Britania Once More - Part Two

The welcome program over and done with, we moved on to the Layag Design Contest. As jurors, we sat under a small nipa shed at the brink of a 100-meter walkway that stood on stilts.

The sun penetrated the nipa roof and the wind caressed our sweaty skin. From afar, Britania’s 24 islands, islets, and sandbars flecked the turquoise water like half-submerged domes of Poseidon. Then suddenly, as the winds shifted, the boats emerged from nowhere. In groups of five, they cruised toward us in boldly painted sails that broke the monotony of a monochromatic sea. To make sure we wouldn’t miss their assigned letter as basis for judging, boatmen tamed the wind and maneuvered their sails, the better to charm us with their creation’s best angle.



The sun grew fiercer and the shed’s shadow began to grow longer on the water. As my stomach growled, I could only hope that Dir. Bulabog didn’t notice. The boatmen began taking their time like we had the whole day to spare. Good thing Dir. Bulabog instructed the guy holding the megaphone to tell the boatmen to move it faster. By the time the Layag Design Contest was through, we were ready to eat the pencil we used for rating the participants.

At my back and reading from a list, a familiar voice was saying who would ride which boat. Her enunciation was excellent and her English, good. The huskiness of her voice was familiar, like that of her father who’s my good friend. When I turned to look at her, she smiled and said, “I told Papa you’re coming.” San Agustin, specifically Britania, could not get a better tour guide than Ms. Baby Darunday-Ladanan!

Together with other judges, I climbed down a stair connected by a wooden plank to the outrigger boat that would bring us to Buslon Island where lunch was served. I didn’t notice the boat was named Ademala, much less realize that it was an anagram of the Mayor’s family name. Hunger has a way of shutting off my brain!

Britania Once More - Part One

When Ms. Lala Ambray, Provincial Tourism Officer, fetched me at half past 7:00 o’clock, I was already in my faux tourist get-up. It was a beautiful June 16 Wednesday morning, the sky was spotless, and we were headed for San Agustin, Surigao del Sur for the launching of Britania Island Tour Package.

The invite said, "be our guest and critic (sic) who shall evaluate/assess the whole tour product and its features for possible modification and refinement." We would also sit as jurors of the "Layag Design Contest," a corollary activity of the launch.

We reached San Agustin’s Town Square before 9 o’clock. Two years ago we would have been half-way still. But now that the highway had been fully concreted, travel time is cut in half and not to mention, many times more comfortable.

We walked toward the sea, to the lighthouse that looked like a three-tiered cake for its conical shape. Visitors from all over Surigao del Sur and Caraga Region, apparently done with breakfast, were now chatting, milling about, and blowing smokes. We stopped midway to look at the dead fountain’s focal point---a snaking swordfish in heavy paint! Does water spew forth from its sharp-toothed mouth?

Somebody smiled and we realized it was the amiable first lady of San Agustin, Ms. Mercy Alameda. Beso-beso. She then introduced us to the regional directors of NEDA and DILG and other visitors before leading us to the table weighed down by fruits and some edibles. We politely declined as we were still full.



It was past 10 o’clock when the Municipal Tourism Officer briefed us on the day’s activity. From San Agustin we had to proceed to Salvacion where all vehicles would be parked and everybody must take either a tricycle or a motorcycle to Britania. This way, she said, we’d get first hand experience on how it is to be a tourist in Britania. Well…

After about 10 minutes, we reached Salvacion Junction where the newly-built Tourist’s Information Center gleamed and smelled of fresh paint. (Lala Ambray commented on the placement of apostrophe; I let it pass, the activity being not about punctuation.) Too eager to greet us in their rehearsed lines and smiles, the reception staff made us write, among other things, our name on a logbook. In exchange we got a shell-laden, hand-painted “Welcome to Britania” lei and a fringed buri hat.



