Kotong is dead. Long live kotong!

I was contemplating for a month to write about it, but I could not. It’s only now that I got the nerve because I was already suffering from stomach cramps just thinking that the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo administration was again able to make a fast one on us, the people, by lulling us into believing it was serious on this one. I mean, if it’s all “drowing”, then something must be said about this abominable crime that has become official business.

I refer to mulcting which in Manila’s street lingo means delihensya, lagay, or kotong.

It’s everywhere, and happening from Malacanang up the Pasig River down to the jeepney stop along Buendia Avenue near Taft.

In the middle November last year, in response to public clamor for lower bus and jeepney fares, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, instead of conducting a dialogue with the concerned sectors, made a stroke of genius. She created a task force called Kontra Kotong at Kolorum (KKK), with her factotums saying that this was the answer to higher transport fares resulting from surging oil prices.

Ang gagaling ng mga tinamaan ng lintik! Can you imagine that? It’s like burning down an entire house because it is infested with termites. Ang layo sa bituka ng naisip na solusyon.

Naghasik ng lagim ang pagkakatatag ng KKK. The mainstream media wrote about it and it made headlines. The head of the task force, retired general Roy Kiamco, even got himself interviewed on television. He boasted he will end extortion on the streets after a month. Naturally, drivers of kolorum vehicles shuddered at the thought. Police officers who were on the take wrung their hands in despair, for if they can no longer extort bribes from truck, bus, taxi, jeepney, tricyle, and tri-sikad drivers because Kiamco’s KKK will apprehend them, magugutom ang kanilang MGA pamilya. Talaga. Ang dami yatang binubuhay ng ilang pulis.

In the meantime, the unknowing public applauded. “Yehey, matitigil na ang kotong!” they said. “Mabuhay ang Pangulo ng Pilipinas!” said the Palace’s palakpak boys. “Mabuhay!” the paid supporters responded in unison.

Over a week of media fanfare made many believe that the government was serious. Kiamco and his task force members were seen around the metropolis, making arrests, as well as press conferences hyping up their new-found zeal in ending delihensya, lagay, and kotong.

But while Kiamco and his KKK army were in serious work, the big-time collectors, most of whom are high and powerful officials of the administration, went about their normal ways, making deals, collecting huge sums, and cooking up some more fabulous transactions. They collect not delihensya, lagay, or kotong, but commissions in fat amounts, away from the media’s prying eyes and the attention of the salivating public, of course. Kiamco cannot touch them. They were not covered by his mandate. They are not kolorum. They are “official”, with fine demeanors complementing their expensive business suits. They were not on the streets, but can be seen dining in fine restaurants and sipping lattes and margaritas in hotel lobbies.

A month after, or on December 15, the KKK’s self-imposed deadline, nothing was heard from Kiamco about his task force’s accomplishment or performance. But here’s a terse news about it in the Philippine Star:

“When it was launched last November 14, the Task Force Kontra Kotong at Kolorum promised to eradicate the problem on kotong (extortion) and kolorum (unregistered vehicles) by December 15.

“Last December 7, a total of 160 unregistered vehicles have been impounded as part of the inter-government agency campaign to finally stop kotong by some police officers and traffic enforcers and kolorum vehicles, which cost an ordinary taxi or jeepney driver P7,000 a month.

“But drivers said they hardly felt the campaign as unscrupulous traffic enforcers from different government agencies continue their illegal activities to the detriment of the jeepney drivers and operators.”

Ano ba yan? We thought KKK is for real. 'Yon pala, press release lang.

Kotong is dead? Manigas kayo.

I was in Nigeria, says this thief of my e-mail password

Today, January 25, I lost my e-mail account without really trying.

Early in the morning, Ellen Tordesillas, a friend who writes opinion pieces in Malaya and Abante newspapers, called to ask if I am in Nigeria.

Surprised, I told her no, I am in Manila, and that I was preparing breakfast. Then I asked her why.

