Budget is a foundation of economic management of a country, and therefore, in the context of developing countries, it is primarily an issue of development. It is often pointed out that the Philippine budget institution is characterized by its high degree of politicization. Such politicization is said to be one of the major causes of corruption, opaque plutocratic policy-makings, and frequent delays in budget approval and implementation. Politicization in the budget process, in concrete, is brought about by budget allocations aiming at providing benefits only to some regionally bounded constituency, which are often collectively expressed as “pork-barrel”.
Showing posts with label Aquino Period. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aquino Period. Show all posts
Aug 29, 2013
Apr 27, 2013
Philippine Government Signs Pact With Muslim Rebels
MANILA — The government of the Philippines
signed an agreement on Monday with the country’s largest Muslim rebel
group that both sides say they hope will lessen the chronic violence and
poverty that have plagued the southern island of Mindanao.
May 30, 2012
Impeachment of Chief Justice Corona: The Vote of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile
On Article II of the Articles of Impeachment against
Hon. Chief Justice Renato C. Corona
In the entire course of this impeachment trial, I have faced many difficult challenges to my own and the Court's collective wisdom, our sense of justice and fairness, the delicate balancing act we must perform to ensure that we do not stray from the strictures of the Constitution, the law and our rules.
This trial began and unfolded against the backdrop of a highly charged and emotional atmosphere, acrimonious debate in and outside the confines of this Court, and a deep political fissure which threatened the stability of our democratic institutions.
But the impact of the many events that transpired since December 12 last year to this very day, taken altogether, cannot compare to the sense of heaviness that I feel at this very moment.
The culmination of this national drama is at hand, and the time has come for me to render judgment on the person before whom I took my Oath of Office as a Senator of the Republic...no less than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Renato C. Corona.
The Respondent Chief Justice and his family understandably feel deeply hurt, pained and aggrieved.
As a lawyer, I must confess that I was personally frustrated by the loose and hasty crafting and preparation that characterized the presentation of the charges contained in the Articles of Impeachment. It seemed that the case was being built up only after the charges were actually filed. The repeated recourse to this Court's compulsory processes to obtain evidence which normally should have formed the factual basis of the charges in the first place further burdened and, at times, taxed the patience of this Court.
We have witnessed with disdain the indiscriminate, deliberate and illegal machinations of some parties who have been less than forthright with this Court in presenting dubiously procured and misleading documents which were spread to the media obviously to influence this Court's and the public's opinion.
The letter of the Administrator of the Land Registration Authority which contained, as an attachment, a list of 45 properties supposedly owned by the Respondent Chief Justice, was fed to the media even before we could begin the actual trial of this case.
Even before the Hon. Ombudsman, Conchita Carpio Morales, was called to testify before this Court, her letter to the Chief Justice requiring him to explain in 72 hours an alleged aggregate amount of US$10M in several dollar accounts was leaked to the media right before the resumption of this trial last May 7.
We have sternly cautioned against unethical and unprofessional conduct, the penchant to engage in trial by publicity, to use the media to disseminate and advance so called "information" or "evidence", to provoke and disrespect this Court and its members, and to irresponsibly hurl disparaging insinuations and accusations.
We have tried to impress upon everyone who may be similarly motivated and inclined to test our will that this Court means serious business and would not succumb to nor allow such underhanded tactics and gimmickry to deter us from our task.
Prudence and justice dictate that in determining the guilt or innocence of the Chief Justice, we must try our best to confine ourselves to the pieces of testimonial and documentary evidence that have been presented to this Court, to pass upon their relevance, and to measure and weigh their value in the light of the charges before us.
After all the accusations levelled against the Chief Justice - eight (8) charges in all comprising the Articles of Impeachment - the Prosecution chose to present evidence only on three Articles (Articles II, III and VII), and abruptly rested its case.
I have always believed that of these three, the case for the Prosecution and the Defense will rise or fall on Article II, which is the subject of this vote.
This Court, at one point, had extensive discussions and differences of opinion, to be sure, regarding the charge contained in Paragraph 2.4 of Article II that the Chief Justice was "suspected and accused of having accumulated ill-gotten wealth, acquiring assets of high values and keeping bank accounts with huge deposits".
We ruled to disallow the introduction of evidence in support of Par. 2.4 which, to this day, I strongly maintain was an invalid charge, it being based on mere "suspicion", on so-called "reports", rather than on factual allegations.
The Defense and the Chief Justice himself somehow revived this issue of the nature of his assets by introducing evidence to prove that his income and assets were legitimate, and by testimony to show how he and his wife had saved and invested these savings in foreign currency over so many decades.
I wish to reiterate, for the record, that the Chief Justice does not stand accused of having amassed any ill-gotten wealth before this Impeachment Court.
