Moving on

Moving on

MOVING on” or “let’s move on” is the catch-phrase of the season.

The phrase has dripped from the mouth of politicians, columnists, editorial writers, broadcast journalists, Palace officials, the President and everyone wishing to sweep a nightmare away.

We are advised to move on after the resolution of a big political scandal, a messy business scam, an ugly congressional investigation or an unsuccessful attempt to destabilize the government.

It means that Filipinos should keep moving, get the nightmare behind them and just push on. Get a life, please!

We should move on after the trial of President Estrada, which consumed us for more than six years. We heard that advice after the nursing exam scandal, the May 14 election anomalies, the military boo-boos in Sulu, the attempts at government destabilization and poor government response to natural disasters.

Manfully, we collected ourselves, shook off the scary headlines and the TV news, and told ourselves we were flexible and strong, and that we have survived.

Filipinos, after all, are a forgiving and a forgetful people. We have a short memory for national troubles, sensational crimes and man-size scandals. We have a very high threshold for patience and leniency.

OK, we promise to move on. We close the book on the Estrada case. It’s time to resume our normal life. We have other important things to do.

Besides, look at the bright side. The peso is strong. OFW deployment will hit one million in less than a year. Remittances are up 16% in seven months.

S&P has reaffirmed its “BB+B” (plus or minus) for foreign and local currency issuer credit ratings on the Philippines, meaning the outlook is stable. Employment has risen as of July. Foreign investments are pouring in. Our ‘economic fundamentals’ are very strong.

Of course there are other worries on the horizon. The government has a hard time selling the national broadband network project. The Department of Education’s cyber-education program smells like a fake diploma. The Commission on Higher Education has discovered a suspicious P500-million campus-based call-center project on its backyard. The customs bureau and the BIR have not met their collection targets. It’s 2007 but we have not automated the voting system. We need to address the long-playing MILF secessionism and the NPA insurgency that are hindering development in the regions.

But what the heck—let’s move on.

Let’s book that trip to Macau next week. Order the Wagyu beef from TriNoMa. Let’s wake up late today, Sunday, and pretend nothing bad happened. Join the barkada for gin and coke. Rent the new Angel Locsin DVD. Take the family to Luneta. We will move on. We will not be defeated by the system. We will help the nation survive.

Gross national joy

IT would not be a bad idea if President Arroyo creates a National Commission on National Happiness to determine the level of our well-being and satisfaction.

The thought came to mind after reading that the World Database of Happiness, which lists 95 countries, has determined that Denmark (with a rating of 8.2), Switzerland, Austria, Iceland and Finland, all with high per capita income, are the “happiest” countries.

But wealth is not only the gauge of the Database, the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Institute and the Cambridge Institute of Well-Being, all doing research on what makes races and nations happy. Their yardsticks include education, nutrition, freedom from fear and violence, gender equality, mental health and having choices.

The United States makes it to the top 15 with a 7.4 index rating. In the middle range are the Philippines (6.4), Indonesia (6.2) and Iran (6). At the bottom are Tanzania (3.2), Zimbabwe (3.3) and Moldova (3.5).

The small kingdom of Bhutan said goodbye to gross national product a long time ago and said Bhutans should aspire to Gross National Happiness. Bhutan’s idea of collective happiness is based on equitable development, environmental conservation, cultural heritage and good government.

Today think tanks and research institutes are working on development models for methods to find out what makes peoples happy and why.

Filipinos are generally a happy people. Our sense of humor does not fail us even during national tragedies. Martial law and the Aquino assassination inspired many jokes, some still circulating today. OFW jokes about life in the US, Japan and the Middle East are plentiful. The only people who do not appreciate humor—especially jokes at their expense—are government officials.

We have a popular observation about Filipinos: Mababaw ang kaligayan (easy to please). We make do with the basics: three meals a day. A roof over one’s head. A good job. Family and friends. We are a hospitable people. We make friends easily. Pakikisama (the ability to get along) and utang na loob (returning a favor) are national virtues.

But the Presidential Commission on National Happiness could raise our level of well-being. It could look into quality-of-life issues, such as having clean air and water, less public noise, building more parks, making traffic more tolerable, building an efficient public-transportation system, insuring prompt trash collection, making medicine cheaper and making the neighborhood safer for children.

If we cannot become a First-World country, we could at least expand our national smile.

