Pet Melliza

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER Iloilo Province’s Gov. Arthur Defensor Sr. is taking a risk by granting the request of Iloilo City to use the Iloilo Sports Complex (ISC) as staging area for the Dinagyang group competition. The province-owned ISC was damaged in 1998 and Defensor had to repair them, after he granted then  city Mayor Mansueto Malabor’s request to use it for the Dinagyang. Defensor is too glad to grant the same favor and for free for many reasons: the city and province are one. Their borders are mere administrative fiction. What benefits the Ilonggo in the province likewise benefits the Ilonggo in the city. Here is one leader who broadly sees the city and province as inseparable and intertwined. The brisk sales of goods in the city during the Dinagyang means more products from the province, more merry makers from the towns flocking into the city. It is a bustling season for the transport sector of both city and province. Provincial residents also own businesses in t...

  THE BEEKEEPER | By Pet Melliza | The seeming constitutional crisis brewing in the Philippines today hardly ricochets on an exclusive legal question. It is more correctly a political matter that refers to the process, clash or struggle among various factions or forces in society for control of political power. Those forces today in the Philippines are offshoots of the contracdiction between the factions of the ruling elite represented by PNoy and on the other hand, that of Gloria which has been edged out from the center of political gravity. We may also include among the forces vying for control of the national polity, at least by asserting their voice, as the masses which have borne the brunt of state ruthlessness during the inglorious reign of Gloria and now want justice served on her. That’s how events are unfolding today: the disgraced former president, bogus president to be more precise, trying to abscond from her unforgiveable sins against the people by mob...

With an area of some 8,000 ha., vegetable production still remains promising in Iloilo City. Lawyer Hans Sayno is proving that with his garden at his 4,000 square-meter backyard in Mandurriao district, Iloilo City. He stresses that he has gone organic to promote his health and that of his family. His farm has growing fruit and timber trees, talisay, mahogany, star apple, babana, guavas, jackfruit, lemon, papaya, bananas and rows of plots planted to different vegetables.  Hans has just harvested several plots of pechay that his kids sold near the church. He informed me of the sale which must have beenvery brisk because when I got there, his kids were no longer there. The back of the church is just a seven-minutes leisure walk from my place. It did not take an hour for the kids to sell out their pechay. Hans invited me to his backyard later that same morning of November 27, 2011, to scour (ay mail, "scrounge" is the better term) for pechay left overs to pick some harv...

By Pet Melliza/ The Beekeeper ILOILO CITY (26 November 2011) -- Transparency and public accountability are the last virtues that the administration of city Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog cherishes. These are the common observations of today's resource persons at Kape kag Isyu have of the current management of city hall. Lawyer Roming Gerochi and Ted Alvin Ong, two leaders of the NGO Freedom from Debt Coalition, note that while they raise legitimate issues Mabilog instead answer them by fielding barking dogs hitting them personally. "As public officials, Mayor Mabilog and the utility worker-turned-mouthpiece Jefrey Celiz should be reminded that they are publicly accountable," says Gerochi. "I know Jefrey Celiz back in our student days," recalls Ong. "From activist of the people, he mutated into activist of politicians particularly (Rep. Jerry) Trenas and Mayor Mabilog." Gerochi, Ong and another critic Manuel Mejorada came under personal attacks...

BY PET MELLIZA/ The Beekeeper   No rice? Eat camote.  That line is not an insult but a friendly message to Ilonggos who want good health and longevity.   Fastfood restaurants, commercially processed foods, cigarettes  and pollution exposes us to toxins like lead, formaldehyde and cadmium, among others that may cause cancer.   We can reduce that risk by adopting a healthy lifestyle and  advocating ecological balance. An example of the former is eating healthy foods like camote because they helps us detoxify or expel those poisons from our system.   ***   Western Visayas which comprises the provinces of Iloilo, Capiz, Aklan, Guimaras, Antique and Negros Occidental, nearly doubled its rice output for the first semester of this year over the same period last year.   From 430,000 metric tons in the first half of 2010, the region’s rice production jumped to 735,000 MT in the same period of 2011, reports Department of Agriculture (DA) Larry Naciona...

THE BEEKEEPER | By Pet Melliza | The Jaro Plaza is now a bazaar, a recreation center, an “ukay-ukay” market, a garden show, and hub of hawkers selling trinkets, toys, food -- everything including shabu – under the guise of a “trade fair”. That always happens, sicut erat et principio et in saecula saeculorum amen, as the Jaro district chapter of the Liga ng Barangay prepares for the Candelaria Fiesta come February 12. Supposedly, the fete is “religious”. Taxpayers shoulder the brunt of beautifying the public place, maintaining its cleanliness, planting ornamental plants and tree saplings the rest of the year. They will repeat the same ritual after the last merchant tears down its stall and packs-up because the place is once more in shambles and in need of a facelift. In 1996, a councilor named Jerry Trenas stood up at the podium at the session hall of the old (but real) Iloilo City Hall to castigate the administration of Mayor Mansueto Malabor for allowing the Jaro Plaza to be turne...

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER Ms. Sally Perez, then governor of Antique (2001-2010), declared the good news that the province would reap  at least P400 million in unpaid real property taxes from Semirara Coal Corporation. That never materialized. The giant company that raked billions of dollars from the coal of Semirara succeeded in skirting its obligation. The Austrian company Alpine Voechst, majority owner of the mine simply packed up with its billions and left a vast swath of human misery caused by its plunder of Antique’s coal. It sold its interests to DMMCI of the Consunji group of companies which merely continues the plunder until today without paying Antiquenos a single centavo in real property tax and business tax. It refuses to compensate for the destruction of the environment and the human misery it caused. Journalist Ely Suyum, writing for the local weekly News Express in the late ‘80s, noted that Semirara Island, Caluya town, Antique, was once comparable to Boracay ...

By Pet Melliza/ The Beekeeper I was among the millions of viewers worldwide amazed by the verdict of the Pacquiao – Marquez bout last November 13. One scored it a draw while the two others gave Pacquiao a two-point lead. From where were watching, Tib’s Rock Resto, Mandurriao we were downcast as Manny Pacquiao was when the scores were being announced. Pacquiao anticipated a loss, and so were we. Our cheers after the tally were half-baked. Pacquiao might have thrown more punches but missed most of them as his nemesis rolled with them. His hits were not clean, most of his punches and jabs just grazed the target. Marquez delivered cleaner and more solid punches, especially those on the rib cage of his opponent. We expected an early demolition of Marquez as predicted by Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach. We did not expect the Mexican to stand up that well against our hero who had demolished all his past 13 opponents at will. We are no experts but we scored it at Tib’s Rock (ov...