Ako Bicol Chair Zaldy S. Co Vows to Uplift the Lives of Bicolanos in the Countryside

Agta children of the Oyango tribe in Sta. Teresita, Iriga City proudly display their school bags handed over by members of Ako Bicol party list who also doled out food stuff and school supplies.

IRIGA CITY --- While the Bayan Muna and other leftist groups in Bicol region strongly contested before the Commission on Elections the proclamation of three nominees of Bicolano’s homegrown regional political party, Ako Bicol chairman of the board, Elizaldy “Zaldy” S. Co vowed to continue implementing programs that would uplift the lives of the Bicolanos in the countryside. 

Co along with the nominees of Ako Bicol, lawyers Rodel Batocabe, Pido Garbin and Christopher Co visited the cultural minorities in a remote village of Iriga City to personally hand over school supplies for children and food assistance to the Oyango tribe here.

The Oyango tribal group in Sta. Teresita village in Iriga City originally dwelled on top of Mt. Asog in this city but they now reside within the 1.5 hectares land purchased by the provincial government. The Oyangos welcomed happily the assistance to them by Ako Bicol, the children especially gleeful over the goodies. 

The tribe epitomizes the whole of the Agta population in Bicol region, a fact that interested journalist and photographer Ricardo Perez, director of the Instructional Media Center of the University of Nueva Caceres based in Naga City, and made him pursue and document the tribe's story in his series in this newspaper titled “The Oyango Odyssey.” 

Co, when asked by Bicol Mail why he opted to visit the tribal community said that he wanted to see and reach out to the poorest of the poor communities personally to come up with holistic approach programs to address the pressing issues affecting among the cultural minorities. 

“They (Oyango tribe) represent the poorest of the poor Bicolanos. They’re the symbol of our roots. Since I graduated from the seminary in 1992 during my secondary education, I promised to extend assistance whatever I could as part of my advocacy,” Co told Bicol Mail.

Co, 40, chief executive of the Sunwest Group of Companies, like his late father Delfin Co, who established the Delfin Co Foundation to support the education of the poorest of the poor specifically poor but deserving students in Bicol said that holistic programs should be done to truly uplift the lives of the poorest of the poor communities in Bicol. 

After handing over food assistance and school materials to children, Co and his group inspected the site of Oyango tribe where he vowed to put up a solid multi-purpose hall, water facilities and livelihood programs for parents for them to generate income and support the needs of their children. 

“We will assist the educational needs of Oyango tribe and other cultural minorities in the Bicol Region, particularly from the communities at the foot of Mt. Asog in Iriga City but we should address first primary concerns like their daily subsistence. We, in Ako Bicol, have decided to assist in the educational needs of children of our cultural minorities after I’ve personally observed their needs. It is unfortunate that these children could not even finish primary schooling due to extreme poverty,” Co lamented.

He also directed party workers to visit these communities and evaluate the needs of the children to ensure that no child of school age would be deprived of basic primary education. 

Likewise, he directed them to study possible livelihood opportunities for the community and look for ways to improve the delivery of basic social services here. 

Co stressed that it has been his personal advocacy to help out the educational needs of poor but deserving Bicolano youths as an effective way of combatting poverty. 

Currently, Ako Bicol has thousands of scholars enrolled in the different colleges and universities across the region including vocational and training schools.

However, it has only two Aeta scholars, Divina Nagrampa and Bernard Ballesteros, who are taking up midwifery and criminology courses, respectively. The two were given immediate scholarships by Ako Bicol after their tribal chief Perdo Sentillas, interceded on their behalf.

Sentillas admitted to Bicol Mail that majority of children among the cultural minorities do not go to school due to poverty.

In the 2007 population survey conducted by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples in Bicol, the Agta population reached to 46,841 people consisting of 8,968 households with 23, 579 males and 23,262 females scattered in 183 tribal communities across the region. 

According to the study of NCIP office, the Agta population are in Camarines Norte with 24 registered tribal groups in seven municipalities while the province of Sorsogon account for 44 tribal communities scattered in six towns. The province of Camarines Sur has the largest concentration of Indigenous Peoples with 85 tribal communities located in 12 municipalities and one city while Albay has 28 tribal communities found in five towns and one city.

Ricardo E. Perez, 58, alias “Kastilang Kasag” (crab) who serves as a big brother to the Agta community and devoted his life to assist the tribal people of Mt. Asog, in Iriga City said that the assistance given by the Ako Bicol and Zaldy Co would help to intensify and awaken public awareness particularly the plight of the tribal people as they go about their day to day lives.

