Yes, President Arroyo can speak in Bisaya!

One very positive note we received from many people about our interview with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) on our show, Straight from the Sky, at the Waterfront Hotel in Lahug, Cebu City is that she really is a multi-lingual person, preferring to speak in Cebuano or "Binisaya" even if we asked the question in English. That, of course, is totally understandable; after all, it is election season and a presidential or senatorial candidate looks for whatever advantage he or she may have to win votes, and what a huge advantage GMA had pulled, especially when our show was replayed on PTV-4, IBC-13 and RPN-9. So now the nation knows why GMA is strong in the Visayas and Mindanao, that’s because we can relate to her.

A case in point is vice presidential candidate Sen. Loren Legarda, who for many years has been identified as a Manilan, but is now going back to her past and is selling herself also as a Bisaya from Aklan. In fact, my good friend, Dr. Jose Dacudao, founder of our group, Save Our Languages Through Federalism (Solfed), texted me that when Sen. Legarda campaigned in Aklan, she was met by Solfed members who sang the National Anthem in Aklanon, which evoked tears among those with her, and Loren was visibly touched.

Indeed, this is also the same feeling Cebuanos get when they sing the National Anthem in Cebuano, especially my friends at the Cebu Rotary Club (Mother), simply because we can understand every word in the song. I submit that President Arroyo, when she spoke in Cebuano during my interview, no doubt triggered a sense of regionalism in many Cebuanos and more so with the Cebuano-speaking people in Mindanao. After all, it is time for our national leaders to accept the reality that the Philippines is a nation of diverse cultures.

When I asked Continental Airlines chief executive officer (CEO) Gordon Bethune, whom we met in Houston, Texas last December, how he turned around this twice bankrupt airline, he replied that recognizing cultural diversity was the key to his success. International flights take you to different countries and cultures, and once you integrate their culture into the airline’s culture, then you win instant recognition.

You can say that about the Catholic Church when it evangelized the Philippines. If they insisted on talking in Latin, how could they have converted the Filipinos to the faith? Today, the Catholic Church has helped preserve indigenous languages because the parish priest in Guiuan, Samar says the Mass in Waray, while they do their sermons in Ilonggo when you go to Mass in Iloilo or Bacolod, or in Ilocano when you are in Dingras.

Again, it is time to accept our cultural diversity… that speaking in our respective native tongues doesn’t make us lesser Filipinos. Just look, all our national dailies are in English, while all nationwide television shows are in Tagalog, a.k.a. Pilipino, but AM radio shows which folk in the provinces or far-flung areas listen to are in the vernacular. So when GMA was heard talking in Cebuano or Bisaya, she made the Bisaya very happy.

I don’t blame the Bisaya or Cebuano-speaking Filipinos for feeling this way. After all, the last Cebuano-speaking president was President Carlos P. Garcia, who hailed from Bohol. It is a fact that many people still believe that we ought to stick to the old political tradition where if a Cebuano is seeking the highest office, his vice presidential candidate must come from the north and vice-versa. Alas, that has not been happening in the last presidential elections since the demise of the conjugal Marcos dictatorship.

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I’m sure a lot of people read the paid advertisements of Tsuneishi Heavy Industries (THI) printed in all the local dailies and all the major national newspapers. If we’ve been writing at great length about the controversy between Negros Navigation Co. (Nenaco) and THI, now it is time for our readers to know why we are so passionate in defending this direct foreign investor.

First of all, a few years back when the Cebu Industrial Park Developers Inc. (CIPDI) opened for development and Tsuneishi opened up together with the K & A shipbreaking facility, they were threatened by self-proclaimed left-leaning environmentalists. K & A eventually shut down and laid off its workers.

After careful sleuthing, we found a document which linked these environmentalist to the labor organization of THI in Japan. Obviously, Tsuneishi’s moving its operations to Cebu wasn’t welcomed by their labor union, which had links with environmentalist groups here who then "harassed" the development of Balamban into an industrial base. I recall meeting Sen. Rodolfo Biazon in Balamban when the Senate looked into the operations in Balamban, and Biazon was surprised to see the waters in Cebu’s west coast pristine clear, contrary to what was reported.

A few years ago, Manong Max Soliven was invited to see and we helicoptered to Tsuneishi so he could see for himself the rapid economic development in Balamban, which was one of Cebu’s poorest towns and a hotbed of insurgency. I can never forget Manong Max climbing up the stairways of those 40,000 DWT vessels close to 10 stories high…he almost had a heart attack!

No doubt, THI is the largest shipbuilder in the Philippines with sales of over $115 million (P6.3 billion) in 2003, putting Cebu on the maritime map among the great shipbuilders of the world. In the last 10 years of its operation, THI has constructed close to 40 of the 52,000 DWT world-class ships, which are ISO 9002 and ISO 14001 certified by the international maritime accrediting body for quality standards. They make seven ships a year!

Hopefully, this September, THI will double its production capacity to 14 ships a year and begin building 70,000 DWT bulk carriers (Panamaxes) with its additional investment of P2 billion. That means stable jobs for the people in Balamban. Now back to the controversy. Simply put, Nenaco had its ships repaired by THI and failed to pay its dry-docking and ship repair bills. So why should Nenaco twist the story and portray that THI harassed them? If only Nenaco paid its debts, all this wouldn’t have happened!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talk show, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.