Losing a World Heritage Site

Losing a World Heritage Site

Filipinos refer to the rice terraces in Banaue as the eighth wonder of the world. The site – the most extensive network of terraced rice paddies in Asia – failed to make it to the new Seven Wonders of the World, officially proclaimed recently. But the rice terraces are in the list of World Heritage Sites drawn up by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Now even that classification may be withdrawn. A recent report said Unesco may take the Banaue rice terraces out of its list of World Heritage Sites if the rice paddies continue to deteriorate. Unesco also noted the presence of structures that are not supposed to be within the heritage site and the apparent lack of a sustainable tourism program.

Local officials in Ifugao province have downplayed the possible loss of its Unesco classification. But the possible withdrawal of the classification cannot be taken lightly. In recent years other groups have expressed concern over the deterioration of the Banaue rice terraces. Though the site remains one of the country’s top tourist destinations, there has been little improvement in the tourism infrastructure in the area, from the two roads leading to the site to the accommodations and telecommunications facilities.

This could be the terraces caretakers’ idea of preserving the natural state of the site. But the terraces themselves are the ones that should be preserved; the surrounding areas can use some upgrading. The terraces themselves, however, are deteriorating. An infestation of giant worms eroded the terraces. Because of the low yield of the paddies and the lack of support to market the fragrant mountain rice, young Ifugaos were reported to be abandoning their farms to seek livelihood opportunities elsewhere.

In other countries, the rice harvested from a World Heritage Site would have been marketed worldwide as a gourmet variety at premium prices. The profits from tilling the terraced fields plus the tourism revenue would have guaranteed that the next generations of Ifugaos would have a stake in preserving their precious environment. It is not yet too late to do this in a site that is a source of national pride.

Filipino or Pilipino or Tagalog?

Filipino or Pilipino or Tagalog?

Sometime last week the Batasan gallery was treated to a heated debate about language. The spectacle was not quite as raucous as brawls in the Taiwan legislature but it raised some sticky problems which remain unresolved. Concretely the problem centers around the question: What is our national language?

The 1973 Constitution, through Article XV, Section 3, made a distinction between “Pilipino,” which together with English was made an “official language,” and “Filipino,” which was envisioned as the “common national language.”

The “Pilipino” referred to was actually the Tagalog commonly in use as distinct from the pure Tagalog of literary writers. Together with English, Pilipino was, under the 1973 Constitution, the official language. “Official language” means the medium of communication for all official acts of or transactions with the various departments and agencies of the government. Moreover, by Presidential Decree No. 155, Spanish continued “to be recognized as an official language in the Philippines for as long as important documents in government files were in the Spanish language and not translated into either English or Pilipino language.”

“Filipino,” on the other hand, was seen by the 1973 Constitution as a language yet to be developed. Consisting of a fusion of the various existing Philippine languages, it was envisioned as the “common national language.” It was hoped that it would be symbolic of the Filipino nation and expressive of the Filipino soul. It was also expected to become the official medium of communication.

Major changes were made by the 1987 Constitution. The debate in the Batasan last week was a reverberation of what transpired during the deliberations of the 1986 Constitutional Commission.

Under the 1987 Constitution, the basic policy on language is stated in Section 6 of Article XIV. It says: “The national language of the Philippines is Filipino. As it evolves, it shall be further developed and enriched on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages. Subject to provisions of law and as the Congress may deem appropriate, the government shall take steps to initiate and sustain the use of Filipino as a medium of official communication and as language of instruction in the educational system.”

As can be seen, Filipino, which was seen as a dream by the 1973 Constitution, is now categorically declared the “national language.” While the 1987 Constitution has retained the distinction between Filipino and Pilipino, it in effect has demoted Pilipino, the more developed language, in constitutional stature. In its stead, Filipino has been made the national and official language.

This did not go unnoticed on the floor of the Commission and it prompted a Cebuano Commissioner to ask whether the command of the 1973 Constitution to the Batasan to develop Filipino as a national language had already been accomplished. In reply, linguistic experts were cited as saying that even prior to 1973 Constitution Filipino was already a lingua franca though not popularly known as Filipino. Whereupon a defender of Filipino obliged with a demonstration. He said: “[W]e are referring to the masses of our people—the ones we came in contact with in our public hearings. They are the ones who say, ‘Sain kayo maglakad tapos dini?’ instead of the purist saying ‘Saan kayo magtutungo pagkatapos dito?’ But we understand what they mean when they say, ‘Mas guapo giud ang bana ko sa bana mo’ or ‘Guapo kuno ang kanyang amiga’ or ‘Yawa kawatan pala ang soltero’ or ‘Huwag ka man magtapon sa road’ or ‘Mayroon pa ngani.’ These speakers of the lingua franca throughout the country make themselves clearly understood because consciously or unconsciously, they use words that most Filipinos can comprehend.”