Tricycles and motorcycles vroomed to life after visitors mounted them. DILG Provincial Director Bulabog made me ride a motorcycle driven by the barangay captain of Salvacion. Good choice as he was a driver skilled at maneuvering his red-and-black Honda away from craters, puddles and rocks that littered the unpaved, narrow road. And most importantly, he knew his facts: From the highway, it’s 2.8 kilometers to Britania; the proposed road (not the private road currently being used) leading to Britania had been converted from a barangay to a national road, which means it may be completed sooner than usual.

Expectedly the road was better than when I last visited it, which was the Monday after Easter this year. However, despite our suggestion made weeks before the launch, there were no signages to guide tourists like me who have no sense of direction. (Although we saw one tarp on our way home, tourists would easily miss it as it was not conspicuously placed.) Thankfully, LGU-San Agustin had replaced the two rickety wooden bridges. But still it bothered me to see that garbage, mostly cellophanes and diapers, remained caught between the gnarled roots of mangroves that richly and beautifully line the dirt road. Unchecked, this may drive persnickety tourists away as it hints at the water quality of Britania. While this can easily be solved by a coastal clean-up, it’s really community education that will have a far-reaching effect.



When I reached Britania, the crowd was already thick at the area where the welcome program was to be held. Under a humongous blood-red umbrella were monoblock chairs and a long registration table. A rostrum stood beside a royal blue cloth that hung in front of a wall and pinned with words welcoming guests and visitors to Britania. As though in a concert, a group of men and women in blue, peach, and red floral outfit sang Kamayo ditties specially composed for the occasion.











As one important guest spoke after another, I couldn’t take my eyes off the rice cakes and the fresh young coconuts because my stomach was roiling from hunger as it was almost noon. And then finally, Gov. Johnny T. Pimentel, NEDA and DILG Regional Directors Cochingco and Bordeos unfurled the tarp just when the crowd turned restless from heat and hunger.

But lunch was still an island and a Layag Design Contest away!

*****

jejemon

according to urban dictionary, a jejemon is:

1) Usually seen around social networking sites such as Friendster and Multiply, jejemons are individuals with low IQs who spread around their idiocy on the web by tYpFing LyK diZS jejejeje, making all people viewing their profile raise their eyebrows out of annoyance. Normal people like you and me must take a Bachelor of Arts in Jejetyping in order to understand said individuals, as deciphering their text would cause a lot of frustration and hair pulling. CAUTION: THESE INDIVIDUALS ARE BREEDING! THEY CAN BE SEEN WRECKING GRAMMATICAL HAVOC ON FACEBOOK TOO!

2) Jejemons are not just confined to trying-hard Filipino gangsters and emos. A Jejemon can also include a variety of Latino-Hispanic fags who enjoy typing "jejejejeje" in a wider context, much to the disdain of their opponents in an internet MMORPG game such as Ragnarok and DOTA.

3) Basically anyone with a low tolerance in correct punctuation, syntax and grammar. Jejemons are usually hated or hunted down by Jejebusters or the grammar nazi to eradicate their grammatical ways.

****

for more definition of jejemon, go to this link: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jejemon

how tagon-ons voted

[Disclaimer: This armchair analysis centers on how Tagon-ons voted in the Sangguniang Bayan race. However I delimit it to the Top 10 SB candidates, using results from the randomly selected 13 of the 24 barangays. To get the voting pattern, I gave one point to a candidate if he landed anywhere from 1st to 8th place in any of the 13 barangays.

There’s nothing scientific about this discussion. No winning candidate was interviewed. All information was gathered from unverified secondary sources.]



The recent elections in Tago partook of a money contest where candidates played ATMs, dispensing crisp bills as though they’d go offline in the morrow. Others made it look like they were on relief operations, giving out noodles, detergent bars, rice, toothbrush, and reading glasses.

But before going any further, a definition of some terms: a) “Tili-tili” (literally a rain shower) means either cash or goods that the candidates give to voters to win votes; and b) “Planting rice” means a wholesale giving of tili-tili.

The cash “tili-tili” in the SB race ranged from P20-50. Because there was a shortage of small bills, other candidates went for three voters for P100. This tili-tili was stapled to the candidates’ campaign material and distributed by political leaders using the Comelec’s List of Registered Voters as guide.

