world class

It appears nothing could shackle Pampanga to economic stagnation and impede its holistic development as a province.  We’ve seen how the worst volcanic eruption and its resultant lahars flows in the last decade of the past millennium hardly hampered its march to progress and development.  In fact, if I’m not mistaken, these twin disasters, coupled with the hasty withdrawal of the Americans from their biggest air force base outside the US mainland—Clark Air Base—failed to displace it from the list of most progressive provinces in the country.  Former Governor Bren Z. Guiao heavily boasted and trumpeted this feat in his failed attempt to get votes and win re-election in the 1995 local elections against movie action star Lito Lapid.  Moreover, even the succession of what most would consider intellectual lightweights—Lito Lapid and his son, Mark, when ranged against previous occupants, Atty. Estelito Mendoza and Guiao—in the provincial capitol under these hostile conditions barely slowed down this progression.

On hindsight, I believe former Gov. Guiao erred when he appropriated the honour and responsibility for this feat unto himself.  In spite of his touted stellar accomplishments and the insinuation that only someone like him at the provincial helm could sustain the rehabilitation and further development of the province, the overwhelming majority of the Kapampangans opted to entrust political power and the right to steer Pampanga to greater heights to an intellectual lightweight and, in the process, handled Gov. Guiao, considered a political heavyweight, his most crushing electoral defeat. 

Contrary to the expectation of Kapampangan and other intellectual elite, Pampanga had sustained its rise from the ashes of Mount Pinatubo eruption and maintained its notable economic performance during the 12-year reign of the Lapids.  Former priest-turned governor Ed Panlilio showed that his father-and-son predecessors clearly robbed huge sums of money from the provincial coffer in the form of incorrect collection of quarry fees.  Their combined 12-year quarry revenues appeared miniscule when ranged against Panlilio’s collection during his three years in office.  This “daylight robbery”, which I wish only happened in one of the movies of the father and son actor-governors, was again validated by the performance of the current dispensation of Lilia Pineda.

This clearly shows that incompetence and malfeasance, like these, were not enough to deter Pampanga’s trek to progress and development.  Furthermore, this proves that progress and development in the province is hardly dependent on the leaders to whom the Kapampangans would entrust political power to govern the province.  This too clearly points to where Pampanga’s stature among the country’s provinces should be aptly credited:  to the Kapampangan themselves. 

I can cite at least two convincing instances to support this assertion.  One was the construction of the FVR Mega Dike.  This controversial engineering intervention did a lot to contain the deposition of lahar deposits in my hometown, Bacolor, and prevented, in the process, the spread of the destruction these deadly flows will cause in other municipalities, especially in San Fernando.  More importantly, this spared other Kapampangans from displacement, marginalization and miseries that befell the people of my town.  I have yet to hear the credit for this being ascribed solely to then Gov. Lapid.  And rightly so, for it was the leaders and members of the various civil society organizations—the different “save movements”—that figuratively waded through tons of smouldering lahars to convince the Ramos government to erect the billion-peso dike.  Ascribing this to the governor and other elected political leaders alone could be allegorically likened to the cart pulling the carabao.

Two was the relative ease that the province rose from the ashes of Mount Pinatubo eruption and the resultant lahar flows that poetic Kapampangans had repeatedly compared to the rising of mythical bird Phoenix from its own ashes.  I may be wrong but I believed that the government, both local and national, did not have specific economic programs and strategies to sustain the local economy during the heights of the eruption and subsequent lahar flows.  The government was obviously reactive and limited its actions to search-and-rescue operations and was contented to wait for the situation to settle down before it intervened and decisively did something to save and rehabilitate the province.  The construction of the FVR Mega Dike in 1997 was the first definitive indication that the government was bent on saving Pampanga.

These two instances alone are indicative of the abundant human capital of Pampanga.  And this answers the question:  “Who propped the province up during this period of uncertainty when the government was almost, if not completely, absent?”  The local economy certainly did not go under but persisted during these tough and gruelling times.  It was only the severely hit Kapampangans who subsisted on dole outs and stayed in “tent cities”, albeit temporarily, but the overwhelming majority went back to their usual productive ways.

It therefore saddens me no end to see that 20 years after the historic eruption Pampanga’s vaunted abundant reserves of human capital appeared to have suddenly dissipated as reflected by the kinds of candidates that ran and won in the last local elections.  It makes me wonder no end where the flaunted reserves went as the Kapampangan electorates were left with no other option but to elect from a few families those who’ll lead and administer our local governments.  (If it’s any consolation, this predicament was not peculiar to Pampanga but was pervasive and was practically the norm nationwide.)  No matter how their sycophants would trumpet it in public discourses and in the media, these families are definitely far from being the best that the province could offer.  Certainly, there are better alternatives.

Let’s zeroed in on the governorship of Pampanga.  Gov. Lilia Pineda easily won her second term, not counting the 2007 elections where the COMELEC favourably decided in her electoral protest over Among Ed Panlilio but did not claim her seat.  Before becoming governor, she was an influential member of the Provincial Board for three terms and before this, the unbeaten and unchallenged mayor of Lubao, also for three terms.  She’ll surely deny it but her sole ticket to her victorious, and mostly unchallenged, political career—and for that matter, that of her vice governor son, her mayor daughter and her mayor daughter-in-law in another town, too—was being the wife of the alleged jueteng kingpin, Rodolfo ”Bong” Pineda. 

