Saturday, July 28, 2007 Tulabut: Messages By Noel G. Tulabut Palm Notes
IT'S not the only the mouth that speaks. The head, too.
That's how people from Candaba town talk. On a lazy Sunday morning, Mayor Jerry Pelayo, town councilors, and barangay leaders sent their messages across.
Not with pen and paper. Not with streamers and letters, nor with text messages. But through a stronger medium -- getting not just an ordinary haircut but becoming bald.
The event meant more than just getting precious hair off the heads of somebody whose strands were already diminishing, and probably painstaking to keep. It also means firmly standing on one belief, one conviction and in one voice.
Mayor Pelayo is such a charismatic leader. He is not only a local chief executive, but is a person very much knowledgeable in packaging himself and his objectives through effective media. He is a communicator, a medium, and at times he is also the medium himself. These are the vital elements of effective communications.
He now looks good. Not because he sports his bald-shaven cranium well, but because of what he wants to accomplish -- giving peace a chance.
Candaba was once a hotbed of insurgency and killings. That is over now, with Pelayo successfully promoting the town as a tourism site with its migratory birds, the buro (fermented rice), hito and dalag (catfish and mudfish) and watermelons.
Except for the visiting birds, Candaba's products are widely sold, exported, and patronized. Pelayo is also the man behind the success of the Friday market dubbed "Farm Fresh" inside Clark Freeport where Candaba's products are much awaited before each weekend.
"Seedlings not bullets, seedlings not guns; give peace a chance!" written in the vernacular (and in the shirts and streamers they displayed last Sunday), it means "Binhi, hindi bala". This may no longer be original as I recall former Kumander Dante's group a.k.a. Bernabe Buscayno shouted the same in the mid 1980s.
If not only for the wrong connotation, "Semilya, hindi bala" would have been better since Candaba is a fishing village. Just the same, Pelayo is still effective in this campaign.
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From this, the mayor urged all local government officials in the country to initiate moves that would bring total development in the countryside.
Pelayo also encouraged other officials to take an active role in handling the peace process in their respective areas of jurisdiction, as he believes they are well versed on the dynamics and terrain of their places and have first-hand information on the root causes of insurgency.
Pelayo cited that a long time ago, this once sleepy town was known as one of the hotbeds of rebellion in Central Luzon. But due to the persistent efforts of the local officials here, they were able to socio-economically transform Candaba into a first-class municipality.
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Pampanga third district Representative Dong Gonzales is also sending key messages. He will be shooting for legislative agenda that includes the top three very important initiatives in Congress.
These include a special law for the fast recovery of Bacolor, the creation of a separate district for San Fernando and the conversion of Mexico into a city.
Gonzales has been known to be a builder, himself being an engineer by profession. And he is banking so much on that legacy. Perhaps, this is one compelling reason why he made it to Congress in his very first attempt.
His proposals would make available more funds for local governments not only for services but also for meaningful projects like more roads, school buildings, funds for livelihood and others.
No less than P3 billion in fresh funds could be poured into the district alone on a yearly basis if the three legislative proposals materialize into laws.
He added that investments coming into the district from Metro Manila combined with economic spin-offs spilling over from Clark and Subic will create a high-energy economic area in Pampanga.
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Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) has done it again. And it's anther first in the telecom industry.
It now offers Korean SMS, an innovative service that ensures that all text messages passing through the Smart network in Korean characters, to be accurately sent and received by Koreans in the Philippines and in Korea.
"Smart serves not just Filipinos, but also foreign nationals residing in the country and the people they communicate with abroad. In 2006 alone, over three billion international connections were logged on the Smart network, which includes those made by foreign nationals," said Danilo J. Mojica, head of Smart's wireless consumer division.
The leading wireless services provider enjoys the largest share of the Philippine wireless market at about 58 percent with a network coverage that spans 99 percent of the country's population.
South Koreans in the Philippines also make up the largest community of overseas Koreans in Southeast Asia. As of February 2007, their count has been pegged at 92,608, roughly doubling since 2005.
