Barangay Business

I have been giving unsolicited advice to my colleague Nestor, who is running for kagawad in tomorrow’s barangay elections. He is one of 40 candidates vying for six seats in his neighborhood’s barangay council. Nestor is not content with simply winning a seat–which he is confident of doing–but he wants to top the election.

Posters have been appearing on posts and walls along the streets, and I must admit that most of the candidates for kagawad in my barangay are unfamiliar to me. A neighbor is running for re-election, and I’m voting for him of course: actually, his is the only name I’m putting down, because he, too, wants to top the election.

I’ve had occasion to participate in a case brought before our barangay council, when several of my neighbors filed a complaint against some un-neighborly character landing a helicopter in what used to be a vacant lot in the vicinity, particularly at unholy, early morning hours. I attended the hearing–if that is what you call barangay sessions–to lend moral support to the complainants and to add to the unified voice of protest. The hearing was held at the home of our barangay captain–since we don’t have a barangay hall, the residence of the captain, whoever he or she may be, serves as the office–and I was greatly impressed and pleased with the dispatch and efficiency of the proceedings. By the way, the helicopter landings stopped.

We really should take a more active part in barangay affairs. Historically the basic unit of social governance, the barangay can be most effective in handling and solving community problems like garbage and peace and order. When solved on the barangay level, problems do not escalate into municipal or even national crises, and our national "leaders" can then be left to their inquiries, investigations and other inanities.

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A word about this week’s cover. STARweek’s design consultant Dopy Doplon has ventured into a new field of art–cyber art, also called digital art. He has taken photographs and digitally enhanced, cut up and manipulated them to form a collage which he calls a photo illustration. Dopy has been working on this new process for over three years now, collaborating with master photographer Jaime Zobel de Ayala to create huge canvases of flowers and nature scenes that have won praise and admiration. Dopy has been working on a series of his own digital artworks, which will be exhibited later this year.