She said I sent her an e-mail frantically requesting for help; in that e-mail, I allegedly said I was in dire need of US$680 plus plus for my expenses as I was said to have lost my passport and money in a cab and that I had been stranded in some decrepit hotel in Lagos. I was allegedly in Nigeria on the way to some civil society conference in Ghana.

I laughed out loud, and said that if ever I would travel at this time of the year, it would not be to Nigeria, but to South Carolina to observe the presidential primaries.

Be serious, Ellen said, for I might not be the only one who received your e-mail call for help. That my friends to whom I might have sent the email might really send me money through Western Union (Ellen said "my email" has instructions to send the money through Western Union!).

True enough, my next caller was another friend who asked where he can send the money. He also received the email Ellen T. received. Then another call from Jun de Vera, then another call from Jing L. All were worried and were asking how I am.

I said I am alright. That I don't need dollars (I need pesos), but I am not one to molest my friends through email. May delicadeza naman ako, no! What I'd do, I told these friends, if ever I need money, I will send a collector from the BIR. Or travel with them to China ala Abalos and then and there demand that I be paid commission for an overpriced project. Ha ha ha.

It was when another friend called up telling me that he is at Western Union to send me US$133 that I sensed something has gone awfully terribly wrong; that some recipients of that fictitious e-mail are believing the email that I am in dire straits.

Oh, no, I told myself. What if the nasty, wayward email (a scam actually) was received by the wife and she actually sends me US$680? I haven't seen her for a day and she might suspect I have a girlfriend. Lagot ako.

So what I did, after realizing how serious this scam was, was to run to the nearest Internet cafe to read my e-mail for the day. When I got there, I could no longer open my mail.

What happened? I don't know. Somebody must have stolen my password and used my Yahoo account to solicit money, just what Ellen T. and the rest who received the email have said.

Then, I remember that a friend of mine, OWWA Director Vivian Tornea, was victimized in the same manner last year. It was actually I who called her attention about it, asking if she was in Spain where "her SOS email" said she was stranded and hospitalized and that because she had no money, she summoned the courage to ask help from friends.

Now, I have lost my old masursor@yahoo.com account. Goodbye, masursor@yahoo.com. Whoever stole you, I am sure of it now, will have pink urine and have rubber bands in his/her waste every morning. Akala nyo, hindi kayo tatalban ng kulam ng Taga Masursor? Wait until you see it.

My new email is balinsasadaw@yahoo.com. From hereon, email me in this address. balinsasadaw@yahoo.com will not be stolen, I hope. I have entrusted my password for this account to the Bangko Sentral.

With this, may I request for your help by disseminating my new e-mail address to friends. Why this request? Bacause my yahoo directory also got pirated. So be warned. Any email from hereon emanating from masursor@yahoo.com is not mine. It comes from a phantom robber who must be suffering from stomach cramps as I write this.

Postscript: Three days after I was able to e-mail again using my new e-mail address, I still received calls asking if indeed I am in Nigeria. I had to repeat my story.

This sorry episode in my "online life" keeps me wondering how in the world the thief of my e-mail account did it. If you have some explanation, I would welcome it. Again, please send it to balinsasadaw@yahoo.com, not to masursor@yahoo.com.

Why did Trillanes do it?

(Published by The Manila Times on 26 December 2007)

Less than a month after Senator Antonio F. Trillanes IV and Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim walked out of a court hearing at the Makati City Hall and trudged off to the Manila Peninsula Hotel to demand, in full view of the media, that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo resign from the presidency, only to be arrested later in the day as common criminals, many Filipinos have become familiar with how such incident happened, but could not still get a sane sense of why it happened.

Well, an excess of epithets, tons of it, had been thrown during the last four weeks, against Trillanes, wrapped in gilded gift boxes by GMA partisans, traditional politicians, and kibitzers and delivered through the mainstream media, but these were expected. In carrying forward his revolution to oust Arroyo to be able to effect genuine systemic change in the country, Trillanes recognizes the important and legitimate role of the media in society but had never engaged—will not engage—in traditional means to ingratiate himself or his cause to the “fourth estate”. In Trillanes, WYSIWYG.

