G SPOT
Pacman of the trees
By Virginia J. Pasalo
PACMAN is a game where the player increases its strength through power-ups to turn around to catch the ghosts. The player gets bonus points and extends his life after gobbling up enough ghosts. In the Philippines, it originally refers to a person who accumulates, at whatever cost, financial gain and influence, and no one laid claim to this title because it was bestowed rightfully, on just one man, Danding Cojuangco.
The acquisition of state lands by Danding Cojuangco was described fully under the sub-heading “Pacman’s Lands” in the book, “The Anti-Development State: The Political Economy of Permanent Crisis in the Philippines” written by Walden F. Bello and three other authors. The book said Cojuangco accumulated his wealth primarily from taking state-owned “underdeveloped lands”, exchanging his allegedly developed land to the ratio of 1 hectare to 10 hectares of virgin forests and prime lands under the Marcos administration.
Describing his acquisitions, the authors wrote it was in Negros where Cojuangco holds dominion over his lands. His scion originally found its wealth in agriculture and had grown to become one of the biggest landowners in Central Luzon. In Negros, Cojuangco reportedly owned several haciendas “encompassing eight municipalities that he began purchasing after 1975.” This they said led to the displacement of thousands of workers. One of his “preconditions“ to buy the farms was the mass eviction of labourers in the farms he was buying. And, quoting Alfred McCoy, “Cojuangco’s presence in Negros was clearly a product of state resources beyond the reach of even the wealthiest local partner.”
There is no love lost between Cojuangco and the workers. In an article, D’Jay Lazaro, wrote about San Miguel Corporation’s “Massacres’ Thousands of Workers” where more than 6,000 workers were fired from their jobs, even after former President Estrada’s ouster. Cojuangco likewise shut down the operation of SMC’s Coca- Cola plant in Calamba, also in Laguna, laying off more than 200 workers in the process. The Cojuangco-led management justified the closures and retrenchments by saying the company has been losing money. Clearly, Cojuangco did not care who it displaces, not even the thousands of workers who have worked the land for years. He was a Pacman to the core, it is as if, the game was created to honor him.
It is therefore wishful thinking to expect his son, Mark Cojuangco not to massacre thousands of trees, which to him is just a source of tissue paper, condemning the effort to save them as just “pag-ilo”, something to wipe the anus with. Massacre is the operative word for the Cojuangcos. At the time of the campaign to save the trees, “ilo” was the only word he knew. Now he learned a few words, from tutors who impressed on him that he needs to learn a few words, nice words, to run as governor of the province.
The closure of companies owned by Danding Cojuangco can be traced to the incompetence of his own son, Mark Cojuangco, who mismanaged them, and was replaced by Charlie “Atong” Ang in order to restore them to their profit levels. His own father did not trust him. It would be foolish for Pangasinan to hand the province to an incompetent person who cannot even construct a decent market place in the town where his cement operation deforested the mountains, and in the District controlled by the Cojuangco dynasty.
Mark Cojuangco wants to be governor of Pangasinan, capitalizing on the gains of his self-serving infrastructure projects in District 5, which massacred thousands of trees. Aside from this cruel legacy, he is pushing for the establishment of a nuclear plant. If other countries are exploring other energy sources and abandoning this type of energy source, why is Cojuangco pushing for it?
Agriculture teaches us about the laws of nature. One of the most valuable lessons is the fact that a sugarcane from Tarlac cannot bear sweet mangoes. It just isn’t possible, it works against nature, even if it were grafted. If we do not learn our lessons, we get a grotesque mango, a genetically modified organism (GMO), sweet to the bite, but exposing the province to fourth stage cancer.
(For your comments and reactions, please email to: punch.sunday@gmail.com)
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