Paragraph 2.2 of Article II of the Articles of Impeachment accuses the Respondent Chief Justice of failing to disclose to the public his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth as required by the Constitution.
I submit that the Chief Justice had justifiable and legal grounds to rely on the Supreme Court's procedural and policy guidelines governing such disclosures as embodied in a Resolution promulgated way back in 1989 when the Respondent was not yet a Member of the Supreme Court.
Under the said guidelines, the Clerk of Court of the Supreme Court, who is the repository of the SALN's submitted by all the Members of the Supreme Court, may furnish copies of the SALN's in his or her custody to any person upon request, and upon showing that there is a legitimate reason for the same.
The Constitution, in Article XI, Sec. 17, states that "in the case of the President, the Vice-President, the Members of the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Commissions and other constitutional offices, and offices of the armed forces with general or flag rank, the declaration shall be disclosed to the public in the manner provided by law".
R.A. 6713, known as the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, recognizes the public's right to information on the assets, liabilities, net worth, financial and business interests of public servants. But it likewise declares it unlawful for any person "to obtain or use the same for purposes contrary to morals or public policy or for any commercial purpose other than by news and communications media for dissemination to the general public".
Whether the said guidelines violate the letter and spirit of R.A. 6713 and the principle of public accountability is not for this Court to pass upon. I grant that the Chief Justice believed in good faith that after periodically filing his sworn Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth, the guidelines issued by the Supreme Court were sufficient to allow the Clerk of Court to comply with the Constitution and the law.
We cannot ignore the fact that the failure or refusal, particularly of public officials in high government positions, to provide the public or the media with copies of the SALN's, continues to be a raging issue to this day. In fact, some, if not most of the members of the Prosecution panel itself, the Members of the Supreme Court, members of Congress and other high officials of the government have been challenged by media organizations to make their SALN's available to the public and to the media.
Paragraph 2.3 of Article II further accuses the Respondent Chief Justice, based on "reports", of not including some properties in his declaration of his assets, liabilities, and net worth, in violation of the anti-graft and corrupt practices act.
The Prosecution, based on the list it procured from the LRA, claims that the Chief Justice owned and failed to fully disclose in his SALN 45 real estate assets. Based on the evidence, I am convinced that the Defense has presented credible evidence to refute this charge and to explain the exclusion in the Respondent Chief Justice's SALN's of certain properties which have either been sold or legally transferred, properties which are actually owned by his children and/or third parties, and properties which were never owned by the Respondent in the first place.
I am likewise convinced that the Defense has sufficiently established that there was no ill intention on the part of the Respondent to understate or misrepresent the value of his real properties.
Proceeding now to the most significant charge involving the non-disclosure of the Respondent Chief Justice's cash assets, the Ombudsman, at the instance of the Defense, testified with a presentation of a report from the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), showing 82 bank accounts allegedly belonging to the Respondent.
She further testified that based on her analysis of the report, aided by the Commission on Audit, the Chief Justice had cash assets in the examined bank accounts of anywhere from US$10 Million to US$ 12 Million.
Even if we grant the existence of these 82 accounts, the amount of deposits corresponding to each of these could not just easily, fairly or logically be summed up to arrive at exactly how much cash assets or deposits, in actuality and in totality, the Respondent Chief Justice had or has at any given point in time.
Hence, the Ombudsman's reference to a "transactional balance" of about US$12 Million should not mislead this Court in its appreciation of the facts.
Regrettably, both the Prosecution and the Defense panels decided not to present the concerned bank officers or the AMLC to ascertain the veracity of the data allegedly provided by the AMLC to the Office of the Ombudsman, despite the Respondent's submission to this Court of a written waiver to cause the opening of all his bank accounts. Laudable as this belated act on the part of the Respondent Chief Justice may be, it would have served him better if he had just presented bank documents as evidence to either confirm or refute the documents showing his bank transactions as presented by the Ombudsman. It has not escaped this Presiding Officer that initially, last May 22nd to be exact, before he walked out of the halls of this Court, the Chief Justice signed the said waiver in open court but made the release of the same conditional, that is, after all the 188 signatories to the Articles of Impeachment and Senator-Judge Franklin Drilon have signed a similar waiver. It was only during the hearing last May 25 that the Chief Justice decided to submit the waiver to the Court without any conditions.
Moreover, even as the Chief Justice had full access to his own bank accounts and all the opportunity to introduce evidence to disprove the data, findings and analysis presented by the Ombudsman or the report of the AMLC, the Defense did not introduce any such evidence.
As it is, the Impeachment Court could only rely on the documents supplied by the Ombudsman which show the Respondent's bank transactions but which do not show the actual bank balances of Respondent's bank accounts.
