Early this year, Roan Abasalo and I were tasked to
translate the Davao City Watershed Code into Bisaya. I gave half of the
chapters to him. Roan as a government broadcast media worker for many years had
a penchant for the job. Like my neighbor here in the pages of Mindanao Journal,
Sir King Quimpan, Roan is also “bagtik” in the mother tongue. One should take
extra pre-caution to give an accurate translation of the proviso to save the
trouble of being scolded by framers of the law.
In good faith, such self-proclaimed version was
hoped to pass all strict scrutiny, with the evil being avoided. But more often,
we can be “lost in translation”, like a toddler lost in the offing. A
translation job is seriously funny at times as you are not only stretching thin
the law, you could also lose its real meaning when written in another language.
Such could pop up many dialog balloons of jokes at the end of each line when
you read your work, but not for the experts.
Registering in our radar screen are those who play a
Smart Aleck in Congress with Senate Bill 2997, proposed by Senator Angara
and House
Bill No. 5497, proposed by Reps Romero Federico Quimbo and
Karlo Nograles, which seek to privatize all of the country’s water districts. This
proposed law that is tripping us up gets in the way of naming Davao’s icon of
abstract logic. This is staining the reputation of Davao to have the best
potable water in the world. With this judgment of Nograles, he has also to live
with all the consequences because not less than our national hero Dr. Jose P.
Rizal said, “True shame encounters eyes everywhere”.
How many wells do we have in the first district that
Nograles has been so keen on privatizing our water resource? The Davao City
Water District (DCWD) must have a point of influence and point of reference, so
to speak on this matter. Being a consistent Most Outstanding Water Utility in
Asia (which was awarded in Singapore), privatizing is much like reinventing the
wheel. He may have invalidly classified our water district with that of
Manila’s MWSS. Poor Davao. By and large these lawmakers, including the young
Nograles continue to champion this idea on privatization to the strong
opposition of their constituents.
It is the death of commonsense and people will feel
being suffocated by all these proposed laws. Is our government ridiculously oversold?
In that M-Power forum held in Grand Men Seng Hotel recently, one cracked up: Is
P-Noy also wants to privatize the police and military? In response to the
arbitrary quality, on how many looked at the agenda of the government gearing
towards Public-Private-Partnership (PPP), which also sounds like from protector
to protection racket. The government is our protector, the surrogate of the
rights-bearer from the ruling class. That is only a punch to the moon (suntok
sa buwan).
True, DCWD must have known its potential water
customers: the residential, commercial, industrial, government, institutional
and other users. But the government must draw the line between service and
profit. For water is a utility indispensable to our existence. It is even
supposed to be free for the households. So when water rates go up, people will
dig their own well and let government worry on the sanitation problem. Big
corporations stand to benefit the move on privatizing our water districts.
Every generation has the Smart Alecks who think they
can figure everything out, once and for all. We happen to be in the generation
that fell for it. But as Justice Cardozo once said: “We must spread the gospel;
that there is no gospel to spare us the pain of choosing at every step”. Where
do taxes of people go if the most basic service that our government can offer,
such as the provision of water will slip from its hands? Ergo, Nograles is
scaling the mountain in his proposed law.
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