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 non-government 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 agrupation 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 fisher folk, 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.”
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.
(Jeff Tupaz)
