How Can They Hear Us?
A simple question plays on my mind. “How can they afford to treat Ternateņos as if they don’t exist?”
A question that hurts me much knowing that even the person whom I thought will hear first the voices of the small ones will
be the one who will tell the whole nation that the groups of people who are opposing the sanitary landfill to be built in
Ternate, are just lacking the information and just pretending to have competent knowledge on the sanitary landfill project.
From what I remembered, the thing that happened in International Institute for Rural Reconstruction in Barangay Biga,
Silang town was held in order for the Governor to hear the side of each group. Now, for those people who still don’t
know what really happened in Silang, here’s the story.
The program should have started eight o’clock in the morning, but as the usual thing, it started late. It was
almost 10 am when Ms. Gloria Diaz spoke in front of the people saying what was her opinion as an opposing to the landfill
plan.
The program eventually started. The said
event was started with a prayer, national anthem and an opening speech from Governor Ayong Maliksi. From his speech, he stated
that Cavite is really having now problems regarding wastes. He keeps on reminding everyone that because of his care to the
environment, when he was once the mayor of Imus, he was the one who started the segregation project but unfortunately, he
said that only 50% of the residents from Imus participated. He also reminded everyone that almost all the mayors of Cavite
are just hiding the collected wastes away from the eyes of the people for them to believe that every town has no big problem
with regards to wastes. He also said that the event was for the two groups to hear themselves out. Now, hearing it from our
good Governor, we, the opposing group, prepared ourselves, for the open forum. But the open forum did not follow immediately.
From their program, they have a lot of speakers first before having the open forum.
Lunchtime came, and as we grouped ourselves,
we thought of asking the emcee directly that we wanted to proceed to the open forum as soon as the program resumes. The program
resumed at 1pm and we already had the open forum. There were lots of questions raised by the concern citizens not only of
Ternate but also of the whole province of Cavite. The set-up went like this, each person who’d asked question was given
only a small period of time asking while the person addressed by the question was given lots of time. From there, it was obviously
seen that the forum was not in favor of us.
They actually cut the microphone for us
not to follow up questions. To make the long story of the open forum short, we were very
disappointed of what had happened. In the middle of the forum, two mayors stood up and shared their opinion. It was really
disappointing because even them, they treated the Ternate people as if we don’t know anything. They
are actually not included in the forum but what can we do? Nothing more than to respect, but I don’t think that they
respected us, even before the start of the program.
Too sad that most of the elected officials are thought to have sympathy on the people who trusted them. And
the forum was totally cut at 2:20 in the afternoon when it should have end at 3 pm according to the program sheet itself.
Now, can someone tell me, how can we, especially the people of Ternate, who are treated as nobody, be heard by the
whole nation?
We, as no one for some people out there, think has a bigger hearts and brighter minds that makes us SOMEBODY to our
beloved mother earth and ever-loving God the Father.
