Bicolanos ask: What now for greater autonomy?

SORSOGON — Once again I joined Concom Chairman Jose V. Abueva, Atty. Leonardo de Vera of Equal Justice for All Movement in a symposium on “Charter change” for Bicol Greater Autonomy. The series of talks have been organized by Dante Jimenez, founding chairman of VACC, Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption. With his Mariners’ School in Legaspi City, these have been organized around schools. So far the group has been to Legaspi, Naga and Masbate. These are arduous trips. You wake up at 4 o’clock in the morning to catch the first flight out of Manila by Cebu Pacific to Legaspi from which you move on by car to reach the other provinces in the region. To go to Masbate for instance we had to take the car up to Pilar, the coastal town to pick up the boat for Masbate. Now it was Sorsogon’s turn.

 All this is to say that it is a poor region, the second among the pool of the most depressed regions in the Philippines. Poverty is pervasive among 5 million, more than 60 percent of its people barely eking a living. The irony is that Bicol is also one of the richest regions in resources. It has one of the most expensive electricity despite being the site of the Tiwi and the Bacon-Manito geothermal plants that feed its power first to the Luzon Power grid before it gets to the people of Bicol and this at exorbitant rates, with no taxes paid to the local government.

Bicol is a logical case for advocating federalism but some of its advocates are reticent about Charter change even if it is the only peaceful way to get what they are asking. Charter change has been so badly mangled that even those who believe in it are forced to deny its merits or be labeled ‘rebels’.

In its brochure, however, the group admits two articles need to be changed to achieve greater autonomy: Section 15, Article X that created autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao and the Cordilleras. The other section is Section 20, Article 10 that spells out the legislative powers of autonomous region. In seeking greater autonomy for their region, Bicolanos face a wall. It is the wall best described by Senator Aquilino Pimentel, the father of federalism who said “there would be nothing more to gain for greater autonomy as embodied in the local government code of the 1987 Constitution.”

That impossibility may be at the back of their minds but I noticed the reticence. Federalism is an unknown concept, often mistaken to be more radical than “Charter change”. Professor Abueva covered the subject comprehensively so when my turn came to speak, I was inspired by the moment. Why are we being made to speak to these people in language alien to them? That is what I said when I stood up. “It is you who have something to tell us why you want change in Bicol. It is you, more than any one of us who understand what it is to be so poor in the midst of so much wealth.”

 They applauded, finally seeing how incongruous it was for outsiders to speak about their poverty, something they know about and feel everyday. I had no doubt they had talked about Charter change among themselves. This was the meaning of the long and strange word — federalism — that we outsiders brought with us that afternoon in The Lewis College where the meeting was held. The college was put up by Loida Nicolas Lewis, a Bicolana who married a rich and wealthy American who has since passed away. It was her brother, Francisco M. Nicolas Jr., treasurer of the Board of Trustees who provided the venue for the conference and made the closing remarks.

What seemed at first to be an unpromising dialogue with some participants turning up so late became a frank and honest dialogue that surprised us all. Yes, they asked, we need Charter change but what will come out of all this talking? Or are we to keep talking about the intolerable conditions in Bicol region and do nothing about it?

The answer came from the feisty wife of the owner of the hotel where we had stayed. She gave me a clue about how far gone the dissatisfaction of Bicolanos were. She was puttering in the kitchen early in the morning when I took the chance to talk to her. She, too asked what would happen after we had left? Is that all there was to it? Just talking. Then without any prompting, she asked — what are we having elections for in 2010 if it means just electing the same trapos into office. Then after more harangue she said “boycott.” That is what she would do if we persist in having elections for the sake of having elections. This was the first time I heard the word boycott and I was incredulous that it should come from the kitchen of a small hotel in Sorsogon from a struggling woman preparing breakfast for the hotel’s guests.

We were just invited as resource speakers. The actions that will matter, that will bring change to Bicol will have to come from the Bicolanos themselves. The woman understood the dilemma more than most even in an obviously very intelligent audience that included the vice-governor. She would not be part of a charade. To her elections no matter how honestly conducted that will not substantially change their conditions simply is not the answer and since there was nothing she could do in the grandiose scheme of national politics, she would do what she can to show where the power of the ballot really belonged — in her kitchen — in this serene land of the ‘butanding” (the whale sharks of Donsol that have made Sorsogon famous).