No place for good people in gov’t
My heart immediately went out to the very personable, no-nonsense lady being interviewed on ANC. The lady and her story brought me back to the similar struggles of Winner Foundation, of which I am a member, for the survival of Arroceros Forest Park, in Manila, decades ago.
Without seeking it, Lucille Karen Malilong-Isberto, executive director of Nayong Pilipino Foundation, an autonomous government body under the Department of Tourism, found herself in the middle of a controversy.
The President, within whose power he could well do certain arbitrary things in an emergency, like the pandemic, approved a project to be undertaken by a private entity, supposedly at no cost to the government, to build temporary vaccination centers in the Nayong Pilipino property.
As a lawyer, economist and longtime advocate of the environment, Malilong-Isberto could not go along with anything that to her violates the law, in this case as it applies in the private use of government property and the care and management of the environment—the project involves cutting 500 trees.
Enrique Razon, the developer involved, immediately fired Duterte-like insults in reaction to her objection.
To this Malilong-Isberto reacted with dignity and class: ”Mr. Razon’s verbal abuse will not change the facts, the laws, or the science on environmental managements.”
Razon fired further, only to bury himself deeper. He said there were no trees, only tall weeds, but conceded in the next breath that there were and added, stretching logic to ludicrous lengths, that Malilong-Isberto’s group would rather save trees than people’s lives.
Indeed, there’s more than meets the eye in this issue, Malilong-Isberto explained. “The land has no septage or sewerage system, no water, no electricity connections, no toilets. Why should that be the ideal site for vaccination?”
‘Super sayang!’
I just heard—and thought it credible—that what we needed was not larger vaccination sites but more trained vaccinators, more vaccines and an efficient system of rolling them out. Dr. Tony Leachon, in fact, lamented that “at the slow rate we are vaccinating, so many vaccines will be expiring in June and July. Sayang! Super sayang!”
In any case, Malilong-Isberto has already resigned from the foundation, but not before saying her piece in public, which, in these times and under Duterte, must have taken far greater moral courage than merely resigning.
A TV interviewer asked her, “If prevailed upon, would you reconsider your resignation?” Her answer was a fast and firm, “No!” And that’s how government loses highly qualified and principled people.
We, ladies of the Winner Foundation, thank our lucky stars, we lived in another, safer time. In the heat of our struggles against City Hall, as caregivers to the Arroceros Park, at no cost to the government, but with no official personality, we didn’t have the option to resign. Giving up, however, never entered our naïve, impractical female minds.
Against all advice, we took Lito Atienza, the sitting mayor of Manila, to court. He apparently didn’t quite know what to do with us, so he mocked us, deploying elements from the old Tagalog movie plots of rich versus the poor.
As the poor, he cast, not himself, but the people of the Baseco compound, and incited them to harass us, tagging us as the perfumed ladies of Forbes Park, where none of us lived—if only he had done some research. His lies may have looked good for himself on placards, anyway.
He removed the park’s security guards, cut off our electricity and water supplies, amenities provided by City Hall in the time of Mayor Alfredo Lim. In the end, he locked us out of the park. We defied him and, younger then, were yet able to climb over the walls and continue taking care of the trees, especially after typhoons.
Mere shadow
Without the same environmental clearances as Malilong-Isberto is demanding in the present case, Atienza’s men cut down nearly a third of the forest, destroying its natural canopy. He also allowed digging in the heritage grounds, which yielded shards from the Ching Dynasty.
We ran to every government agency created precisely to protect heritage sites, watersheds and forests—Arroceros was all that. Unfortunately, all the heads of those agencies, although sympathetic to our cause, would not cross the appointing power. No one stood up to the mayor and did their job or resigned, as did Malilong-Isberto. The permits were issued—after the fact, a case of environmental murder.
We lost on every battleground, but we have continued fighting for what was left of the forest. It was never about winning, anyway. And I’m sure it’s the same with Malilong-Isberto.
It is an uphill task to do anything good for this nation
It is indeed an uphill task to do anything good for this nation. Arroceros Park has survived, but is now a mere shadow of its old self, and is continuing to lose more space and trees, this time to a walkway, as part of some dubious project by the national government—obviously the environment is not a priority.
Somehow we’re still able to count on foreign, religious, civic and media groups to help our cause. This month, for instance, the Australian embassy is donating 75 tree seedlings; a small ceremony is scheduled for May 22 in the park.