People power or mob rule?

Amid three and a half hectares of hillside full of grown fruit trees, both mundane and exotic, a melange of common and rare ornamental plants, thousands of dazzling orchids of all varieties, sits a white mansion of charming Victorian design and classic ambiance where Aurora "Ching" Santos Dychangco lives out her widowhood years in perfect contentment.

Ching's father, the late Nick Santos of the prestigious "Santos Lumber" enterprises in the Visayas and Mindanao, planted all the fifty or so mango trees of different varieties. Mr. Santos was a UP Los Baños Agricultural College graduate, worked as a forester in Mindanao before migrating to Cebu with his wife Loreto from Marikina and Taytay. Today his family has the distinction of having Cebu's best and most varied mangoes - Guadalupe, Indonesian, Florida, Indian, Puerto Rican, etc.

Lording it over this collection of mango trees is the Indonesian tree brought from Kuala Lumpur by Ching's husband Renato Dychangco who passed away in 1978. Agriculturist and Bulletin editor-writer Zac Sarian, who was a recent visitor, writes: "This mango tree has been producing a lot of mangoes. The fruits are at least half a kilo each, very sweet and juicy, and has very scant fiber, not sour even when green. Some scions have been recently obtained for grafting in a nursery in Manila. Some scions have been used in topworking a mature tree for faster production of budsticks."

A new tree brought from Brazil by Ching in one of her frequent travels abroad is the Brazilian national fruit, the Abreu. It is now three years old, about five feet high. All mature trees in this colossal garden are fruit bearing - lychees, mangosteen, tambis, sweet tamarind, lanzones, rambutan, etc. - to the enjoyment and delight of Ching's grandchildren by Ollie and Samuel.

Ching does not use chemical pesticides or fertilizer or inducers. She relies on old-fashioned "pa-usok" and she makes her own compost. Indeed, the Santos Dychangco garden is the best model of successful urban farming in the City of Cebu.

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Recent events remind me of past commentaries. From Seth Mydans of New York Times, February 6, 2001: "People Power 2 was met with doubt and criticism, described by foreign commentators as a defeat for due process, as mob rule, as a de facto coup. It was seen as an elitist backlash against a President who had overwhelmingly been elected by the poor. This time, it appears, people power was used not to restore democracy but to supplant it."

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From Anthony Spaeth, TIME, January 29, 2001: "The Philippine polity is 77 million strong. Was this a revolution of the Filipino people - or a few hundred thousand powerful individuals? Perhaps this represents confusion between democratic passions and the rule of law. More by a certain clique People Power has become an acceptable term for a troubling phenomenon known as "mob rule."