I came in late but their haircut and deportment gave them in. The stiffly-seated, crew-cut men occupying the front row of the auditorium were obviously young military officers. And my strong inkling, they were graduates of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA). The attention of the rest of the crowd was on them as the comment of the professor handling the orientation of new students, including us, graduate students in public management, was obviously chiefly directed to them. “Why did you take public management? It would only add to your disgust and fuel further discontent as you come to grip with the ins and outs of the government and governance,” he’d declared something to that effect.
To understand his comment one has to revisit the event carried out almost a year earlier by mutinous soldiers led by then Navy LtSG, now incumbent senator, Antonio Trillanes, and Army Captain Gerardo Gambala. The group now popularly known as “Magdalo” took over the Oakwood Premier Ayala Center on 27 July 2003, the country’s allegedly finest serviced apartments, to show the Filipino people the supposed corruption of the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration.
The first sign of the possible truism of that comment was manifested two years later. An early evening TV news broadcast reported the graduation of some incarcerated Magdalo soldiers from their master’s program at the University of the Philippines (UP) Open University. It might just be coincidental, but obviously some of the Magdalo soldiers were indeed enrolled in public management at the time of their covert adventurism. But the more compelling proofs of this truism were of course the ones I had personally experienced as I struggled to finish my own program. (Sadly, it now looms that the UP diploma that I was hoping to earn all these years would again elude me—as it did during my undergraduate program at the UP Los Banos—as I wrestle anew with the maximum residency requirement of the university.)
I was doing my short papers (tutor-marked assignments—TMAs) on my Rural Administration and Development and Urban and Metropolitan Administration and Development courses this past academic year when I met anew these proofs. As in the past and in my other courses, whenever the opportunity is offered and the situation permits, I always make my hometown, Bacolor, the subject of these short papers, thus, the use of the adverb personally.
Bacolor bore the most brunt from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo and the resultant yearly lahar avalanches that practically wiped it out from Pampanga’s map. We had to abandon the comforts of our homes and were forced to seek refuge from the various highly congested resettlement sites in the province—some even went as far Surigao and Mindoro—to escape the wrath of these twin disasters. The town that’s steeped in noble tradition and pride born out from the recognition as the primus inter pares of all the towns of ancient Pampanga that included localities that are now parts of the surrounding provinces of Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Tarlac, and Bataan and from being the seat of Spanish colonial rule from 1762 to 1764 when Governor General Simon de Anda had to escape Manila to avoid capture from the invading British forces, had been reduced to rubbles. And some of the once proud residents of what many considered the “Athens” of Pampanga had to swallow their pride and depended on dole-outs to tide them through the ordeal and survive. A Benedictine nun I was working with in coming out with an alternative rehabilitation program of their religious order for lahar survivors could not believe that such an enterprising people would morph into beggars upon seeing some residents asking motorists for alms along the Olongapo-Gapan Road.
But like the proverbial mythical Phoenix, Bacolor has slowly risen from the ashes of Mount Pinatubo. This, though, gave the opportunists and schemers another opportunity to line their pockets anew and, more importantly, project themselves as caring politicians who take to heart the interests and welfare of their marginalized and downtrodden constituents. This development offers them to repeat what previous opportunists and schemers did during the height of the eruption and lahar onslaughts when they capitalized on the compassion not only of other Filipinos but also of other nationalities and fund raised that ended up in their pockets instead of easing the miseries of the disaster survivors. I am reminded of the story told by another lady, former Fil-Am Washington State House Representative Velma Veloria, who helped my group pursue a development project for Agno River bank communities in Pangasinan, her parents’ and my wife’s home province. As a labor organizer then, she successfully spearheaded various fund raising activities, including a $1,000-per plate dinner, for Mount Pinatubo survivors. They forwarded the more than $100,000 (am not sure if my recollection is right) they mobilized to the Philippine consulate, which could not make an accounting of the funds when Ms. Veloria’s group requested for one. This was the more compelling reason why she opted to work with my social activist group in pursuing social development projects in the country, particularly in Pangasinan.
