Pet Melliza

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER Iloilo is home to the “litson manok Bisaya”, free ranged chicken marinated then roasted on barbeque stick. Without mentioning the restaurants offering them, they taste similarly when they are stuffed with tamarind leaves, lemon grass and even dried banana leaves, and broiled on slow charcoal heat.  They command a price, P250 apiece (averaging 800 grams) at the Iloilo City Central Market, or above P300 each in specialty restaurants. The litson manok Bisaya is a tourist attraction; not quite a few national private organizations and government agencies pick Iloilo as venue for conventions if only to give themselves chance to repair to our specialty restaurants to relish the dish and take out some as “pasalubong”. However, something awry is going on in the industry: the farmer who produces the free ranged poultry is at the receiving end. The bonanza of traders and restaurants cooking the manok Bisaya hardly trickles down to the very ...

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER Our leaders are just too fond of wishing for “foreign tourists” to swarm here. When the Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) mulled placing the Iloilo Airport in Cabatuan under the “open sky policy”, Iloilo City mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog was ecstatic. According to him, the open sky policy would usher in international flights and with it, economic boom as “foreign tourists” would come in droves. “Open sky policy” is allowing foreign airline companies to operate domestic flights in the Philippines, meaning, they would compete with local airlines in catering to Filipino travelers. (Lucio Tan of PAL has all the right to oppose that because of the eskewed policy of the home countries of these airlines to protect their own from external competitors.) When the DOTC broached the idea of making the Iloilo Airport accommodate international flights, Mabilog was ecstatic anew for the same reason. International flights ha...

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER The Philippine Sanhedrin is at it again: threatening with fire and brimstone advocates of the RH Bill or House Bill 4244 sponsored by Albay 1 st  District Rep. Edcel Lagman, and Senate Bill 2378 by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago. Lately, the Sanhedrin, also known as Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), is pressuring Ateno De Manila University to investigate its professors who earlier signed a pro-RH Bill manifesto. This is one instance where the shepherd – flock analogy that has been used in catechesis is useless. A good shepherd, according to the Carpenter from Nazareth, leads and protects, even dies for, his flock. However, in the RH Bill brouhaha, the Philippine shepherd, after running out of arguments, misleads the flock by recycling its old trick called fire-and-brimstone, eternal-fire-in-hell, excommunication and its other versions like ostracizing Catholic schools which support the RH Bill. The Sanhedrin in...

BY PET  MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER Any Juan, Pedro and Maria know that the people own them; everybody knows that except one Jed Patrick Mabilog. Mabilog, mayor of Iloilo City, stakes like the conquistador the two public places as his own to the exclusion of  two local dailies run by the publisher who Mabilog hates. The two dailies, one in English the other in Hiligaynon, hound Mabilog on corruption issues. The two papers are not allowed inside the City Hall. At the inauguration of the Esplanade August 18, Mabilog showed himself the big boss anew by ordering his security men to kick out the newsboys distributing complementary copies of the English daily which bannered the event led by Sen. Franklin Drilon and Sarangani Rep. Manny Pacquiao. Mayor Mabilog is not an urchin in a fit of tantrum against the publisher of the two dailies. He merely acts the role of an adult beating his chest proclaiming his boss-ship that gorillas are won’t to in Tarzan movies. H...

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER Saturday and Sunday, August 11 and 12, the taps of MIWD were dry. They flowed but the water they produced was not enough even to fill a bucket. MIWD is the acronym for Metro Iloilo Water District but given its dismal performance, it should be renamed Metro Iloilo Water-less District. We did not know what caused the snafu. For decades, water has been rationed in the barangays of Guzman and Jesena, both in Mandurriao, Iloilo City. Taps there flow only in the morning and evening. At times, water flow at noon but that is an exception rather than the rule. People never grumbled. Being accustomed to rationing, residents there stock water for drinking. For bathing and washing clothes, they have “tasuk” pumps to fill the gap. It is just ironic that in a “highly urbanized city” as defined by the Local Government Code, like Iloilo City, residents and guests are tormented by water shortage. Two weeks ago, water was abundant in Iloilo ci...

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER Some 1,600 barangay officials of Iloilo City converged at the Iloilo Sports  Complex (ISC) on August 11 to “declare war” citywide against dengue. The organizer, the president Liga ng mga Barangay in the city, of course had more creative plans in mind. It’s obvious that declaring war against dengue at this time is rather late. The dreaded viral disease has been afflicting city residents, and even claiming lives, since the start of 2012 and even earlier due to climate change that blurred the demarcation between the dry and wet seasons. But convening a crowd of 1,600 barangay officials in the guise of waging war against dengue is always timely now that May 2013 is looming. In effect, what transpired August 12 at the ISC was but a precursor of more political rallies to come whether or not they would be in the name of  Aedes aegyptii  or  Aedes albopictus,  two species of dengue-carrying mosquitoes. ...

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER The saga of Pavia Housing Scandal suggests that Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales must do more housecleaning. Pavia proposes that the more accurate term is “Iloilo City housing scandal in Pavia” because the town, a mere venue, has nothing to do with the mess. The project, implemented in 2001, targeted to build 413 units of low cost houses for city employees from the bond flotation. The indebtedness, originally P125 million ballooned to P137 million within the first term of Mayor Jerry Trenas. The scandal broke to the open in 2002 after subcontractors announced they were abandoning the work because the contractor ABE Builders, Inc. failed to pay them. The city council investigated and in 2003 rendered a report recommending among others, rescission of the contract and compelling the contractor to pay damages, and slap graft charges on certain city officials and the contractor. Among those mentioned by the committee headed by then Kgd. R...

By Pet Melliza/ The Beekeeper HB 4244 (The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development Act of 2011 or RH Bill has spawned debates that in turn engendered the jargon “pro-life” that the conservative wing of the Catholic hierarchy uses to rally its flock to fight it (there is also the progressive wing, you know). February 3, the  faction that usurped the title “the Church” mobilized mostly students of Catholic schools in major Philippine cities against the RH Bill that it calls “pro-abortion”. I am one of the many who itch to defy the likes of Fray Butod and Padre Damaso whose stand on population development throws the country back to antiquity. They misguide the flock, you and me, to the Dark Ages. In the Dark Ages, only a minority, the “clerics”, knew how to read and write. Together with the landed gentry or feudal lords, they monopolized knowledge. Their quack sense of religion explained why scientists and geniuses of the ...

By Pet Melliza/ The Beekeeper Though its new name is West Visayas College of Science and Technology (WVCST), many Ilonggos still prefer to call it by its old “ISAT” or simply “Trade”. ISAT stands for Iloilo School of Arts and Trade, a government school that has produced artisans and professional machinists. ISAT upgraded its curriculum to include bachelor in science courses. Assemblyman Salvador “Buddy” Britanico, in the last years of the Marcos dictatorship, worked to elevate it into what its name now suggests, that offers full college courses. Britanico is also credited for making Miag-ao town, 40 kilometers south of Iloilo City, main campus of the University of the Philippines in the Visayas (UPV) system. WVCST officialdom is not satisfied with its current status though. Its top brass lobbied with Rep. Raul Gonzalez, Jr. to transform it into a “polytechnic university” which offers wider range of collegiate disciplines. Gonzalez has filed a bill to that effe...