition, I am a Cordilleran having spent 55 of my 58 years in Baguio City. But I’m still a city mouse.

I’ve made it a point to see as much of “my Cordilleran homeland” as possible, vainly hoping it would make me “more Cordilleran.” Being a journalist and photographer in a previous life (before I became a lawyer) often gave me that opportunity.

For instance in 1988, I did some slide film photodocumentary work for the Central Cordillera Agricultural Project (CECAP) under Director Tom Gimenez. The job called for me to shoot about 100 rolls of Kodachrome, documenting traditional farming practices in Mountain Province and Ifugao.

That’s when I learned the painful lesson to never believe a true native Cordilleran who gives you a verbal descriptive estimate of DISTANCE.

“Bernie, adayo ba diay papanan tayo?” (is it far where we’re going) I asked my local guide Bernard Foryasen who was from Natonin, Mountain Province.

He said, “dita laeng asideg” (right around there not too far).

We hiked for five hours.

After five days, I was able to put together a rough “description-to-travel-time” conversion table, based on Bernard’s descriptions to me. Something like “dita laeng”- 5 hours hiking time; “idta bangir” – 8 hours; “idiay” – 1 full day; “idiaaaaaaaayyy!”- bring food and drinks for 1 week.

I was lugging a big camera bag that held 3 Nikon bodies (back then SLR’s were all-metal, no plastic) and 6 lenses, including a heavy 500mm “catadioptric” or mirror reflex lens. Whenever we settled down for the night, I was aching in parts of my body I never knew I had.

I looked at our itinerary and guide map for the next day’s shoot. The names of the places were Sagada, Barlig, Paracelis, Natonin, Banawe, Hapaw, Hungduan, Guinihon, Batad….

I called Tom Gimenez. He called the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) who operated off Bagabag Airport in Nueva Vizcaya. They sent over a helicopter to pick us up and I completed the rest of the job photo-mapping all these farming communities from the air.

If you haven’t flown over the Cordilleras yet in a helicopter, one that can cruise slow enough and just high enough, and even hover over one spot, you have not seen the place from a critical perspective.

Up in the air, the Cordilleras look so awesomely picturesque, unbelievably beautiful, virginally pristine and—the best word I could think of—so FRAGILE.

I felt the same way Meryl Streep felt flying over the savanna in “Out of Africa” that as soon as we landed all I wanted to do was grab the first native Cordilleran I could find by the scruff of the neck, shake him up and say, “Don’t you ever, ever, ever, EVER give this land away to anybody, you hear me??!”

All the slides I took are still with CECAP today (I hope).

The thing about slides—especially Kodachromes—is you only ever get ONE COPY of it. It cannot be faithfully reproduced. Unlike color negatives that allow you to produce as many positive prints as you want. When you shoot slides, the roll of film that you loaded into the camera, after it is processed, IS the final product itself. The processed roll is just chopped up into individual frames and mounted onto these little square plastic frames that you load into a carousel tray. Each frame is a color POSITIVE, so you can project it to a screen and watch the whole slide show like a movie.

I did the photoshoot totally from a "National Geographic" approach. I photographed Ifugao farmers repairing rice terrace walls, women whipping rice pannicles to separate the chaff before pounding, men hoisting a carabao up the next level of a rice terrace, glorious sunsets framing silhouettes of thatched roofed huts, and many more. I count it as one of my best works--that I never got to keep.

That was 33 years ago. So much may have changed since 1988. Even I am curious to know—what did I capture on film 33 years ago that are no longer there now? I don’t know anybody in CECAP now, I don’t even know if that World Bank-funded project still exists and how well they take care of their film archives.

I may be subjective, even biased. But if I were to rank the six Cordillera provinces, I think Mountain Province has done the best job of protecting and preserving the land. And I don’t mean this just in the narrow sense that they have kept out the “outsider” better. They have shown to me a deeper affectation for their place and culture in a manner I haven’t witnessed in Benguet, for example. When I was doing the shooting from the ground in Natonin, Bernard spent most of his time explaining to village folk and fending off some people who wanted to interfere with my work.

They said something to me I will never forget. When I told them I was doing no harm and was just capturing images in this little black box called a “camera” they said, no, I was capturing the soul of the place. Don’t be ridiculous, I said. That is just superstition.

Looking back now 33 years later, I take it back. They were right and I was wrong. I DID capture the soul of the place, I did capture the spirit of the land. They are locked up in those slides. And the only good news is, those slides never left the Cordilleras.

I just don’t know where they are.

