Of phantoms and real forms

The Cebu Daily News reported last Monday, August 29, that the Catholic Mass Media Awards or CAMMA of the Archdiocese of Cebu gave GMA-7 Cebu the Best Corporate Website award even if the website hasn’t yet been launched and thus not yet before the public.

This is very intriguing, to say the least, and needs an immediate, clear and satisfactory explanation by those concerned, otherwise the incident tarnishes the credibility not just of the CAMMA, but all of the awards it has given.

The CDN report quoted Albert Aballe, the editor of the website, as saying the GMA-7 Cebu website is still under construction and development and should not have been awarded. “It should not be awarded because we have not gone public yet. It’s still under construction.”

Aballe said GMA-7 Cebu will continue to keep its website “a secret” since it hasn’t yet been officially launched. Based on such statements, the question now arises: On what basis did the CAMMA decide to give the award to something that, officially at least, does not yet exist?

Asked for comment by CDN, Teoddie Dumam-ag, the CAMMA chairman, admitted that he himself never saw the website in question. That is, of course, understandable. Mr. Dumam-ag cannot be expected to see a website that is not yet available for access by the public.

The CAMMA has a cutoff date for all nominations, roughly about a month before the awards are given. If I understood Mr. Aballe correctly, the website has not yet been officially launched even to this day. So one can just imagine what its status was a month before the awards.

I have no doubt GMA-7, one of the most admired corporate entities in the country today, deserves every award it has ever earned. For it to say it shouldn’t have been awarded because of the aforementioned reasons puts it right up front as a highly-principled company worth emulating.

But the CAMMA needs to explain the incident, if only to put the matter to rest, and as a matter of reassurance to everyone concerned. For a lot of people have been unsettled by the CDN report. And naturally so. For how did the CAMMA do it — award something that is not there?

By the way, the CAMMA awards last Sunday was controversial in at least two other respects: 1) How will the awards given to two Cebu tabloids affect the cases and proposed ban filed against them? 2) Why were scantily-dressed dancers given a part in the awards program?

Cebu’s two tabloids — SunStar Superbalita and this paper’s sister publication Banat — also received several CAMMA awards Sunday night, all in recognition of excellence. But because the giver was the Cebu Archdiocese, the implied moral imprimatur could not be far behind.

Defense attorneys of the two tabloids in the pornography cases filed against them may find the Cebu Archdiocese’s CAMMA awards most useful in fending off the charges. Similarly, those who oppose the proposed ban can use the awards to argue their case.

The charges and proposed ban both deal with questions pertaining to ethics and morality. And I think the Cebu Archdiocese is a far more qualified arbiter on the subject than the Cebu Anti-Indecency Board and the Cebu Provincial Board.

As to the sexy dancers gyrating on stage during the CAMMA awards, I do not think Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma had anything to do with the program. But whoever was in charge clearly did not see that, as a Cebu Archdiocesan event, the sexiness was inappropriate before priests.

Not that priests are impervious to beauty. Or that they could not be open-minded. But of all the thousands of dances to choose from, I cannot see why the program organizer had to choose a sexy dance to entertain Palma and his guests.