If that is a sampling of the language which embodies the Filipino soul, it makes you wonder what the Filipino soul looks like!

The Constitutional Commission, however, was quite aware that Filipino, as illustrated above, was undeveloped and undergoing evolution. Hence the second sentence of Section 6 adds: “As it evolves, it shall be further developed and enriched on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages.” Hence, too, the second paragraph of Section 6 is very tentative in referring to Filipino as “medium of official communication and as language of instruction in the educational system.”

Section 7, however, categorically makes Filipino the official language for purposes of communication and instruction while tolerating English also as official language “until otherwise provided by law.” In effect , too, the second paragraph reduces Pilipino, together with other regional languages, to official “auxiliary media of instruction.” Likewise, the promotion of Spanish has been reduced to optional effort in the same way as Arabic. These last are in recognition of the special role Spanish has played in Philippine history and of the affinity of large segments of the South to Arabic.

So, when Congressman Lopez spoke at the Batasan in celebration of Linggo ng Wika, did he speak in Filipino, Pilipino or Tagalog?

A Finer Reflection

A Finer Reflection

It’s been all about evolution in Cinemalaya ‘07, the indie film festival ending at the Cultural Center of the Philippines on July 29. As most everyone knows by now, “indie” is shorthand for independent film – both for its financing and a whole new freedom possible in the eighth and liveliest art, thanks to popularly affordable digital technology

That a new Filipino generation has taken to indie and is speeding with it towards expansive new horizons would be an understatement. This early in the development of technology that’s democratizing filmmaking worldwide, we’re regularly jolted by a new Pinoy indie global prizewinner or contender in a lengthening list of foreign competitions – possibly one of the best things happening to this nation’s image at home and abroad today.

Ed Cabagnot, who runs the CCP’s media arts division, wasn’t kidding when he said that 2007 would outdo the rousing first two years of Cinemalaya. Indeed, not a rain but a torrent of fresh and exciting new film work by Filipinos is upon us, made possible by digital cameras, editing and projection, with film grants kick-starting projects.

It’s a whole new ballgame of serious challenge to the old studio system local and foreign, its stories largely picked and crafted by exploiting lower human emotions, the highest value given exclusively to money, and film stars with a lion’s share of the budget as studio property with the equipment and machinery for media hype, all derisively labeled “show biz.”

You could touch and smell the opposite pole at the CCP this week –indie as a matrix for a new way of film, filmmaking and film-going. All ages, though mostly young and middle class, came trooping in – lining up for tickets, huddling in lively circles of critique between showings, applauding onscreen dialogue and film director in contagious enthusiasm that brought many “feeling-rally” moments.

Here’s an overview of Cinemalaya 07 – modern film classics in exhibition, new films on premiere, competition entries in the short-film and full length feature categories, the winners to be announced in the evening of July 29.

If there’s been a downside to the banquet, it’s the old festival syndrome - too many things to see and too little time to see them without suspending the rest of your life, ready to turn catatonic from an overload of fascinating micro-universes in film, unable to remember the title of the 6th film you saw that day.

Vowing a leisurely catch up with future showings of gems that cineastes and culture eagles have begun gurgling about at this writing, I saw only three full-length features. First, the two-hour competition feature Endo, a luminous first try by the 28-year old balikbayan director Jade Castro; next Auraeus Solito’s Pisay, also a competition feature; third the exhibition film Kaleldo by Brilliante Mendoza, another young director bidding for a global reputation (marred, however, by overly mannered cinematography and editing of this otherwise richly textured film in Tagalog with snippets of Pampango, subtitled in English for global audiences. )

Close-up on Pisay

Lyricism, honesty and originality in Solito’s Cinemalaya ‘05 winner, Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros, and daring theater of stunning visual quality in Tuli, , a Cinemanila winner later that year, made it easy to gravitate to his latest in Pisay - slang for the Philippine Science High School founded in 1964 as a seedbed for young Filipino scientists.

However the competition judges evaluate this film, what I saw was another milestone faithful to both art and life. Even better, from the germ of the plot to the finished film are a series of lessons in authenticity – pagpapaka-totoo, indie’s most telling hallmark.