Thus, nary a whimper or whine has been heard from the Trillanes camp, even if it knew that the painful truth has been buried deep under an avalanche of lies. Thus, when the barrage of criticism, most bordering on calumny, started streaming in immediately after the Peninsula incident, Trillanes could only chuckle, his faint smile hinting that he was satisfied that one of the many steps toward change has been accomplished. “We were defeated in this one, but we have not failed,” he told me. “Deretso lang tayo. Let us do our duty,” he added.

Such is Trillanes’s conviction, his undiluted courage, that one was wont to entertain the hope that had he had a plan to forcibly takeover the government on November 29, as the Arroyo administration now wants the public to believe, that plan would succeed. Then victory would have sired a thousand fathers, with the onrush of arm-chair revolutionists and “I-told-you-so” siguristas planting stakes to own part of the revolution they themselves should have initiated, but did not because of their cowardice.

As a young change advocate, Trillanes knew that charlatans inhabit the country’s political spectrum. They are all over, occupying positions of power and possessing filthy wealth that could be used against him and his horde of believers. He knew that paid hacks in the media could continue to paint him in a bad light, ridicule him even. But have these facts deterred him from pursuing his cause? The Peninsula incident showed that not even handcuffs, police boots grinding on his hands because of hate, and the prospect of long incarceration, can douse the burning fire of his desire to reform Philippine society.

The debate on the Trillanes “caper” had focused on his alleged method. “I agree with what he wanted to accomplish but am against his means to achieve it,” was the familiar chorus heard. This debate can go on and on, yet it will not settle matters. For Trillanes’s method is to act, not to fence-sit and be co-opted, as most who criticized him do—and did on that fateful day.

I even now suspect that most of the calumny heaped upon Trillanes was a result of the nagging feeling of guilt that the critics felt for themselves: that unlike Trillanes, they don’t have the capacity to stand-up against Gloria, like what police Gen. Geary Barias did, who employed the sociological method of transference by venting his barbaric anger to Trillanes’s wrist and by hauling him off to the bus in his trousers. In short, it’s the feeling of supreme inadequacy—ok, the lack of balls—that ignited the extreme criticisms.

The hoped-for focus of the national discussion on why Trillanes did what he did should be on the action, for at the end of the day, it will boil down to the oft-repeated admonition of President John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what the country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

Trillanes is a fool, said Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, but who believes a public official who faked his own ambush to entrench a dictator? In saying he himself contemplated killing himself had he failed in the EDSA Revolution, Enrile knew that this was a comfortable option than the AFP’s dark and cold torture chambers where Marcos critics were conveniently herded and isolated.

But of all the silly comments thrown in after the November 29 incident, the one that provoked incredulity was the statement of a Malacanang factotum that Trillanes was the cause of rising LPG prices. Hep-hep, hooray! Macapagal Arroyo, who claims to be an economist, should have squirmed at this comment, bud did she? She must even have delighted in such inanity.

Then, there was the criticism of a non-entity that became fleetingly one after the November 29 incident, obviously upon the prodding of Malacanang. The non-existent group said Trillanes was un-Filipino.

Arroyo’s hirelings have used this line before, in the election of 2004 (remember “Hello, Garci?”) against the late Fernando Poe, Jr. They even filed a disqualification case against FPJ, alleging he was not a Filipino. Well, the court said he was a Philippine citizen, but he was dead. Trillanes, like FPJ, is a Filipino and he is alive, thanks to the tender mercies of his guards who refused to follow the alleged order of Gen. Esperon to waste him during the Peninsula incident.

The African writer, Chinhua Achebe, was it who said that a tiger need not proclaim his tigritude. Trillanes need not proclaim his “Filipinoness” to be considered a Filipino. He won by 11 million votes during the May 14, 2007 elections despite of the efforts of this administration to repeat “Hello, Garci?”

But why did Trillanes attempt a failed revolution? Because it was there, in the first place, to be waged, like a mountain waiting to be climbed.

