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Bacolod City, PhilippinesWednesday, April 11, 2012
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From the Center
with Rolly Espina
OPINIONS

Panaad, hope for
Negros Occidental

Rolly Espina

Often we overlook the things that promise us a bright future. These are normally things we have become familiar with. But they also augur hope for the future of the province and the people of Negros Occidental.

That’s what Panaad has become a beacon to all of us as to the future of our province.

The crowd that attended yesterday’s 19th Panaad festival fires hopes among people that the future is not as hopeless as most of us think. And the frenzied buying of local products at the local government units various display houses presages that more people can be expected to visit Panaad next year and the years thereafter.

Thus, Governor Alfredo Maranon, Jr., the low-profile visionary leader of the province, must have felt elated with the crowd that stampeded to the Panaad.

To him and local officials, our fervent prayers and hope that they continue to devote themselves to what is best for Negros Occidental and to focus their attention on how they could empower their co-provinces to be able to overcome the poverty that rips many of them still.

An engineer, Maranon is best equipped to craft plans and programs that are suited to the province. Most of these are implemented quietly and without much fanfare. Yet they are significant in the fact that they empower people to bail themselves out of the poverty that has through the years enslaved them.

Our prayers for the future of Negros Occidental. And Panaad is a harbinger of hope for the province.

***

Thus, for example, we may view with concern that fact that there are only an average of 5,000 foreign guests coming to Sipalay annually. But precisely that gradual buildup promises a more orderly and gradual development of the tourist industry instead of the much publicized and often destructive development of other areas of spectacular tour industry’s rise.

The gains may be smaller, but the buildup is gradual and more permanent. Not just a flash in the pan with the goodies of monetary gain at the cost of the destruction of the very things that bring in the tourists today.

Boracay’s fame was rapid. But what is happening today to that island-paradise presages the possibility that soon it could end up as an urban jungle.

Notice how developers have managed to destroy the ecology and the topography of the place. Soon, the very towering edifices that fired up the hopes and aspirations of Boracaynons may end up in a major catastrophe. Even now its sandy beaches are no longer as pristine as they used to be when we first visited the place several years back.

We were among the first term visitors to Boracay. That was still during the age of the Petromax and the kinke. Year after year, we visited the place with my late wife, Dr. Lourdes Espina, herself on Aklanon from Ibajay town.

Shortly before she died in 2000, we visited Boracay again. We both were appalled at the way of its development. And we vowed never to go back there. We opted to stay in Ibajay, just a stone’s throw away. Although its sandy beach was not as white as those of Boracay, still, it is just as breathtaking.

But that was the last time we visited the place. There just was not another time for us to go back to Ibajay.

And I still have to go back there. The pain of her early demise just refused to go away.

***

If Nazer Claro and his companions are willing to file their affidavit with the Sagay police that a group of RPA-ABB members strafed Claro’s house at Sitio Campo Santiago in Brgy. Seweahon, Sagay City last Good Friday, then Chief Inspector Gabreile Gutierrez, Sagay police chief, should immediately file the case with the Sagay RTC against the suspects.

The problem is that the substance of the incident had just been verbally reported to the police. But the police cannot just bank on hearsay information.

The group headed by Maning Verbo, barangay captain of Celestino Villacin fired in Cadiz City, reportedly accompanied by Kagawad Junun Labolbora and 14 armed RPA ABB members fired their guns several times at the Claro residence and strafed it.

Fortunately, no member of the Claro household was hurt reports said.

If true, the incident should immediately warrant a crackdown on the part of the police. In short, that puts into question that agreement which allows members of the rebel group to keep their firearms purportedly to protect themselves from reprisal by their erstwhile companions in the rebel movement, the NPA.

Allowing them to keep their firearms does not mean that the RPA-ABB can continue to harass and intimidate civilians.

But complainants must be able to stand up to their allegations, not just report them to the police. They must also allow the cops to be able to file the charges against those whom they accuse of having harassed them.*


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