Hard Times

In many areas all over the Philippines and particularly so in the Lianga area, it used to be that the coconut tree was the poor farmer's reliable cash cow.  With the minimum of maintenance and care, even a small coconut farm of a hectare or so harvested every two or three months can produce enough copra which if sold could provide for, at the very least, the basic needs of a farmer and his average-sized family and tide them over until the next harvest.  When copra prices are high, enough cash can even be earned which can be used to buy a few luxury items or be set aside as savings for the family's future needs.

Copra, for the uninitiated, is, of course, the dried or desiccated meat of the coconut which is a rich source of coconut oil. The oil has many industrial uses and also happens to be a vital ingredient in many food and medicinal products.  The Philippines is one of the world's top copra producers with more than a quarter of its available agriculture land planted to coconuts.  It is said that more than a third of the country's total population is dependent, either directly or indirectly, on the copra industry.

Nowadays with copra prices spiraling to their lowest in years which many are blaming on a worldwide glut in palm oil stocks, many local coconut farmers in Lianga are wondering if it would be worth their while even to think about harvesting their trees,   Most of them are already grappling with the depressing thought that if they do go on to schedule a harvest, the high production cost of their copra may far outstrip whatever little prospective income they may eventually earn.  This leads to the specter of being forced to borrow more money in order to survive and go deeper into debt after already seeing their incomes steadily shrink in previous harvests as copra prices continue to fall.

Christmas Magic

One of the saddest things about growing up as a child is coming to the age when one suddenly and disconcertingly realizes that much of what one has believed as wonderfully magical and enchantingly special about Christmas is actually mostly hype and largely sheer nonsense.

It is not only just about losing faith in Santa Claus, his elves, his reindeer and his flying sleigh and his squeezing of his corpulent bulk into tight chimneys on Christmas Eve.  It is not just about learning the hard way that Christmas is not really about pine trees with icicles, snow covered landscapes, white-capped mountains and Frosty the Snowman with his black top hat and all the other rubbish that seeks to implant in our Filipino culture and consciousness the ridiculous traditions and belief systems of cultures from far distant climes and locations.

It is not just even about having one's eyes being suddenly opened to the crass commercialization of the whole Christmas idea, the insidious propagation of the delusion that holiday happiness and festive cheer can be purchasable like most instant goodies prepackaged in a box and ready to be unleashed and used at one's choosing anytime and anywhere.

Still Lucky

Note:  This post was supposed to be published last December 5 but mobile communication and internet services were cut off in the wake of Typhoon Pablo.  It took Smart Communications fourteen days to fix everything and restore internet connectivity to all of Lianga.

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On the early morning of December 4, Typhoon Pablo (International name: Bopha) made landfall near the many remote coastal communities that rim the borders of the provinces of Surigao del Sur, Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley provinces.  In the hours that followed it carved a wide swath of death and destruction inland which, in the frenzy of media reporting following the event, have seared the names of towns and villages like Cateel, Baganga and New Bataan into the national consciousness.

Lianga is only a little further north of the primary disaster zone and was spared the full brunt of Pablo's fury but even it got caught in the northern edge of the violent storm system and was still given a beating that locals will be remembering for many decades to come.

The southern and northern edges of the town where most of residential houses are built close to the seashore or are actually built on stilts over the high tide mark got the worst of it as gusting winds topping 170 kph caved in walls and ripped off roofs while huge waves made more savage by the double whammy of a storm surge on top of high tide seawater levels smashed the frail wooden structures into pieces forcing more than a hundred families to flee to safer ground, many of them escaping only with the clothes on their backs.

Biding Time

Vice-Mayor Robert "Jun" Lala is arguably, by what is considered the norm in Lianga politics, an unsettling aberration.  Firstly he is just barely forty years old and therefore unseemly and irresponsibly young for a seasoned politician and senior municipal official in a political culture where the prevalence and dominance of stodgy and grizzled politicos have always been seen as both sacrosanct and inevitable.

He is also considered as exceedingly brash, too impatient, excessively energetic and a tad too eager perhaps to prove himself in a political milieu which frowns upon anyone who rocks the boat too much and too fast, where extreme caution and the search for the broadest consensus (the illusive win-win option) has always been the key to political survival and where new ideas and new ways of doing things have always floundered in the face of the extreme conservatism that has always characterized the nature of governance in this part of the world.

To his credit, he is considered, even by his detractors, as a popular and even charismatic leader.  Ever since he first became a municipal councilor in 2007 and municipal vice-mayor a year later, he has managed to build up a substantial political following among the local electorate drawn to his populist image and rhetoric.  Gifted with an engaging and boisterously affable personality, his appeal is said to reach across socio-economic, political and religious divisions.