A Story Behind a Story

Pisay literally began on the road when Auraeus, fresh from the Rotterdam Film Festival with Maxi, dropped by Ultrecht, that famous safe haven of Filipino communist officialdom. Who else would fate have him bump into but Ludy, an old classmate who had mysteriously dropped out in their sophomore year two decades back? For the first time, Auraeus discovered why – her parents, both CPP members in the military’s Order of Battle, had fled with her into exile.

That encounter between two classmates, part of their generation’s “cream of the cream,” lodged a stubborn bit of sand in an artist’s oyster. Their batch of state scholars entered high school in 1982 and graduated in 1986 - a pivotal historical period mirroring the beginning of a previous generation’s revolution in the late 60s.

Ludy was a passionate and eloquent political animal. Auraeus was a history champ in grade school, just the oyster to be stung into secreting a new pearl. Ludy’s story haunted Auraeus on more festival trips with Maxi, becoming a compulsion as he bumped into more Pisay graduates all over Europe and America.

He had grappled with conflict in Pisay as a government scholar discovering that he preferred to do theater. How did the rest of their batch fare? Thus began a filmmaker’s e-mail dialogue with his high school classmates, one contact leading to another as life stories poured into his inbox, fragments in interlinked patterns of an autobiographical story – youth in a time of revolution, just begging to be told afresh.

Following the feeling, Auraeus wrote a story-line and a shooting script, then asked his old Pisay classmate Henry Grageda to “play my left brain” and write the dialogue. That turned out to be the easy part. What followed was indie’s built-in obstacle course - mostly defined by money and the organic solutions artists are compelled to discover to enflesh a creative dream.

When his Cinemalaya filmmaking grant ran out in mid-production, Auraeus turned to a now global Pisay community for rescue. The way the Philippine Science High School Foundation and Batch ’86 here and abroad came through brought back their teen years together in inspiring poignancy. But like true love, the path of true film never runs smooth. A crash followed, with new post-production obstacles and money running out again in looming deadline. It almost had Auraeus giving up.

Enter producer Robbie Tan and the Roadrunner Network with its state-of the-art editing facilities. Tan’s name was already attached to Dante Mendoza’s “Foster Child” as producer of a film favorably reviewed at the last Cannes Film Festival, now Cinemalaya 07’s inaugural feature.

And Robbie Tan’s original billing as profit-churning producer of Seiko Films’ skin flicks and his new role as indie convert became part of the making of Pisay and the rest of a whole new chapter of Filipino film history.

Unforgettable Reflection

On the path of the liveliest art, off-screen drama lent Pisay the movie its tone and spirit. Youthful charm and pathos in Bisayan, Tagalog, Taglish and American English accents unfold a tapestry of first love, steep challenge, early death, failure, hope and heartbreak as individual moments of revelation flow into the larger rhythms of history.

Briskly woven into personal lives is documentary footage of the Aquino assassination, Cory’s acceptance of the draft for her candidacy and Mr. Marcos swollen on steroids in the barely disguised agony of lupus, all nudging the film to climax. Implosion and explosion leap from the screen as they sweep Pisay’s students and teachers into a historical tide that ends in a moment of reflective silence, just before a festival audience burst into applause. Once more indie had dived deeper and etched life more sharply in art.

This one’s definitely a must-see.

Music and the Marcoses

Music and the Marcoses

The library director and National Library ushers all wore ceremonial red like Imee Marcos and Irene Araneta at the 07-07-07 launching of the seven books on the Marcos years. Alas, the scripted air of that scene extended to the books themselves.

Where the direst need of the Filipino historical hour remains the telling of more, not less truth on the present and the under-examined the past it’s built on, the first book I read - “The Musical Arts in the New Society” - yielded cardboard cutout figures from a movie house lobby.

The first dead giveaway to a combined apologia and hagiography in this book is the inclusion of the still emotionally loaded phrase “New Society” in its title, locating it right in the stream of “Tadhana,” “Notes on a New Society” and “Towards a Democratic Revolution” – the three main propaganda tomes that sought to justify the declaration of Martial Law 25 years ago.

As though nothing at all had happened to interrogate and contradict the “newness” of that society Ferdinand Marcos created by fiat and backed by armed force, this book now asks us to accept the failed intention of a “New Society” as a valid historical description of the era.

