“ONLY WHEN it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
So waxed romantic Mayor Crisostomo Garbo keynoting the 9th Charter Day celebration of Mabalacat City last Wednesday with the quote from Martin Luther King .
The interplay of light and darkness, an allegory for the eternal battle between good and evil, Garbo spun throughout his speech: of “creating a gleaming future for Mabalacat,” of the city itself as a “seed in the dark yearning for sunlight for it to grow and prosper.” And, albeit implied, the mayor’s “Bayung Mabalacat” as that yearned-for sunlight.
Delivered with the zeal of the proselytizer of old, as is his wont whenever he opened his lips, oh, how Garbo’s speech must have touched the Mabalaqueño to the very core of his being.
No Mabalaqueño myself though, I am the least touched. In fact, I was shocked, aghast at the future Garbo seeks to create for his people.
For all his biblical mouthing, Garbo – having penned his speech himself, as his press release proudly claimed – appeared to have little, if different, understanding of the meaning of “gleaming.” Else he would not have used it.
Here is the standard Webster dictionary definition of the word GLEAM: (noun) – a transient appearance of subdued or partly obscured light; (verb) – 1. to shine with or as if with subdued steady light or moderate brightness. 2. to appear briefly or faintly.
Transient, temporary, brief, impermanent, short, ephemeral – all implied in gleaming. As opposed to long-lasting, permanent, secured. Not the kind of future any rational being would ever wish for, much less to seek to create.
A gleaming future for the Mabalaqueño, a gleaming mayorship for Garbo. Yeah, be careful what you wish for, it may just come true.
“Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
King’s wit is skewed in its application to the celebration of Mabalacat cityhood. Every year, it sees less and less of the stars and more and more of the dark. Not so much a matter of fading stars in the night skies, as a case of faded eyesight.
Indeed, where in the celebrations was the very North Star of the Mabalacat cityhood struggle, in its “narrative of success and perseverance”?
That, which Garbo’s press release oversimplified: “By virtue of Republic Act 10164 signed by former President Benigno Aquino III, the town of Mabalacat was converted into a component city in June 2012.”
Three years ago, I already noticed an insidious attempt to expunge from the Mabalacat cityhood narrative the role, the key role, the now dearly lamented Cong Tarzan Lazatin played in its coming. Here’s my take on that, dated July 25, 2018:
Paternity suit
“FATHER OF Mabalacat cityhood.”
So declared the city council of once forever Mayor Marino “Boking” Morales in Resolution No. 392 it approved last Monday (July 23, 2018).
Even as it hailed – rightly – his “many years of dedicated public service as local chief executive,” the resolution topped Mayor Boking’s celebratory cake thus: “Foremost among his outstanding achievements is the passage into law of Republic 10164 in July 2012 which declared Mabalacat as component city of Pampanga.”
So – rightfully – earning the honor of being father of the city. The highly prolific Mayor Boking thereby adding yet another child, so to speak, in his multitude of 21, as of last count.
I don’t know if it was in the resolution’s whereases but the news story on this city fatherhood cited as backgrounder that:
On May 18, 2012, then President Benigno Aquino III approved House Bill 4736, an “Act Converting the Municipality of Mabalacat in the province of Pampanga into a Component City to be Known as Mabalacat City.
House Bill 4736 which became Republic Act 10164 was sponsored by Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., chairman of the Senate Committee on Local Government…
No fake news, but there obtained one major lapse in the cityhood narrative. (Come to think of it: Whenever the Marcos name crops up, some historical rewriting pops out. Even if so unwittingly.)
No denying that Marcos Junior did indeed a yeoman’s job at the Senate for the passage of RA 10164. But what good was that, what cityhood would even befit Mabalacat, without the spadework that was House Bill 2509 sponsored by then Pampanga 1st District Rep. Carmelo “Tarzan” Lazatin?
As we wrote here in July 2011 – a full year before the plebiscite that officially birthed Mabalacat City —
…And then there is consolidated House Bill 2509/4736 mandating cityhood for Mabalacat already nearing approval, so Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr., committee on local governments chair, himself is said to have declared.
Cong Tarzan, but of course, stands as the legitimate father of a Mabalacat City, having sown the very seed, incubated and nurtured the embryo which is soon a-borning.
Yes, Tarzan…
No, I don’t mean to question, much less disparage, Mayor Boking’s fatherhood of Mabalacat City, officialized as it is by city council Resolution No. 392.
It is just that Cong Tarzan deserves his own rightful place in the cityhood history.
Indeed, in the euphoria that followed the plebiscite, Mayor Boking himself was profuse in his acclamation of Cong Tarzan as “father of Mabalacat City.”
“By the grace of God and the sovereign will of the people, we are now a city” proclaimed tarpaulins all around Mabalacat at that time. Modesty be damned, I minted that phrase over café americano at Starbucks SM Clark with Mayor Boking and his most loyal lieutenant, double visionary Deng Pangilinan.
Delighted as he was with it, I remember the mayor asking how Cong Tarzan’s name be incorporated in the tarps. Not wanting to disrupt the cadence in the phraseology, I suggested separate streamers thanking the Cong for his paternity of the city. Which, to my knowledge, were also posted.
As much a victory for the townspeople and Mayor Boking as a triumph for Cong Tarzan – given his being denigrated as chair of the comite de silencio at the House – was the cityhood of Mabalacat.
Ain’t it long been clichéd that “Victory has many fathers…”?
So, why now make fatherhood of Mabalacat City exclusive to Mayor Boking?
It smacks of historical revisionism pursuant to vested interests towards a second coming. Political, what else.
(AND BOKING did run – for vice mayor – and miserably lost in 2019.)
