Covering a ‘Miracle’

Covering a ‘Miracle’
How a story moved a reporter to tears
By Tonette T. Orejas

VEN IN the most dramatic moments of news coverage, I do not remember myself crying or even holding back tears.
Angelo de la Cruz, my fellow Kapampangan who was held hostage in Iraq, did not get a lot of sympathy from me. My bureau chief Rolly Fernandez and his assistant Robert Jaworski Abaño set down the rules that would guide me in reporting: objectivity and professional distance.
But I found it a struggle to abide by these rules when Fr. Eddie Panlilio entered the Pampanga gubernatorial race.
First, Panlilio was my kabalen (townmate) in the small fishing and poultry town of Minalin. Second, as executive director of the Social Action Center of Pampanga, he guided the theater group that I headed and sent it out to perform in 40 or so evacuation centers to help Mt. Pinatubo victims talk about their conditions and find solutions to those.
Going against the wishes of his archbishop, Paciano Aniceto, who wanted to keep his “good priest,” Panlilio decided to go ahead and test the waters of politics. In his last mass at his parish in Betis, Guagua, I saw parishioners cry as Panlilio shed his priestly robe.
This is it, I said. With Panlilio pitting himself against Gov. Mark Lapid and board member Lilia Pineda—both allies of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo—I might be covering what could be the most exciting, most unusual election ever held in Pampanga—or in the entire country.
I had my own decisions to make, too. I pledged not to allow my familiarity with Panlilio to get in the way of my journalistic work. I turned down the request of Panlilio’s close advisers to join his media bureau.
Excited by the changing complexion of the gubernatorial race, I began to regret undergoing a hysterectomy last March 12. Still feeling quite weak from the surgical procedure and occasionally bleeding, I plunged back to work.

Lapid’s silence
Strangely, in the big fight that loomed before him, Lapid was not in battle mode. When suspected jueteng lord Rodolfo “Bong” Pineda announced his endorsement of the guberna-torial bid of his wife, Lilia, on Dec. 31, Lapid was silent.
Lapid kept silent, too, when GMA-7 aired an exclusive story revealing that he was not, after all, a bachelor. He had a Korean wife by whom he has a daughter. He also sired a child with actress Tanya Garcia. Those revelations did not sit well among conservative Kapampangans.
As incumbent governor, Lapid tried to improve his chances of winning by cam-paigning among the barangay captains as early as October 2006. More than 400 of the 538 village chiefs received vans that his father, Sen. Manuel “Lito” Lapid, funded through his pork barrel. These vans displayed sticker-photographs of the Lapid father and son that were as big as the tires of the van.
The 28-year-old Lapid held meetings left and right with various sectors. But he had many things going against him.
Unlike his father, the young Lapid was not a good speaker. He made himself scarce to the media, letting his chief campaigner, Fidel Arcenas, do the talking for him most of the time.
Unlike Pineda who has been doing town-level consultations as early as November, the incumbent governor hit the campaign trail only in January 2007.

‘Mother of Perpetual Help’
Pineda, through the 16 mayors who were her allies, organized crowds of as much as 5,000 people and met with them in gyms. The audience would stay for four to six hours, getting bottled water and boxed dinners.
Pineda, 56, gave a distinct campaign pitch. It was time for the Lapids to go, along with their corrupt and poor governance, she said.
Her running mate, Vice Gov. Joseller Guiao, recited a list of graft cases that had been filed against Lapid. One was for five alleged ghost projects that were paid for twice by the capitol and the senator’s pork barrel. The other was for alleged negligence in the collection of quarry taxes.
Pineda was not a bombastic speaker but she knew how to strike at the emotions of her listeners. Health and education were her priorities, she said. Her PR handler projected her as a motherly figure.
In reality, Pineda was more than that.  For 19 years, she had served in various local positions. Married to a man who was a reputed jueteng lord, she was known among the masses as the “Mother of Perpetual Help” because of her charity work even before she ran for governor. In April, she told me that she had received solicita-tion letters which, if piled up, would be taller than her height of 4’ 11″.
After every speech, she would be sur-rounded by people with all sorts of requests—money for dialysis or surgery, medicines, plane fare, tuition, or summer excursions.
Lapid could not raise the jueteng issue against Lilia because, as Bong Pineda had claimed, the governor was helped by the Pinedas in his 2004 gubernatorial bid.
In their political rallies, Lapid and Pineda always had the masses for their audience. In those events, I got the sense that the people were merely mobilized by political operators. When I set out to interview some of them, only a few were willing to give their names. Most of them would walk away.

A third force
Lapid and Pineda knew a third force was coming.  Streamers ominously began appearing all over Pampanga by the second week of March. One said: “No to evil: Lesser or greater. Yes to a good Kapampangan leader.” Another streamer said: “No to jueteng! No to quarry corruption!”
By March 29, it was clear who the third force was. Pushing a cart carrying four children and the image of the Our Lady of Fatima, Panlilio went to the Commission on Elections to file his certificate of candidacy. Right away, he explained what he was doing. He was waging, he said, not an electoral campaign but “a moral and spiritual crusade.”
Soon enough, a campaign to discredit the priest began. His critics distributed press statements and flyers claiming that Panlilio had four girlfriends and a son.
The flyers came from anonymous sources. Checking out the allegations, I tracked down the supposed girlfriends of the priest but they all laughed and dismissed these as rumors. No boy came forward to claim he was Panlilio’s son. I grilled Panlilio for three hours, hoping he would admit to something. Days later, women, men, and children wore pins on their T-shirts or bags mocking the allegations against Panlilio. Wearing T-shirts that were stamped with red lipstick, they declared themselves “girlfriends, boyfriends, children of Among Ed.”

A miracle?
My attention, however, was drawn not just to Panlilio but also to his volunteers and supporters.
Virginia Diego, 59, a bottle vendor in Guagua, would distribute Panlilio’s flyers as she bought scrap bottles. Terence Joseph Yumul, 13, and Romeo Ojero II, 12, gave up their summer vacations to work in the campaign headquarters. Farmer-businesswoman Agnes Romero offered her spacious garden for fundraising dinners. Overseas Kapampangan wired money to his campaign coffers.
Four days after the May 14 elections, provincial prosecutor Jesus Manarang began reading the votes cast for Panlilio in Magalang. Hardly had he finished speaking when screams of joy and applause filled the jampacked Bren Z. Guiao Convention Center in San Fernando. The 11,097 votes gave Panlilio an edge of 1,147 votes over Pineda.
Rushing backstage, I began writing the story on my computer.  A text message came in. “It‘s a miracle, of course. And we worked hard for it. It’s God’s way of saying it’s time to change, to serve His people, especially the poor.” It was Panlilio.
I rewrote the lead. Tears were welling in my eyes. I was moved, not by Panlilio’s feat but by the Kapampangan’s courage in choosing their leader in the face of mighty and moneyed politicians. It was a story to cry for.

Tonette T. Orejas is a correspondent for the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

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