Events: The Video Documentary PUREZA: Preparation or Propaganda? (3)

This third piece took some time because one library of documents was handed to me by former Councilor Wilson Gamboa, Jr., valuable documents which needed to see print as a “kabilin-bilinan sang napatay”, former SRA Administrator, Atty. Wilson Gamboa, Sr. If J. Abello’s PUREZA is a contribution to History, wow, in my possession now are legal documents of the late SRA Administrator who was lambasted by 56 sugar industry leaders Last 1996 printed in local and national papers for one week. They alleged Gamboa’s pretensions as a “modern messiah”. How I wish Mr. Abello accepts my Facebook requests and see for himself documents not interviewees.

These 56 sugar leaders quoted 10 portions of former SRA Administrator Gamboa’s speech delivered before PASUDECO, Pampanga dated September 23, 1996. They mocked him as “Mr. Right”, “day dreamer”, “grade school teacher of GMRC” but surprisingly, Mr. Abello’s PUREZA beautifully presented an artistic syncretism of Gamboa’s speech. I wonder why Mr. Abello did not get flaks, perhaps, the sugar leaders are now psychosocially adept.

These 56 sugar leaders paid a full page advertisement demanding that Gamboa, Sr., “As SRA administrator should utilize to the fullest the powers and prerogatives of his office to hasten the implementation of the Sugar Restitution Law and Sugar Order # 6 for the benefit of both sugar producers and their workers, rather than make use of his time in making insolent remarks about our financial flight.” Kudos to the history paradigm of PUREZA because a decade before this paid advertisement of the 56 sugar leaders, then Assemblyman Wilson Gamboa, Jr. together with Iloilo Assemblyman Fermin Caram, successfully proved in the Batasang Pambansa, the P14 Billion plunder of the sugar industry PHILSUCOM-NASUTRA under the Marcos-Benedicto tandem – which became the solid basis of the Sugar Restitution Law. Were they then accusing Gamboa, Sr. who fought for them? Looking at these in a wider perspective, what happened three decades hence, long before Gamboa, Sr. was appointed SRA administrator until to date? Mr. J. Abello unfortunately was not able to cull answers from his interviewees some of them were SRA Administrators themselves.

I have an answer. Gamboa, Sr.’s library kept a complete set of documents exposing the anomalies in the sugar industry whereby planters are cheated of their just share in sugar transactions mainly the sale and utilization of import allocations and CONVERSIONS, among others. This can easily be made available to Mr. Abello for his next documentary film.

He was not “day dreaming”, using the 56 sugar leaders’ words in their paid advertisement last 1996 for one week in both local and national newspapers, when they themselves quoted Gamboa’s speech, “Spending only a few days at SRA, he already discovered a cabal and conspiracy of three big planters organizations and one mill organization that utilized the countertrade program to make a lot of money; that he (I) wondered if producers finally received this large amount of money; that after getting their permit paper to import, they immediately sold these to Chinese and Filipino-Chinese traders; and that the sugar industry is marred by one scam after the other involving its leaders.”

The late Atty. Wilson Gamboa, Sr. reiterated this a month before he died in a personal interview. I am sure everybody will agree that the dying man’s words are precisely reliable. Thus, I demand a public “vomiting in repentance”.

If PUREZA is meant to prepare us for 2015 zero-tariffication, then Gamboa’s library contain documents that are clear road maps which started when the Island was opened to world trade middle of the 19th century. “We forgot this,” J. Abello said it himself in his PUREZA narration. Gamboa, Sr. during his time could not care less to be labeled all sorts of names. Some, during his funeral wake, were kind to say, “He was a man ahead of his time”. No, he was a man in the right time who admonished sugar leaders to prepare the industry for what PUREZA itself feared. Gamboa, Sr. was not running a sari-sari store. At least two decades are needed to prepare an industry for globalization. He made statements two decades ago that created the ire of sugar leaders but his wisdom mocked and unheeded is the very cause that the industry now is pushing the panic button.*

(Next: Sugar as the Philippines’ comparative advantage in the global market)