Ako Bicol is a regional political party which topped the elections for party list representatives with more than 1.5 million votes. Bayan Muna is contesting before the Commission on Elections Ako Bicol's three nominees.

Due to this the Bicol bloc led by Senator Francis Escudero unified to ask the poll body to immediately proclaim the AKB to uphold the rule of law and the voice of the Bicolano electorate. 

Article by: Rhydz Barcia

Source: Bicol Mail

AKB’s press statement on disqualification case filed by Bayan-Bicol

May 30,2010

Reference: Rodel M. Batocabe

President, Ako Bicol

“The baseless disqualification case filed by Bayan Bicol against Ako Bicol is nothing but pure and simple harassment designed to thwart the will of Bicolanos who have reposed their trust in us.” Ako Bicol President and nominee, Rodel M. Batocabe said in a statement.

Ako Bicol noted that right from the start when it decided to enter the political fray, Bayan- Bicol had always been very active in hurling black propaganda in an attempt to discredit Ako Bicol in the eyes of the Bicolanos. Bayan-Bicol has accused Ako Bicol as a GMA-aligned party list which is not marginalized.

Ako Bicol said that the disqualification case is a rehash of the old issues raised by the militant group during the campaign which were not believed by the Bicolanos as shown by the more than 1 million votes garnered by Ako Bicol in the Bicol region alone.

“First, the disqualification case was filed out of time per Comelec rules.  Second, Ako Bicol is a regional political party and not a marginalized sectoral organization or coalition. A regional political party is allowed to participate in the party list sytem of representation and certainly, it has every right to represent marginalized Bicolanos. Third, Ako Bicol does not deny that its Chairman, Elizaldy S. Co, is a generous benefactor of its livelihood and scholarship programs which were already instituted and had benefited thousands of Bicolanos in and out of the region long before the party decided to join the political arena. There is nothing wrong or illegal with that if we have generous Bicolanos willing to help us in our programs. Certainly, we will not take it against Bayan-Bicol if it has also generous friends, including Mr. Co, who will contribute in giving scholarships or livelihood programs to Bicolanos. But the problem is, Bayan-Bicol has no such programs as its priorities are somewhere else.” stressed Batocabe.

Ako Bicol further decried why Bayan-Bicol is singling out the Co family among all its supporters. It emphasized that the Co family has been benefactors of various charitable and church organizations and anti-poverty causes in the region and the scholarship programs and projects of Ako Bicol are only minor beneficiaries compared to the Cos ’ charitable endeavors. Since it was founded in 2006, Ako Bicol has been active in disaster relief and rehabilitation efforts , scholarship and livelihood programs in the Bicol region. In June 2009, it decided to participate in the party list system of representation.

“It is unfortunate that it has already been the professed advocacy of Bayan-Bicol to malign Ako Bicol. If it had its way, it could have thrown the septic tank and even the entire garbage dump on us.” said Batocabe.

On behalf of AKB headed by our chairman, Elizaldy S. Co, we are humbled by the tremendous mandate given by our fellow Bicolanos to our very own party list. You did not only give us your vote, but you made us the number 1 party list nationwide.

We cannot achieve this great honor alone. We owe it to our Lord God who was instrumental in uniting us as a people behind our very own party list.

Dios Mabalos Lord. We again ask you to help and guide our duly elected representatives to truly serve the interests and welfare of our people for your greater glory.

Dios Mabalos man Bicol. Let us continue to be united behind our very own party list so we can effectively strenthen and expand our programs and projects for the betterment of Bicolanos and the Bicol Region.

For after all… ang sabi ta ngani.. Sinda..Kita..Ika … Gabos Kita… Ako Bicol!

AKB's answer to Tessa Lopez's (Bayan - Bikol) malicious accusations

Dear Katrina,

Hi! Thank you for sending us the letter to the editor of a certain Tessa Lopez, the alleged Public Information Officer of Bayan – Bikol.

