Going Cavite, Going Global

In five years’ time, your favorite tinapa (smoked fish) from Rosario, Cavite as well as the kapeng barako (brewed coffee) from Silang that your old man can’t do without at the start of the day, are envisioned to hit it big in the international market.

"It can be done," says Cavite Gov. Ayong Saquilayan Maliksi, "if the right technology, right packaging and right promotion are applied."

In between sips of the famous kapeng barako after breakfast at the Maliksi family farm in Barangay Malagasang 1-A in Imus, Gov. Maliksi speaks of how his provincial government would go about making Cavite a winner in the development arena in this time of global competitiveness. "As a start, I have already issued a circular to all my department heads that only Cavite-brewed coffee should be served to all our guests and callers."

The impetus to carry out the theme "Think Global, Act Global" was provided by some 80 Cavite local officials led by the governor himself, members of the high-powered provincial development council and representatives from the business sector and non-government organizations (NGOs). They gathered together for a four-day, live-in strategic planning workshop last November at the Meralco MML Development Center in Antipolo. Apart from focusing their energies and collective talent on identifying strategies and programs that would make Cavite competitive and a winner in the global arena, the workshop participants crafted and adopted a vision.

Makasaysayang Kabite.

Lupain ng Bayaning Mamamayan.

Buo ang Loob sa Pagbabago.

Matagumpay sa Pandaigdigang Larangan

The vision not only speaks well of the heroism demonstrated by the Caviteños in the struggle for Philippine independence. In a few words, it also captures Gov. Maliksi’s keen sense of history, being a grandson himself of the Katipunan hero Hipolito Saquilayan, and his unbridled confidence in the capabilities of his fellow Caviteños.

Despite his many achievements as a public servant and an unbeaten politician, Ayong Saquilayan Maliksi will always be best remembered for two things: That’s he’s the father of modern-day Imus, the architect who transformed one of the nation’s cleanest and greenest cities into the Christmas capital of the Philippines. That he authored the stunning defeat of the vastly popular movie actor Bong Revilla Jr. during the latter’s incumbency as governor of Cavite in the May 2001 polls.

And very little – or none at all – is known of the fact that when he was still chief of police of his town of birth in 1963, he helped plot the capture of the late Nardong Putik, whose notorious life his political nemesis had turned into a blockbuster movie.

Sprightly and hale at 62 even when he almost always sleeps late because his last commitment for the day generally finishes before or past midnight, Gov. Maliksi rises even before the sun does! He is already into a few kilometers of brisk-walking just as the first rays of the sun slip through the thick foliage in the 10-hectare family farm, which is five minutes by car from his residence in Bayang Luma.

His fastidiousness with the food he eats perhaps explains his superb state of health. No one in his household or from his staff at the provincial capitol in Trece Martirez City or among his circle of friends can ever remember a time in the last 30 years or so when their governor went down with an illness serious enough for him to stay bedridden for even just a day or to be hospitalized. Rare bouts of common cold, yes, but so fit and healthy is he that he has never been seen coughing in public as most of us do during the rainy days and cold months.

What keeps him in top form? "Clean living, good food and regular exercise, but I would say doing these healthy things is no secret at all," he says. "I don’t smoke; I don’t drink. I’m not even a social drinker. I go for tea – and coffee as long as it is Cavite-brewed coffee. As for food, I stick to a fish-and-fruit-and-vegetable diet. I have a very hearty appetite for fish, whether it’s fried, grilled or plain pinangat, and for steamed vegetables dipped in sautéed bagoong, the liquid kind, not the kind that we use for kare-kare. Sometimes I go for a little amount of meat as well, but I can’t control myself if I am served sinampalukang manok. But the chicken should be native. I raise many of these on my farm. We also grow the vegetables we eat."

Having come from the ranks of the poor, Maliksi, whose mother sold the vegetables grown by his farmer-father, has always enjoined his constituents to raise practical food in their backyards. Since his first day in office as governor in July last year, he has been pushing for sufficiency in food production. "At every opportunity I get, I tell them to plant vegetables and raise animals in their backyards or in any available space."

