MikeLigalig.com

By Paul Borja
Published on October 8, 2006 - The Bohol Standard Newspaper

After the triumph of Manny Paquiao came the tragedy of the Ultra 74. There couldn’t be more distressing images of how we are faring as a nation than the sequencing of these two events together. In the first, millions of Filipinos came out to pin their hopes and then to hail the victory of one man in a very brutal sport, as if he were the last remaining hope of the country. In the second, a one-million peso prize money brought out thousands of Filipinos to try their luck in a TV game show, as if this were their last chance to escape poverty, only for 74 luckless people to die in a quite brutal way.

In both instances, however, we showed our propensity to place an inordinate amount of hope on someone or something we believe could turn things around or make everything better for us. More properly these are called acts of desperation. As a nation, we may have reached new lows in our collective despair that a boxer could turn millions into a frenzy of jubilation and a TV game show transform thousands into a stampeding horde.

And to think that only twenty years ago to this month, the Filipinos jubilantly stampeded to freedom from a veritable prison called the Marcos regime. In our recent history, the 1986 EDSA people power revolt may have been the high point in our collective journey for it certainly raised hopes for a new beginning for the country. Unfortunately, it seems that from that high point the journey has been downhill ever since.

With the present administration under a continuing cloud of political crisis, we are now being herded into another kind of stampede that is being hailed as the beginning of much-desired national reforms: the move to change the EDSA constitution. While recognizing the flaws of the EDSA constitution itself, it is highly doubtful whether the proposed Arroyo constitution, for this is what it essentially is, could turn things around or make everything better for us. But this is precisely what the Arroyo administration wants us to believe, and has impelled upon the Filipinos to adopt groups not only fear that big businesses will come to dominate even more the use and destruction of our coastal areas but likewise fear what the word “etc.” really means in the order. Deliberate vagueness is certainly the refuge of the ill-intentioned; in this case, the intention is certainly to deceive the people and to create a loophole big enough for anything and everything to be put inside it.

And in almost the same bad breath, Defensor cancelled more than 1,700 community-based forestry management agreements (CBFMA) thus revealing the real intentions of the order to displace and deprive local communities of access to mangrove and coastal resources, the better for the big businesses to come in and gobble up everything in their wake. Recently, we learned that one of the CBFMAs cancelled by DENR involved local organizations located in our very own Maribojoc Bay area, which comprise one of Bohol’s largest nipa areas. Communities there have long depended on the nipa for a livelihood by making shingles for roofing materials.

Nothing could be more sustainable, economically viable and equitable than the nipa shingle making industry managed by communities in the Maribojoc Bay area. Yet, in one single blow, Defensor and DENR may soon be depriving our own shingle makers not only with a livelihood but with access to the extensive nipa resources in the area that could be turned into a vast wasteland of fishponds and other corporate ventures. Several years ago, communities in the Cortes-Maribojoc areas rose up against an attempt to develop a large fishpond in the area, and succeeded to stop the project. Now, there may no longer be any stopping to similar attempts in the future with passage of the DENR order. Moreover, existing fishponds in the area could be expected to inexplicably grow in size like a cancerous pale tumor in a sea of green. Concerns over the environmental and socio-economic implications of the order even boiled over to local scientists that the Philippine Association of Marine Science (PAMS) issued a position paper criticizing it. PAMS warned of “despair, frustration and social unrest” sweeping coastal communities as a result of the order. For the moment, the DENR has reportedly been forced to review the order due to the widespread opposition against it from different sectors. But whether said review would yield significant changes remains to be seen. The damage however has been done and the cards of this administration revealed when it comes to its priorities, which is certainly not to defend local communities and the environment.

That Mike Defensor was transferred from DENR to Malacanang after issuing the controversial order is revealing enough. When worse comes to worst, the defense of the occupants of Malacanang takes priority over everything else. With “environmental defenders” like Defensor, perhaps we won’t mind a Manny Pacquiao throwing a punch or two his way.

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