Instead, the Defense presented the Chief Justice himself as its last witness and pleaded for the Court's permission to allow the Respondent to deliver an "opening statement".
This Court, out of courtesy to the Chief Justice, decided to extend its understanding and to exercise liberality in granting the request.
The long narration, where the Chief Justice touched on a wide range of issues, assertions of facts, accusations, opinions and personal sentiments, which the Respondent said he found necessary to narrate in order to clear his and his family's name, was later adopted by the Defense as the direct testimony of the Respondent. The Prosecution, on the other hand, waived its right to cross-examine the Chief Justice, provided the Defense would not conduct any further direct examination.
Nevertheless, the Respondent Chief Justice testified and admitted, in answer to questions from a member of this Court, that he had around P80 Million in 3 Peso accounts and US$2.4 Million in 4 US Dollar accounts, but that he had purposely not declared these assets for 2 reasons: (1) That his Peso accounts represented "co-mingled funds", and (2) That he was not required to report or declare his foreign currency deposits in his SALN because they were absolutely confidential under R.A. 6426.
I disagree on both counts.
If, indeed, any of the Respondent's cash deposits were co-mingled with the funds belonging to other parties such as the Basa Guidote Enterprises, Inc. (BGEI) or his children, the Respondent was still duty bound to declare these deposits in his SALN, they being admittedly under his name.
The evidence is devoid of any indication that the Chief Justice was holding these funds in trust for or that they were actually beneficially owned by any one other than himself or his wife.
Assuming that any part of such deposits in truth belonged to third parties, the Respondent could have indicated such third-party funds as corresponding liabilities in his SALN. That would have reflected his real net worth.
With all due respect, I believe that the Respondent Chief Justice's reliance on the absolute confidentiality accorded to foreign currency deposits under Section 8 of Republic Act No. 6426 is grossly misplaced.
The Constitution, in Article XI, Sec. 17, provides that "A public officer or employee shall, upon assumption of office and as often as may be required by law, submit a declaration under oath of his assets, liabilities and net worth. x x x "
Are we now to say that this Constitutional command is limited to a public official's assets or deposits in local currency? If so, would we not be saying, in effect, that the Constitution allows something less than a full, honest and complete disclosure?
It bears noting that the prescribed form of the SALN quite simply requires public officers and employees to declare their assets, real and personal, the latter to include cash and bank deposits, bonds, etc. It does not require the public officer or employee to indicate whether or not he or she has foreign currency notes or deposits. Neither does it require details such as account numbers, account names, bank identity nor any branch address. All that it requires is a declaration of the total amount of the funds deposited in any bank account or accounts maintained by the public official or employee concerned.
Surely, the Chief Justice knows the equivalent value in local currency of his foreign currency deposits to be able to declare the same as part of his assets, especially since the aggregate amount of these foreign currency deposits, by his own account, amounts to US$2.4 Million.
The non-disclosure of these deposits, in both local and foreign currency, would naturally result in a corresponding distortion of the Chief Justice's real net worth.
Consistent with the position taken by this Court in the case filed by the Philippine Savings Bank before the Supreme Court last February, pursuant to which the Supreme Court issued a Temporary Restraining Order, I maintain that the Constitutional principle of public accountability overrides the absolute confidentiality of foreign currency deposits.
The provisions of R.A. 6426 cannot be interpreted as an exception to the unequivocal command and tenor of Article XI, Sec. 17, of the 1987 Constitution, and I regret that the Highest Magistrate of the land, no less, would think otherwise.
Section 8 of R.A. 6426 provides that except with the written permission of the depositor, "in no instance shall foreign currency deposits be examined, inquired or looked into by any person, government official, bureau or office whether judicial or administrative or legislative or any other entity whether public or private."
The so-called conflict of laws between R.A. Nos. 6713 and 6426 is more illusory than real. Section 8 of R.A. No. 6426 merely prohibits the examination, inquiry or looking into a foreign currency deposit account by an entity or person other than the depositor himself. But there is nothing in R.A. No. 6426 which prohibits the depositor from making a declaration on his own of such foreign currency funds, especially in this case where the Constitution mandates the depositor who is a public officer to declare all assets under oath.
Some have raised the question: Why should the Chief Justice be held accountable for an offense which many, if not most others in Government are guilty of, perhaps even more than he is? They say that hardly anyone declares his true net worth anyway.
Here lies what many have posited as a moral dilemma. I believe it is our duty to resolve this "dilemma" in favor of upholding the law and sound public policy. If we were to agree with the Respondent that he was correct in not disclosing the value of his foreign currency deposits because they are absolutely confidential, can we ever expect any SALN to be filed by public officials from hereon to be more accurate and true than they are today?