Elections at ANY age is always juvenile

n 1973 in Baguio Central School, we were 30 Grade 3 pupils under Homeroom Teacher Miss Basilisa O. Peña. There were no elections in Grades 1 and 2 yet. I think the reason is because it is only starting from Grade 3 when there was already some form of “governing” needed.

In Grade 3 we were grouped either by seating rows, or clusters, but more often than not by random distribution. Ms. Peña would tell each pupil what group he or she belonged. She made sure there was an equal number of boys as girls in every group, and that the stronger, bigger beefier boys were not in the same group. It didn’t take long before I understood that she was really distributing MANPOWER, going for as much balance as possible among FIVE groups. That’s because all groups have only one reason for living—the raison d’etre—and that is to clean up the room after dismissal. That’s why there are 5 groups—for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…

Not only were we school kids EXPECTED to clean up the school as a conscripted juvenile slave labor force—and no parent complained (not even one!)—we were even supposed to bring our own cleaning implements. So it was our first awareness of the phrase “ginigisa sa sariling mantika.”

We were laborers “gratis et amore” who had to bring their own soft brooms, broomsticks, dustpans, coconut husks, wiping rags and such. Now since only one group actually needed all the cleaning tools on any given day, it made no sense to have five sets of tools. It made a lot more sense to centralize procurement. That needed some budget, which had to be raised through taxation.

It was called the “class fund” and as tiny toothy little children as we were still then, Miss Peña totally refused to hold our money. She forced us to manage everything about it—from how much each pupil must pay in “tax,” how often, to whom, what it must be spent for and how each centavo must be accounted for.

That’s why there HAD TO BE a class president, vice-president (in case the president dropped out from school), a secretary (who wrote everything on the blackboard for the teacher, and therefore had to have the most beautiful handwriting, so it was ALWAYS a girl), a treasurer who kept the money in her own purse (and must be able to resist all carnal seductions to spend, so again it was ALWAYS a girl), an auditor (who doesn’t get to hold any money but is always suspicious that the one who does cannot be trusted, so it was ALWAYS a boy), a business manager (who is the purchasing officer, the one who actually has to go to the market to buy things, so someone who knows how to cross the street PROPERLY, not in a mad suicidal dash like most boys do, so again it was usually a BIG GIRL), a public relations officer or we just say “P.R.O.” (because we really had no idea what his job was supposed to be), and finally a Sergeant-at-arms, who was basically a young human rights violator with a license to hit anybody who refuses to sit down during heated arguments among the class officers.

We learned a micro-abbreviated version of the Roberts Rules of Parliamentary Procedures—which is to say we knew FIVE SENTENCES: “The table is now open for nomination”, “I nominate this idiot” , “I second the motion”, “The table is now closed” , “All those in favor of Idiot A raise your hands.”

There was hardly any campaigning because we knew each other so well already, lying wouldn’t help much. But the bigger reason was that, basically, NOBODY wanted to be an officer. There was no pay involved and you would always be called by Miss Peña to render all kinds of verbal reporting—in English, which can be a struggle in Grade 3.

But all of that changed when suddenly Bart Serrano, a transferree from Cabanatuan proposed something radical. He gathered all of us boys and said if we would vote him President, he would raise the weekly classfund “tax” from ten to fifty-centavos!

Doing the math, with 30 pupils, that would be P15-pesos a week, or P60-pesos a month, multiplied by the ten months of the school year—we would have SIX HUNDRED PESOS in the class fund. By current Forex formula adjusted for time and inflation, that’s equivalent to P34,224.00 today! We only needed P500.00 to buy cleaning implements. What would we do with the remaining P33,723.00?

Bart said we would hold TWO big parties, one for Christmas and another one just before school went out in March. And there would be food galore! A smorgasbord of pansit, fried chicken, lumpiang shanghai, macaroni salad, two flavors of ice cream and some real cake with real icing on it and—best of all—we would lace the pineapple juice with brandy!

One of the girls, Myra Erece, heard about Bart’s plan and she gathered the girls and did their own plans, their own math, their own party scheduling, listed their own menu and—to top it off—they were going to ask Julie Monteclaro to sneak out one of her dad’s champagne bottles from home to lace the Christmas party lemonade drink!

The boys’ plans seemed dull, all of a sudden so we regrouped and started from scratch. When we came up with grander scenarios, the girls would regroup, and rework everything from the ground up! It went back and forth, from day to day and we cursed the fact that the class was split right down the middle, 15 boys versus 15 girls with no turncoats in sight.