Aside from Among Ed and two other relatively unfamiliar candidates, are there no viable and competent candidates to challenge Gov. Pineda?  I hate to say this, for I consider him a friend, but Among Ed had ceased to be a viable alternative candidate in the past two elections.  (Still, I not only kept voting but campaigned for him—more enthusiastic though during his first—in all his three runs.)  He definitely was one during his first foray when he trounced Gov. Pineda and Gov. Mark Lapid in the 2007 elections, even if the COMELEC declared him loser later.  My sincere belief was, as a priest, he should have been a transition governor to sow the preliminary seeds of the good and upright governance he advocates and pave the way for the selection and election of other qualified and deserving Kapampangans.  He should have played a role similar to what St. John the Baptist played to Jesus. 

Blame it on my high regards for the Kapampangan race but we’re not supposed to encounter problems to find and field genuine alternatives to administer and govern our province and our towns.  This, I believe, is true even if we just focused our search for alternatives among our local government chief executives. 

In local governance, we, Kapampangans, are blessed for having two world class mayors in our realm.  First was Rep. Oscar Rodriguez who after serving city mayor of San Fernando for three terms has reclaimed his seat in the Lower House anew.  Second was Angeles City Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan who just won his second term after his stint as a cabinet member in the highly disgraced Arroyo administration.  The first was declared the Fourth Best World Mayor in 2005 while the second was deemed Eighth Best in 2012.   The former bested among others the city mayors of San Francisco, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago and New York in the USA, Paris in France, Berlin and Munich in Germany, Rome in Italy, Stockholm in Sweden and London in England.  Only the city mayors of Athens (Greece), Mississauga (Ontario, Canada) and Guatemala City (Guatemala) were deemed better.  Mayor Pamintuan was only beaten by the city mayors of Auckland (New Zealand), Changwon (South Korea), El Paso (Texas, USA), Quebec (Canada), Surakarta (Indonesia), Perth (Australia) and the winner, Bilbao (Spain).  (Wikipedia 2013)  The award is given biennially by The City Mayors Foundation since 2004 to honour those who have served their communities well and have contributed to the well-being of cities, nationally and internationally. (Ibid)

While I rarely visit Angeles City and could not therefore say much about the reforms Mayor Pamintuan had done during his first three years as returning mayor, I certainly like what I’ve mostly seen in San Fernando.  Mayor Pamintuan is of course not qualified to run as governor since he’s a voting resident of Angeles City, which politically is no longer a part of Pampanga as it is no longer a component but a chartered city.   But Rep. Rodriguez is.

For the middle class and local intellectuals, the right next path for Rep. Rodriguez to take after his stellar career as city mayor was not to return to the Lower House but to replicate what he’d done in San Fernando in the whole of Pampanga.  It’s been public knowledge that he really wanted to be governor.  But what cowed the alleged “Kumander Jasmin” to make him abandon his dream, which should have been the fitting crown to his relatively illustrious political and public service career?

I remembered the reply of Rep. Rodriguez’ brother-in-law, a Department of Agrarian Reform-Candaba employee whom I worked with when I supervised the implementation of a component of a DAR project (ARISP – Agrarian Reform Infrastructure Support Project) that was contracted out to the NGO I worked for in the early 2000’s, when I queried why he’s just running as city mayor and not as governor when his third congressional term was expiring in 2004.  His reply was, he did not have the wherewithal to run a decent campaign and, thus, he’ll just be defeated.

Is this same reason why he did not throw his hat in the last gubernatorial race and instead opted to regain his congressional seat?  This time, of course, he cannot rehash this reason for his “no show” in the gubernatorial race.  Among Ed, who was his party mate in the Liberal Party, which was also the same party that carried Pnoy to the presidency, had already proven this false.  And the fact that he’s one of, if not, the most respected member of the president’s party in the province, campaign resources would not pose a problem anymore.  What then were the reasons that made Rep. Rodriguez to turn his back from pursuing his supposed ultimate political dream?

He obviously did not want to get out of his comfort zone and to cross sword with his Kumareng Lilia and Kumpareng Bong.  And evidently, there were more political trades off that the people could only surmise behind this.  The most overt was the support for his candidacy and that of his allied candidates in San Fernando by the local party of his kumare.  This appears to contradict the public perception that he’s a principled man; he undoubtedly had given more weight to his more recently established political and social relations than to good governance and other advocacies and values he crowed about as a former activist. 

This led me to ask:  “If he’s a world best city mayor, what does his not taking the challenge to run for governor makes of him?  A world class coward?”  May be, he would retort that he’s just a world class pragmatist.  Indeed, he is.  And I fervently pray that unlike him the rest, if not the overwhelming majority, of the Kapampangan human capital will have the fortitude to truly follow the “matulid a gasgas” (straight path) in deciding what’s good for Pampanga politics and the Kapampangans.  Just imagine where our beloved Pampanga could be if only the best and those with the purest of hearts could become the stewards of its political, socio-cultural and economic life.   (30)