In cognizant of the evolving events, the Bacolor Rehabilitation Council Act (BRCA—Republic Act 9506) was signed into law in record time by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on the birth date of her father, former President Diosdado Macapagal, on 28 September 2008 at Far East Asia’s oldest vocational school bearing the name of the latter’s benefactor, Don Honorio Ventura College of Arts and Trades (now Don Honorio Ventura Technological State University). The national government has initially earmarked P1.5-billion to effect the restoration of my town’s glory: “ibalik ing maningning nang bukas ning balen Bakulud” as the slogan of a local politician went.
With this enactment, infrastructure projects materialized in record time. President Arroyo practically started the ball rolling, so to speak, by committing P350 million for major projects and development identified in the BRCA master plan, whose cost has since ballooned to P4.6 billion in the plan commissioned to and prepared by the UP Planning and Development Research Foundation (UP Planades), Inc. The fastest, of course, was the rehabilitation of the Ricardo P. Rodriguez Memorial Hospital (RPRMH). The construction of the P26-million hospital was so fast that it was finished even before the required pre-construction documents, e.g. building permits, etc., that usually accompanied regular private and public construction projects have yet to be accomplished! What’s more, even before its catchment—meaning, the people it’s going to serve—are nowhere to be found in the town!
The Chief of the Hospital, a high school classmate, was the one “harassed” into producing the required documents immediately after the conclusion of the 2010 local and national elections and effecting the transfer of operations of the RPRMH to the new hospital building from its present buildings at the Bulaon Resettlement Complex, where its catchment includes not only the more than 4,000 resettled Bacolor families but also villagers from the northeastern barangays of the City of San Fernando and the northwestern barangays of Mexico on its peripheries. My former high school classmate, had to perform as many as seven Caesarian operations—a no-no in standard hospital practice—out of necessity on extraordinary busy days.
Even the lowly jueteng-cum-STL (Small Town Lottery) collectors know that the planned immediate transfer and its downgrading to a birthing station, allegedly being initiated by the provincial government, would be detrimental to meeting their and other basic sectors’ needs not just for primary but more advanced health care and services. The National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) and Local Government 2008 joint population count, showed that 41,955 (58.26%) of the total municipal population of 72,016 are residing in various resettlement complexes in the province. While 30,061 are listed as actually living in the town, a sizable number are in reality not full-time residents as they would return to their houses in resettlement complexes after tending their farms and other livelihoods in their home barangays at the end of the day. Only those residents who are left with no other choices, those forced to sell their houses in resettlement complexes out of dire necessity, are practically the only full-time residents of the town. These are the tangible catchment of the hospital being revived at the cost of P52 million in its original site at the town proper. It cannot claim the residents of nearby barangays of Guagua and San Fernando as catchment as these are already and better served by the Diosdado Macapagal Provincial Hospital and the J.B. Lingad Regional Memorial Hospital, respectively.
This does not mean that I am neither against rehabilitation of Bacolor, in general, nor the revival of the said hospital, in particular. What I am really against is the manner in which the rehabilitation was designed and how it is now being pursued and implemented. What really makes me seethe in anger is the gall these scum bugs are using us, twice disaster survivors, to make fast bucks and then passing themselves as saviors of Bacolor. Had I been a Magdalo, I would have staged my own Oakwood Mutiny or the more recent Manila Pen Siege! The more I would stage one if the rumor I’ve heard will become fact.
The rumor was that it will be the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) which will bid out the remaining P26 million, out of the total P52 million allocated for RPRMH rehabilitation, for the hospital equipment. Hospital equipment and DPWH! Is the DPWH now manned by health professionals? These scum bugs posing as public servants are pushing their luck!
In the midst of all these, there was only deafening silence as if everything is normal; as if this is way things should be. Nobody dares to raise a voice. Where is the media? Had they been gagged? What happened to the true leaders of Bacolor? More importantly, where are the erudite Bacolorenos we are all proud of? And, why is it that it is only this angry old man raging? (30)
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