stark show of the class divide: the traffic problem solved in favor of car-owners, never mind the masses of public transpo commuters who are oppressed, disenfranchised, marginalized enough.
TAMING THE ROAD RAGE |5 things MMDA missed in its ban on provincial buses
Transport woes
TRAPIK !?@#$%^&*! A Way Out of Our Traffic Mess
Traffic scheming
i was only half-listening to the prez until he started talking coconuts…aha, here we go, i thought, let’s hear your plans for the coco levy loot (160B and counting). alas, nothing, as in zilch, as though it doesn’t exist. nothing, too, about the problem of aged unproductive trees that we’re not allowed to cut down without first getting permits and paying fees. worse, the president’s best answer to the low productivity of coconut lands is nothing new. intercropping is an old idea. we’ve tried it and it doesn’t work, unless of course yours is a large-scale operation with lots of capital. to be sure, i emailed what the prez said to my coco farmer sibs based in tiaong and got this reply today:
The State of the Coconut
By Luis Umali StuartI listened to the SONA on the radio, and drew close when coconuts came up, since I still have a stand of them up the hill. From the ground here, my immediate thoughts:
Procy* is from these parts and when it comes to cocos he pretty much knows the score, it’s a job cut out for him.
1. The real problem is that world prices for copra have fallen drastically, largely on a challenge from palm oil. Two years ago we were netting up to P4.50 per nut on lean months, now it is down to P1.50 almost year-round. Even “buko” (murà here) down from P6 to P3.
2. The market for coconuts is now shifted to higher-technology, higher-value, processed coconut products – virgin coconut oil from the meat, activated charcoal from the shells, coirflex and planting media from the husks, coco sugar from the water, packaged buko juice. These are where the reported gains are coming from, but are really only viable largescale, and require considerable capitalization. Large landholdings are the early beneficiaries (Villa Escudero I underatand has a thriving VCO operation.)
3. To participate in the new industries, avail of financing and incentives, small coconut farmers must organize into cooperatives, always easier said than done. Coconut farmers are producers, they are not businessmen and cooperatives are serious business, there is enormous paperwork involved. In the end it is rural businessmen and do-gooders that set up these cooperatives, who naturally end up controlling the whole shebang, turning the producers into the same cut-rate suppliers that serve the copra industry.
(And let’s face it. Pinoys are not a cooperative bunch. We have been so well-divided-and-ruled for so long perhaps that we really only trust the very closest to us. Even our vaunted bayanihan spirit, at least hereabouts, is not instinctive, there is always a promise of food and drink and and cigarettes after, it’s a small party limited to short friendly chores requiring many people.)
4. To help the small scale coconut farmers (under five hectares?), Procy’s sell to the president is “intercropping.” Give them something else to earn from, forget the coconuts, he means, and he’s got all these other products lined up: kape, cacao, saging, chickens… to intercrop with the niyog. None of which is new. The Silang (Cavite) project in the 60s of the rural reconstruction movement (that bred Juan Flavier and Boy Morales) was a showcase of intercropping (coconuts with papayas cum pineapples). But it now seems to be the focus, radically giving up the coconut industry to the more poised financially for the new directions in the market. In this regard the old small farms have been quickly outflanked by new players opening new sites.
5. The message for the small coconut farmers, is to stop relying on the coconuts and get off your butts, start working the land around your old trees, and intercrop. What would be new is if it will turn out to be worth all the work this time. Will the market and right prices be there when the critical days of harvest come, or will it be quickly cartelized by deft middlemen as usual? Will there be post harvest support and dependable technology inputs for more efficient processing and storage? Otherwise all this crop diversification business doesn’t work. I suggest to Procy, if he wants farmers to really intercrop, he should be fielding futures buyers everywhere now with ready checkbooks for these startup crops, and then everyone will get to work.
6. Material inputs for the intercopping seem to be in place as claimed. Last October (21012) this forwarded text from my sister Babes: “tita, eto po ung contact sa alaminos laguna PCA, incharge of coco seedlings distribution… namimigay po cla normally 100 seedlings per person.” Bobby de Guzman (Candelaria) got some of these free trees himself (in San Pablo) with start up free-range chickens for their farmland in Dolores. I have heard also of ECA giving away coffee and cacao seedlings. Obviously one has to run around for these freebies, but they are out there, if only for the fleet and able.
