Should there be a Charter Change not the kind pushed by House Speaker Jose de Venecia, it must be in the Charter of the City of Naga. Its Charter, known as Republic Act 305, was approved on June 18, 1948 by then President Elpidio Quirino in the presence of several Bikolano House representatives. Since that time until today, the Charter has never had any amendment. It has remained intact. Not even a syllable or a word in the Charter was omitted or changed for the past 59 years. As such it is very old. Were it a citizen of this country, it can be classified as a senior citizen, due for retirement.
At 59, the provisions of the Charter are relatively irrelevant today.
Consider these provisions: “The Municipal Board shall be the legislative body of the city and shall be composed of the Mayor, who shall be the presiding officer, the City Treasurer, the City engineer and five councillors elected at large by popular vote.
“(The Mayor) shall receive a salary of not exceeding four thousand pesos a year.”
It is evident that the provisions of Republic Act 305 have been overtaken by time. Should its provisions still rule the actions of the local government of Naga, the present set-up of the municipal board would be unsanctioned.
At present the municipal board of Naga City has ten councilors and two ex-officio members, one from the Federation of the Sanggunian Kabataan and another from the Association of Barangay Captains. Such a legislative set-up is far different from the one described in the Charter of Naga City, where the municipal board has only five councilors and two ex-officio members in the persons of the City Engineer and the City Treasurer.
When we mark with a holiday the Charter Day of Naga City, do we have in mind the written Charter handed over to the City on June 18, 1948 or an unwritten Charter that has the City of Naga operative and effective for the past decade?
What Charter has been making the wheels of the government of Naga turn day in and day out? If such a Charter is not the one approved in 1948, then Naga needs to change its Charter.
A Charter Change in Naga City is badly needed — if only to make the provisions of its charter in speaking terms with the present structure of the local government.
A Charter Change in Naga City is badly needed — if only to make the provisions of its Charter reflect the aspirations of the city as a growing city in the Third Millennium, not of a city just off the Second World War.
A Charter Change in Naga City is badly needed — if only to make the city more responsive to the needs of its citizens and give flesh to the slogan of the City now on its 59th Charter year: “lubos na sa gabos anpaglingkod na lobos”
If Charter Change in Naga City has to take place, it must be one that should take off from what the City is today: an independent, highly urbanized city. This is a point of departure that shall give full rein for the City’s aspiration as a center of growth and development in Bikolandia.
Entertaining the thought that the City of Naga with its own newly amended Charter could become a congressional district is nearer to reality than to a dream. Such an idea has never been thought of before as one that could be done outside the bustling cities of Metro Manila,
But with a leadership 0f the Robredo kind at the helm of the City of Naga, with a Charter towards the Third Millennium, the thought for a congressional district in Naga is never a bridge too far.
In the Englishman’s eyes
It’s amusing, at times offending, to see through the impressions of an article entitled “A matter of taste” (Bicol Mail June 7 issue) by certain Matthew Sutherland, who confessed he comes from the United Kingdom and has been staying in the Philippines for six years now.
Sutherland made a cursory and detailed description of the fondness of Pinoys to balut, to bluntly drive home the point that, as a matter of taste, eating duck embryo would make an Englishman like him throw up. The author made further impressions regarding Filipino food that are less gross (in the eyes of an English man) but nevertheless fall into the same cuisine category of the balut like barbecued chicken feet, heads and intestines.
The Englishman, describing himself as “well assimilated” into the Philippine culture, also took notice of the patterns of Filipino names, especially names that sound self-deprecating to him and are sources of his continuing “amazement and amusement”.
Sutherland wrote: “Even the towns here have weird names; my favorite is the unbelievably named town of Sexmoan (ironically close to Olongapo and Angeles). Where else in the world could that really be true?...Where else in the world could that really the head of the Church really be called Cardinal Sin (referring to the late cardinal of Archdiocese of Manila)?... Where else but the Philippines!... Note: Philippines has a senator named Joker, and it is his legal name.”
Classifying nicknames like Dong, Ding, Bong, Bing, Ting as doorbell names, the Englishman was amused and amazed that there are millions of them here in the Philippines, aside from “repeating names” like Ningning, Tingting, Lenlen, Letlet or Mai-mai. Several more name classifications the Englishman found amazing and amusing did not escape his keen sense of differentiation from the ways of Filipinos, from the way they write or how they choose names of their children.
In one instance, Sutherland unwittingly reminded one of an incident last year in Canada where parents of a Filipino immigrant student complained of discrimination when a school official embarrassed their son because he cannot use spoon and knife. “Where I come from, you eat with a fork and a knife. Here, you eat with spoon and fork. You try eating rice swimming in fish sauce with a knife.”
But the Englishman seemed honest and candid if only to point out the differences of the culture where he grew up from the Filipino culture he is engaged in the past six years, even though, he inadvertently showed inherent prejudice to an alien culture he claimed he had assimilated.
Sutherland’s cultural lens definitely filtered impressions of unique traits and values of Filipinos in which he compared them on standards of a society where he comes from that flaunt and dignify orderliness in hierarchy of things and people; where there are subjects and royal families, lords and commoners, dinners and tea parties and array of formalities to fit in a square.
Noticing what had been natural cultural phenomena occurring in the Philippine setting, the Englishman’s cultural lens filtered several traits and values of Filipinos in bad taste against a backdrop of sets of the standards in the kingdom where he was born. And he is wrong to say that “food dominates the life of the Filipino” because majority of the people here can hardly afford to eat more than three-square meals a day.
Indeed, it takes an Englishman to point out to Filipinos cultural traits that can be considered natural consequences of the dominant political and economic set-up defining their identity but weird and strange to foreign nationals.