To further encourage backyard food production and provide a source of livelihood, the provincial government, Maliksi says, has also distributed over 3,000 kabir chicks from Israel to residents of all the barangays in the province. A kabir chicken can weigh as much as 14 to 15 kilos and is capable of laying 250 eggs annually. And the wonder of it all, he gushes, is that it tastes like the native chicken. Now, the provincial capitol has set up a hatchery for kabir chickens. It has also given away seeds of high-yielding fruits and vegetables as well as taught the recipients the latest technology in growing them. In fact, the government technicians, in cooperation with Israeli agri experts, have already been using the Maliksi farm as some kind of an experimental laboratory.

LRT Extension Project

Under the five-year development plan pursued by Gov. Maliksi, Cavite hopes to perfect the technology to raise and process high-yielding fruits, vegetables, animals and other agricultural produce and be able to produce them in commercial quantities. Alongside smoked fish and brewed coffee, the province also aims to push oysters, mussels, tourism and its human resources, both in the local and international markets.

To do that, Maliksi is pursuing as well a program to set up infrastructure that will move both the product and the people fast.

Though not a signatory in the recent signing in Malacañang of the $847-million Light Rail Transit Extension Project to Cavite, Maliksi was instrumental in getting the project off the drawing board. His involvement began when he was still mayor of Imus from 1988 to 1998 and has continued through his term as congressman of the second district of Cavite from 1998 to 2001 and up to the present.

Says he: "A good mass transport system is a prerequisite to the sustained economic development of an area, so that when I heard that the National Economic Development Authority was drawing up a plan to extend the LRT from Baclaran southward, I pushed hard to have Cavite included in the project. When interest in the project cooled down due to changes in government stewardship, I urged various departments and agencies of the government through a flurry of letters to keep it going. In fact, on Dec. 14, 1999 when I was still congressman, I received a letter from the Canadian ambassador at the time, John H. Treleaven, enlisting my support for the project. I’m glad our efforts paid off. Construction work will begin early this year."

The extension project, which comes in three phases, is an undertaking between the national government represented here by the Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) and Canada-based SNC Lavalin International, Inc. Except for paying for rights of way and some other relocation expenses to move affected homeowners, the government will not spend a single centavo for this project.

Phase I of the project will link Baclaran to Bacoor, a distance of 12 kilometers. A four-km. rail line will connect Bacoor to Imus for Phase II while Phase III will span the 11-km. distance between Imus and Dasmariñas. Hopes are high that the completion of the Cavite rail line from Baclaran to Dr. A. Santos Ave. in Parañaque City will be completed before its 2004 deadline. When fully operational, the extended LRT will greatly cut down travel time of commuters to and from Cavite as well as increase their working productivity.

Decongesting Traffic

However, the LRT 1 Extension Project won’t totally decongest traffic along Aguinaldo Highway and Coastal Road. What will, says Maliksi, is to back it up with internal roads. The LRT project is only some of four major road and transport projects he has set his sights on to put Cavite again at the forefront of industrialization. The others include the extension of the Manila-Cavite Toll Expressway to Noveleta, Cavite; the Cavite Urban Mass Transport (Busway) Project; and the construction of another highway parallel to Aguinaldo Highway from somewhere between Kawit and Noveleta to Tagaytay City.

Currently, Makati- or Manila-bound motorists and commuters taking the Aguinaldo Highway and Coastal Road sometimes take three or four hours to wiggle out of the bumper-to-bumper traffic on these stretches. This traffic situation, Maliksi says, is one reason why investors have either moved out or ignored Cavite. "Businessmen need at the longest only one hour to move their products or services to the nearest airport or pier, but that’s hard to achieve with the kind of road and transport system we have right now."

Given his track record in public service with Imus as a shining example, it’s easy to see where Cavite – and Tinapa de Salinas de Las Islas Filipinas and tahong chips – will be five years from now under his leadership.