To be effective, tili-tili should be uniform in amount, meaning, if a candidate gives P20 to the “intelligent” voters in Poblacion Tago, then voters in Layog or Anahaw Daan should also receive P20. If the candidate becomes selective, i.e., preferring to give bigger tili-tili in Poblacion than in the barrios, he courts being junked by offended voters outside of Tago. This happened to one candidate who gave P50 in the central part of Tago and P20 in the barangays; though he won, he didn’t land in the top three as earlier predicted.

Voters without personal attachment to candidates tend to vote for whoever gives them a bigger tili-tili. Okay, not all. But most! One voter who received four 20s but had only one slot to spare said he confronted his guilt by placing the tili-tili inside a bottle and picked the candidate who would complete his list of eight SB members.

Because candidates believe that there’s no substitute for victory, they engage in planting rice. But to work, planting rice requires two things: 1) enough cash to cover all registered voters; and 2) an organization of honest and loyal leaders who will distribute the tili-tili as intended by the candidates.

By its definition, planting rice is giving tili-tili to all registered voters. But even how well-oiled he is, a candidate can’t afford to go for 100 per cent exposure. And so he or his voodoo analysts study the result of the previous elections and ask: How much percentage of the total registered voters were the votes garnered by the top SB member? The politician's crude and unwritten formula is to multiply this percentage by the present number of registered voters and then multiply the result by two. The product becomes his target for planting rice operation.

How expensive was planting rice in Tago during the recent elections? A winning candidate spent a whopping P640,000.00 by “buying” 75% of the total registered voters (about 16,000) at P40 each. Vote conversion rate however was placed at 50% because for every two voters he “bought,” he got only one vote.

(Just so you get the whole picture, let me stress the obvious. The P640,000.00 was for tili-tili purposes alone and did not include expenses for caucuses and rallies, and mobilization for leaders.)

What’s the mechanics for planting rice? Using the crude formula cited above, the candidate decides how and where to generate these target votes by checking the voters in each barangay and decides who to include in his shop list, prioritizing his and his leaders’ relatives, friends, and acquaintances.

Planting rice has become a pervading practice in Tago that it now cuts across the hitherto sacrosanct stratum of the “rich” and the “intelligent.” Leaders of politicos have become brazen as to knock at the door, holding a bundle of tili-tili for the entire household. Gracia hatud bay! And as if to lessen the shamelessness and guilt of the act, the paymasters would say that the tili-tili is all part of their budget and that if the recipient wouldn’t accept it, then it would go to their pocket.

But a total price war it was not. Some SB candidates gave P30 and still bit the political dust while others gave P20 and emerged victorious. Another candidate, who has been claiming that he's no practitioner of tili-tili giving, also won. Perhaps for these winning candidates, a good organization was the clincher. Or simply that it was written in the stars that they would become legislators no matter what.

None of of the candidates who distributed consumables won. And interestingly, all incumbent candidates, while putting up a good fight, lost. Makes one wonder how people treat performance or lack of it as voting consideration!

Here’s how the top ten SB candidates of Tago figured in the political landscape of the 13 randomly selected barangays. The 1st and 2nd placer got 13/13, meaning they were consistently in the Top 8; the 2nd, 12/13; the 4th, 10/13; the 5th, 8/12, the 6th, 7th and 8th, 6/13; and the 9th and 10th, 4/13.

I can tell you how this voting behavior changes in May 2013. But first, show me the money!

may 2010 elections: tago's score card

Hours before Tagon-ons went out of their homes to try their hands at the PCOS machine for the May 2010 elections, heaven was already leaking like hell. Still they went to their designated polling places by braving the heavy rains and queued for at least two hours while standing on murky, knee-deep waters.

When rains continued without let-up and people began going home with nary a blot of indelible ink on their index finger, candidates panicked: These people had already received “tili-tili,” what if, because of the hassle that comes with voting, they would just decide to stay at home and not vote?

