Epitaph

He was a great lumbering hulk of a man, blessed or cursed (depending on how you would look at it) with the great physical bulk genetically common to my mother's side of the extended Murillo clan. But he carried his not inconsiderable stoutness with grace, aplomb and good humor convincing many that it was a manifestation of good health and good living rather than the result of a privileged and dissolute lifestyle.

He also had that rogue gene not uncommon within my mother's clan that gifted him with the fine Caucasian features, the hazel-brown eyes and the brown-black hair that many would ascribed to the supposed influence of distant Spanish forbears. That plus his physique gave him the air of a plump, good-natured and mischievous child with the carefree, roguish twinkle in the eyes despite the fact that he was already past middle age and approaching 60 years of age.

That he was liked by the many who he came into contact with was a fact for he was essentially a likable man. He cultivated friends like a game fowl breeder raised champion cocks and had an affable, extroverted nature which enabled him to enjoy a wide circle of friends, all of whom held him in great esteem and who remember him with fondness.

He was not perfect and had his faults though like the rest of us. He could be pushy, domineering and even occasionally guileful but it was easy to forgive him for his excesses because deep inside his heart was as big as his body and his imperfections were trivial compared to his virtues particularly his capacity to empathize and sympathize with others.

Lost Cause

The Communist Party of the Philippines celebrated its 41st founding anniversary last December 26 and in northeastern Mindanao, local communist cadres commemorated the event in a day-long ceremony in an undisclosed location said to be just a kilometer or so from the national highway in Marihatag town which is just a little over 40 kilometers north of Lianga.

Jorge Madlos, better known as Ka Oris and officially the spokesman for National Democratic Front in Mindanao, outlined the revolutionary movement's optimistic assessment of its current status and its plans for intensifying the war in the next five years. The target, Madlos said, is to advance its conflict with the government to the next level which is supposedly the strategic stalemate stage wherein the communist forces will have attained numerical and tactical parity with the Philippine armed forces. According to NDF thinking, this strategic stalemate level will only be in preparation for the next crucial stage which will be the strategic offensive level where the revolutionary forces will have achieved the capacity to conduct large scale military offensives against an already weakened and increasingly defense-oriented national government.

Ka Oris also reported during the anniversary celebration that the New People's Army (the CPP'S military wing), contrary to government claims that the NPA is a force in decline and that its number of armed partisans has shrunk to less than 6000 at the end of last year, has actually been growing at a healthy 5 percent a year although he has declined to give the actual figures even for just the number of rebel forces in the Mindanao area alone. The target, he claims, is to train and equip one platoon of armed fighters for every town in the country within the next five years for the movement to be able to advance to the next stage of their prolonged and protracted war with the Philippine government.

Ho-Hum

The office of the local election officer in Lianga recently released the list of candidates who filed their certificates of candidacy for local positions in the May 2010 general elections. All of them had managed to file their COC's before the deadline which expired at midnight last December 1 and will, unless disqualified by the Commission on Elections, be eligible to run in the coming local polls.

Except for one or two minor surprises, the public response to the names on the list was decidedly lukewarm and matter-0f-fact at best. The list was just as the local folks had expected it to be, nothing more and nothing less. Ho-hum.

Incumbent municipal mayor, Roy Hegino Sarmen will be slugging it out, one on one, with Felino Pantaleon Jr who is a veteran of Lianga politics. Pantaleon has been a fixture in local politics for decades and has served several terms as mayor of Lianga himself in the past. Sarmen, while considerably younger than his opponent, is no political neophyte either. He has been a barangay captain, a municipal councilor and has served one term as a provincial board member representing the federation of barangay captains all over the province.

Sarmen actually won election as vice-mayor in 2007 and only took over as the town's chief executive when Mayor Vicente "Belos" Predrozo passed away after a sudden illness last year. He will be heading the Lakas-Kampi-CMD municipal ticket while Pantaleon will be carrying the banner (or torch, if you will) of the Liberal Party.

Magkono

Mention the name Xanthostemon verdugonianus Naves to avid collectors of fine wood decorative pieces and top quality wooden furniture and you are certainly going to get more than your fair share of interest. The latter, of course, is simply the scientific name for the Magkono tree and the source of the extremely dense, heavy, dark-hued and now very rare species of Philippine hardwood that only a few places in the Philippines, Lianga included, is known to produce.

Wood from the Magkono tree is often called "ironwood" for its reputation as the hardest of the Philippine hardwoods. It is so hard that cutting down a mature tree of the species can take two or three days when a similar sized tree of another type can take just two to three hours. Most modern loggers use diamond-point saws to slice through Magkono trunks to speed up the process but copious amounts of water are often needed to aid lubrication and prevent excessive heat generation during the cutting.

In the past, this hardwood species was highly valued for its extreme durability and density. Old steamships used Magkono wood bushings for their propeller shafts. It was made into tool handles, rollers, shears, poles and piles for wharfs and bridges, and,not surprisngly, for bowling balls before the advent of modern plastics and resins.

Bogeyman

As midnight of last December 1 drew to a close together with the deadline for the filing of certificates of candidacy for next year's local and national elections, the person almost everybody who is anybody in Surigao del Sur politics was either anxiously dreading or eagerly anticipating would file his COC (depending on which side of the political divide one was) was most assuredly nowhere to be seen. As in the last two previous local polls, Dr. Primo Murillo was again a disappointing no-show.

Yet until the very last minute, there were those at the provincial offices of the Commission on Elections in Tandag who waited in trepidation for the man to suddenly and magically appear and then formally join the list of hopefuls eager to mix it up in the May 2010 race for provincial positions. This, of course, brings up the big question in my mind.

For someone who has been out of the political limelight for the past nine years or so, why is Primo Murillo still such a big issue especially for the current political powers in the province? Why are rumors of the possibility that he may again be re-entering politics capable of sending shivers of apprehension and causing sleepless nights among those who supposedly have already sewn up total control of the provincial government after almost a decade of being in power?

Primo Murillo's nine years as provincial governor of Surigao del Sur from the early 1990's to 2001 were both remarkable and yet undistinguished depending on how one looks at his political career. Capitalizing on the the popularity of his father, Gregorio Sr., another doctor who was assassinated in 1983 while also a serving provincial governor, he quickly built a personal following that saw him win the governorship and hold on to it for three consecutive terms with landslide victories every time.

Nothing New

With all the media hype and attention currently focused on the so called Maguindanao massacre, it is easy to forget that despite the fact that at least fifty-seven persons lost their lives in that one, single and tragic incident, the merciless slaughter was ordered and carried out not by madmen and deranged individuals who did it merely for the love of killing or for some unexplained or insane blood lust. It was, based on what has been uncovered so far, a political assassination that lead to the mass killing of innocent individuals (all possible and potential witnesses to the original crime) and clearly a rational, planned and calculated act done for the sole purpose of stopping and crushing with one stroke the Mangudadatu's challenge to the political dominance of the Ampatuan clan in that province.

In the dog-eat-dog world of warlord politics in most provinces in Mindanao, dominant political clans enforce their rule over their political fiefdoms by intimidation and force. They will try, of course, to threaten and intimidate would-be opponents but actual and real challenges to their supremacy are inevitably met with violence since that is the most expedient and effective response in a local culture that worships the power of the gun and where private armies maintain and project a political clan's control and dominance over a province or geographical area.

Thus the Manguindanao massacre is singularly significant only in the sense that more than fifty people lost their lives in it. In all other respects, where it not for the number of individuals killed, it would have been merely another bloody footnote in the turbulent political history of this southern part of the country.