I am not oblivious to the possible political repercussions of the final verdict we are called upon to render today. I am deeply concerned that the people may just so easily ignore, forget, if not completely miss out, the hard lessons we all must learn from this episode, instead of grow and mature as citizens of a democratic nation.
Those whose intentions and motivations may be farthest from the lofty ideals of truth and justice are wont to feast upon this man's downfall should this Court render a guilty verdict.
I am equally aware of the tremendous pressure weighing heavily upon all the members of this Court as we had to come to a decision on this case, one way or the other.
But to render a just verdict according to my best lights and my own conscience is a sacred duty that I have sworn to perform.
As one who has been through many personal upheavals through all of my 88 years, I, too, have been judged, often unfairly and harshly. But I have constantly held that those who face the judgment of imperfect and fallible mortals like us have recourse to the judgment of history, and, ultimately, of God.
And so, with full trust that the Almighty will see us through the aftermath of this chapter in our nation's history, I vote to hold the Chief Justice, Renato C. Corona, GUILTY as charged under Article II, Par. 2.3, and that his deliberate act of excluding substantial assets from his sworn Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth constitutes a culpable violation of the Constitution.
Dec 27, 2011
On Floods, Deforestation, Logging
STATEMENT
Sound Environmental Governance Inc. (SEGI)
Landslides and floods are triggered when rain becomes excessive beyond a threshold limit; deforestation and logging being tagged the main cause after every massive flooding is without firm scientific basis.
We wish to express and share our views, through the undersigned members of the Board of Trustees, on the recent natural disaster caused by typhoon Sendong in the Northern parts of Mindanao. The focus is on the perceived relations amongst forests, deforestation and floods.
While we sympathize with the victims and families of the casualties in the massive flooding in Northern Mindanao particularly the Cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan, we are deeply concerned with the statements being made on the causes of such disaster and the impacts to the affected areas and people. As expected, deforestation is always the favorite whipping boy by uninformed officials and commentators during tragic disasters like this. Deforestation and logging are pin-pointed as the major causes of flooding.
We wish to explain the role of forests in relation to flooding and landslides. Contrary to popular belief, forests have only a limited influence on major downstream flooding, especially large-scale events. It is correct that on a local scale forests and forest soils are capable of reducing runoff, generally as the result of enhanced infiltration and storage capacities. But this holds true only for small-scale rainfall events, which are not responsible for severe flooding in downstream areas. During a major rainfall event, like those that resulted in massive flooding of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan Cities, especially after prolonged periods of preceding rainfall, the forest soil becomes saturated and water no longer filters into the soil but instead runs off along the soil surface. The sponge effects of forests have threshold levels. Ondoy in 2009 dumped one month’s worth of rainfall in just six hours, sending floods rampaging across Metro Manila and much of Luzon while Sendong dumped one month’s value of rain over a 24-hour period, but was more destructive.
Many studies have shown that most landslides and floods are triggered when rain becomes excessive beyond a threshold limit. For landslides this threshold varies with the slope gradient, depth of soil and antecedent soil moisture content. But the idea that deforestation caused flooding is deeply flawed. There is not a shred of scientific evidence to suggest that logging or deforestation play significant roles in massive floods. At the large scale, things like dams and drainage channels and how much water people consume are far more significant. Usually rainfall is fairly localised, but big floods tend to occur on those relatively rare occasions when it rains everywhere at the same time. And the myth is doing great damage to farmers and forest dwellers that need forests to survive.
The case of the floods in Albay, Camarines Sur, Samar, Agusan, Zamboanga, Davao Provinces and Palawan and the landslides in Leyte (not to forget the previous floods and landslides in Infanta and Real, Quezon; the unprecedented inundations in Marikina City and vicinities; and the killer landslides in Benguet) are the consequences of climate change manifested in prolonged and excessive rain rather than logging per se. This is why even as the Philippines is reeling from the effects of such natural disasters, other countries that supposedly have more forests such as Australia, Brazil, China and Thailand also suffered from destructive inundations.
We must remember that in the Ormoc floods in 1990 and 2004 floods and landslides in Quezon and Aurora, investigative assessments done by group of scientists both revealed that the disasters were triggered by excessive rains. Estimates done in these assessments also showed that even if the forests were intact, too much rains would have led just the same to floods and landslides. Further it was also reported (especially in Quezon) that more landslides occurred in areas with trees than in areas with grass and brushes consistent with the physical nature of landslides that the heavier the mass of soil the more predisposed to landslide an area becomes.
Thus, forests cannot stop flooding and landslides brought about by excessive rains over a wide area.
