Trouble anew at the NCCA?

Okay, I know I promised an immediate sequel to last week’s column that toasted recent positive developments on the Fil-Am literary front. I’ll do that soon enough, inclusive of a review of a recent Filipino-American anthology.

Something else has cropped up, however, that begs for urgent dissemination. The Plaridel list serve (or e-mail group) had an eye-catching item late last Wednesday: a well-articulated message or public letter posted by the distinguished film director Eddie Romero, current head of the Cinema Values Reorientation Program of the NCCA or National Commission for Culture and the Arts.

I wish I can share his well-meaning alarum in its entirety. But getting in touch directly with Mr. Romero, and waiting for his response, might take time that’ll go beyond the weekly deadline. So I’ll do the next best thing, which is to quote some important passages. I hope he doesn’t mind.

Mr. Romero’s e-mailed message was subject-titled "Big Trouble at the NCCA." Uh-oh, I thought immediately to myself, what I heard about very recently from a big birdie will probably be confirmed here at Plaridel.

"Attention all hands in the arts and culture community," the message began. "It may be a little early to cry wolf, but it’s beginning to look like Malacañang, intentionally or not, is moving towards taking over the National Commission for Culture and the Arts."

The gist of Mr. Romero’s concern is that "projects of the 22 private-sector national committees that constitute the Commission are being sidelined because, according to (the) Budget Management department, of insufficiency of funds."

So what I’ve heard is true. That the NCCA has been remiss in disbursing funds for certain obligations, and that of late only employees’ salaries are being released.

I’m only sorry to report that this state of affairs concerns me directly. In no small way.

Last February, five lucky fellows were awarded the NCCA Writers’ Prize for proposals to complete writing projects in five different genres. Lourd de Veyra won it for a collection of poetry in English, Timothy Montes for a novel in English, Jimmuel Naval for a short fiction collection in Filipino, Roland Tolentino for a book-length essay in Filipino, and yours truly for translation from Filipino to English of 60 poems by the late Mike L. Bigornia.

The cash awards may be said to be rather big-time, which was what seduced this long-toothed veteran to enter the literary sweepstakes in the first place.

We all felt good on Awards Night as we were handed checks of 50 thou each as a first tranche. (See photo) The total award money would be 200 thou per awardee. The balance would be given in successive tranches of 25 percent each upon submission of half of the proposed manuscript, then three-fourths, and ultimately the whole enchilada, as long as the serial submissions were conducted within no more than a year. So said the contract each of us grantees affixed our signatures to.

If one wrote fast without prejudicing quality, we were assured, why, we could collect the full sum in no time, or once we turned in the full manuscript.

I submitted translations of 30 poems by Kaibigang Mike on March 18, and looked forward to receiving the second tranche in, say, a week or a fortnight, or as reasonably long as it took the usual bureaucratic procedure, which meant getting a Land Bank check filled up and signed by the powers-that-be.

Oh, there was a little business about having a designated reader go through the submission, presumably to determine if the grantee had not turned in a sheaf of papers with nothing but "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" repeated all over.

I say presumably. After all, would the reader recommend denial of the purse after several judges had already chosen the winning proposal, and the grantee had indeed come across with what he had promised?

A month passed and there was still no call – with bells ringing as from a PAGCOR one-armed bandit – from the NCCA. Sure, Holy Week had intervened, not to mention some newfangled notion called holiday economics. I can understand and stand such delays as would be occasioned by genetic and generational reliance on tropical birthright. Read: Time and effort can be an item when it comes to going ever so slowly – together, hand in slow-mo hand.

But after five weeks the kids started protesting over their monggo diet. What was I to do but take the initiative and ring up the NCCA myself, and ask sweetly if it was tropical, er, topical time for yours truly to collect his just rewards?

I was told by a functionary assigned to the matter at hand – and I know this young fellow to be an otherwise decent, respectable, budding literato – that the readers had not yet turned in their verdict. Er, approval.

Readers? What readers? Three of them, I heard over the phone. Hmmm. Three. That many? Yes, sir. And not a single one had submitted his/her comments on the 30 translated, fulfilled poems. Not one. Could have been the Holy Week. Could be they’re all still out of town.

Could be, the paranoiac Kafka in this here Krip surmised, that they all ignored the half-manuscript altogether. Could be that this here grantee can wait till kingdom come before he upgrades his family’s meals to include a staple like rice, let alone meat and fish.

"Hindi naman po siguro." Wow, that’s a relief. So how long do you think this process will take? Aren’t you guys supposed to follow up on the Boracay-based readers, urge them to render their verdict, even if I can’t see how any negative commentary on their part can overturn the grant program jurors‚ decision? Let alone my genius in English?

I mean, if a reader were to say he/she didn’t think my translations were a whit worthy, whose word or sense of the word would NCCA go by – the recently empowered grantee, by virtue of a prize, or the randomly selected reader-authority, by some sort of footnoted mandate? Should the grantee insist that he knew what he was doing, and the hell with the Reader since he the Grantee already gained deep selection by the Writers’ Prize jurors, would Reader and Grantee then be made to argue it out, mano a mano, at 10 paces?