There was no choice, there had to be recruitment from the “enemy camp” which meant drawing posters with pictures of ice cream and wine bottles cut out from magazines, “All these YOURS if you vote for BART!” and sticking it in the girls’ comfort room.

The next day, a BIGGER poster made by the girls and stuck in the boys’ comfort room promised a raffle with sumptuous prizes like a Dymo plastic labeler and a Walt Disney round colorslide viewer! “All of these waiting for you! VOTE FOR MYRA!!”

We boys looked pathetic.

It marked the end of innocence. It was a portent of things to come much later in life when politicians would promise basically the SAME THINGS scaled up a billion times—only to raise our taxes as soon as they won.

We finally held our class elections—but for the life of me I don’t remember who won!

It must be the champagne in the lemonade.

How to protect Leni Robredo from good intentions

eni Robredo’s campaign is red-hot—or pink-hot, if you will. She is well received in many sectors because her sincerity is authentic. The outpouring of support for her candidacy is an unmistakable sign that she can unite opposition forces, both mainstream and militant, while maintaining her appeal to less-radicalized elements of society. To me, she is the more fitting allegory to Barak Obama for reasons not having to do with gender or race wars, but with well-calculated political pragmatism. Obama was black but not quite Black Panther. He did not rely on the race card, confounding many in the black community who actually accused him of not being proudly  “black enough.” Obama did not panic. He cannot see black people voting for John McCain, but he saw it was viable to win some white support so long as he didn’t spook them with the black stereotype.

   Leni Robredo is the antithesis of Rodrigo Duterte. But she is not naive to think that a wholesale rejection of the traditional politics that Duterte represents is necessarily wise. She doesn’t see the red or  yellow brigades voting for Marcos, or other Duterte proxies either. But she can certainly win over many disappointed Duterte votes, viably even Marcos’ vaunted Solid North so long as she didn’t channel Cory Aquino too strongly as to preemptively repulse them.

   It won’t take long, when Leni starts embracing the eclectic Filipino masses who are not all doctrinaire socialists, before you begin to hear the radical left complain that Leni Robredo is not “opposition enough.”

   So dyeing her political brand pink is a masterful stroke. It sends a strong statement that she doesn’t intend to be purely centrist yellow or militant leftist red.  

   I worry that it is not her detractors but her own supporters who may not get it. The overeager ones, especially, may be clinging to the antiquated dogma  that to support a candidate is to own her politics, forgetting that politics is addition, not antagonism.

   I’ve observed this early in social media that some are convinced demonizing Leni’s opponents is the way to go. Take the anti-historical revisionists, for instance. I agree that the Marcos family are kleptocrats of the highest order. This is a historical fact.  If some people insist on remaining in denial of it after forty-nine years of immersion in the fact, clearly reason cannot be the reason. They could only have been part of the kleptocracy in ways big or small. Proselytizing among their number is a total waste of time. Make no mistake,  plunder as epic in scale as the Marcoses did it must not be erased from memory. But condemning the revision of history is meaningless to  generations that do not know history. The campaign period is too short a time to educate e-gaming millennials who weren’t born yet when Marcos was dictator. Remember, one needs only to have been born after 2003 to vote.

   The same goes for human rights abuses during Marcos’ time. If people were not fazed by all that killing as they were happening, how much more will their outrage be inflamed to be reminded about it four decades after the fact? The atrocities deserve rich condemnation of course. But they cannot merit central focus in a short election campaign just for the blood-curdling memories they evoke.   All the horrendous memories of the holocaust is not preventing the reemergence of ultra rght wing fascism now sweeping across Europe. Neither did the kumbayah legacy of the 1960s civil rights movement prevent the rise—and now the menacing threat of a return—of a Donald Trump. The lesson is simple. Trafficking in historical fear and nostalgic civil disobedience did not help Hillary Clinton in the US presidential elections in 2016. It did not help Mar Roxas in the Philippine presidential election in the same year. To think it will help Leni Robredo in 2022 is a sentimental but foolhardy, and ultimately counterproductive repolishing of the vanished glory of the 1986 EDSA People Power. It is what it is.

   There’s no denying that right now the bulk of Leni’s supporters are middle-class to upper middle class.  It is the most socially and economically upward-mobile class, one that has the greatest capacity to shape public opinion and excite voter participation. The goal of the Leni Robredo campaign has to be to increase the volume of that base, spilling beyond class divisions and not just to raise its awareness temperature.