The objective conditions to dislodge a corrupt despot are ripe. It’s not only the surveys which say so. Even the traditional politicians from both sides of the fence and who will be the first to become unhappy ones once genuine systemic change takes effect, say so. Even the soldiers, who are gagged by Esperon, say so. The teachers, the OFWs, the farmers and fishermen say so. The Church . . . well, forget the Church in the meantime. My daughter, Lara, says so. Only the paid hacks and the bribe-able politicians, the local government officials, the crony-authors of ZTE and Transco, and cyber-ed ad nauseam, say GMA must be president for life.

In short, ramdam na ramdam na na kailangang patalsikin sa puwesto si GMA dahil puro kasiphayuan ang dala sa sambayanang Pilipino.

And how should this be accomplished? Armed insurrection? People Power? Election? Cha-cha? Impeachment? Refer back to the statement of Gen. Lim at the Peninsula on November 29.

The revolution that we ought to wage is a work-in-progress. It is not correct to say that our national cancer is curable only by an election in 2010, although that is a prescription that, as 2008 enters, is becoming a remote possibility, given Gloria’s gluttony for political power. Paging Mar Roxas, Manny Villar, Loren Legarda, Richard Gordon, Noli de Castro, and Panfilo Lacson. Tell us if there will be a 2010.

Trillanes did what he did because a revolution never waits for timing. A revolutionist who waits for favorable winds before he sails faces the unintended consequence of getting suffocated by the short bursts of wind that come between a real storm and a perfect calm.

A writer, said Nadine Gordimer, writes because he or she doesn’t want to be suffocated by the demons inhabiting his or her soul. A revolutionist wages a revolution because he doesn’t want to get waylaid by stifling concerns and worries of who’s on his side and what do they bring upfront. He only keeps worrying if his revolution is on the side of the people. Once he is sure of it, he tries to know and to understand that whatever the outcome of his revolution, a correct step is taken.

The Philippine Revolution of 1896 was not a single act of settling societal contradictions. It was a series of steps, of bloody wars, of defeats and victories, of retreat and consolidation that dates back to Lapu-Lapu in Mactan.

The revolution Trillanes is waging is only one of those steps, yet because of the dire predicament the Filipinos are in, they dare look at it as if it is the final chapter of the effort to free them from the malice of misgovernance and from the claws of a corrupt government. We cannot blame them. They have been waiting for redemption since 2001.

Death of an intellectual

The Philippine Daily Inquirer news-eulogy on Adrian E. Cristobal Sr. didn’t mention that he kept friends.

By this, I mean Adrian, when he was alive, really remained steady with a coterie of friends that, like constellations gravitating around a planet, were drawn to Adrian’s light which shone like a sun’s.

I cannot claim to be one those, for the simple reason of age: his friends were his contemporaries and I knew him only when I was in my late twenties, (I was then an aide to the late Blas F. Ople, Adrian’s kumpadre, and one of his closest friends). Yet, I was drawn to him because I’m a fanatic of good writers, Ople and Adrian being two of the most serious writers I have ever encountered, walked with, and learned from.

Serious writers, much more, deep thinkers, are rare. And Adrian belonged to this rarefied race of artisans. This is not to be explained, for serious writers and deep thinkers prefer that their craft explain them. It is their work’s impact on society that serves as their badges, their identikit, and while alive, Adrian prominently wore his despite the difficulties of political labels that hounded him to the very end.

As a public intellectual, Adrian abhorred, despised, mediocrity and shallow thought, and thus spared no one from his acerbic tongue and the satiric tip of his pen. He was always quick on the draw when shooting down mundane ideas, but quicker in encouraging sincere discussion of issues affecting our common life. He was always engaged.

“O, buhay ka pa!” was his greeting when we last met at a birthday lunch of a writer, but I knew it was more of a compliment than a cynical jab at a willing apostle. There, I saw in his eyes his own sense of his mortality: he was already feeble in his steps.

