Pet Melliza

THE BEEKEEPER By Pet Melliza Name a single accomplishment funded exclusively by his administration in nine years that he was mayor. That was asked by columnist Peter Jimenea. I could point to none. Jerry Treñas, mayor from July 2001 through June 2010, is better known for authoring signs and billboards telling all things except what he actually did. You can find those billboards, tarpaulin streamers, street signs, and what-have-you –  confirming him as man of words, one gifted with the knack to sloganeer. “Uswag Iloilo!” (Progress Iloilo) was his common slogan. When typhoon “Frank” lashed Iloilo in June 2008 he littered the streets with “Bangon Iloilo, Masarangan Naton Ini!” (Rise Up Iloilo, We Can Make It!),  replete with his cute, round face grinning from ear-to-ear as if Iloilo just passed through a birthday party, not tragedy. Equally ubiquitous were traffic signs donated by business establishments ordering all: “No U-turn”, “Observe Traffic Rules”, “No Crossing”, “No L...

By Pet Melliza/ The Beekeeper People at the traffic management office of Iloilo City have a nice way of dealing with drivers redeeming their confiscated licenses: they require their victims to surrender their receipts, their sole proofs that they indeed atoned for their sins by paying for the fines. Columnist Peter Jimenea personally experienced it: he paid P200 commensurate to his “offense” as indicated in the temporary permit to operate (TPO) ticket issued by the apprehending traffic enforcer. Next, he was directed to another window to claim his driver’s license. He was asked to surrender the receipt before he could get the license. He refused since he was paying “under protest” as noted in the receipt as  a way of challenging the manner of apprehension in the regular court. (He did bring the traffic enforcer and his associate in court but the case was settled at the level of the public prosecutor.) There’s something awry at such arrangement; the drivers are made to...

By Pet Melliza Iloilo City, Philippines (24 September 2011) -- Today's edition of Kape kag Isyu has two officials of Panay Electric Company (PECO) as guests. Pearlie Domingo, executive assistant to the vice-president for operations of the power distributor, has a power-point presentation on energy saving tips. PECO is adjusting its rate by P3.40 per kilowatt/hour after the Energy Regulatory Commission granted the application of the Panay Energy Development Corporation (PEDC), owner of the newly built coal-fired power plant, for a an increase of the same amount.  The rate increase has triggered uproars from consumer groups who realized consumers have been deceived into accepting the controversial coal-fired power plant on the (false) promise that it would reduce power rates. Lower your power consumption by practicing energy-saving tips, according to Ms. Domingo. Dara Liboon, a legal officer of PECO, reports that PECO has established a Gawad Kalinga Village at San Isidro Jaro, ...

THE BEEKEPER By Pet Melliza We thought all the while that it is the Formosa Heavy Industries-Global Business Power that had the highest stake when the coal-fired power plant was still in the drawing board. Now, we realize that it is Uygunku (never mind the spelling) who also owns the only flour mill in Western Visayas, who is the biggest winner in the swindle of setting up the controversial power generator. Formosa turned out to be only the supplier of machinery. Uygunku is the biggest shareholder of the Panay Energy Development Corporation (PEDC) that owns the coal-fired power plant at Ingore, La Paz, Iloilo City. The plant is now in place and operating. In 2007, when its paid hacks (to include Padre Damaso whose sense of right and wrong is as revolting as his looks) were still wooing Ilonggos’ acceptance, they did three things: first, they promised heaven, second, they promised heaven and third, they promised heaven to all power consumers regardless of race, age, religion ...

Pet Melliza Leon and Alimodian towns stand as models in Iloilo in organic farming. Both have organized farmers’ groups committed to the earth-friendly farming system that considers chemicals as “last resort” if not irrelevant. Both have local officialdoms sympathetic to their cause. During the first incumbency of Gov. Arthur D. Defensor, Sr. (1991-2001), the Iloilo Provincial Agriculture Office, then under Apolinario Sotomil, had technicians dedicated to organic farming. They regularly set out to municipalities to train farmers in “integrated pest management” (IPM),  another concept for organic farming,  in growing vegetables and rice. “Chemical dependent farming is unsustainable,” Defensor would tell farmers. “In the long haul, whatever income you earned will just be wasted in medicines because chemicals destroy your health”. During that decade, all towns practically, have “field schools” or discussion groups organized by technicians. The farmers learned in these study...

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER It was not the “sikad” drivers who did him in when he fell from the political wayside in 2010. He was handily outraced in vice-mayoral for Iloilo City because he got ensnared in the ploy of outgoing Mayor Gerry Trenas who  succeeded in snatching the congressional seat in the same breath. We are referring to Tongtong Plagata, popular medical practitioner who handily won three straight terms for the city council and tried to move a notch higher in May 2010 but failed. Months before, he hugged the headlines after Trenas made him traffic tsar.  The mayor gave him marching orders of ridding national roads of “trisikad” (rickshaw trikes) to which he overzealously complied. Sikad were banned in national roads. A city ordinance limits their route only within city and barangay roads. However, that ordinance, to the sikad drivers, was a little bit too harsh. Traffic enforcers under the command of the overzealous traffic tsar, not only apprehen...

THE BEEKEEPER By Pet Melliza (with pictures below) Blurb:  Farmers are still buried in debt as the profits from the destructive farming practice flowed into the pockets of capitalists, compradors, and dealers of agri-chem products While warnings from the Mines and Geo-Science Bureau are up on the possibility of landslides in Iloilo, our very nice people at the Department of Agriculture (DA) are busy preaching the gospel of corn production that has turned farms into disasters-waiting-to-happen. In fact, mudslides did occur in San Joaquin, Miag-ao, Igbaras and Leon towns, all in Iloilo, in the wake of the heavy and continuous rains in August with at least two persons dead. Authorities trace landslides, like earthquakes, on tectonic plate movement, and as well, on environmental degradation like deforestation that exposes the surface to erosion. The DA’s program fits into the second factor as its agents pan the countryside preaching the gospel of corn production, with farmers i...