DAVAO CITY--Environmentalists here are now on the search for the
ultimate "green idols" as they launched the Green Vote 2007 Thursday,
a public awareness-raising campaign with the aim of making
environment an election issue.
Jesuit Priest Albert Alejo, executive director of the Mindanawon
Initiatives for Cultural Dialogue Center of the Ateneo de Davao
University, said the green idols will be the politicians who will be
put to office because of their environmental agenda which will
specifically address the concerns of various sectors of the society
particularly the marginalized ones.
"People will decide who among the aspiring public leaders will survive
the environmental challenges being raised by various sectors. The
people will judge these candidates based on their specific
environmental agenda and their commitment to keep their promises,"
Alejo said.
Alejo said they will not endorse particular candidates but their
campaign will only elevate the awareness of the people about the
candidates who will most likely become their allies. He said they will
be presenting to the public the candidates' profiles and records of
statements, passed ordinances regarding environmental issues in Davao
City.
The priest also emphasized the need to carefully select leaders who
are not corrupt, saying corrupt leaders are naturally the number one
destroyers of the environment.
"We will only put our lives in grave danger if we entrust our future
to corrupt leaders by putting them in office. Only few people have
really benefited from logging. Only few lives were bettered by mining
and plantation," said Alejo who is also active in the nationwide
anti-corruption movement Ehem!
"The effect is really clear. A wrong choice can leave devastating
effect on our lives and the environment," Alejo added.
Through Green Vote 2007, the candidates will also be invited to
different community forums where they will be given the chance to lay
down to the public their environmental agenda.
A brainchild of various groups of nongovernment organizations,
people's organizations, medical professionals, and the academe, the
Green Vote 2007 grabs the elections in May as an opportunity to raise
environmental concern for the people and the politicians running for
office into a level characterized by what they call a Green Culture.
The campaign primarily wants the public aware of the importance of
the coming elections and choosing high-quality leaders who would
address the people's deepest concern for a healthy environment.
It also aims to provide voters information on the environmental
platform of candidates as bases for choosing leaders and to come up
with priority environmental agenda to be implemented in the next three
years.
The Panaghoy sa Kinaiyahan-Coalition for Mother Earth (also known as
Panaghoy), a broad aggrupation of different environmental NGOs, the
people deserves ecologically-minded candidates who will secure their
future.
"We will not dwell on the personalities because we do not want to be
branded as a political machinery of a particular political candidate.
The issue here is their agenda and their platform and we do not want
to hear from them motherhood statements but concrete and specific
statements which will answer the concerns of the fisherfolk, women,
farmers, children, among others," said Lia Jasmin Esquillo,
chairperson of Panaghoy.
Dagohoy Magaway, spokesperson of the group Mamamayan Ayaw sa Aerial
Spraying (Alliance against Aerial Spraying) or Maas, said they do not
want to be fooled again by candidates who will be promising them
roads, schools, and basketball courts.
"Enough of leaders who constructed for us basketball courts and
donated trophies…we want someone who will assure us of a safety
environment," Magaway said.
"However, we have to be very careful because these people can very
well deceive us with their sugar-coated promises. Lami kaayo ni sila
mubatbat nga pati mga patay mabuhi," he added.
Geraldine Catalan, member of the broad coalition of women's group
called Kolos Neng Bi Libo (a lumad Dyangan group term for Empowered
Women), said the candidate must realize that the farmers and the poor
whom they have deceived in the past have already tasted the bitter
taste of the consequence.
"Dili na mga bugo ang mga tawo karon. Kini kinahanglan nilang
masabtan. Ang mga mag-uuma, ang mga babaye, na-edukar na ug dili na
mga bugo. Kinahanglang masabtan sa mga kandidato nga among
kinahanglang makita nga lider nga adunay paglantaw sa among kahimtang
isip mga yanong tano ug mag-uuma," Catalan said.
As a mother and member of a women's group who practices organic
farming, Catalan said they want to see leaders who will be legislating
specific laws which will support and provide security to organic
farmers.
Also part of the campaign is to conduct community-based discussions on
the elections and environmental issues and to forge a covenant between
the groups behind the campaign and candidates for an environmental
agenda which will be done during different candidate forums.
The group said the covenant will be used as a tool for "paniningil"
(payback time) from the candidates.
"Kini aron dili sila basta-basta mubiya kanamo," Catalan said.
A paper on the Green Vote 2007 says more drastic actions must be done
to reverse the tide of environmental degradation and secure the future
of the children.
"The city has its own share of environmental problems. Studies have
shown that by 2013, our groundwater considered as one of the best in
the world, will be insufficient to meet the needs of the populace,"
the paper says.
In 2001, however, the city council passed the Davao City Water Code,
the first of its kind in the Philippines and recently signed into law
of the ordinance that banned aerial spraying in the city's banana
plantations and Watershed Code. This, aside from the existing Trees
for our Children Project and the efforts to enact an Environmental
Code and a Coastal Management Code.