The Comelec Report

For Tago, COMELEC reported 35 clustered precincts, 21,254 registered voters and 16,638 who actually voted. All these data say is that for every 10 Tagon-on voters, about eight had cast their ballot. Given the inclement weather on May 10, the 78.28% voter turnout is quite high and all because the electorates were curious about the PCOS machine and the new way of voting.

The mayoral race posted the lowest ballot spoilage at 3.29%, trailed by the congressional race at 4.37%. The vice-gubernatorial race posted the highest ballot spoilage at 15.84% followed by the vice-mayoral race at 10.19%.

A little digression: Under automated elections, the PCOS machine rejects the ballot in whole when the bar code is corrupted, the ballot’s crumpled, or the ink has bled. It rejects the ballot in part when a voter over-votes, meaning, instead of voting for only one candidate---as in the case of Mayor---he votes for two or three candidates. Should this happen, only the vote cast for Mayor gets voided while the rest of the entries in the ballot, assuming they’re correct, will be counted.

Moving on now. Spoiled votes in the mayoral and vice-mayoral races amount to 547 and 1,695. This 1,145 disparity reveals that more people erred in shading the name of their vice mayor than their mayor. Or that they had over-voted. What is interesting is that the chance of accidentally over-voting in the vice mayoral race was slim as it contained only two names and written in one line because of the “landscape” orientation of the ballot. Compare this with the mayoral race which had three names and written in two lines.

Could it be that some electorates voted for mayor but not for vice mayor?

The Tagon-ons, the Ballot and the PCOS Machine

Most Tagon-ons, including moi, hadn’t attended a PCOS briefing that Comelec conducted in all barangays and so they didn’t know that automation involved only canvassing and transmission but not filling out of ballots. And when Comelec conducted a mock election to test the PCOS machine days before May 10, this fear spiraled because almost all the participants said the special marker had the tendency to bleed out of the provided “itlog” that preceded the names of the candidates, and that their ballots were repeatedly rejected before the PCOS machine finally swallowed it.

Candidates gave out “tili-tili” stapled to a sample ballot that contained their name and their corresponding “itlog” and number in bigger and bolder print. The official ballot however had the names, “itlog,” and number written in smaller font and fading ink. And if one wasn’t careful enough, the ink would really bleed and taint the other “itlog,” thus spoiling that portion of the ballot.

Negotiating the ballot was particularly hard for senior citizens, what with their failing eyesight and shaking hands. Next time around, it’s best for them to request for assistance to save them a lot of trouble.

There was a sense of hesitation and palpable fear every time a voter approached the PCOS machine to feed his ballot. It just didn’t help that a teacher was around, ready to assist. But when the machine ate the ballot, the voter’s face lit up as though he were a cell phone receiving a text message.

Cold and dark, the PCOS machine inspired techno fear, especially for voters living under the rocks. But some decided to confront this fear by opting to feed the ballots themselves despite racing hearts and unsteady hands. Their reward came in seeing the word “Congratulations” blinking on the small screen!

Lessons Learned

Tagon-ons have realized that with automation, they could indeed vote for their choices and never be discovered, unlike before where “contra-senyas” tended to unmask them. They have also discovered that it’s now easier to vote as they only have to shade the “itlog” rather than write the names on the ballot and that it’s easier to remember the candidates with their assigned numbers than by their names.

Tagon-ons have also realized that it’s now quicker to canvass votes than before because by midnight, the winners were already known.

what to do on a holiday?

bake some banana bread, that's what!



this is called "humble banana bread." but its humility centers on cost, not on taste. it is so easy to prepare that even a quadruple amputee can do it in 30 minutes flat!

gemmadel l. medrano rocks!!!

when i got back from my summer class last night, japan texted me that i had some stuff from our girl high school batchmate who was once a US navy. i sent our helper to get them and boy, was i surprised...and happy!

thanks loads, gem!

before you start eating your heart out, please tell me: what will i do with my clinique-for-men stuff given by another california-based friend?