I find this a pity, another wasted opportunity to readjust the nation’s historical spectacles on one-dimensional demonization of the period, throwing several healthy babies out with the bathwater. Now is the time to remember: one of those babies was a foresighted energy program cutting down Philippine dependence on imported oil. Geronimo Velasco was slowly inching to a dramatic 55% from the high 90s of the mid ‘70s, with a lot of help from geothermal energy and our own Pinoy engineers and scientists. We all know the direct contrast of what happened to energy after that.

Another baby thrown out on its ear by the succeeding dispensation was Imelda Marcos’s fruitful patronage of the arts, sped by music. With its fruits all around us today, still gaining honors from the world at large as they send out new shoots on home ground, it seems history itself has been ripening a new moment for truth-telling. With twenty-one more years of experience in the opposite, never has the nation been better prepared for the adult exercise of revaluing the achievements alongside the terror of the Marcos Years.

In the book’s closed defense of the mix of good and evil that was the reign of Malakas and Maganda , an earnest student of history is however left rummaging for missing nuggets of fact and snippets of insight for a more complete, more nuanced and more truthful understanding of the past that led to this present.

With all due respect to Antonio C. Hila, author of “Musical Arts in the New Society,” associate professor of history at De la Salle University and Inquirer music critic, a serious failing of his book is not so much its over-reliance on “textual” sources to recount the period – ghostwritten speeches by the Marcoses, Executive Orders, Presidential Decrees and “praise releases” passed off as appraisal of the cultural initiatives and milestones of the period.

The culprit is a book schema that stops short of a crucial reality check. This was the real challenge - to bring the Marcos era right alongside the present in a comparative view. The inclusion of facts and insights from a more complete spectrum of artists and other culture bearers, including those that resisted the regime - the world over, one might add - would have given the book far greater value.

With the passing of time and the emergence of fresh perspectives born of experience, a fuller, more fearless account could now help the nation arrive at a more balanced appraisal, a plumb to its depths, a measure of how it’s outgrown - or failed to outgrow - the Marcos template of “revolution” that mirrored Joma Sison and his generation’s own. This is a large part of what Philippine military intellectuals have yet to outgrow.

The record stands. There were countless abuses of power and unspeakable violations of human rights under the Marcos regime. Paradoxically, to deny Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos’s instincts for excellence while all that was going on is to do Filipino history itself a disservice. That would be like denying the brilliance and cunning of Joma Sison, the delightful originality of Joel Rocamora, or the human kindness of Satur Ocampo.

“He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch,” was the vulgar shorthand for Washington’s support of Marcos to his regime‘s last two minutes. Our own Pinoy lead question might well be, “Yes, he was a tyrant, but what have we learned from the way his leadership attracted as many of the best Filipino minds as it alienated and turned into implacable enemies, or simply tortured and shot dead?”

Meanwhile Imelda Marcos’s musical gifts and unfeigned sensibilities for the arts were fueling a new cultural bureaucracy, identifying and nourishing many outstanding musical talents that teach and flourish today, the way she built several cultural institutions at the peak of her husband’s political power.

That these institutions survived and went on serving the nation long after she left the center of national life is a reality no ideological wand - or even her own silly senior moments - can whisk away. Prime among these were a Cultural Center of the Philippines attended by sniping both at its birth and the regime’s demise, and its 30-year old coeval, the Philippine High School for the Arts whose growing roster of accomplished young Filipino artists can speak for themselves.

Then there are the National Artist Awards created in 1973, giving state recognition to the Filipino artist for the first time in the republic’s history. The controversies that have recently visited these awards redound to a left-handed compliment to their creation. In agitating to reexamine and update them today, the Filipino artistic community has in effect “owned” the National Artist Awards beyond their origins in Martial Law – a sign of new life.

Professor Hila’s recitation of musical careers that enjoyed Imelda Marcos’s pro-active patronage is led off by the name Cecile Licad, followed by Rowena Arrieta , Jovianney Emmanuel Cruz, Andion Fernandez, Rene Dalandan, Raul Sunico, Julian Quirit, Jaime, Ramon and Alfonso Bolipata; Lucrecia Kasilag, Francisco Feliciano, Jose Maceda, Antonio Molina, Lucio San Pedro, Levi Celerio, Andrea O. Veneracion, the Philippine Madrigal Singers…

The list goes on, telling the story of institution-building alongside the recognition and valuing of genuine talent. Not only did the NAMCYA (National Musical Competitions for Young Artists), the YAFP (Young Artists Foundation of the Philippines) and the CCP discover, nourish and showcase performing and creative talents that would otherwise not have reached their present niches as teachers and templates.

