Carcar celebrates the Kabkaban festival!

What a country! The so-called "Marcos Loot" is something that the remaining Marcos siblings always deny as nothing more than a myth that never existed. However, thanks through the efforts of the late Haydee Yorac, it became a reality in the form of US$ 623 million taken from the Marcos Swiss numbered accounts.

We gathered that this later ballooned to a whooping US$ 718 million because of interest and apparently, is it now officially considered missing? Wow! Who looted this loot? Only in the Philippines that stolen money that is recovered by the government can still end up stolen! So okay, if it's not stolen, was it perhaps misused?

Supposedly, the Marcos Funds can only be used under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). From the reports coming from Budget Secretary Romulo Neri, P17.3 billion was earmarked for the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) for the year 2004; P9.7 billion of this fund came from the Marcos Fund. Who benefited from it?

For the sake of transparency, the DAR ought to explain to the Filipino people how they used or should I say, misused this money? This money took the honest officials of the government 19 years to recover from the Marcoses and they tell us that it took the government only a couple of years to spend all of it, without telling us who benefited most from this fund?

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Two major events are happening in Cebu aside from the holding of the ongoing Ad Congress that's the celebration of the Kabkaban Festival in the town of Carcar this coming Sunday Nov.20, 2005. This year's Kabkaban festivities is especially meaningful because last September, the Municipality of Carcar passed an ordinance creating the Carcar Cultural Heritage Conservation Council (CCHCC) which would look into the structures 50 years old and above as heritage monuments. More importantly, that it is the first time that the Carcar Heritage Conservation Council has full control of the Kabkaban Festival, just like what the Sinulog Foundation does for the holding of the Sinulog Festival.

Carcar is known as the place where Spanish and American influences converged through the architecture of the houses of its residents. So many houses in Carcar are of Spanish origin, like the Balay ng Tisa of the late Dr. Pio and Nyora Taring Valencia, now owned and well-maintained by grandson Manny Castro. But there are also many homes that are influenced by the Americans. In fact the famous Carcar Rotunda is not influenced by the Spanish; rather, it is very American.

An added feature for this year's Kabkaban Festivities is the coming of internationally renowned and award-winning painter Romulo Galicano, a native Carcaranon who brings with him 21 prominent artists from Cebu and Carcar. Galicano will donate an original oil painting, which the Conservation Society will auction (opening bid is P180,000) so that they would have the needed funds to start planning how to shape up Carcar in the future.

Hopefully when they're through, Carcar would become the next Vigan in this country and a big tourism destination.

The other major event happening in Cebu is the formal opening of the International Academy of Film and Television, operated by the Bigfoot Company. While Carcar preserves our past, the IAFT represents the future of Cebu where talented artists can go to school that's focused on the film making industry. This should give those people who love to collect pirated video films an idea of how much one single film cost to produce.

That Bigfoot has chosen Cebu for this one-of-a-kind project is laudable. Actually, this was supposed to be the purpose of the Film Center that Superma'am Imeldific built in Manila, which ended in a construction tragedy.

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The world finally saw the face of a suicide bomber when a few days ago, the BBC and CNN showed the confession of an Iraqi woman named Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi whose explosive belt strapped around her waist failed to detonate. She now confessed to Jordanian authorities that her husband and two other companions were the suicide team that detonated and killed 57 people in Amman, Jordan. While I was watching this on tv, I was wondering: This woman should be grieving for the loss of her husband, shouldn't she now be crying out of control? Is she perhaps happy that her husband is now in the hands of Allah, ravishing the promised 72 virgins prepared for those who die a martyr's death?

If you ask me, there is something terribly wrong with the way Muslim extremists are being taught by their Imams. When we die, we're nothing but a spirit being; therefore, we shouldn't expect to have sex in heaven! As for the widow, Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, allow me to wonder aloud what if her explosive belt detonated? What promises were made to her? To also have sex with 72 male virgins? These are sick people!

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