After going over the letter of Tessa (allow us to call her that para kunwari close ), we found out that it is nothing but a rehash of old baseless issues replete with lies and innuendoes circulated eons ago by the same group. Such letter is a very desperate but futile attempt to discredit the party list of Bicolanos, AKB, from going up the ratings, which is steadily rising . That is so sad because we Bicolanos, through AKB, right from the very start of the campaign period, intended to conduct our campaign at the highest level based on issues not on personalities, on merit and performance not on calumnies, as well as based on programs and platforms and not on empty promises. It is doubly sad that this group has went down to the gutters, so to speak, just so their votes will not be affected. But you can be assured Katrina that we will never go down to their level and make stories just to convince our fellow Bicolanos to vote for our party list. Allow us, therefore, to expose the blatant lies of this group, to wit:

First, Tessa’s desperation to connect our party list to GMA just so to discredit us is so obvious. She admitted it herself that we are now in the top three and according to her, “our tactic to distance ourselves from GMA seemed to work.” Accordingly, Tessa again tried to connect us to GMA but just like in the past, she is destined to fail and this time, she will fail soooooo miserably. (lol! Lol! again!). Why is this so Katrina? Because the truth will always come out Katrina and reason will always prevail. No matterhow you cover the truth with lies and black propaganda, in the end, the truth will always set us free.

Now Katrina, let us go to the ultimate question. Are we dummies of GMA so that she can be elected as Speaker of the House and eventually become prime minister? For the uninitiated and those who have intellectual pretensions, they would take this GMA gambit hook, line and sinker. I call this Katrina the “budol-budol-kigkig” effect which Tessa’s group has already mastered to perfection, and in the process, claiming innocent victims. You see, Tessa and her ilk loves labeling people, shouting slogans and engaging in agit-props. They will shout, call you names, swear on you and yes, they are very good in upholding mob rule. This is their expertise and nothing more.

And so, Katrina, let us analyze if indeed we are dummies of GMA in order for her to become Speaker. I am not sure if Tessa knows that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, while technically elected by his/her peers in Congress, is actually selected by the President. The President will naturally select a congressman who has his trust and confidence that will support his legislative agenda. Among all the presidential wannabes, no one in his right mind, would select GMA as his speaker knowing full well that he cannot sleep tightly in Malacanang, with an overly ambitious speaker threatening the President with impeachment every time he does something not to her liking. With the high negative ratings of PGMA, all presidentiables are now avoiding PGMA like a plague. Hence, we can be sure that the next president does not owe any political debt to PGMA nor will the next president allow himself to be an automaton of GMA after what he had been through just to get elected. The next president, whoever he may be, will never select GMA as his Speaker unless he is so stupid as to get a boulder to hammer on his head. But then Katrina, assuming that GMA is really bent on becoming Speaker and she will strike a deal with the next President. Analyzing this scenario is easy as ABC. We’ll just look at the leading presidentiables who have high probability of winning the polls—these are of course, Noynoy, Manny and Erap. Now tell me Katrina, who among these presidentiables, will most likely deal with GMA so she can be Speaker. Your guess is as good as mine Katrina! Yes Katrina, it so happens that this presidentiable is the same presidentiable who is being assiduously supported and endorsed by Tessa’s group! Now tell me now, who is the real dummy of GMA? The morale of the story Katrina: Never, never point a finger at anybody because you’ll never know, there will be ten fingers including ten toes pointing back at you! Let us have a good laugh on that Katrina.

The truth Katrina is this. AKB was formed by Bicolanos, for the Bicolanos and with the Bicolanos. It will support the next President and not PGMA who is no longer the President after noontime of June 30, 2010. Accordingly, assuming that PGMA got elected as congresswoman of the 2^nd District of Pampanga, AKB has no connection with her whatsoever since she has nothing to do with Bicol anymore but will only be attending to the parochial concerns of her district. What is certain, however, is that AKB will be supporting the next President since he is the one given mandate by our people. We want the next president to succeed since his failure, is the failure of the Filipino nation.

Second, tell me Katrina, is there a possibility that GMA will become Prime Minister? Sometimes, I wonder if Tessa and her group know our democratic processes. You see, before we change into a parliamentary form of government, we need to amend our constitution. Now what is the probability of this Katrina? Almost nil. Since the approval of the 1987 Constitution, several attempts were made to amend it from the time of Cory to GMA, but these never went beyond first base. You need a law to do that Katrina either providing for a constituent assembly or constitutional convention. Assuming that the House of Representatives will get the numbers to pass a bill to amend the Constitution, do you think this will pass through the Senate? Do you think our newly-elected senators, even the veterans, are so stupid so as to allow the abolition of their offices and adopt a unicameral system? Of course not! At this stage, the proposal to change into a unicameral legislature or parliamentary form is dead as in really dead. And assuming that this will pass through the Senate, would you think the President would sign it into law? And assuming that the President was not in his lucid state when he signed such measure, do you think our countrymen will approve of charter change? Now you see Katrina how the “budol-budol kigkig effect” perfected by Tessa’s group works. Again, let us have a good laugh on that Katrina.