The government should focus on other major drivers of flooding brought about by heavy rains from typhoons. The absence or lack of a flood warning, high tide, darkness and a false sense of security proved disastrous for people of northern Mindanao when Tropical Storm “Sendong” came over the weekend. The impacts were high as climate change tends to increase the intensity and occurrence of typhoons while rapid urbanization and informal settlers in highly vulnerable areas have expanded through time. Scientific warnings, geohazard and vulnerability maps made by the DENR, unsustainable land use changes, and simulation models on the probability of a typhoon like Sendong occurring in the affected areas have been ignored. The catchment areas in the two cities and the waterways are not prepared to handle such excessive flow of water from the heavy rain. There is no integrated plan to adapt and mitigate the impacts of strong typhoons in Mindanao that are usually not frequented by such natural disasters. Identifying deforestation as the major culprit in flooding is most unfair and unscientific.
Logging was also identified as the major cause of deforestation and hence flooding. In the country, deforestation or the total loss of forests leading to denudation, is caused mainly by land conversion to other uses primarily agricultural use and the unsustainable utilization by poor forest dwellers, such as “kaingin”, “carabao-logging”, and the more modern “motorcycle-logging”. Scientific studies in legal and sustainable forest operations confirmed that timber harvesting need not destroy the natural production forests nor adversely affect the forest environment. An environment and biodiversity-friendly forest management system including its timber harvesting, silvicultural, and protection components can be designed and implemented.
We support the all out war declared by the government against illegal logging. However, the current ban on harvesting natural and residual forests under EO 23 does not lead to significant reduction in illegal logging but rather increased the illicit practice by organized syndicates and impoverished forest dwellers in areas formerly occupied and managed by legitimate tenure holders such as CBFMAs, IFMAs, SIFMAs, CADTs that have become open access with the ban. Despite the ban the illegally cut logs stocked in the upper watersheds of the waterways leading to Cagayan de Oro and Iligan cities were floated and pushed downstream by the floods causing more damage to the coastal settlement areas. Meantime, the good forest managers have been penalized to give way to the bad illegal loggers.
It is imperative that the remaining sustainable forest operations remain as sustainable forest management units rather than be banned from harvesting. Studies conducted in 1989 by the UP Los Baños Forestry Development Center (FDC) on the Status of Cancelled and Expired Timber License Agreements (TLAs) revealed negative results for log ban areas. Instead of keeping the forests in such areas intact because of the stop in logging/timber harvesting operations, forest destruction became worse and was enhanced as these areas were rendered open-access, unmanaged, and unguarded forests, making them free-for-all areas of unrestricted exploitation. Twenty-seven out of 32 cancelled and expired TLAs showed faster forest loss than during the time that the TLAs operated.
Finally, hundreds of lives may have been spared had settlements and structures not been located in danger zones – islets, river banks, near or above waterways, including dried up river beds and creeks.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- Decision-makers and scientists must interconnect. Focusing on deforestation and logging as the main culprits after every massive flooding in the country is irresponsible and without firm scientific basis.
- An independent 3rd party group composed of scientists, professional groups, and civil society should evaluate what happened in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan and other parts of Northern Mindanao and what future actions can be taken to prevent or mitigate the destructive impacts.
- Review the impacts of EO 23 as far as controlling illegal logging is concerned and the effects on legitimate tenure holders.
- The government must have accurate and updated data, maps and management information system on all aspects of natural disaster vulnerability, impact reduction and assessment. These should be supported by remote sensing technology and geographic information system capability.
- River basins and watersheds should be the integrated planning and management units for sustainable forest management, disaster risk reduction and climate change vulnerability. Ridge to reef approach is best.
- In the medium-term, the Sustainable Forest Management Act of 2011 already approved at the House of Representatives as consolidated HB 5485 should be given priority and enacted into law. SFM, within the context of river basins/watersheds and integrated ecosystem strategies, is the main framework of the proposed legislation. It also provides among other key features the sustainable utilization of forest products from natural forests to support the forest industry and upland development without jeopardy to the maintenance of the various ecosystem services from our forests. Forest management units will be managed principally by communities assisted by local government for economic-ecologic objectives including climate change.
- The LGUs should talk to people living in disaster vulnerable areas to move to safer grounds. In the absence of a Land-use law, the provincial councils should exercise their current authority to properly classify their geographic areas based on "best use" principle. But we badly need a land-use law with provision for funds to relocate residents in disaster-prone areas.
- Enforce and review Comprehensive Land Use Plans and remove settlements and structures in danger zones identified in geo-hazard maps.
Victor O. Ramos
Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Former DENR Secretary
Ricardo M. Umali
President and Member of the Board of Trustees
Former DENR USEC and Acting Secretary
Fulgencio S. Factoran Jr.
