Galunggong crisis

THIS is definitely one for the books. An archipelagic country importing galunggong (round scad) from other countries that are landlocked. That’s not even the clincher. The clincher is that these fishes would most probably be harvested from the disputed West Philippine Sea.

Last week, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol issued a certificate, allowing the importation of (up to) 17,000 metric tons of galunggong with a five percent tariff on its price tag.

He allowed the importation as a buffer in preparation for the closing of the fishing season here which starts on November and will end March, next year.

The importation would start next month and would end up to the last day of December or until the Department of Agriculture revokes it, the certification reads in part.

Although it did not specify from what country the fishes would be imported from, the imported galunggong would most likely come from China and Vietnam. At least that’s where we last imported fishes from in 2016, according to the records of the Philippine Statistics Authority.

Why would we source the fishes from China or Vietnam when their coastlines are far shorter than ours. The Philippines has the fifth-longest coastlines in the world at 36,289 kilometers. The People’s Republic of China and Vietnam have 14,500 kilometers and 3,260 kilometers of coastlines, respectively.

If we base the fish resource per square kilometers, there is a great chance that we’d be importing galunggong from within our exclusive economic zone.

Look, I understand that there is a need to close the fishing season. Having worked with the Fisheries Resource Management Project in the early 2000s, I know the municipal waters in the country are facing the depletion of stocks. But back then, the project aimed to reverse the trend of resource depletion in municipal waters and improve the income of coastal communities by promoting alternative livelihoods.

This is because a large number of Filipinos depend on coastal fisheries for their livelihood. According to the World Atlas online, about 40 to 60 percent of the total fish catch of the country is contributed by the coastal fishing communities.

We found out, however, that the marginalized fisherfolk in the country hardly has any dent in the fish stocks of the municipal waters. It is the commercial fishing boats plying in these municipal waters that harvest fishes with impunity. This, despite the ban of commercial fishing boats in municipal waters under the Fisheries Code of the Philippines of 1998 (RA 8550).

So just maybe, we shouldn’t be rash in punishing our fisherfolk by closing the fishing season on our waters but by implementing RA 8550 to the letter.

Whatever happened to the frigates and destroyers this administration has been boasting about on social media? Let those ships patrol our waters and apprehend commercial fishing boats encroaching into the municipal waters.

Well, that is unless all those boats are like most of the President’s speeches that are full of hyperbole. Pfft.

Justice for Butch Rosales

"If you should go skating on the thin ice of modern life. Dragging behind you, the silent reproach of a million tear-stained eyes." ― Pink Floyd, The thin ice

AS if the spate of extrajudicial killings wasn’t real enough for us here at Crow’s Nest, the culture of impunity victimized one of its long-time residents.

Last Wednesday, a gunman shot Butch Rosales several times to his head. Butch was riding a multicab on his way to Mandaue, Punta Engaño in Lapu-Lapu City. Butch was sitting at the front passenger seat while the gunman sat at the back with the rest of the passengers. Butch died on the spot on broad daylight. He was 45 years old.

He died a volunteer of Rise Up for Life and for Rights. Rise Up is a network of volunteers and rights defenders committed to working in the defense of life and protection of human rights against drug-related extrajudicial killings and violations under the Rodrigo Duterte government.

Before he became a volunteer for victims of Duterte’s war against drugs, he used to be the development worker of the community extension program of Visayas Community Medical Center in Cebu City. VCMC is a member-organization of the church-run non-government organization called the Consortium of Christian Organizations for Rural and Urban Development where I used to work as its information management officer.

Whenever there was consortium-wide gathering, which usually takes at least a week, Butch would opt to stay at Crow’s Nest rather than in the dormitory beside our office in Barra, Opol.

I knew him to be an efficient yet “cool” community organizer. Butch used to quote Pink Floyd songs to point out social injustices.

He used to cook at Crow’s Nest. Butch was an excellent cook. He talked to my children while they were preparing the ingredients, where the stories always had morals in them. He wasn’t religious but he was a morally upright person.

In one of the posts on social media about his killing, someone commented that his being an activist and human rights advocate has been maliciously played up so that people could then attribute the killing to the Duterte administration.

I say all extrajudicial killings, be it by rogue men in uniform or vigilantes, should rightfully be attributed to this administration.

This administration breathes and breeds the culture of impunity since day one. Hell, the President started his call for impunity even when he was still campaigning for the presidential seat.