As Professor Hila reminds us, all of that came with programs to build and sustain popular taste for more elevated music in programs like Concert at the Park, Puerta Real Evenings and Paco Park Presents. That they languished and slowly died out with the withdrawal of state support under succeeding political regimes invited the inevitable – fresh onslaughts of crude commercial music in beer gardens ruled by plakado and karaoke. (At the boulevard Baywalk, it comes with streetlamps in High El Cheapo, courtesy of ex-Mayor Lito Atienza.)

And so the value in Professor Hila’s book lies in the music and the musicians themselves, with Madame Marcos speaking their language like a native, beyond the speeches and between the lines. Burdening this story with a defense of Martial Law all over again, instead of allowing it to roam free in the far wider field of a musical race’s past, present and possible future, is a double pity, Ms. Imee.

Making the CCP relevant to Filipinos

Making the CCP relevant to Filipinos

IT goes without saying that during the three decades or so of its existence, the state sponsored Cultural Center of the Philippines—that stark concrete celebration to all things connected with both high and low culture sitting imposingly on reclaimed land along Manila’s Bayside—has been carrying out its mandate to bring culture to the masses exceptionally well.

But even while it has been focused on its mission—and struggling to finance itself in a country where, particularly in recent years, culture has more or less been given dismal short shrift by the National Treasury—the prime blocks of real estate that surround it as part of its mandated portfolio have been largely left abandoned and neglected.

In fact the only people who have cleverly and sneakily put this real estate to good use have been the squatter colonies who set up homes and shops on the perimeters of the CCP and for years have been running small businesses from which the CCP’s coffers have gained nothing.

But now comes dapper CCP President Nestor Jardin who is playing the role of a corporate chief executive and slowly but steadily trying to leverage these parcels of land to good effect to help boost the organization’s bottom line.

The squatters have been moved out (though not without anguish and pain on the part of the compassionate Jardin) and where their shanties once stood have arisen a restaurant and entertainment row that is fast rivaling Baywalk as a complete—and certainly far less sleazy—nocturnal experience.

And according to Jardin, more such family-orientated offerings are planned for other parts of the CCP so as to maximize the commercial value of the sprawling property. Explains Jardin: “The year 2007 will be a transformational year for the Cultural Center of the Philippines. It will be a year of changes directed toward making the arts and, indeed, the CCP more relevant to the lives of Filipinos.

“We felt that the CCP should be more attuned to what’s happening in our country and around the world. The arts can be a trans­for­ma­tive tool for the Filipino human being, for the community and for the environment that we live in.”

But Jardin sees the CCP’s outreach going beyond that. He says: “The arts can help in values transformation, in developing community spirit to bind people together as a society and a nation. The arts can also help propel a people towards national progress through the creative industry.”

Spearheading this thrust will be the CCP Complex Development Business and Master plan aimed at making the CCP Complex a cultural, ecological and tourism landmark, incorporating public art, parks, gardens and pedestrian walkways.

In this context the Liwasang Kalikasan Nature Park was inaugurated last year as an environmental, cultural and educational project that will transform 1.6 hectares of wooded area in the CCP Complex into an ecological showcase and venue for cultural and educational activities in a tropical rainforest setting.

The CCP will be also be continuing its flagship program, “Arts for the People,” but with some fine-tuning. “It is a good program that ensures people have a greater awareness and appreciation of the arts. But, we need to be more responsive to the challenge of making the arts more relevant in addition to making them more accessible to the people. We need to elevate it one step higher and substantially redirect it towards transforming lives,” states Jardin.

Other initiatives in the CCP’s mission to reach out is the award-winning radio program Sugpuin ang Korupsiyon. The CCP radio talk show, which is aired on DZRH every Saturday at 2 to 3 p.m., focuses on the various aspects of corruption and challenges people to stand up against corruption.

The CCP has also been holding arts therapy workshops in places ravaged by disaster and calamity as well as areas where there is armed conflict. Held in cooperation with Unicef, the program seeks to help heal people who have been traumatized by the loss of loved ones, shelter and livelihood due to natural calamities and war.

So all in all good luck to Jardin who needs all the help and support he can muster to bring the CCP, albeit kicking and screaming, into the 21st century to play a relevant role.