I remember most vividly his exchanges with Ople about the burning issues of the day, exchanges which, to me, were on the highest level of serious thought that only public intellectuals were capable of. Adrian’s deep knowledge of public policy, foreign affairs, and history complemented Ople’s experience and learning as a writer and as a senator. His sagacity of mind and keen perception of historical currents would have made him an ideal public official, if there is such, but then again, he would have dismissed the idea, given at that time the degenerate culture of government.

As a member of the publications committee of the National Centennial Commission from 1997 to 1998, Adrian edited Siglo, the committee’s short-lived journal. Adrian himself predicted the journal’s “limited tenure” but he did not despair, saying Siglo would serve as a ‘vehicle’ for the most significant thinking on the themes and issues of the Philippine Revolution and Independence.

Revolution. Independence. These are two issues that Adrian took to heart in many of his writings. His favorite revolutionary persona was Andres Bonifacio, about whom he wrote a scholarly tome, “The Tragedy of the Revolution”, and an essay, “In Search of the Hero.”

In the latter, he tore to pieces the canon of some historians to “deconstruct” Bonifacio by saying their “historicizing” is a “mere elegant substitute for gossip.” He reserved his venom for the American historian who wrote that Bonifacio was an invention. He said the historian is a psychologist who has not gone to school. The poor American did not bother a reply. The wounds inflicted by Adrian’s pen must have incapacitated him.

Only 75 when he died yesterday, Adrian has joined his compatriot-writers and public intellectuals, like Ople, Salvador P. Lopez, Fred Mangahas, E. Aguilar Cruz, Nick Joaquin, I. P. Soliongco, and Guillermo de Vega in the great beyond. There, they could resume their debate and intellectual meditation, while we, the living, can remain reeling and stammering in our intellectual poverty because one by one, the few genius and really articulate public minds are slowly deserting us.

An Education Agenda (Last Part)

The Need to Plan

During the past few years as a private citizen, we have been engaging the political leaders of our province, and even some of our national leaders, to incorporate this Education Agenda in our provincial and national programs. We are doing this with diligence and without fanfare because we know we are competing against many provincial and national priorities for limited provincial and state resources.

But for us to succeed in getting national attention, we must have first the intellectual honesty to understand the education needs of Sibalenhons. We need to scan the environment for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that are necessary elements in education planning.

How many teachers, for example, need to be trained and in what field? What are, for instance the most common causes that lead pupils and students to leave school? Why do some graduates find it difficult to get employed? What are the facilities we are most in need of? Is undernourishment a cause of underperformance in school? Do we have classroom, books, and desk shortages? Can our local government afford to pay incentives to our teachers? These are questions that we must have ready answers to be able to plan ahead.

It is therefore with a sense of optimism that I commend the leadership of the Concepcion National High School for organizing this event, and congratulate all of you for your happy participation.

By holding this Summit, the CNHS, as a public education institution, is playing its expected role of molding and shaping the young minds of Sibalenhons in preparation for the Knowledge Century. The CNHS, by its mandate, has been a visible presence in Sibale’s public affairs, even as it continues to make a mark through its graduates.

It can do more, however, to help in Sibale’s development efforts. For example, it should conceive training programs for out-of-school youths to enable them to acquire basic occupational skills, such as carpentry, welding, plumbing, masonry, practical electricity, and other blue-collar skills which today are in demand in the labor market. It can organize weekend literacy classes for women, story-telling for children, and even conduct livelihood programs, such as fish– and meat processing, for those who are interested in entrepreneurial activities.

These activities, while no longer confined in the four corners of the classroom, are education-related and will go a long way in empowering the Sibalenhon to prepare for the future. The CNHS can partner with the barangays, even with some private NGOs and civic organizations in carrying out such initiatives.

In my own, despite my very limited time, I can offer my expertise as a facilitator in communication training, value orientation, and institution building, which are all essential element of any education empowerment initiative. All I need to see is sincere commitment to pursue such a program.

The realization of our education goals needs a lot of investment in time and money. But more than the financial resources, we need communal unity, focus, and patience, with large doses of cooperation.

It can be done. To believe otherwise is defeatist and is not the Sibalenhon way.