Member of the Board of Trustees
Former DENR Secretary
Horacio C. Ramos
Member of the Board of Trustees
Former DENR Secretary
Rene de Rueda
Member of the Board of Trustees
Former DENR Undersecretary
Jeremias Dolino
Member of the Board of Trustees
Former DENR Undersecretary
Rolando L. Metin
Member of the Board of Trustees
Former DENR Undersecretary
Abelardo Palad
Vice-President/Member of the Board of Trustees
Former Director of Land Management Bureau
Joel Muyco
Treasurer/Member of the Board of Trustees
Former Director of Mines and Geosciences Bureau
Wilfredo Pollisco
Member of the Board of Trustees
Former Director Protected Area and Wildlife Bureau
Gregorio Magdaraog
Member of the Board of Trustees
Former DENR Assistant Secretary
Luis Jacinto
Member of the Board of Trustees
Former Regional Executive Director
Donna Z. Gasgonia
Board Secretary
Former Secretary of National Anti-Poverty Commission
Lirio T. Abuyuan
Member of the Board of Trustees
Former DENR Assistant Secretary
Ebert Bautista
Auditor/ Member of the Board of Trustees
Former Director NFDO
RICARDO M. UMALIwww.sustec.org
President and CEO
Sustainable Ecosystems International Corp.
19-A Matimtiman St., Teacher's Village West
Diliman, Quezon City, Philipines
Tel (632) 929-4235, 436 - 3971 Fax (632) 436-3971
(The Sound Environmental Governance Inc. (SEGI) is a non-stock, non-profit, non-governmental organization registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The NGO is composed of former DENR officials or employees with recognized expertise or significant contribution in the fields of forestry, mining, lands, protected areas, ecosystems research, and environment including waste/emission management.
We are committed to promote advocacy on certain environment and natural resources issues and share them with all those concerned to improve the ENR sector and promote sound governance. We believe that our collective wealth of experience and expertise that span over a hundred years can stimulate action from the government, the private sector, civil society and all other actors in sustainable development.)
We had been warned of Cagayan River’s fury
I was born in Cagayan de Oro, as were my parents and most of my ancestors. The first of our forebears to settle here came in 1780.
This is the city of my roots. I thus know firsthand that Cagayan de Oro had never been in the typhoon path. The only aberration historically recorded was in January 1916, when my late father, who was born in 1903, experienced a severely flooded Cagayan de Misamis, as the town was then called.
In what I call the Great Flood of 1916, the Cagayan River overflowed its banks after three days of incessant rain. Many parts of the town had to be traversed by small boats. Historical documents say there was a typhoon that also ravaged the hinterlands bordering the montane plateaus beyond, known today as Bukidnon province.
I grew up with the Cagayan River (not Cagayan de Oro River; the “de Oro” is a recent appendage to the place named Cagayan and is not necessarily transferable to the more ancient river’s name).
The street that lined the bank was the main street of this town that was founded in 1626 by Higaunon headman Datu Salangsang and the Portuguese-born Recollect, Fray Agustin de San Pedro. In the Hispanic era up until the early American years, this street was known as Camino de la Iglesia because it led to the stone church built by the Augustinian Recollects in 1845.
Most of the old families of Cagayan de Misamis built their houses on this street, later renamed Calle Burgos. Except for one, the Reyes-Roa-Chaves house, all those huge and beautiful houses are now gone, looted and torched by the invading Japanese on May 2, 1941.
Stray shark
The Cagayan River was truly the center of my childhood. Among the family tales handed down to us was that of Dolores Margarita Corrales y Roa, a sister of my paternal grandmother, bleeding to death on June 10, 1878, after being bitten by a shark that had strayed into the river.
That should give us an idea how deep this great river was. In Spanish-era maps, it was marked as navigable.
It was here that the trading boats of rich Cagayan merchants—Tirso Neri y Roa and his cousin-wife Mercedes Roa, Ramon Chaves, and the wealthy bachelor Jose Roa y Casas (who became Emilio Aguinaldo’s first Filipino governor of Misamis in 1899)—docked and unloaded their goods to the almacenes, or stores stocked with imported goods that lined the Camino.
Ramon Chaves and his family lived on the second floor of a huge house; the ground floor was his almacen that bore the sign “La Fortuna de Ramon Chaves.”
It was on the riverbank that, in 1882, a Chinese junk unloaded its cargo of red bricks for the new house being built by Sia Ygua. The house is still standing at the former Calle del Mar that leads to the sea. It now bears a marker that the National Historical Commission installed in 2000, when Cagayan commemorated its participation in the Philippine-American War of 1900.