   I realize, of course, that preparation-wise, I am Monday-morning-quarterbacking here. The deadline for new voter registration is past.  The success of the Obama campaign was largely due not to its campaign messaging but in effectively bringing out the vote. You must assume that your supporters will vote for you 100%. The true mission, therefore, is to draw the highest turnout possible. US Democrats in state, city and county levels literally went door-to-door in 2015, even escorting youths to voter registration centers a full year before the campaign even started. It makes you shudder to wonder how many of these young animated Leni supporters today actually remembered, or even bothered to register? If they did not register to vote, they can shout themselves hoarse all they want, or storm the digital ramparts of social media but they cannot deliver the only thing they can guarantee Leni: their all-important one vote. 

   It hardly matters now. The fight throughout the remainder of the election period will now be two-pronged: First, to ensure that the vote of the Leni Robredo base is brought out on election day. No more expansion is possible here.  Second,   to make the best effort to turn the biggest possible number of antagonistic voters around. Any expansion is possible only here.

   This is not something you can accomplish by preaching to the choir.  That doesn’t  teach the choir any new songs, it just enables them to sing louder. But noise alone will not win the campaign. The most clever memes on Facebook will not reach the rural yokels who don’t even own a cellphone or have even heard of the internet.

   Fortunately, the Leni Robredo campaign has one thing going for them: Leni Robredo.  All they have to do is just let her talk. Her launching speech is a veritable clinic on how to message correctly: clear, concise, conscienticizing but not condemning and most of all credible.

   If any single dominant group of supporters tries to interfere with her honest messaging, to brand her more sharply or to add fire to her belly, they will rue the day when they realize that all they helped her accomplish is to  snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. © 2021 Joel R. Dizon

NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It  is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:

 Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON

   

A Different Bar Exam Story

he Supreme Court has moved the Bar Exam to January next year, instead of this coming November. To our law students who are Bar candidates this year, that is less a reprieve than a stay of execution.  Before the delay was announced, I’ve met many of these law students in town, walking around like zombies, practically out of their minds from the buildup of the pressure of taking the toughest licensure exam.  Some of them have chided me, please write something encouraging and inspiring about the bar exam, for a change. One student, a female, said, please include your tips on how to handle the pressure. I said the best way to handle the pressure is to look past the bar exam itself. Concentrate on what you will do after the results have been released. She fainted.

   I guess I should have phrased it better by putting less emphasis on the fickleness of outcome. Really, you can let off so much pressure by simply  appraising your own efforts less. Other people have actually invested in you more than you did. If you thought of them, too, perhaps you would stop acting like this is just your personal do-or-die saga.  

    That's why my own “bar exam story” is more inclusive than most. It has to include the two people who made it possible for me to become a lawyer in the first place.

   Before he died in 1994, Benjamin R. Salvosa (founder of the University of the Cordilleras, which used to be called the Baguio Colleges Foundation) would  often send for me from my groundfloor office as editor-in-chief of the Gold Ore to his penthouse. “Daddy Ben” as we fondly called him, was a hands-on publisher. No week would pass that he wouldn’t ask me “anong headline mo?” (what’s your headline?) Friday was “pressnight” when we put the paper to bed.  So every Thursday afternoon, I would sit with him and run him through the week’s news stories to give him a heads-up on what he can expect to read in the upcoming issue. He rarely reacted much, even when we carried some heavy stories of the kind that stepped on the toes of some of his friends. He never ordered a story killed. Not even once. But he always groused about it during our briefings, “If you think I might want to kill a story, just don’t tell me about it!” So I followed his advise. There were times when he summoned me and I didn’t go to see him. He  complained plenty about it.  “Pinatawag ko si Joel hindi ako sinipot.” (I called for Joel, he stood me up). His friends would ask him, why would he put up with that? “You should fire your editor!” But after a long silence, Daddy Ben would explain, “I once told him if he carried a heavy story I might be inclined to kill as publisher, he should just not let me know.”

   In one such briefing session, he suddenly broke a different topic out of the blue. He spoke slowly and deliberately. “When you are litigating a case, the most important thing to pay attention to is your case theory. What laws you will use depends entirely  on what your case theory is.”

   I cut him short, “Daddy Ben, I’m not a lawyer.” (Not yet, in 1994.)

   He said, “Oh, you will be, so shut up and listen.”

   “The only part of the bible I don’t agree with is where it says the meek shall inherit the earth. That is such an incomplete statement. The meek will inherit the earth in the shape left by the bold, the daring and the shameless.”

   “Tyrants will always use the law to shape this world in the mold they want.  So never assume that the intention of the law is noble in every situation. Law always advances the interest of the powerful because they control the lawmaking process. It is their tool of choice.”

