ANGELES CITY – “What has the Kapampangan done to make Roxas hate the province so much?”
Asked the advocacy group Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement, “appalled” at what they called the “maximum overdrive” of Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas to “destroy the good image of Pampanga.”
The PGKM said Roxas’ inclusion of Pampanga in the list of provinces considered as high-risk areas in political violence in the 2013 elections was “only his latest stunt denigrating the province.”
PGKM chair Ruperto Cruz questioned the DILG Secretary what considerations or standards he used in “levelling Pampanga with Maguindanao, Abra, Masbate, Lanao del Sur and Basilan, among other traditional election hotspots.”
“Pampanga is considered among the top ten most progressive provinces in the country, a distinction it cannot attain if it has some peace and order problem,” Cruz said. “Friends in both the police and military top brass are one in saying Pampanga is a most peaceful place, so what drove Roxas to label the province as a hotspot?”
Last week, Pampanga police director Senior Supt. R-win Pagkalinawan expressed surprise over Roxas tagging the province as hotspot as “our office has never made any such recommendation.”
Pagkalinawan disclosed that from the average 500 crime incidents monthly, the number of crimes in Pampanga has gone town to an average of only 200 incidents per month, mostly petty crimes. He added that this is way below the average for a province with a population of some two million.
Pagkalinawan conceded that only the town of Arayat with a history of political violence could be considered as hotspot in Pampanga.
Anti-Kapampangan
The PGKM initially branded Roxas as “anti-Kapampangan” at the time he headed the Department of Transportation and Communications where he served as chairman of the board of the Clark International Airport Corp.
Roxas was scored by the PGKM and other airport advocacy groups like the Move Clark Now for his alleged “express policy of alibis to prevent the development of the Clark International Airport as premier international gateway.”
Roxas was reported in the media as saying the CIA could not be made a premier international gateway because of its distance to Metro Manila and the high cost of building a connecting railway.
“Roxas had absolutely no intention even if only to improve the CIA as alternative airport to NAIA (Ninoy Aquino International Airport) which it is already serving whenever the instruments at the latter malfunction or when there are strong gales or typhoons hitting Manila,” said Cruz. “Records will bear us out that Roxas never attended a single meeting of the CIAC board as chairman, so how could he be in anyway interested with Clark’s development?”
The PGKM suspected some “conspiracy to sabotage” the development of the CIA “pursuant to the vested interests of the Manila-based imperial dragons.”
“And maybe campaign funds on the side, in aid of some presidential ambitions,” Cruz said.
Anti-development
It was not only Pampanga that was affected by Roxas’ “policy of non-development” at the CIA, Cruz said.
The CIA serves not only Pampanga but the whole Central Luzon, and reaches out to the Ilocos, Cagayan and Cordillera regions.
“The development of the CIA will spur the development in the four regions north of Metro Manila. Conversely, then, the non-development of the CIA will have an adverse effect on the said regions,” Cruz said.
“By destroying Pampanga’s potentials for development, Roxas is also devastating that of the other provinces in central and northern Luzon.”
Successful in stunting the development of the CIA, Roxas is now going for the “coup de grace,” said Cruz.
“With Pampanga projected as a high risk area for violence, it follows that it is an even higher risk for investments. Who would put money in a place where there is a breakdown of law and order?”
Insulting Pineda
In late October, Roxas was widely criticized, even denounced by some sectors here, for what they believed was an insult he made on Gov. Lilia G. Pineda.
At the October 24 meeting of the regional peace and order council in Clark, Roxas seated former Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio at the presidential table while Pineda and the other governors and mayors as well as police officers in Central Luzon made up the audience.
A number of the governors and mayors later complained to the media that the presence of Panlilio in a meeting supposed to be exclusive to elected officials and the police was a “breach of protocol and grave insult” to them.
They added that Panlilio being the official candidate of the Liberal Party for Pampanga governor put in an “exalted place of honor” at the meeting was “a personal insult and an official rebuff of Pineda.”
The PGKM said Roxas, by insulting Pineda who “stands as the very symbol of Pampanga” also insulted the whole Kapampangan race.
Hating-GMA
Roxas could be “channelling” to Pineda the Aquino administration’s perceived hatred of former President and current Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, said Sonny Dobles, chair of the Alliance for the Development of Central Luzon, who shares with the PGKM their Clark-development advocacy.
“Is Roxas punishing the Kapampangans – starting from the governor down – simply for having the former President as provincemate?” asked Dobles. “That is not only misguided but totally misdirected.”
Dobles said that while his group did not come up with a united stand, some of its members joined the PGKM in their anti-Arroyo stand on many issues in the previous administration, including the “Hello Garci,” the NBN-ZTE deal, and the “then-as-now non-development of the Clark airport.”
In late 2003, the PGKM went pamphleteering on the issues hounding the Arroyo administration and put up large streamers with messages like “Ngayon walang gloria ang Pampanga, sa 2004 walang Pampanga si Gloria.”
“Not all Kapampangans love the Arroyos, so they should not suffer for whatever crimes, if any, committed in GMA’s name,” said Cruz.
Roxas’ concerted effort to “destroy Pampanga” will strike back at him and his LP slate in 2013, Cruz warned.
Already, a so-called “Proposition 0-12,” aimed at junking the whole LP senatorial slate in Pampanga is gaining ground here.
“It’s actually as simple as: Roxas is against us, so we are against him and all those with him,” Cruz said.