So indelible was the river’s influence on the culture of the town that the Roa clan, to which both my parents belonged, was branched into two—the “Roa sa tubig” (who lived riverside) and the “Roa sa ibabaw” (who lived on higher ground).
My father descended from the former, and from the latter came my maternal grandfather, Juan Roa, who became governor of an undivided Misamis.
Ateneo de Cagayan, today Xavier University, came from the former; its original campus on the Camino was the ancestral house donated to the first bishop, Santiago Hayes, SJ, by Zosimo Roa and his cousin-wife Conchita Roa Roa.
The time has come
Many times as a child, I witnessed the river swell after a heavy rain, but just enough not to spill into our property line. Over many periods, I saw its furious torrents on downcast days, but never cruel enough to engulf the community.
My father, however, always warned that the time would come when the river would unleash its rare fury, just as it did in 1916.
Little did we know that that time had come. There was no clear foreboding of what happened at about 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 17, yet the writing on the wall had been there.
In 1998, I came upon a study of Fernando P. Siringan of the University of the Philippines’ National Institute of Geological Sciences in Diliman. The study on the sedimentation patterns and dispersal at Macajalar Bay where this river empties showed aerial photographs that uncannily matched the old river beds that my father had indicated.
Because they were alluvial deposits—silt and sand deposited by regular flooding and tidal patterns—they appeared of a different, lighter color on the black and white photographs compared to mainland soil.
What I found uncanny was how they matched with historical data. A layman could easily see where the old river course was. Clearly, this was the forerunner of today’s geohazard maps.
The alluvial plains—huge swaths of land that lie on the riverbanks—became a magnet for informal settlers over the last 20 years. And what started as a small delta has grown over the years from continuous siltation.
That is the island now known as Isla de Oro, heavily populated for the last 20 years but nothing but a bar of silt and sand.
Bitter lesson
It is not true, as Cagayan de Oro Mayor Vicente Emano now says, that he could not do anything because these lands had been settled since 50 years ago. That is plain and simple evasion. Fifty years ago, these places were still uninhabited.
What the river did was to simply reclaim its old course. That should have been predictable.
Cagayan de Oro is ignorant of typhoons. I myself do not know what it feels to be in a typhoon. Perhaps that is the reason for the complacency.
Today’s Cagayan de Oro would rather be agog over becoming a burgeoning metropolis with over a million people on weekends. That will continue to grow with the opening of Ayala Land’s Centrio mall, hotel, and condo tower complex, and the opening of Paseo del Rio mall, convention center and Riviera Hotel high-rise of the genteel Cagayan de Oro heiress, Rafaelita Pelaez Pelaez.
The bitter lesson lies in the misplaced and mismatched mix of rapid urban progress and inept local governance that has not kept up with the global standards of neomodern urban living. Despite its touted growth, Cagayan de Oro remains a “barriotic” city where the mayor tolerates a pedal-pushed and two-stroke public transport system that is the bane of its traffic-choked roads.
It is a lesson in not having foresight of priorities. The mayor claims he is propoor, and hence cannot remove the city’s primitive public transport system and the informal settlers who he sometimes allows to occupy one lane of concrete roads.
That is a strange policy: a city government that encourages informal-settler colonies to mushroom. The objective is clear: votes for the next elections.
Understanding the river
To know the Cagayan River is to understand its very name and the characteristics of the terrain on which it meanders.
The name “Cagayan” was acquired even before the coming of the Spaniards in 1622. As early as the 1500s, the river was already known as Cagayan in official documents.
One historian suggested geographical twinning: The river had exactly the same features as the Cagayan River of Luzon.
Indeed, during the early Hispanic years, the place was known as “Cagayan el chico” (little Cagayan), to distinguish it from El Rio Grande de Cagayan in northern Luzon. And like its geographical counterpart, the river chisels its way to the sea through scenic vertical limestone cliffs and forests.
When it enters the city, it becomes languid and quiet, but deep.
But upstream, the Cagayan River rambles down slope with an estimated 3,883 million cubic meters of runoff annually, making it one of the eight major river basin systems of Mindanao. And while it encompasses 1,521 square kilometers of mountainous terrain, it occupies only 86 sq km of level area.
That is why it is also the city’s main tourism resource: Because it moves down slope at a fast velocity, its water creates white-foam rapids so suitable for white-water rafting—a natural trait not all rivers exhibit.
But there is one more thing to understand. The Cagayan River is an enormous river that has no headwaters, unlike the Pulangi or the Rio Grande de Mindanao. It actually serves as drainage for five other rivers, all large tributaries, up in the Bukidnon mountains. All these rivers are themselves catch basins of rainwater.
Environment Secretary Ramon Paje is right. And this old piece of public information is certainly not Greek to many of us. It is incredible that the city’s local leaders have not pored over it. This is a serious sin of omission.
