Meeting Vicente Emano’s intransigence

“This revolution started online. We would post a video on Facebook that would be shared by 60,000 people on their walls within a few hours. I’ve always said that if you want to liberate a society just give them the Internet.”

Thus spoke Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian activist who played a key role in organizing Cairo’s Tahrir Square protests that brought down Hosni Mubarak. “I want to meet Mark Zuckerberg one day and thank him,” Ghonim told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Ghonim was later arrested and languished in a Cairo prison for 12 days.

Though it may be too early for them to thank Zuckerberg, Cagayan de Oro’s Mata Ná, CdO! netizens may soon find themselves, like Ghonim, thanking the creator of the social media network Facebook. “Mata Ná,” Cebuano Visayan for “Wake Up,” is, as one priest-member ideates it, “a call to wake up from our deep slumber of indifference.”

The popular Facebook page, in fact, was born in Europe under the shadow of Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. Its creator is a young Cagayan de Oro development communications professor now reading for his dissertation in Sociology at the University of Barcelona. Inspired by a group of young activists there known as the Indignados who brought their fight against Barcelona institutions from their own Facebook page, the creator started Mata Ná even before Tropical Storm “Sendong” made history in his native city of Cagayan de Oro. The group’s slogan was simple but truly rallying: We can make the change ourselves.

The context of Mata Ná’s creation cannot, in fact, be separated from an abusive local government that had devastated Cagayan de Oro long before Sendong. Sendong, as it is being said now, was just a symptom. Mayor Vicente Emano had long packed Cagayan River’s sandbars with a bogus informal settlement program despite warnings from concerned government agencies. What is probably “The Philippines’ Dirtiest City,” Cagayan de Oro’s streets are littered with garbage and sidewalk vendors at any time of the day.

That Sendong was just a symptom can best be seen in the fact that no disaster command center was set up by Emano after Sendong. Foreign and local private donors as well as national media covering the catastrophe are brought instead to a one-man command center where they are made to wait for hours to pay obeisance to the mayor. Fourteen years of Emano rule has given Cagayan de Oro a culture of silence and indifference. Even business and some church leaders keep mum on the blatant derelictions of one supposed to serve, lest an Emano vendetta come their way. Mata Ná provided the leaderless void.

Emano had probably thought that Sendong’s devastation can be buried in the city’s landfill as he had done with scores of unidentified dead bodies. He had no idea that his political career will end in the same landfill where he had dumped compact flash cards of the last election’s automated machines. He certainly had no idea that public indignation against his tyrannical regime would erupt in social media’s cyberspace.

Mata Ná, in fact, had all the makings of a citizens’ tool for checks and balances even before Sendong struck. “This is the Facebook group of concerned Kagay-anons who believe that Cagayan de Oro can be better than it is now. We believe that our leaders and the citizens should be active members of our city.

“Let’s make Cagayan de Oro better by learning from our past, understanding what’s happening now and making everyone believe and take action that we all can make a change.”

Prior to Sendong, Emano had already been a favorite caricature in Mata Ná. “Deep laughter can bring politicians down,” one Mata Ná member from the United States wrote. The Facebook page became a popular alternative to air gripes against a local regime that silences dissent. It is not uncommon for some media institutions in the city to be perceived as on the payroll of the mayor. One radio station recently opened by the son-in-law of Emano’s favored contractor only airs praises for the mayor. Perceived enemies of the mayor are given a tongue-lashing by a team of garrulous and uncouth broadcast commentators. Mata Ná netizens have already issued a call for a boycott of this radio station’s advertisers. At least one advertiser has withdrawn placements.

Mata Ná also regularly issues weather announcements culled from the Internet. “Take necessary precautions, guys. Our LGU does not care,” one netizen from Qatar advises, either defying or spoofing Emano who had claimed that he did not know Sendong was coming.

Facebook is also a source of graphic evidence. Sometime ago, fanatical city councilors denied that destructive hydraulic flush mining was going on in the city’s watershed. Mata Ná netizens went viral with helicopter photos of heavy silt tailings of hydraulic flush miners given permits by Emano, thanks to Air Force pilots with connections to Mata Ná. At least four of Emano’s city councilors have been found to have had ties to these mining companies. After the Mata Ná exposés, city councilors could no longer deny evidence now in the virtual hands of the public.

As I write this, students at UP Diliman’s School of Economics were discussing the post-Sendong discourses in Cagayan de Oro and how these were nuanced through Mata Ná. Their take: “Just think of the families who are still suffering from the ire of Sendong just because of a godfather who cuddled their aspirations to live in a decent abode but eventually became a prophet of doom.”

Local potentates can be intransigent for as long as they please. Citizens who have taken to Facebook as social media revolutionaries are as determined as long as the potentate falls from power. The world has changed. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, Emano’s days are numbered.

Mata Ná’s creator from Barcelona, who we shall protect anonymously at this point, will have his own sweet time to meet Mark Zuckerberg and thank him in person.

(Comments to antonmonta@gmail.com)