Filipino seafarers register for overseas absentee voting in Piraeus Port, Greece. Photo from DFA website.

By Cherry Joy Veniles, VERA Files

Gary Garcia has been working as a seaman for almost 10 years—and has been a registered absentee voter for just as long. In fact, it’s as long as Republic Act 9189 or the Overseas Absentee Voting Law, which provides for a system for Filipino citizens working or residing outside the Philippines to vote in a national election, has been in existence.

“But not once,” Garcia said, “have I ever been able to vote while at sea.”

One of the 26,808 seafarers who have registered as overseas absentee voter or OAV, Garcia still remembers how excited he was a decade ago when he learned from an orientation that seafarers and other overseas workers could now vote even if they were outside the Philippines.

“I bought into that,” he said. “But during elections, there was nothing, no one official who could point us to our options.”

So for this year’s midterm elections, Garcia is hardly optimistic that he and other seafarers who registered could even vote since they are at

Commentary

USS Guardian in Tubbataha

By Rex Robles, VERA Files

It was 1974 and I was taking up an advanced course in Mechanical Engineering at the US Navy Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. For our final exam in Oceanography, our professor simply called the twelve of us to his office one by one and asked us a few questions. I noticed a certain level of interest in the Philippines that I did not expect.

For instance, he showed me a satellite photograph of Manila Bay and asked me what I thought about a plan to build a highway along the Manila-Cavite coastline. I mumbled some comment on how the ecology in the area would be affected.

Then he showed me photographs of the entire Sulu Sea with what looked like ridgelines in the water running roughly parallel to Palawan. I was intrigued. My professor, who is based in New Zealand, told me they were a dozen or so swells that go northwest at certain times. At other times, they go the opposite way.

The swells seemed to emanate from the Tubbataha area. I could

Text and photos by Vincent Go, VERA Files

The 11th Aliwan Festival brought together the country's best street performers and dancers at the Quirino Grandstand over the weekend, with colorful contingents from all over the country parading along the stretch of Roxas Blvd. towards the CCP complex.

Photography enthusiasts from all walks of life had a field day witnessing the best fiestas that showcased vibrant colors, creativity and diverse culture in one place.

For the fourth consecutive year, the best street dancing award went to the contingent from Iloilo which depicted the province’s Dinagyang Festival.

Adjudged the best float was the one from Alang-alang, Leyte, while Jamie Herell from the Sinulog contingent of Cebu was crowned Reyna ng Aliwan 2013.

(VERA Files is put out by senior journalists taking a deeper look at current issues. VERA is Latin for true.)

Art cannot be rushed. It has its own pace. Rush it and its excellence is lost along the way — or so goes the conventional concept in the never-ending art-versus-commercialism debate.

That is why some people tend to think that paintings being sold by painters trying to make a living by being artists aren’t really art. Cheap art, if at all. In the financial pressure to make money, as the conventional thinking goes, artistic excellence becomes secondary.

But ceramic potter Lanelle Abueva-Fernando doesn’t see it that way. Commercialism doesn’t bother her because that’s the path she chose when she took up pottery in the 1970s during a three-year stay in Japan.

“What I like about pottery is that I can create functional pieces,” she says. “I make more functional pieces than artistic pieces.”

Fernando is an artist, first and foremost. She took up fine arts at the University of the Philippines, where her father Jose Abueva was its 16th president. She is the niece of

Commentary

Chinese fishermen in grounded vessel Reuters

By Ellen Tordesillas

President Aquino is being consistent when he said that the government will not be filing a diplomatic protest against China for the intrusion of a fishing vessel that got stuck in Tubbataha Reef in Sulu Sea, 150 kilometers southeast of Puerto Princesa City in Palawan.

After all, he didn’t also protest to the United States when the minesweeper USS Guardian got stuck and caused extensive damage to the reef which is Marine Protected Area three months ago (Jan. 17). It took the US navy three months remove the 1,300-ton, 68-meter-long Avenger Class minesweeper piece by piece. It was completed last March 30.

Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said April 7 that a diplomatic protest against the U.S was “unnecessary” because the superpower has been cooperating with the maritime investigation and has committed to the compensation and rehabilitation of the reef.

Damaged to Tubbataha Reef, which is UNESCO Heritage site, has been placed at P58 million.

According to elders of Lampaya, no one in their village in the southwestern town of Leon in Iloilo, central Philippines, has successfully finished college to become a teacher, a doctor or an engineer.

In this remote mountainous village of clear skies and cool air known as the Little Baguio of Iloilo, farming is the way of life. Thus, it is already considered an honor for anyone here to be able to graduate from high school.

All that has changed when one of them dared to dream and in the process becoming an inspiration to villagers for whom ambitions and time seemed to have given up on.

“Our parents’ only dream was to get us into high school and after that, they won’t care anymore,” says 21-year-old Leonisa Calimotan. “There was a time when my father told me that right after I graduate (from high school), I should just get myself a husband.”

Leonisa’s mother, Celedonia, 65, works as a househelp while her father George, 60, is a

By Erin Emocling, VERA Files

Photos from Greenpeace Philippines

Green superheroes Ben 10, The Green Lantern, and The Hulk are joining the Philippine election campaign.

No, 10-year old Ben the Omnitrix will not use his a mysterious alien weapon, Omnitrix, for either Team PNoy or United Nationalist Alliance senatorial candidates.

But who knows if Green Lantern would use the ring that grants him superpowers to fight those who threatens to upset the balance of power in the universe. Or if The Hulk would turn into a green, irradiated, mutated humanoid monster if he meets candidates coddling illegal loggers.

The participation of the emerald-attired superheroes in the election campaign is part of “Berde ka ba?” ---this year’s campaign theme of Greenpeace Philippines’ Green Electoral Initiative (GEI).

Coined from the rising fame of Pinoy rap culture of FlipTop, where contenders outfox each other through witty freestyle verses, “Berde ka ba” activities will include a public debate among

Emily Watson as cellist Jacqueline Du Pre

By Pablo A. Tariman, VERA Files

If you want to explore the performing arts this summer and are not keen on music listening, the best way is to watch films on the lives of artists.

The best examples are “Shine” (about a piano prodigy and his Rach 3-obsessed father), “Hilary and Jackie” (about a celebrated cellist and her flutist sister), “The Piano Teacher” (about a Schubert interpreter with a wild streak of obsession and jealousy) and perhaps “Music of the Heart” (about a music teacher introducing classical music in the public schools in New York).

The film impact of “Shine” and “Hilary & Jackie” was revealing even among non-music aficionados. Perhaps one way to improve musical education in this country is to expose both young and adult audiences to quality films revolving around the life of musicians.

If the themes of love, intrigue and obsession are common, they are even more pronounced in the musical world.

Competition between voice teachers and their pupils reached absurd, if,