When Cha-cha becomes class war

The entry, in an active way, of former president Corazon C. Aquino in the opposition to charter change last Friday has revived the battle lines between the traditional Filipino elite and the masses.

Blame this on this middle class lawyer from Pangasinan by the name of Raul Lambino who now heads the pro-cha-cha group Sigaw ng Bayan. When Mrs. Aquino announced at the Club Filipino that she was joining the Stop Cha-cha movement, Lambino immediately exclaimed: There goes the Filipino elite again.

As a matter of fact, the creative Lambino immediately coined the phrase "yagit vs. elite" to highlight his movement's view that the yagits were for charter change while the elite were for stopping cha-cha. In short, Lambino wants his movement to be identified with the majority while Mrs. Aquino's stand carries the minority position.

Lambino has yet to explain the full basis of his point. But we think that his tactic is very clever. By placing the anti-charter change on the side of Cory and the elite, he immediately scores in the propaganda battle. Lambino is hoping that the land question that confronts the family of Mrs. Aquino would enter the political equation of charter change.

Lambino is a probably an expert in propaganda, aside from being a lawyer. He knows when to seize the high ground - and the high ground on the cha-cha issue is to get more adherents to your side. Perhaps, he thinks that by polarizing the issue into the yagits and the elite, he would be able to get the high moral ground.

The President, the Speaker and the members of the ruling coalition that spearhead the charter change have found a true believer in Raul Lambino. As he spoke at the Kapihan sa Sulo last Saturday, he was full of confidence that his crusade would succeed.

When I told him, for instance, that there seems to be a trend among Regional Trial Courts to stop the local Commission on Elections from verifying signatures obtained from the people's initiative, his emotions went high and his language became denunciatory. He should just have said that the local courts could not do the job of the COMELEC. But then, Raul is a true believer.

* * * Intellectual property rights

Just in case you don't know, we have a government agency that protects inventions and useful ideas of Filipinos. This is the Intellectual Property Office under the Department of Trade and Industry. Mr. Adrian Cristobal Jr. - the son of the famed Filipino essayist - heads the agency.

Cristobal said that the IPO is mandated to administer an effective intellectual property system to promote creativity and competitiveness, facilitate transfer of technology, attract foreign investments, and ensure market access for Philippine products. IPO also promotes the diffusion of knowledge and technology for socio-economic and cultural development.

IPO aims to foster a creative and innovative Philippines that values and uses intellectual property for national development. Cristobal hopes that this new goal of the IPO will lead to mobilization of ideas in support of small and medium industries.

* * * Ernesto Makahiya: Honasan's compatriot

All of a sudden, we became nostalgic when we saw on television the arrest of Mr. Ernesto Makahiya, a former executive of the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) and now a co-accused in a rebellion case against former Senator Gringo Honasan.

Makahiya was arrested in Laguna after weeks of hiding. The military has charged him for involvement in the Oakwood Incident which happened some years back. Why the charge came only now - years after that failed putsch - is not really clear to me. Perhaps, the evidence came late.

Unknown to many, Makahiya was an activist in the sixties. He must have been a founder of Kabataang Makabayan on November 30, 1964, because when I became an activist in 1966, he was already a senior in the movement. We remember Ernie to be an expert of the Tagalog language and whenever we had the chance, we would request him to deliver the poems of the labor leader Amado Hernandez.

After graduating in Asian Studies, he went to the DBP, a surprise to most of us who thought Ernie would join his brothers in the Alpha Sigma fraternity in the underground. But no, he went to the DBP instead where he rose from the ranks to become an executive.

The year 1986 must have changed him because since that time, he started his relations with Col. Gringo Honasan, a fraternity brother. His idealism must have been rekindled, but this time, his new association was not with the Left, but with the military rebels.