7. It would be great if government can bring these offerings around farmgate to farmgate. Farming is a hunkered down life, and true farmers venture little outside their cozy soil-based comfort zones. They aren’t ones to run around playing government’s games, they (I) must be reached out to. The government must “missionarize” the farms, or it can never hope to suck the farmers in.
8. But we know, new and greater efforts require new and greater funding, and I dream of crop futures and farmgate services for small farmers with the coconut levy fund in back of my mind, if it should ever get in the hands of honest people, i.e.
The fund is again unmentioned in the SONA, simply because there is not anything good or clear to report. I heard recently that the SC has finally (?) decided vs Danding and given it all (?) to the coco farmers. This is obviously good news, but Noynoy can claim no victory nor promise anything from it. Indeed, what legal tricks are still open to Danding’s formidable lawyers so well-paid from the looted funds? The best thing about it is that we know where this bulk of the fund is and how much it is now worth.
For us coconut folk from whom this fund was extorted in the 70s under duress of martial law, following its trail and the long story of machinations that have kept it in Danding’s hands all this time, we all yearn to put the perpetrators in their place and fully recover this wealth. Still and all, I have grave misgivings where these funds are headed.
From my vantage, the coconut levy fund was a scam from the get go. I don’t have the dates, but the levy was well in force and being collected when I started in Santol in ’77. It was amounting, I think, to 10c per kilo of shelled nut (at P1/kg it was a whopping 10%). The buyers would return with booklets of stubs for us to fill up, equivalent to our contributions, loads of them for they were in small denominations and we soon gave up trying to keep filling them up. Until a while later, news came of scholarships being handed out. I dug them up and filled up hundreds if not a thousand. Aling Nene rushed to sign them up. We were to get “certficates” of a sort in return. But very soon after, that cocofund office in town closed, and we never heard of scholarships again nor ever saw any of our certificates.
In all these years following the progress of the levy fund chase, I have not once seen or heard of a list of its so-called beneficiaries nor ever met anyone with any kind of certificate in hand. Nor have we ever received any communication from any source that would suggest that we are on anybody’s list as true contributors to the fund. My very strong suspicion is that there is no true list, and that whatever list of beneficiaries exists, or should suddenly surface, is spurious.
At least in these parts, many of the farmers and coconut lands that were squeezed to build the fund are long gone, to the great beyond or other parts, the trees the way of the powersaw in the spate of land coversions in the face of CARP. If by some magic, the coconut levy fund should actually metamorphose from its shady beginnings into some real support fund for coconut farmers, I would be very surprised and declare it a holy day for the overwhelming power of good intentions. (2013 Aug 01)
*proceso alcala, secretrary of agriculture
i never met him, i mean, we were never introduced, not even in the 80s when i was “running around town” (more like flitting around) with mitch valdes and i had really close encounters with showbiz peeps. but i did have a rather unforgettable brush with him that he may not even have been aware of, haha.
it happened in some studio set where peque gallaga was directing the pilot of a satiric sitcom that would have starred, if memory serves, mitch, behn, and elvira manahan (this was at the height of her talk show, two for the road), and joey reyes was writing the script. i was there because the sitcom was not the entire show. half would be a talk show of sorts on current issues, and i was writing that. and it was a good idea to be around because peque might have something to tell me bigla about writing my half — it was quite a radical format, i wasn’t sure, i didn’t see yet how, it would work (and never found out because the producer backed out).
so anyway. i was behind the cameramen of course, along with other crew, staff, mirons. there were no seats, standing room only. except for one lounge chair, yung you’re half-reclining na, that was empty; i gathered that it was for the director, and while he was busy, one or another would take it briefly, pahinga ng paa, but it was mostly unoccupied, until one of the guys offered it to me (i must have been ready to sit on the floor or something). so i took it.
not long after, ms. manahan and behn arrived. they had to wait, though, stand around, until direk was ready for them, and siyempre, medyo imbiyerna ang mga lola na there were no seats around. they had noted the one lounge chair, of course, and little me in it, on it, and i swear, when i stole a look at them, behn caught my eye, looked down his nose at me, and made irap, lol. not that it was a laughing matter at the time. i could have vacated the seat at once, left it free for them to take it over, if behn hadn’t been so isnooty. had he given me even just the faintest smallest smile, i’d have smiled back, sabay get up and offer ms. manahan the seat myself. instead, i sat on, went back to whispering nonsense with one of the guys for another minute or so, and got up in my own good time.
and then, again, i may have imagined it all. right now, hearing that behn is in asian hospital with a septic infection, no visitors allowed, it doesn’t matter. what matters is that he has a heart for nation, and he was one of the true machos, along with lino brocka, in the war against marcos all the way to EDSA. stories of behn cervantes are writ large in the pages of martial law history, and i salute him.
