“Ipinapakita nila na kuta kami ng mga terorista, na ang Mt. Arayat ay kuta ng mga terorista. Hindi lang dito sa Pilipinas, pati sa ibang bansa pinapalabas ang ‘Ang Probinsyano’ kaya ‘yung mga kababayan namin tumatawag sa amin (The (show) is depicting our town as a terrorists’ lair, that Mt. Arayat is a haven of terrorists. The show is aired not just in the Philippines but outside of the country that is why a lot of our townmates are calling us),” so was Mayor Emmanuel “Bon” Alejandrino quoted in the SSP story.
Recent episodes of the show dealt with a fictional terror group nesting in Mt. Arayat which, Alejandrino said, portrayed his town as a “haven or breeding ground for terrorists and hoodlums.”
This, the mayor lamented, “smeared the reputation of Arayat as a wholesome and peaceful town,” and negated his administration’s strides in erasing “the stigma of Arayat as home of terrorists.”
The sangguniang bayan earlier passed a resolution condemning FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano for its “reckless portrayal of the town” that “has caused not only the local government unit in a state of distress but also the Provincial Government of Pampanga.”
Alejandrino thus slammed former Pampanga governors Lito and Mark Lapid, making their showbiz comeback after disastrous losses in the last polls as protagonists in the series: the father as chief, the son as foot soldier of the terror group.
Raged Alejandrino at the Lapids: “Wala silang malasakit sa bayan namin at sa buong Pampanga. Sana sila mismo kinontra nila dahil dati silang nanungkulan dito at dapat alam nila ang totoong sitwasyon dito at kung ano ang magiging epekto ng palabas sa bayan namin (They have the least concern for our town and for the whole of Pampanga. They themselves should have opposed (the bad portrayal of Arayat) as they once served here and are supposed to know the real situation and how the show will affect our town).”
De-Lapidation
No karmic cycle maybe, but full circle certainly have gone the Lapids, as well as Alejandrino, here.
The dilapidation of Pampanga by the infamous quarry scam in the nine years of the Bida ng Masa and the single term of his hijo at the Capitol, whereby the provincial coffers dwindled even as private estates and mansions with fleets of luxurious vehicles escalated in Porac, came to a full stop with the de-Lapidation of the province in 2007, at the ascendancy of the Reverend Governor, Eddie T. Panlilio, who, in his very first day in office collected P1 million in quarry revenues. Definitively impacting there the graft and corruption in the Lapids’ collection of P115.6 million in 11 years. Do your math now: all it takes is three months and 11 days for Among Ed to equal the Lapids’ 11-year quarry (non) performance.
Returning to their showbiz home ground, albeit on the aptly named idiot box, Lapid and son – if we take Alejandrino’s drift – are back devastating Pampanga anew. The image of peace and prosperity of Pampanga shattered by that nationally televised and internationally beamed, if only fictional, terrorist lair in Mt. Arayat.
For Alejandrino, the real has come all too reel. Of art imitating life, all too perversely.
It was not in the fastness of the mountains that I interviewed the then-supremo of the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan in the 1980s, but Mt. Arayat historically stood as the sanctuary of revolutionaries.
And Alejandrino was engaged in a revolution, his HMB though outsized, out-popularized, and out-propagandized by its splinter group the New People’s Army.
But no terror group was his – being masabased rather than massacring, mostly agriengaged, socially-grounded, even constructing village chapels, resorting to the gun “only in the pursuit of justice for the people.”
(How did I know? I had full access to the supremo. So, that when Alejandrino was presented to the media after his capture by the then-provincial PC commander Col. EQ Fernandez, I was promptly taken in for interrogation soon as he acknowledged my presence.)
Come to think of it now, more than the smear on his town and Pampanga, what drew the ire of Alejandrino against FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano is its utter perversion of the part Mt. Arayat has played in our history.
The redoubt of revolutionary movements degraded into a terrorist lair! Sheer sacrilege.