If it will inspire you, a recent experience is instructive. Last week, Sibalenhons from all over Batangas, Cavite, Metro Manila, and Laguna celebrated our town fiesta in Lipa because we cannot come home on December 8. This has become a tradition and has been done the last few years. Naturally, we had a basketball tournament, in which my team, the Batlaw sa Lim-aw, fought for the Ragipon Cup. My team was underrated. It was a rag-tag team, composed of Sibalenhons whose egos are bigger in relation to their skills. No one has believed, except ourselves, that we will win the championship. We did it on sheer calm, focus, unity, and cooperation. Ranged against an unbeaten team with superior skills and over-confidence, we won on account of our organized, systematic, and single-minded effort to achieve our mission.

We, too, as leaders in education can achieve our mission. We can make a difference by making education an agenda and a priority.

The reward that we will reap, by investing in the education of all Sibalenhon citizens, would be enormously gratifying: it will ensure a brighter and more secure future than we could ever imagine. It will enable our children to get to where they want to be, in a position in life higher than where they had started. It will enable them to compete for the best jobs, to position themselves in business and society, and to realize their dreams of self-fulfillment and comfort.

I wish to end my remarks by quoting a paragraph from a poem I had written about a boy studying in Manila who wrote her mother for money. It goes this way:

Kada gani, Nanay, Tatay
Ako’y naghihingyo
Todohi pa baga ka inro pag-ampo
Kaling inro anak miskan asa mayado
Ako’y nag-aaray, nagpapaka-pakando

Finally, I hope we will have a productive Summit. I also hope that this Summit will be a uniting exercise, with the outcome becoming one more step forward toward a progressive Sibale.

An Education Agenda (Part 3)

(Keynote address delivered at the Education Summit organized by and held at the Concepcion National High School on December 14, 2007. The Summit, the first in Sibale, drew over 80 participants.)

2. We must have decent and complete elementary education facilities.

We should start by having enough classrooms, desks,

books, and laboratory equipment. Our elementary schools must have toilets with running water. We should fence-in our campuses. We should have books at a ratio of one-is-to-one. We should have community libraries. And if we can, with enough political will and through the judicious use of scarce money resources, we should expand the pre-school feeding program to the elementary schools.

3. Our teachers should be well-trained and well-equipped.

The most important component of basic education is the teacher. We should attract the best and brightest elementary school teachers, whether Sibalenhon or not, to our schools. But it would be best if the teachers are Sibalenhons themselves. However, the important thing is that they should excel in their profession.

The municipal government, again, with enough political will and through the wise use of limited financial resources, should help implement a training program for our elementary teachers. It is not enough that our teachers graduate with teaching degrees and pass the teachers’ licensure examinations. They must continue to learn and imbibe the latest knowledge and techniques and acquire modern teaching skills. They must have their windows open to the global resource pool of knowledge and must breathe the winds of change.

The municipal government must reward our teachers. Incentives other than supplemental pay from municipal resources will not only motivate and inspire them but also lead them to excellence.

I propose that during this Summit, the operational mechanisms of activating and strengthening our local school board be thoroughly discussed and the modes of cooperation between the teachers, the parents, the students, and the local officials be finalized. The board should always meet in dialogue and act in a concerted fashion.

4. We should invest in ICT for our schools.

The power and wonder and efficacy of information and telecommunications technology are already here, in our midst, for us to use, benefit from, and harness. There is no excuse for our children in the elementary and high schools not to learn to use the computer, much less to have one which they can utilize. We must invest in computers. I realize that the Department of Education has limited resources, but we must ask for it. There is no harm in trying, but there is in failure to ask.


Every elementary school in our island must have at least one computer, complete with a printer, the basic computing software, and hooked to the World Wide Web via satellite. The municipal government should allocate the resources for this to materialize, and if it doesn’t have enough money, raise it from outside sources as soon as possible. It is a mortal omission and monumental neglect on the part of the municipal government not to have an Internet connection even for itself.

It is surprising that while almost everyone in Romblon is dreaming to be hooked to the grid of the global information highway, our municipal government has not exercised the will to acquire even decent PCs for its offices. Office computing is now a necessity, not a luxury. The municipal government must allocate money to train its employees on information technology. Training is an investment that has its own rewards.