Awards and Behn Cervantes
By Pablo A. TarimanONE wonders how actor-director Behn Cervantes feels about the sudden deluge of recognition coming his way.
The truth is, it is nothing but funny, at least to me: what the f is wrong with these National Artists?
And I do mean both Carlo Caparas and Virgilio Almario, going at it on cable television, in an interview that both of them seemed unprepared for. Caparas falls back on meeting up with Almario “sa kanto,” at the same time that Almario screams in exasperation: “Sinipa rin ako sa gobyerno nung naging National Artist ako!”
I say: what a shame. To the National Artist award as an institution, and to the national discourse on culture, both. Because there was nothing intelligent or decent about that conversation, which had nothing to do with what it is that either of them are National Artists for. It has everything to do with how messed up we are about culture in this country, and how we are in over our heads most of the time.
That goes for these two National Artists, going all Round 1 on us on television.
The ghost of Gloria
The truth is, I also do not care for having (had) Caparas as National Artist; I don’t think he deserves it just yet, I do think there are other comics creators who deserve it ahead of him. And yet it is also true that the National Artist Award, as an institution, has always been put into question by the fact of presidents adding to the list of names that the NAA Jury submits to Malacañang.
Say, Fidel Ramos creating the category of Historical Literature to include Carlos Quirino in 1997, Joseph Estrada adding his friend and composer Ernani Cuenco Sr. in 2000, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo adding Alejandro Roces and Abdulmari Imao in 2006. And yes, GMA’s addition of four names to the NAA Jury’s original four: Caparas, Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, Pitoy Moreno and Francisco Mañosa in 2009.
Now it is said that the latter was utterly unacceptable because GMA also dared do what no president had done before: remove someone from the legitimate NAA Jury list, that is, Ramon Santos.
Had she not removed Santos from that list, would this case against those four additional names have been brought to court? If we are to believe National Artist for Literature Almario, the answer would be yes. Because that case was all about saving the NAA, asserting that it is an institution that no President can meddle with in the way GMA did.
Which is what way exactly? Apparently the way of adding four names unilaterally, and deciding against the list submitted to Malacañang by the NAA Jury. The Supreme Court decision in favor of Almario et al says:
“ manifest disregard of the rules, guidelines and processes of the NCCA and CCP was an arbitrary act that unduly favored respondents Guidote-Alvarez, Caparas, Mañosa and Moreno,” and as such “The conferment of the Order of National Artists to said respondents was therefore made with grave abuse of discretion and should be set aside.”?
This of course begs the question: so four additional names is grave abuse of discretion, but an additional one, or two, isn’t?
Almario would say: nilakad ‘yon eh. Which is to ask, too: so the Ramos, Erap and GMA’s 2006 additions to the NAA Jury list weren’t “nilakad”?
At the very least, I expected that the SC’s nullification of GMA’s choices would also mean that Santos – the person she removed from the legitimate NAA Jury list – can finally be given the award he so deserves. But alas, he will not join the other National Artists for 2009 – Lazaro Francisco, Federico Aguilar Alcuaz and Manuel Conde – because according to the SC, “the President had the authority to alter or modify or nullify or set aside such recommendation or advice.”
In effect, while the SC has decided against GMA’s decision to include Caparas et al in that 2009 list, they respect her decision to exclude Santos.
Which is to say this: if the goal is to prove that the NAA is about a credible jury and process that decide on who deserves to be part of this elite roster of artists, then the continued exclusion of Santos is still about the ghost of Gloria hovering over this process.
Caparas’ bark, Almario’s bite
The notion that this SC decision now rids the National Artist Award of politics and politicking is naïve at best. There is nothing apolitical about the NAA, at all. For one thing, it is a government-conferred award; for another, its process is one that’s within the cultural institutions of the State. It is imbued as such with the questionable practices of government in general, and government’s notions of culture in particular.
On an even more superficial level, the NAA is actually embroiled in this glaring inconsistency: on the one hand the laws say the NAA Jury “shall advice the President on the conferment of the Order of National Artists,” which does give the President the opportunity to refuse the advice; on the other hand, the NCCA’s published guidelines for the Order of the National Artists state that “The list of awardees shall be submitted to the President of the Republic of the Philippines for confirmation, proclamation and conferral,” which presumes that the President will merely act on the advice of the NAA Jury.