His admirers point to his go-get-something-done attitude as his biggest asset.  They say that he has helped rejuvenate, in many ways, the staid and somewhat moribund state of affairs at the LIanga municipal hall and has acquired, in just a span of just a few years, a reputation as one of this province's more visibly aggressive and proactive young leaders.

Revisiting Pugad

Of the more well known beaches in Lianga, Pugad is the one that always evokes in me the most nostalgic of memories.  In this sense, its very name which literally means nest in English is oddly appropriate.  Every time I go there, this stretch of coastline has always been able to conjure for me a veritable nest, a cornucopia if you will, of deeply buried yet unforgotten images and sounds, my recollections of Lianga's not so distant past.

I remember the beach as it was in the days of my childhood in the 1970's.  There was no clear access road then but just a dirt track that led from the highway that ran straight and true for a hundred meters or so and which quickly snaked right and then wandered its way through and in between coconut trees sheltering underneath their leafy fronds a straggly line of native huts, most of them facing, just a stone's throw away, the wide expanse of fine sand and the gently rolling sea..

There was no Pugad Beach then, the whole area was just known as Pugad.  The owners of the many beachfront lots then had still no idea of the tourism and commercial potential of their properties.  Many of them were simple farmers and fishermen eking an honest but hard living out of the bounty of the sea and the land adjacent to it.

My brothers and I would spend hours frolicking in the sea or just lying like beached whales on the pristine, grayish-white sand while the gentle surf would wash over us in wave after wave of white foam and greenish-blue water.  On the entire expanse of the gently curving beach, only sounds that can be heard except for the hiss of the sea were the occasional screeching of faraway birds and the gentle swish of the sea breeze on the foliage of the trees and coconut trees on the far shore.

Jaded

In the staid, often predictable and conservative world of Lianga politics where the right to run for public office is traditionally reserved for the more senior and often elderly members of the town's established political clans, the one-on-one showdown between Roy Sarmen and Sammy Dollano in next year's local mayoralty elections should be garnering a high degree of local interest and anticipation.  After all, both are relatively young politicians with much of their political careers ahead of them and both are locking horns in an election where, for the first time, a new wave of younger leaders may be finally dominating the local political arena once the exclusive domain of what is clearly a fading and increasingly irrelevant generation of aging town fathers.

That is, however, not the case and why that is so is a question that begs to be answered.

Roy Sarmen is only in his late forties but he is already a veteran politico who belongs to a big political clan in Lianga.  This can be a decisive plus factor in a culture where voting for political candidates on the basis of blood and family relations is commonplace. He is a former barangay captain of the poblacion barangay and a former municipal vice-mayor who in 2008 succeeded the late Vicente Pedrozo as mayor after the latter succumbed to a lingering illness before he could complete his term as mayor of Lianga.  In 2010, he was elected to his first full term as mayor. His father, the late Leonor Sarmen Sr., also served as town mayor for a couple of terms.

Sammy Dollano had been this town's municipal agricultural officer for some years and was formerly a municipal councilor prior to resigning that post to accept appointment to head Lianga's municipal agriculture office.  He also comes from a political family and his father, Meneleo Dollano, used to be active in local politics during his time.  He is also considered to be well connected politically and has familial links, through his wife, to both Rep. Philip Pichay (1st District of Surigao del Sur) and his brother, Prospero "Butch" Pichay who together with the Ty-Pimentel clan is the dominant political force in Surigao del Sur.

If there is something that is damping the enthusiasm of the local electorate for the upcoming contest between these two personalities, it is the widespread perception here that despite the fact that both men have already established careers in the field of public service, both have yet to really convince jaded voters here that either of them has the far-reaching vision, the iron will, the personal integrity and solid commitment to progress and prosperity that Lianga so desperately needs for the future.

Of course, the official campaign period for local candidates is still more than two months away and both contenders still have plenty of time to brainstorm and strategize and then ultimately sell their candidacies to the voting public.  But in the case of these two already experienced politicians whose personalities and public service track records are not exactly unfamiliar  to most of the people here, the noticeable lack of palpable excitement over what should be a landmark contest between two, young and up-and-coming political mavericks should be a cause for concern for them and their supporters.

One thing is crystal clear, though.  Lianga is fast coming up a crucial crossroads in its political history and it behooves us, its citizens, to make sure that the very people who seek our mandate to lead us for at least the next three years are the very best and most qualified people we have among us.  We also have the obligation to encourage the development of of a local political culture that encourages both full and open participation as well as accountability and excellence in public service, where candidates are elected to office because they are actually the best there is and not because, the choices being limited, the only bet possible must be those on who, in the final analysis, are the lesser evil.