   I was 25, he was approaching 80. But Daddy Ben often forgets our 60-year age gap and that if he starts dropping ancient names, I may not be able to follow. “I told President Manuel Quezon, pañero we cannot keep that parity rights provision in the 1935 Constitution. Political independence will be meaningless if the Philippines remains an economic colony of America anyway.”

   He was talking about the parity rights provision that granted Americans equal rights as Filipinos in the exploitation of the country’s natural resources, particularly in the mining sector. Even without that provision, only the Americans have the capital to go into ore prospecting anyway. So we would still look to American participation, but at least Filipinos should be the owners of the mines, Daddy Ben maintained.  “Pinagbibigyan mo na nga silang mangapital, binabalasubas ka pa, ang mga walanghiya!” (we are giving them already a chance to invest, they still have to disrespect us, these shameless people) then   he went into a short spiel of expletives in Spanish I didn’t understand. Finally, he caught himself, “where was I?”

   “Case theory”

   “Ah, yes! Case theory. Like I said, when you’re fighting a case in court, never be surprised if the law operates in a tyrannical way. That’s always a given. There are big laws and small laws. Usually, small laws, like implementing rules, letters of instruction, executive orders, those are the worst ones. They were not passed by Congress working in the glare of sunlight, but only crafted by some self-appointed bureaucrat working secretly in the shadows.”

   “To formulate your case theory,” Daddy Ben lectured, “find support from the general principles of law. When you cite a specific law, go as high as you can. Refer to the top level statute, even to the Constitution if you have to.  Build your case theory by harnessing the general intent of the law and always paint your case using the bold brushstrokes of the law. Only little minds prefer to split hairs using little laws.  The higher you go, the closer you get to Congress that represents the people. You are always safest when you are with the people.”

   “Even with the hierarchy of courts,  expect the same thing,” Daddy Ben continued.

   “In the level of the Justice of the Peace,” that’s the 1930s forerunner of the Court of First Instance, or the Regional Trial Court these days, “if you go to court, there is always the risk of winning!”  That’s a classic joke among lawyers today, but I heard it first from Daddy Ben in 1994.

   “You will never get a perfect decision below, so if you stop there all you can hope to obtain is fractional justice.  If you believe strongly in your case theory and you lose below, don’t give up until you get to the Supreme Court. Only be at peace after fifteen of the finest legal minds in the country have read your arguments.”

   I told him, “If I ever become a lawyer, I will remember everything you said.”  He took a long pause, and stared at me blankly, realizing that his impassioned lecture might indeed be all for naught.  Then he picked up the phone, “Nene,” that’s his youngest daughter, Nene Salvosa-Bowman, “you call Dolinta (the school registrar) tell them to give Joel a full scholarship in the College of Law. You pay for everything including his books!” I could hear Nene over the speakerphone, “Daddy Ben, I’m not sure if we have a scholarship program like that…”  Daddy Ben snapped, “I don’t care. You invent one!”

   “Alright,” Nene said, “but making the school pay for his books—”   before she could finish, Daddy Ben interrupted her again, “Nene, you’re not listening to me. I said YOU pay for his books!”

   That’s the inside story of how I became the first and the last recipient of the “Benjamin R. Salvosa Law Scholarship”  and how Daddy Ben twisted Nene’s arm to pay for all my books.

   Daddy Ben was long gone by the time I passed the bar in 2000. The week after the bar results were released,  I still went to see him alone at his hillside grave on a foggy afternoon—again, on a Thursday. I was the only one at that    memorial park in Loakan. “I really want to talk to you, Daddy Ben, but you know it’s heresy in my evangelical faith to converse with the dead,”  I began to choke in my tears, “but you always broke the rules for me. So why wouldn’t I break one for you now?”

   “I remember every word you said to me that afternoon. I especially remember that part where you said even when it seems the laws are against me, I should never lose heart or forget that the tyrant would always use the law to shape the world. So a fight against an unjust law is actually a fight against  tyranny. Even more importantly, fighting an unjust law accomplishes more than just fighting for the oppressed. I did not learn that in the College of Law with that scholarship you gave me. I learned that from you.”

   There was nothing but  eerie silence, apart from the faint sound of a few birds that chirped in the distance. I sat in the grass and lingered for a little while, wondering why no one else was around. Finally, as I got up and turned to walk away, that's when the rain began to fall.*** 

© 2021 Joel R. Dizon

NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It  is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:

 Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON