JANUAR E. YAP

life as a rough draft

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Testing Daybreak: Tides, poor signal teach ‘citizen-driven’ operations team lessons on enforcement

by Januar Yap | Sun.Star Cebu | April 16, 2010

Weekend operations in northern Cebu give volunteers a good look at the challenges of enforcing ‘green’ laws


Lawyer-environmentalist Antonio Oposa Jr. raises the need to move on from law enforcement’ and get more citizens involved in the campaign to save marine habitats and resources


“SWIFT, painful and public.”

This was the brief the Visayan Sea Squadron (VSS) took for itself when it geared up last weekend for what could be its biggest operation against illegal fishing.


The team is a composite of volunteer lawyers and citizens, backed by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) 7 and special operatives from the Philippine Navy.


For months now, the coastal residents of Sagay, Negros Occidental have been complaining of blast noise from the sea. There had been reports that fishers from the island of Lipayran in Bantayan, Cebu have been using explosives.

The area had long been in the red list of the VSS for a couple of years, so that when reports of dynamite fishing persisted and were confirmed by the NBI 7, environmental lawyer and Ramon Magsaysay awardee Antonio Oposa Jr. and lawyer Ben Cabrido immediately sought permission from RTC Branch 23 Judge Generosa Labra to allow the VSS to search the area.


The team was granted 12 search warrants, making the operation the biggest offensive against blast fishers in the country, says Oposa.

He branded the move as “Operation Daybreak” and customized caps for the whole fleet with exactly those words.


Scrapbook


Oposa also instructed a group of law students to make a scrapbook that will document the operation and turn it into a model for environmental law enforcement.


It would take note of every detail—from the checklist for dry box contents (“You don’t want plastic on land, but you definitely need plastic in the sea,” says Oposa) to ensuring the chain of custody for the material evidence.

On the eve of Operation Daybreak, the group finally knew the exact location. All respondents of the 12 search warrants were in the island of Lipayran. The squadron, whose members would approach from different points in the nearby islands, was scheduled to jump off at exactly 2 a.m. and converge in the sea to wait for daybreak.

Experiment


The plan seemed ironed out down to the last detail, the tides and sea currents included. That was to ensure the “swift” part of the operation, and it was “public” enough with the fleet having about 50 volunteers on board.

“We want to emphasize that this is a citizen-driven operation,” said Oposa.


But as with any experiment, it was not free of glitches. “Reminds me of Murphy’s Law,” says Oposa. “If anything can go wrong, it will.”


A bit past midnight, one of the navy boats could not leave because it did not have a “directive.” This was a minor setback, though, as the bigger gunship was well on its way from Cebu City carrying two bomb-sniffing canines. The Philippine Navy had also sent a patrol plane hovering in the vicinity.

The boat carrying the volunteers was stuck for some two hours in shallow waters and unable to put its engine on full throttle, as the tide was unusually low.

The third and final glitch came when, nearer the targeted island past 4 a.m., all the mobile networks’ signals proved elusive.

This left the rest of the group with no contact with the NBI, who, it was learned later, went on anyway with securing the area and conducted the search as early as 4 a.m., although not simultaneously serving all the 12 search warrants.

It should be a lesson learned, Oposa said.

He asked: If, along the way, the dogs will detect an explosive in a house that is not a subject of a search warrant, can the operatives break into the house?


This left the paralegal volunteers discussing the matter.


A student’s question caused some comic banter: Can the dog’s actions be taken as personal knowledge?

Apprehended

The 12 search warrants yielded but one successful raid.


Samuel Jamili, 41, was caught with sacks of ammonium nitrate and home-made dynamite in softdrink bottles.


According to the NBI, led by agents Jose Ermie Monsanto and Arnel Pura, the amount of chemicals can make about 2,000 dynamite sticks and would cost about P15,000, net.


That amount of chemicals can sweep about 10 hectares of marine life, said Oposa.


Monsanto says Jamili will face three cases: violation of RA 8550 or the fisheries code; illegal possession of explosives, and the Comelec gun ban.


Jamili had allegedly figured in intelligence reports as the main supplier in the island.


Following the raid, a supposed delivery of more ammonium nitrates from Panay did not come.


Jamili, a father of two, suffers from paralysis in the lower half of his body and limbs. During the arrest, an NBI operative had to carry him out of the house.


Jamili broke down when his daughter wailed and tugged at his pants.


Maluoy intawn mo nako, sir. Wa man gud koy ipa-eskwela sa akong anak (Please have pity, sir. I need money to send my daughter to school),” he said. His eldest daughter is now in junior year as a Hotel and Restaurant Management student in Cebu City.


The daughter cried and knelt before operatives, begging for them to spare her father.


Statement

Jamili was, however, turned over to Barangay Captain Orlando Aliw for custody until the case is filed in court today.


When the neighborhood gathered, Oposa scolded Aliw, and told him he could be sued, too, for negligence of duty.


He remembered Aliw committing to curb illegal fishing once in a gathering of barangay officials. He said he would have brought lechon to the island as a reward, but instead came with a whole fleet of law enforcers, following frustrating reports.


Oposa told the residents to help stop illegal fishing. “Unsa pa may makaon sa inyong anak kung hutdon ninyo’g pabuto tanang isda? (What will you feed your family if you kill all the fish?),” he said.


Some volunteer groups will go back to the island to show “Sangtuwaryo,” a Cebuano film that tells the story of dynamite fishers, and will educate them on alternative livelihood.


“I want a mind shift,” said Oposa, “we should be moving on from law enforcement.”

International observers


OD has brought along international observers.

Nicola Peart, who had been involved in environmental groups, says, “OD is not for the faint-hearted.”


She said young people abroad are also concerned with how the generations have “affected the environmental security” of their future.

“Operation daybreak is a lesson for young people around the world. As Oposa teaches us, the time for action is now,” she said.

When it turned out that the prime suspect was a paralytic and had so little means for a livelihood, Peart realized the social dimension of the OD.

At one point, NBI officer Monsanto suggested that there should have been people from the Department of Social Welfare and Development to take care of the community’s livelihood following the operation.


Impact


Although the operation was able to apprehend only one suspect, lawyer Cabrido says it is not significant.


The success of the operation is measured by the impact it has on the community,” he says. Somehow, he says, it will impress upon the community the seriousness of environmental law enforcement and that they should begin focusing on alternative livelihood.


Comic relief

Back on the boat, the volunteers suddenly noticed a foul smell.

Oposa discovered he had stepped on something on the beach, prompting the crew to haul water to wash his shoes and the deck. Everyone laughed.


“You know, I should write something about this,” he said.


Someone a suggested a title, “Shit happens.”


Another suggested, “Swift, painful and with a little bit of dog shit.”


(A slightly shorter version was published in Sun.Star Cebu, April 26, 2010)


Monday, April 26, 2010

Bohol: for sale | Sun.Star Cebu | April 27, 2010


I should tell you more about Sta. Fe, Bantayan’s School of the Seas, but in another time. It has a house rule that says you need to remove your watches because in there you’re supposed to forget time. You just have to let, to use an Emersonian quote, “the universe pass through you.”

While the universe was trying to pass through me last week, I suddenly got a phone call at 7 a.m. from Jurgenne Primavera. In case you missed some news, Madame Jurgenne, as I call her, was one of the Filipinos who made it to Time-CNN’s 2008 list of heroes for the environment, specifically under the category of scientists and innovators. Her groundbreaking researches revolutionized the science in aquaculture and she had been a strong advocate for sustainable fish farming and mangrove culture.

Last week, I met her, of all places, in Ticao, Masbate, one of the country’s most vulnerable islands in the season of climate change. Very casually, she was talking about why some mangrove-planting activities failed, and she said because some species are compatible only to specific substrate. It’d be like transplanting your great kamunggay in the Sahara. But let’s go back to the phone call.

The officials of Bohol, she said, have recently signed an MOU with a Korean investor for a bioethanol research project. This is supposed to be good news, except that the scale in which the project will be undertaken had the hideous face of a polar shift. Or perhaps, had the hideous face of Joker of the Heath Ledger kind. I promised her I’ll try to go through the MOU. Something about the call made me opaque that the universe couldn’t get through me anymore.


A section in the MOU says that the Province of Bohol will commit a minimum of 25,000 to 100,000 hectares for the aquaculture site of the bioethanol project for fifty years. Bohol, it also says, will “undertake to work for the extension” of the project for 25 years. That will give it a sweeping 75 years, enough to turn Bohol into an ecological mutant. Given the cholesterol and sugar level of Bohol’s officials, the project will definitely outlive them.


I am not sure at which point now has the research gone on algae as a profitable source of ethanol, a renewable energy form. I leave that to experts. But two details in the MUO strike me: the 100,000 hectares of seas around Bohol and 50 years.

Let’s take the 50 years first. Our Constitution allows the State to go into agreements on the use of our natural resources, but “such agreements may be for a period not exceeding 25 years” and “renewable for not more than twenty-five.” If she hears the news, my grade school math teacher will give Gov. Erico Aumentado some good pinch in the groin. Or send the MUO signatories, mayors and all, sitting on the air.

Bohol has 643,000 hectares of seawater, and the MUO commits about 100,000 hectares to the project. I do not know how the LGU’s will share the pie, but remember that our fisheries code reserves 15 percent of municipal waters as marine protected area. But given that the committed area spares the 15 percent, its scale may alter significantly the ecosystem in these areas. It’d be like ripping an entire patch of vegetation on harvest time. Harmful or helpful, when you strip a significant portion of vegetation, and even periodically, it’d be like Pacquiao giving a foe a good dose of body blows onwards to a KO.

I understand environmental groups are mobilizing to file a Writ of Kalikasan case against the signatories of the MOU. By the way, environmental lawyer Antonio Oposa and volunteer lawyers have filed the first ever Writ of Kalikasan case at the Supreme Court last week against the national government for non-compliance of a 21-year-old law on water catchment. Meanwhile, let’s do tarsiers-in-barong-spotting.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Climate change | Sun.Star Cebu | April 21, 2010


I’ve opened a new folder on my desktop and called it “climate change.” A few months ago, I also opened “disaster” and in it saved articles on disaster management and risk reduction practices in different countries. That was after Ondoy. When I saved “climate change,” I’ve cut-pasted “disaster” into another drive. This is so because a few weeks ago, I found great excuse to get out of the city for a while. A scientific survey identified two of the most vulnerable areas in the Philippines: one, Ticao Island off Masbate; two, Gubat, Sorsogon. Both places seem to play like cusps against the yawning push of the Pacific Ocean. As I am writing this, my world has just made a brief halt from a journey from those two places. Small world, indeed, because at 11 a.m., I am now writing beside a window with a superb view of Mayon Volcano.

But let me tell you about Day One:

It was a humid Saturday night in Quezon City when I tucked myself into the cool Spanish music in Dulcinea. Meeting me that night was Maya, of the World Bank, and scientist CP David from the UP MSI. “We’ve met,” I told CP. It was a few years ago when Rock Ed Philippines came to Cebu. He was then finishing his doctoral studies in Geology and Environmental Science in Stanford University. At that time, I was also finishing my sixth bottle of beer with astroboy Lourd Ernest de Veyra and Gang of Rock Ed. Gang recalled how rock icon Bono of U2 smelled during a photo op. But let’s go back to Maya and CP.

“I was just mugged in Geneva,” said Maya, and showed us a few bruises on her elbow. Some guy sprang out from the bushes and grasped at her face. When she tried resisting, the attacker pushed him to the ground. She lost consciousness for a few seconds only to realize the attacker took her camera and bag. “Imagine, in a place like Geneva?” “Anyway,” she said, “let’s go back to Ticao and Gubat.” The World Bank is funding a project that will look at climate change in the eye with a rather holistic approach, and the best prototypes will be these two most vulnerable islands.

CP, on the other hand, had sent his invention, a mini-weather station, in these two islands. He had trained two people to man these stations. “I can text the machine in Ticao and Gubat, and I will get a response right away,” he said, and showed me a text message that showed exactly that minute’s wind velocity, temperature, and even amount of rainfall in Ticao. That, or the local weatherman himself can send the text message.

“How much does it cost to set up this station,” I asked. Just about P40,000, said CP. Either the stations in the Marine Science Institute in UP Diliman or Typhoon Preparedness Center in Naga will send the Ticao and Gubat stations weather updates. The local weatherman, in turn, will spread the news to the local disaster coordinating councils. With the monitoring going that quick and the information traveling faster than the storm, lives would be saved. “This idea should be sold to the LGU’s,” I said.

At this point, I was also catching the eye of the storm, swirling my fork on a plateful of green linguini. I felt the earth’s crust crushing in my mouth as I took the buttered toast. In the next few hours, I’d be taking the journey to Ticao and Gubat. By then, perhaps, I’d get a lesson or two about these most vulnerable islands in the country. It was almost midnight when I got back to the hotel, feeling like a vulnerable island in the quiet night. I needed a wake-up call, I told the concierge.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Psycho | SunStar Cebu | April 16, 2010

Junior year in nursing school was probably my favorite part of college life. We had a whole semester of psychiatry subjects and an internship at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center Psychiatric Ward. I don’t want to brag, but it was in psychiatric nursing and the subsequent exposure to the mental ward where I earned my biggest grades. What can I say, my clinical instructor, she with the Mona Lisa smile, told me, “Indeed, it takes one to know one, Januar.”

She saw the quick bonding taking place between me and my patient, a manic-depressed case who thought he was Balweg, the rebel priest, but wailed Rod Stewart’s “I don’t wanna talk about it…” at the top of his lungs at the first hint of C-D minor during music therapy.

Quite a wild mix of delusions, and of all the loonies in that ward, this single most violent case (with two red precautionary stripes on his ward chart) was assigned to me. A week before my round, Balweg gave another intern a right uppercut, and the latter gave him a big wallop in retaliation. The student earned for himself a month-long suspension.

When it was my turn, the bipolar Philip Salvador behaved like he was my aide-de-camp, rushing into every bit of errand he was sent to do. Psychiatric theory says bipolar people have low self-esteem, and the best way to feed their ego fat is to overwhelm them with tasks and give them their due pat-in-the-back after. So that was what I did for the rebel priest, although I had to remind him politely in between his fits of Cordillera and Hot Legs World Tour that he was neither Balweg nor Rod Stewart just to put his feet back on the ground. “Yeah, right,” he once told me, “and you are Aga Muhlach.” It was a tempting delusion, and for one moment, my mental equilibrium was in a crucial tilt. But thank God for my better grasp at reality.

So my stint in that psychiatric shelter was a rewarding experience. I was about to type “loony bin,” but that would have been cruel. Those were feeble people who turned to the better part of their imagination for safety and got lost in some nowhere thicket in the mind.

But there was one curious case held in a special cell. He was neither violent nor spaced out. You could tell he was lucid each time he’d ask any student nurse for packs of cigarette before he allowed them the required interaction. The students took his word when he narrated in detail how he got there. Well and good, and the student brought to class transcriptions of their interactions for psychiatric analysis, but only to find out later that the guy gave them varying versions of his life story. They’ve been conned by a first-rate storyteller.

I found the case curious for many reasons. Why was he in a special cell in the first place, while the apparently more hostile Balweg was free to walk around? What could be the diagnosis for his mental state?

He was a psychopath. A quick definition by Wikipedia puts psychopathy this way, “a personality disorder characterized by an abnormal lack of empathy combined with strongly amoral conduct, masked by an ability to appear outwardly normal.”

In a world gone grotesquely mosaic, hideous psychopaths dangerously roam like chameleons, shifting skin colors according to the day’s music. But here’s how to put that rather bluntly. Right here, right now, a little juggling of the news will tell you whose mental state fits the psychopath mold and, therefore, should be in a special cell because, of all the loonies at large, they are the most stealthy and dangerous. Back then, at least, the bipolar Stewart, unlike today’s hardcore psychopaths, had the temerity to apologize in a song, “I was only joking, my dear…”

Saturday, April 10, 2010

1997 | Sun.Star Cebu | April 9. 2010

I WAS still in school when citizen Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo joined politics as a senator. She ranked 13th in her first election and, under the Constitution, failing to make it in the first twelve, she’d have a three-year term. Determined to stay, she tried another shot at the Senate in 1995. That time, she used a photograph that made her look like Nora Aunor in her campaign posters.

I remember that one radio interview where she gloated over her Nora-look, “Eh, nagustuhan naman ng mga tao.” True, indeed, at that time, Noranians were probably an unbeatable fleet of 16 million all over the country. That was how much votes Arroyo hauled, making her top the senatorial race.

The glamour pose for a campaign poster was a fresh idea then—in the pre-Photoshop age of Philippine politics. You could tell how traditional politics was with the graininess of posters. You couldn’t even call them “pixels,” they were merely distortions on the theme of reality.

Around this time, someone else was trying to sneak his way into the public sphere. It was Manny Villar, in a binge of media ad placements for his real estate business. The ads, curiously, had to have side stories featuring the spectacular tale of his life. Little did people know then that it was just the beginning of a long and winding road that could lead him to the grand door along the Pasig River. Although, if you believe in surveys, he could have the river as a truer destiny. But let’s go back to Arroyo.

After two terms in the Senate, she gunned for the presidency. Believing she still had that Noranian aura in her, she thought, why not make another superstar pose as a ticket to MalacaƱang. Thinking there was no way to edge out Edgardo Angara, she along with an army of disgruntled hagibis bolted the Laban party.

A Free Press interview in 1997 asked her, “Given that you have a showbiz appeal, we can say that, unlike the presidential aspirants, you don’t find Vice-President Joseph Estrada much of a challenge?” Of, course, says Arroyo, he is a challenge, but said she believed in the intelligence of the electorate, “Otherwise, they wouldn’t find an economist as likable or even more likable than a movie star.” That was our president thirteen years ago as she poised herself quite doggedly for the presidency.

In that same interview, Free Press asked, “You mentioned four blocs that will more or less determine the president in 1998. The church, the media, the business sector and the pro-Ramos group. What exactly is that last group? Excluding President Ramos’s party and political allies, who or what group do you have in mind? Mrs. Aquino, for instance?”

To that Arroyo, replied, “She would be one. I also refer to the organizations made up of governors, mayors, village officials. The political parties are the overt players. The others are…

Funny you could have guessed “covert players,” but the Free Press interview supplied a friendlier phrase, “Behind the scenes?”

She continues, “I look at the next administration as part of a continuum that started with President Aquino, who restored democracy and instituted political reforms, and started some economic reforms as well. President Ramos sustained her political reforms and also brought about critical economic reforms, which made us Asia’s new tiger economy. The next administration should sustain the political reforms that would (shall we say), spread the development that we have already achieved…Spreading the benefits of economic development is an end in itself.”

To cut the story short, she wasn’t able to run for president the following year, but she became the first woman vice-president. It was then president Fidel Ramos who talked her out of her presidential ambition and fielded instead Jose de Venecia Jr. But Estrada became president.

What survey organizations do you usually rely on, the Free Press asked. Arroyo replied, “The Social Weather Station. Asian Research Organizations. Newspapers. A group called the International Research Organization.”

This was 1997, in the age of innocence.

(januarinbox@yahoo.com)

Monday, April 5, 2010

After Holy Week | Sun.Star Cebu | April 6, 2010

When politics become unbearably funny, there is a parallel world that tilts the balance for me. While the surveys showed a reassuring lead for my favorite candidate last Month, I was writing the final chapter for my grad school thesis—some crazy paper on Cebuano poetry. Not the sort that redefines molecular activity, but definitely a saner refuge from a world full of freestylers claiming to have swam in rubbish. In a world going lazy about reading, my paper nitpicks pocket universes tucked in the verses of our own poets. Again, it isn’t the sort that buys me a ticket to China or something.

I won’t bore you with details about my thesis, no. But picture that mindset when the Holy Week put to a halt a life given to feigning intelligence. I tried to avoid writing anything about faith and religion last week. Given my wayward ways, poetry and noodles more or less define my parameters.

But the solemn week caught me off-guard. Bombarded round-the-clock by biblical allusions on TV, a thought came up.

Given the ways His “good news” still spread like wildfire through the centuries, Jesus Christ must’ve been one with a superb PR savvy. Certainly, it mustn’t be the truthfulness and universality of what he preached alone that helped His Word survive the times. Christ must’ve understood the public sphere and how to weave His Word across it. This is probably why His favorite instruction was, “Spread the good news” at a time when word of mouth addressed effectively what will today be called the “mass media.” With an approval rating surging to an all-time spike, His fame was a threat contrasting against an empire losing its mystique. He was a PR threat, and each time He did His stunt with yet another bread-multiplying miracle, it hurt the ears of the establishment.

I have yet to know if He ever performed a miracle without the crowd. I’ll leave that to friends to tell you. When He multiplied bread and fish for the throng that came to listen to Him, He knew it was maximum exposure for his Word. By so doing, He did not only multiply grub, but He splintered his Word in exponential forms. Those guys will be scampering home carrying the most amusing story to tell their neighbors and friends.

He did not only know how to send the message out. He was a storyteller with a talent for symbols. When he rolled his sleeves and started washing the feet of his disciples, He knew exactly how the word will go about humility when it’ll be the disciples’ turn to tell their tale. His ways were never lavish and extravagant, and any marketing guy today understands what “mixed branding” is—and Christ was just one image and Word. I’m not even talking about “lifestyle” yet.

I don’t know if thinking along that line borders on being sacrilegious or what. Really, what could I do? I had a good sleep last week. I think Christ was thoroughly modern in His understanding of media and communications, which is, of course, not quite a stunning piece of information given the magnitude of His greatness and the centuries of free and massive publicity, the Bible being a timeless newspaper. I know, I know, I was just tempted to say what you already know.

In today’s politics, lifting a clueless child or embracing an elderly in the presence of reporters and photographers is usual staple. It’s playing Messiah at the hint of a photo opportunity. But it reminds me of a famous line in a classic Filipino film, perfectly gushed forth by an emphatic Nora Aunor, “Walang himala!” Not even billions in campaign expenditure can perform miracles for you. Happy Easter, everyone.