2017 RM Award: Kudos to Lilia de Lima and PETA founder Cecile Guidote Alvarez
THE Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) and Lilia de Lima, former director-general of Philippine Economic Zone Authority, are recipients of the prestigious 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Award – given to individuals or organizations in Asia manifesting “selfless service and transformative influence”as exemplified by the most beloved Philippine president who died in a plane crash in 1957.
Other awardees of Asia’s highest honor, given last Thursday in an awarding ceremony at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, are Japanese historian Yoshiaki Ishizawa, Sri Lankan teacher Gethsie Shanmugam, Singaporean businessman Tony Tay, and Indonesian indigenous people leader Abdon Nababan.
It isn’t often that two recipients of the premier award, dubbed Asia’s version of the Nobel Prize, both come from the Philippines. And I feel lucky and proud that both Lilia de Lima and PETA founder Cecile Guidote-Alvarez are my close friends and I used to sing for them in gatherings.
In choosing Lilia as an awardee, the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) said she was recognized for “her unstinting, sustained leadership in building a credible and efficient PEZA, proving that the honest, competent and dedicated work of public servants can, indeed, redound to real economic benefits to millions of Filipinos.”
Lilia’s stewardship of PEZA “enabled the rise of the Philippines as one of the region’s top investment destinations,” the RMAF said. “Among the radical policies that made this possible were a shift from governmentfinanced to private sector-led ecozone development; streamlined 24/7 PEZA operations to reliably service global locators; investor-friendly regulations, purposeful interagency partnerships, and strengthened relations with local governments in the ecozones. Defying conventional wisdom, she successfully encouraged existing locators to expand operations despite the volatilities of the global economy.”
Her PEZA achievements are spectacular indeed. “The number of PEZA ecozones increased by 2,000%, from the initial 16 she inherited to 343 by 2016; the number of registered enterprises rose from 331 to 3,756; investments reached PhP 3 trillion; and ecozone exports totaled US$ 629 billion. Also during de Lima’s tenure, PEZA remitted to the national treasury PhP 16.6 billion in corporate income taxes and dividends, and paid off the PhP 4.6 billion debt of its predecessor agency. What is most deeply gratifying to de Lima, who is acutely aware of the urgency of the problem of joblessness, is that PEZA has generated, in direct and indirect employment, some 6.3 million jobs for Filipinos,” the RMAF said.
On the other hand, PETA was chosen as Ramon Magsaysay awardee for its “bold, collective contributions in shaping theater arts as a force for social change.”
Shortly after this year’s batch of awardees was announced last July, PETA founder Cecile (wife of my good friend and esteemed former Senate colleague Heherson Alvarez) emailed me and her many friends her thoughts on the organization she established and which has conquered various challenges in the past 50 years to promote theater arts and culture for education and empowerment.
Here are excerpts from Cecile’s reflections: “It is a blessing that as a septuagenarian plus 3, now legally blind after battling cancer and rehabilitating a broken knee, I am still alive to witness the creative growth of PETA to its golden years honored with a Ramon Magsaysay Award 2017.
“I am elated with the news that validates the vision and mission I had expressed. PETA has passed the test of time validating the immense value of arts for public service. Like a mother, I am privileged to experience the greatest joy from the success of her children and even more thrilled with the zenith of achievement of her grandchildren and great grandchildren.
“PETA was born fifty years ago out of a conviction of dynamically applying theatre, the meeting ground of all the discipline of the arts, as a force for education and social transformation towards peace and sustainable development. It was a dream to build a National Theater Movement truthfully articulating our people’s thoughts, feelings, values and aspirations by drawing meaning and power from the lives, language, heritage and habitat and creative industry of our people.
“Theater is a mirror for our national identity,an armor against social ills, a memory bank to prevent a nation’s amnesia, an engine for employment and entrepreneurship, a conscience and a lighthouse for a pathway of moral recovery and international understanding. We are not poor, though the amount of dollars in our treasury pales in comparison with other developed countries. Nevertheless, the Philippines is rich considering the wealth of our natural resources and cultural diversity evident in our 110 indigenous communities.
“There is a gold mine of talents that must be dug, sensitively unleashed and harnessed as a creative army for change: from greed and indifference to sharing and caring to fight poverty and pollution, crime and corruption, drugs and disease, tyranny and terrorism, ignorance and injustice to secure a compassionate, cohesive, healthy, safe, progressive society. This is where I found meaning to serve. My goal was to initiate and develop a network of theater arts program for enriching curriculum for children, the Teen Theater League, collegeuniversity level and techniques for community development for empowerment and healing trauma. It is to throw away the notion that theater is for the elite and purely for entertainment, but must be available for the masses.Local theater productions are not inferior to foreign presentations which we showcased through the repertory professional standard of Kalinangan Ensemble through its 50 years of existence.
“Indeed, the road was rocky with obstructionism of naysayers, lack of finances, political intrigues, petty rivalries, and derision of a wisp of a girl of 23 daring to reach an impossible dream. But perseverance, deep faith in the value of the idea, courage of commitment, patriotism and volunteerism made possible, with God’s grace, the mission to be accomplished.”