Strictly ministerial, this business of assigning readers to confirm that the grantee wasn’t pulling the wool over the NCCA purser’s eyes. Or so I would have argued had any reader actually come up with a possibly preposterous Nay voice.

But then I left it that, trusting in the vagaries of race and environment. Perhaps the "readers" did need time to decipher my world-class command of the universal language. Perhaps they were all inclined to apply a fine-tooth comb in comparing my second-hand edition with the original in Filipino. Maybe they thought that Mike Bigornia’s idioms and poetic stance, attack and inclination had to be thoroughly assessed before their critical eyes could even turn to the translator’s attempts to achieve a satisfactory level of vulgate.

Eh, wot? Oh, I don’t know. Leave it to time.

But came time when a birdie, large as life, breathed the siren song of insider’s truth. The NCCA had no money. You’re being fed bullshit, I was told. The DBM refuses to release funds for NCCA grants and programs that had been officially approved and announced, even those that had been started, as in the case of your Writers’ Prize.

My, oh my.

Our informant went on breathlessly. The NCCA can’t even pay a printer for the last issue of the scholarly journal Bulawan, so that a subsequent issue is on hold. Other grants and programs are in limbo. To think that a new chair has been chosen, no less than acting chair Evelyn Pantig, who has been Tourism Undersecretary. GMA herself made the selection, this after a well-publicized selection process that called on culture groups to nominate candidates. Siya rin pala ang pipiliin.

Oh, let’s give the President the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she trusts Ms. Pantig’s administrative skills. Besides, the DOT undersecretary has warmed the chair’s seat at the NCCA long enough. So it’s still her acting team-up with NCCA executive director Maria Fina Yonzon that stays in place.

Well, our informant ripostes, trouble is, Mrs. Pantig has been pushing for culture-for-tourism thrusts. And we all know that culture and the arts aren’t exactly to be regarded as handmaidens for tourism.

I fell silent. I had met chair Pantig and executive director Yonzon. Surely they had heads on their shoulders that brought them up the bureaucratic ladder in the first place. And surely our beloved GMA had reason to entrust an important Commission to their hands.

Their problem, as I saw it, would now be to convince the President that the NCCA’s charter can’t be cha-cha-ed. Or shouldn’t be. With the report on a suddenly cash-strapped NCCA, how would the arts and culture community react if funds that had been promised certain programs, let alone already officially earmarked, were to dry up, just because the DBM says it has no money for the Commission?

Direk Eddie Romero explains it all so reasonably.

"In the first place, the NCCA’s capital funds come from an endowment provided by the law which created it, from 10 percent of total travel tax collections. The money is collected automatically on all international travel ticket purchases, and remitted periodically to the National Treasury through the Department of Tourism (whose undersecretary, coincidentally, has been elected chairman of the NCCA on the President’s recommendation). The money is therefore available, and cannot be used for any other purpose than that mandated by law. The DBM has no business impeding release thereof as needed by the NCCA."

True enough, I fished out our contract – okay, Letter of Agreement – and there it was in black-and-white: "Certified funds available in the Amount of P200,000.00 net of tax." Signing below was Susan C. Dayao, acting accountant IV. Hope she’s been made permanent.

Mr. Romero goes on:

"In the second place, even more disturbing, is that the DBM is in fact releasing funds for projects that it deems urgent. What this could easily mean is that a Cabinet department, if not the office of the President itself, is taking over policy formulation initiative from the national committees of the NCCA as well as the Commission itself, usurping the function of deciding what needs doing in our country’s art and culture…"

Mr. Romero continues to be reasonable despite apparent evidence that should cause alarm over where the NCCA under GMA is headed.

He concludes: "I am not (yet) suggesting that we all start screaming bloody murder, only that we pool resources to obtain more definitive information as to what’s actually happening at the NCCA and the Office of the President in relation thereto before we start thinking about lines of action… There may be more important public issues in the air today, but we would all, whatever our political sentiments, be unforgivably remiss if we were to ignore this one. Maybe we should ask the President first. Who volunteers for that?"

"Help."

Okay, let me try.

Dear Mrs. President, could you please have your good office, and/or the NCCA under your good office, clarify this matter? I would be so grateful, Mrs. President, if I were told flat out that I shouldn’t expect any more of the official grant money supposed to be provided the official grant program called the Writers’ Prize. I will continue to translate Mike Bigornia’s poems, until I come up with my promised 60, and submit this as proof that I have honored the contract with NCCA. And I promise not to go to court to demand that NCCA honor it as well. Of course I’m worried that my fellow grantees would have to face the same problem, as would other artists and culture workers who have worked their butts off in expectation of officially projected funding from the NCCA.

But what can we do, except to appeal to you, Madame President, to have the air cleared on this matter? Is the NCCA reneging on contracts, per consultation with the DBM? And would this all lead to big trouble indeed, as Mr. Romero has most reasonably warned?

As a former, equally beloved President liked to say, "Abangan."