Third, Tessa and her herd are wondering who is funding our campaign since according to her, we have lot of air time and vehicles and to her consternation, have even reached Manila! OMG! Tessa is wondering how we reached Manila. Perhaps, she never heard about our widely acclaimed Operation Tarabangan caravan whereby Bicolanos from all walks of life contributed whatever little they have to help victims of typhoon Ondoy in Metro Manila and Calabarzon areas. I wonder where Tessa was at that time.

At any rate, if she is wondering about our air time, it is with more reason we are wondering where their candidate for senator is getting the funds for his seemingly limitless air time on national, repeat, national, TV and radio. We are also wondering where they get their funds for their limitless posters which did not only reach Manila but are omnipresent from the northernmost point of Luzon to the southernmost point of Mindanao and from the easternmost point of Samar to the westernmost point of Palawan. If they are wondering of our three service vehicles which we use to cover the six provinces of Bicol, we are infinitely amazed by their countless jeepneys from north to south, east to west of the archipelago, blaring their jingles and carrying their seeming inexhaustible campaign materials. We are simply awed by the sheer efficiency of Tessa’s group in destroying the landscape of our archipelago with their paper posters, pasting them wherever they want to place them and effectively converting our environment into one big garbage bin. And finally, we can but shake our heads how Tessa’s group have perfected the art of preventing us from campaigning in our very own region! Wow, that is really for the books Katrina. We surmise that this is what we call “power- power-power” a direct aftershock for staying in power for too long. And indeed, power corrupts, and yes, it corrupts absolutely.

Lastly, Tessa is even dictating when we should submit our nominees. There was never any delay in the submission of nominees. Otherwise, our nominees would have been disqualified. And Mayor Rosal as nominee? He is not even a member of AKB. How can then he qualify as nominee? Another thing, how can a non-nominee replace a nominee? We wonder if Tessa is reading the law on party list. You see Katrina, this is the problem of people who are experts in the “budol-budol kigkig effect.” They make kigkig kigkig to you even these are blatant lies and if you succumb to it, you might consider these as true. For the information of Tessa, only a named nominee can replace another nominee. A nominee can never be replaced by an outsider not so named. That is why, Tessa’s group has submitted more than the five required nominees. We wonder why.

We really appreciate Tessa’s letter as this gave us an opportunity to refute whatever lies and black propaganda hurled at us. If Tessa is a Bicolana, we are willing to extend our hand and invite her to join our party list, AKB. But she has to have complete transformation and a make-over first. She has to learn to enunciate AKB’s platforms, programs and projects which are not only written on paper but are already being implemented for the benefit of our fellow Bicolanos. And yes, the most important thing of all, Tessa should learn to tell the truth.

So Katrina, you can sleep well. You have fulfilled your urgent assignment.

God Bless

AKB NO. 57

The AKO BICOL seal

The seal of AKO BICOL is a pair of clasped hands forming a “V-shape” and intertwined by a pepper. On top of such figure is a sun surrounded by six objects.

The clasped hands symbolize UNITY while the “V-shape” it formed is Bicol’s most famous natural landmark, Mayon Volcano, which represents our God-given resources. On the other hand, the ubiquitous pepper represents the man-made attributes that bind Bicol and its people – its unique and distinct culture, history, language, heritage, arts, norms, traditions and cuisine. This figure of clasped hands forming the symbol of Mayon Volcano joined by the representative symbol of a pepper transform into STRENGTH.

The sun symbolizes HOPE with its light radiating to the six objects representing the six provinces of the Bicol Region namely--, the Albay (pili), Catanduanes (abaca,) pineapple (Camarines Norte) , whale shark (Sorsogon) , cattle (Masbate), and the icon of our Lady of Penafrancia (Camarines Sur). The image of Our Lady of Penafrancia is positioned at the center and on top of the sun to symbolize the inherent spirituality and religiosity of Bicolanos which form a central part of their lives.

The AKO BICOL seal, therefore, is about UNITY, STRENGTH and HOPE. The will to be united as one is a result of a common bond forged by nature and man-made attributes which is the essence of what Bicol is. With such will and common bond, there is STRENGTH. And if there is UNITY AND STRENGTH, there is HOPE that the desired development and improved quality of life for the six provinces can be achieved, of course, under the central guidance of God and/or Supreme Being, as represented by the Virgin of Penafrancia.