Viewpoint
‘If it flies, it dies’
By Juan Mercado
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:38:00 01/14/2008
That’s the macho slogan of a hunters’ website. Some members of the Philippine National Shooting Team scrambled to close this web’s photo section. Why? As in Bacolod City’s Air Rifle Hunting website, photos show members flaunting near-extinct Philippine ducks and mallards blasted out of the sky. The “Red List of Threatened Birds of the World” includes these species.
Photo scrubbing intensified after GMA Network’s Jessica Soho aired a documentary Saturday, showing the “kill” included Philippine ducks found nowhere else in the world. Only 5,000 to 10,000 of these birds are left. These issues were stressed by earlier Inquirer columns: “Avian pit stops” (Sept 18), “Slaughter of the birds” (Dec. 13) and “Postmortem evidence” (Dec. 18).
An “unknown group” swiped those photos from a spoof website, team members Jade and Mike de Guzman, plus Tet Lara, claimed in a convoluted denial. In a “poor judgment call,” they posed with birds somebody else shot. They apologized for “bad taste in photos.”
“Denial ain’t a river in Egypt,” Mark Twain once snorted. Joseph Estrada learned that in his pathetic spin that crony Jaime Dichaves owned the P1.1-billion “Jose Velarde” bank account. So did TV host Willie Revillame. He paid a pittance, amounting to P8,000 in taxes, for a P30-million 2006 Ferrari he denied he owned.
But “mere possession of these species, evidenced by their very own pictures, on their very own websites, is punishable” under the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act, emailed Wild Bird Club of the Philippines’ Michael Lu. Republic Act 9147 mandates two-year jail terms and P300,000 fines for those who live by the slogan, “If it flies, it dies.”
“We fail to see how defiance of the law qualifies sports hunters as conservationists,” Lu said. “It’s time to step back and consider our common impact on the planet.”
“Inquirer’s column ‘Few closures’ (Jan. 3) caught my eye as I settled back for the flight to Manila. And when my plane landed, text messages flooded in on the article regarding our son Phillip,” emailed Jose Pestaño.
Phillip Pestaño was a 24-year-old ensign when he was shot aboard RPS Bacolod. Within 24 hours, the Navy ruled it as “suicide.” Nonsense, said the Senate after a painstaking investigation. The Ateneo de Manila University and Philippine Military Academy (PMA) graduate was murdered, Senate Report 800 declared. Pestaño bucked the loading of illegal lumber and “shabu” [“cfrack”] on the boat. “Kawawa ang bayan,” he told his parents, aware of threats.
A spineless Military Ombudsman finally started to ask Navy officials implicated to give their side -- 12 years after the murder. Pestaño’s PMA and Ateneo classmates, and groups abroad, are pressing for justice.
“I’m confident these protests will not go unnoticed with Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro,” the father wrote. “He is still on the crossroads as to whether or not they [the Department of National Defense] will pursue a high-level reinvestigation of Phillip’s case.”
Is Teodoro made of sterner stuff than administration poster boy? Then, he’d give long-denied justice to a straight-arrow officer whose bloodstained shoes many Navy officers are not fit to polish.
The director of the Asian Bond Market Forum in Hong Kong, Marshall Mays, commented on “Poisoned wells” (Jan. 3). Water in the Philippines, the column said, morphed from life-giver to serial killer due to massive pollution and weak governance. “I am worried by how easy it is for politicians to dip from the well, then dump their dregs in afterward,” Mays wrote. “This battle will be won or lost with the middle class. They are the ones fooled into thinking that lower water tariffs are good. And they are the ones most capable (if motivated) of forcing changes in policy. No city’s or country’s policies begin to work until the middle class is roused to action.”
Mays suggested: “Shift from the ADB’s emotive generalities to specific, near-term consequences for the man-in-the-street. A bomb in your neighbor’s yard is not as scary as a gun at your own head.”
Cebu City officials built themselves a P132- million council building, noted “Frugality’s shame” (Jan. 1) but two -- sometimes three -- sick kids were jammed into one bed in a decrepit pediatric charity ward, always short of medicine.
“We have the same situation in Iligan City hospital,” Winze Balangao wrote. But Makati City’s Tony Elicano wishes he learned to speak Cebuano. “Then, I could say, ‘Mga walanghiya,’” in Cebuano. “Comparison of Cebu City Medical Center conditions vs. the shameful monument to wanton megalomania in City Hall is evidence of incredibly distorted values,” Elicano added. “Aren’t we, Filipinos to blame? We continue to reelect these traditional politicos. Is this plain stupidity? Or are we just a nation of masochists?”
David “R” of the United States wrote: “Such ridiculous behavior is not unknown here in the US. Members of our Congress spent thousands of taxpayer dollars to add fireplaces to their offices. But in the US, there is decent medical care available to all. And public and private programs insure that there is no starvation. A politician that can spend money on a private bathroom, while children die from inadequate nutrition or inadequate medical care, displays a lack of humanity that defies belief.
“How Filipinos who have so much (not only politicians) can spend all their time and energy trying to acquire more material wealth than they can even use is scary. Sooner or later, Filipinos will realize that things must change. I hope I live long enough to see it.”
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Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com
More Inquirer columns
Previous columns:
‘Stitching sheets of loose sand’ – 11/21/07
Slaughter of the birds – 12/13/07
A nation of highwaymen – 12/11/07
Lowered voices – 12/04/07
Sweat or pontificate? – 11/29/07
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