5. We must have a trade or vocational school.

It is a fact that not all of Sibalenhon high school graduates have the intellectual capacity or the financial capability to go to college. There are many Sibalenhon school leavers or drop outs and out-of-school youth. It is time that we study the possibility of putting up a community technical-vocational school to accommodate the drop-outs and OSYs so they, too, can be prepared for the Knowledge Century. The financial and technical requirements of such a technical-vocational institution could be immense but it can be done, if we have the will to summon communal unity and cooperation toward this endeavor.

An Education Agenda (Part 2)

(Keynote address delivered at the Education Summit organized by and held at the Concepcion National High School on December 14, 2007. The Summit, the first in Sibale, drew over 80 participants.)

Battle for hearts and mind

It is in this context that education becomes relevant.

Education will define the future as it defines the present.

It is the single most-important key to a better life, the possession that assures one who has it to be able to get to a level or situation better than where he or she started out in life. Education is an equalizer, enabling a poor boy or girl to be at par with, if not better than, a rich peer.

We know whereof we speak. We are witness to education’s liberating—both intellectual and physical—values. Without education, we would have not been equipped to articulate the dreams and visions and aspirations of our fellow Romblomanons. Without education, it would not have been possible for us to engage the leaders of the province and the larger Philippine society on questions that impact on the Filipinos’ daily lives. Without education, we would have been forever imprisoned in the limiting environment of an island—our island.

It was education that made it possible for us to explore the universal apart from the particular, to consider the particular as an essential element of the universal, and to raise the curtain to view the global stage as another arena for competition, a venue for expressing ourselves and subjecting ideas to experiment for their utility and acceptance. In short, it was education that opened for us the doors to discovery and empowerment: to be able to compete.

And it is education that will be the key to winning the battle for the hearts and minds of our people in the 21st century. It is education that will redeem us from poverty; that will open us the doors to exciting opportunities, to a better life, to a status equal to those who have it or gained it ahead of us; to a level higher than where we started out in life.

It is education that will empower us to realize our highest potential. It is education that will enable us to compete with the rest of the world and excel and be the best that we can be. For Sibalenhons all have the equal opportunity under our democratic space to realize their God-given potential.

What do we do?

Having laid down the powers of the force that is education, I now pose the question to you, our leaders: what do we do now?

What do we do to empower ourselves to compete, to realize our highest potential, to enable ourselves to rise from the limiting environment of the island, to secure our position in the Knowledge Century, and to propel all Sibalenhons to a level of socio-economic and political existence higher than where we are now? What do we do to enable us to play a greater role in the provincial, national, and global stage?

We must invest in education. This is the answer to all the above questions. As leaders, we must devote our energies, resources, and efforts to giving every Sibalenhon the best education there is, from pre-school to intermediate to secondary to technical-vocational to tertiary up to where their capacity to learn and acquire knowledge will bring them.

We suggest that as leaders, wherever in the political spectrum we belong, we should pledge to work to make the education of every Sibalenhon our highest priority, and exercise our powers and devote the resources within our disposal to ensure that Sibalenhon education will be the best in Romblon, if not in the whole Philippines.

To realize this vision-mission-goal of providing every Sibalenhon the best education, we propose the adoption of an Education Agenda consisting of the elements spelt out below.

An Education Agenda

1. All of Sibale’s nine (9) barangays should have complete free pre-school facilities.

We should start the basic education of our people at a young age. There is no excuse why we should not give them pre-school education when everyone else is doing it. The formative years of a child are the years when his or her mind is like a sponge, absorbent and open to accepting all knowledge which he or she could use later in life.

By having a complete and free pre-school system, with well-equipped facilities, tools, and well-trained teachers, we could jumpstart the education of our children in a right note and ensure that when they enter the formal school system, they would have developed the self-confidence and right mental attitude toward formal education.

We should incorporate in the pre-school system a child feeding program and allocate financial resources for it. (To be continued)