Caparas is holding on to the fact that his awarding was borne of a presidential prerogative, that he is mere recipient of an award that GMA had the right to give him; Almario insists – and the Supreme Court agrees – that this was not merely about the president’s prerogative, as it was about disregarding the process and rules of the NAA itself.
Given how they are holding onto two very different sets of rules, on that fateful morning when Caparas and Almario treated us to round one of this bout, it was clear how half the time they were shadow boxing, throwing punches in the air, not really hitting each other.
Unless of course we are to consider Caparas hitting the NAA as institution, given articulations that were in many instances en pointe, to which Almario responded without the critical backbone we would know him to have.
Say, when Caparas asks the rhetorical questions: “Ano ba ang nakahihigit? Yung prerogative ng Presidente o reklamo ng maliit na grupo? <…> “Gaano karaming National Artists ang nanggaling sa grupo nila, sa barkada nila? ‘Yan ang maling proseso, na halos lahat ng nagiging Pambansang Alagad ng Sining galing sa hanay nila.”
The right response would’ve been for Almario to talk about this presidential prerogative versus the process of choosing the National Artist for any given year. The right response would’ve been to talk about patronage politics, how it can only play a part in the NAA process which Almario holds sacred, and how it might be disavowed, too, by this process of selection.
But all Almario could talk about was how the proclamation of Caparas was an act that messes with this process: “Parang binababoy nila yung buong proseso. Para bang ngayon, kung masusunod yung kanilang ginawa parang walang kwenta na yung maghirap ka sa deliberation. Pumunta ka lang sa Malacañang, maglakad doon at pwede ka nang maging National Artist. That is not honorable, I think.”
I’d throw in the question of why it might be held honorable that Santos’ exclusion by GMA be respected, but not her inclusion of Caparas etal., but that might be to rain on Almario’s parade, having won this case and all. Then again, the critique of patronage and barkadahan is a valid one for all of local culture, and it would’ve been great to hear Almario talking about how NAA deliberations are affected if not informed by it, but how institutions like this one persist and survive because these have a function because these have value.
Instead all he says is, “Mina-malign niya lahat ng National Artists dahil lang sa sa kanyang sama ng loob. Bakit di n’ya patunayan na magkakabarkada lahat kung ‘di kinuyog siya ng lehitimong artist at manunulat?”
It was clear by Almario’s tone that he was beyond all these, he was beyond this discussion and wasn’t really quite giving it the time of day, even as he agreed to be part of this very public bout. This might also be why Caparas could go on and on about how Almario was just envious of him, and how this is about who and whose works are more popular, on a national scale.
Almario dismisses these and says that the case wasn’t about Caparas’ body of work, as it was about the way in which he was given the award. And yet, in the the 2009 speech he wrote on Caparas and his assertions about popular literature, Almario asserted that the idea of writing “to entertain the masses” is the most “despicable purpose of writing <…> as filthy and as evil-smelling as the capitalist motive of profiting from anything sold.”
(“Aliwin ang masa”? Ito ang isang karima-rimarim na hangarin sa pagsulat. Kasindumi at kasimbahò ng motibong kapitalista na pagkakitahan ang anumang ibenta.”)
Isn’t Almario already drawing the line here, between popular literature and culture, and the literary and cultural establishment? Isn’t it that when Almario says there’s such a thing as “legitimate artists and writers” he is in fact also saying that there are artists like Caparas, and then there are artists like him and the other National Artists?
This kind of distancing is exactly all that Caparas needs to throw some punches that actually hit Almario, the NAA, and the cultural establishment. Because after he takes on the questions of patronage and the discrimination against popular culture, Caparas goes on to question Almario’s role as a member of government vis a vis his being National Artist, hitting at the cultural establishment’s rarely discussed dysfunction. That is, what happens to our notion of the artist – of the National Artist – when artists and cultural workers themselves become government employees that police culture, and who will have their hands tied when it comes to speaking about the more critical political issues of the day?
What is a nation when artists, declared National and otherwise, are indebted to, and colored by, the prevailing discourse of government?
Caparas says of Almario: “Tingnan mo, alagad ka ng sining naglilingkod ka sa gobyerno. Isipin mo, kung alagad ka ng sining dapat may kalayaan ka, na walang sumasakop sa iyo.”
Round 1 goes to Caparas.