We have been witness to a lot of killings across the country. Most of its victims can be categorized in one word: poor. As long as this administration let those in power, its oligarchs, and cronies, get away with its culture of impunity against the poor and disadvantaged, this administration is accountable.

The blood of Butch and the thousand others are on Duterte’s hands. Justice for Butch Rosales and all victims of Duterte’s war against the poor!

Journalism as we know it

I OWE a lot of the stock knowledge I have right now to journalism. If my life is a school term, journalism would be its baccalaureate, masters, and doctorate degrees. I witnessed my father practice it in four different mediums: print (Mindanao Post), radio (DxCC RMN’s pioneering AM station), television (Rainbow TV-12), and he was fortunate enough to use the worldwide web.

He was a widely read person but I have always been fascinated by his command of the language and his skill at presenting an elaborate scheme in a way that any person on the street could understand.

I wasn’t really into journalism at first. I was more of a literary person or I was aspiring to be one. I wrote poems, sonnets, and short stories. I wrote for the school paper but was on the literary section and not on the news or op-ed section.

However, when my father suffered his fifth heart attack, he asked me to be his ghost writer while he was still recuperating in the ICU. First, as a writer, I wouldn’t pass on this opportunity to diversify my writing skill. Second, as a child, I felt honored that he would ask his youngest son.

While I wrote his thoughts for him while he was recuperating, the newspaper had an opening for a typesetter or as millennials today referred to as layout artist. Eventually, I was lured into journalism or as I called the people who practiced them as the “news guys.” I asked the editor-in-chief then for a stab at writing news stories. He was gracious enough to give me an opportunity.

When I told my father I was venturing into another form of writing, he told me there was nothing to be jittery about. He said journalism is nothing but storytelling or truth-telling as he put it. He told me it is like writing a short story but using real-life situations and characters.

He cautioned me though against the use of fancy vocabulary since journalism is more on informing readers, and not to impress them. He told me to understand current events keenly so that I could write clearly and concisely. That, after all, is the essence of communication.

“How could you make people understand the issue you’re reporting about if you, the reporter, do not understand what you’re reporting about,” he said.

So, that was to be my guiding principle in my foray into journalism: write to express, not impress, and write to inform, and not romanticize with the form — substance over form, if you will. If the context is king, content is queen, and form is one weak prince, I dare say.

As I have said at the start of this column, journalism to me is like one long school term in that you get to learn a lot of things in the course of your career. I remember JB Deveza and I scoured through the city for a finance guy to explain to us what the hell are CDNs and CDOs when the Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, which led to the collapse of Wall Street.

The collapse had affected our local economy and we have to understand first what happened in order for us to report it clearly. In the course of my journalistic career, I have had a crash course on almost anything under the sun — from different sciences to mathematics.

In my years of working with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, I got to revisit my literary writing past. Well, not entirely. But, when my editor-in-chief knew that I used to dabble in poems and sonnets, she said the skills I had in writing poems are also applicable to journalism. Yeah, I was also as surprised like you. She said for news reports to be compelling, the writer must also learn the art of cadence and meter. They don’t have to rhyme, of course, you silly goose.

That’s it, how my ongoing journalistic career started in a nutshell — old school.

So when the Presidential Communications Operations Office’s dynamic duo, Secretary Martin Andanar and Margaux “Mocha” Uson, and their trolls suggest that journalism, as we know it, is passé and that the “new media” is the “in” thing, I become curious. I thought I should check out what this so-called new journalism is all about.

Journalism, as in life, is a continuous process of learning. Even if the old school in me thinks that there’s no such thing as new or old journalism, the curious cat in me still wanted to check it out. My colleagues told me to dismiss PCOO since only the medium changes but the skill in writing the content of the report is still essentially the same: “6 Ws and 2 Hs.” In case you’re wondering what the extra “W” and “H” are, they’re the “whence” and “hence” of the story.

As this administration’s deodorant communication unfolds, however, all I’ve seen so far have been smokes and mirrors. Their reports are full of factual errors, unsubstantiated claims, and a butt load of typos and the lack of proper punctuations. I’m not even going to dignify Mocha’s “symbolism photojournalism” by discussing it in this column.

I know Martin is currently doing the rounds, selling his brand of “new journalism” but I think I’ll just stick to the “old journalism” (if there is such a thing) or plain and simple journalism. That is until I see a compelling reason to jump ship. For now, I’m proud to be an adherent of plain and simple journalism.