Clear warnings
On Dec. 15, I was already tuned in to public warnings aired by weathermen of the incoming Tropical Storm “Sendong” (international name: Washi).
That evening, public storm signals were already issued. Misamis Oriental would be under Signal No. 2. And as always, there were repeated bulletins of the approximate time the storm would make landfall in the eastern Mindanao coast.
But Mayor Emano now says he did not know about the storm. How could that be?
True enough, as weathermen had announced, Dec. 16 started with downcast skies. Slow and constant rains soon appeared, continuing for the rest of the day. Sendong was scheduled to hit Cagayan de Oro very late at night.
I must admit that I was excited to experience my first big storm. By 10 to 11 that night, the wind began to howl. This went on until midnight and beyond. We were now in the eye of the storm.
But my excitement was brief. The rainfall did not appear to be of the cats-and-dogs variety; it came in steady trickles, dissipated, then resumed. It was uneventful for the rest of the night.
The local power company turned off the electricity. Sleeping in the dark, one could not help but listen to the continuous wind and the trend of the rainfall. Nothing exciting or earthshaking.
But the Cagayan River, a drainage river with a known massive runoff, is not to be judged that way.
Unknown to us, the rainfall over at the Bukidnon side was greater. That rainfall had to naturally settle in its catch basin, and what a mammoth basin it turned out to be.
That early dawn of Dec. 17, Macajalar Bay was on high tide. In all low-lying areas and elsewhere in the city, people were asleep in the dark. The combination was lethal. The rest is now history.
Where was Emano?
Sendong was already a household name, as announced by Pagasa, as early as Dec. 15. Yet it is on record that the mayor never convened the City Disaster Risk Reduction Council. Surely there was ample time for it. But again he says he did not know of the warnings.
Where was Emano on the night Sendong hit Cagayan de Oro?
Nature itself was not without its dire warnings. In January 2009, the Cagayan River overflowed in torrential currents and also claimed lives. That catastrophe is too soon to forget.
And yet the city government allowed the informal settlers to mushroom. It had enough time to design a functioning relocation program, but its last attempt at what was touted as a propoor housing resettlement was so mired in controversy (alleged misappropriated funds, with none of the promised land titles ever issued) that it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
There is one life-and-death aspect that the city government has procrastinated on: The Cagayan River is now heavily silted.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources claims that its warnings to the city government fell on deaf ears. No serious dredging has ever been conducted despite a dredging machine that was acquired more than 10 years ago.
With dredging, the city government must now consider demolishing the entire Isla de Oro.
Under a recent prestige project where it built a tiny boulevard that it called the “Golden Mile,” the city government closed the river channel between the delta and the eastern bank. That was grossly wrong, for it narrowed further what was left of the river’s breadth.
Accountability
The city government under Emano, in power for the last 13 years, has much to answer for.
It will have to account for the death of more than 1,000 people, the disappearance of more than 1,000 others who may have been washed out to sea, perhaps never to be found by their grieving families, and the displacement of more than 10,000 families.
And it will have to answer for the dumping of the unclaimed bodies in the city’s garbage dump—an unconscionable act that is the height of insensitivity.
No one in Cagayan de Oro is without friends and family who perished. My family was spared, but I will now live with the memory of so many friends who did not survive the devastation.
I will remember the Yrastorza family—Joaquin, Maria Sagrario (Mercader), and their daughter Tish, who died embracing one another. I will remember my cousin Joann Dingcong, who never made it to the rooftop of her own house in Emily Homes. But where could she have gone? All the rooftops in that subdivision were underwater in seconds.
I will remember Nieves Pacana Arcadio, the daughter of a former Cagayan de Oro mayor. She never made it because she could not fit in an overhead window that her niece Jana had broken as their escape hatch after the floodwaters reached for their ceiling.
I will remember little Mica Samson. Her mother’s body has been found but Mica remains missing. Her grandmother, who loved her so much and took her to school each day, will forever be in grief.
And so will countless nameless others.
Rich and poor
The storm hit rich and poor alike. The daughter of a former Cabinet official was saved by a floating surfboard. Her neighbor, a snooty woman doctor, had to sit it out on her rooftop drenched in rain.
Precisely because both rich and poor were devastated, the more it becomes mandatory for heads to roll. And the investigation must focus on the mayor.
There are those who say that a proud city has been brought to its knees. It makes no difference to me.
This is home, albeit a home now in tatters. If I have loved her all my life, I will love her until my last breath.
(Editor’s Note: The author writes for the Inquirer’s Opinion section. He is a Mindanao anthropologist, historian, and educator, and is a member of the national advisory board of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.)
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