Time to rethink our language policies!

The results of the Bar exams the other week showed that the University of the Philippines (UP) fared very poorly, garnering only 8th place, while Ateneo de Manila got almost all the top slots. Mind you, we’re talking about the Bar exam for this country; just imagine how UP is faring today vis-a-vis the rest of the top schools in Asia… UP isn’t even on the radar screen!

Again, many of our friends here in Cebu who graduated from UP are asking why UP is losing its prestige and its standing in the Bar exam. I’m pretty sure that the UP’s Board of Regents must be in a quandary as to what is happening to UP studes? If you didn’t know, the UP in Lahug, Cebu is one of the oldest schools not only in Cebu, but also in the Philippines.

On Nov. 25, 2002, I interviewed Dr. Francisco Nemenzo Jr., president of UP, on my talk show, Straight from the Sky, and told him that one of the reasons why UP is fast losing the brightest students is its own requirement in its entrance exams where more than 50 percent of the questions are asked in Tagalog. Okay, call it Pilipino if you wish, but we all know that 99.9 percent of what is Pilipino is taken from Tagalog. Because of this requirement alone, the bright students, especially those coming from the non-Tagalog provinces, would rather go for schools that use English in their entrance exams where their averages are much better or higher.

We ought to admit the simple truth that we are losing to other schools in Asia simply because of our wrong kind of nationalism. It is time to accept that the Philippines is a nation with a diverse culture and people. Forcing us to speak only Tagalog isn’t working to our nation’s benefit! I just came from Saipan and yes, they teach Chamorro in their elementary schools so that their indigenous tongue will never disappear. But what about here? Cebuano, Chavacano, Waray or Ilonggo are never taught formally in schools. Indeed, it is time for the DepEd to rethink its education policy.

Incidentally, a few months ago, I chanced upon Dr. Jose Abueva, former UP president, in a forum on federalism and we had a short exchange of ideas on our language policy. But being a "nationalist," he insisted that the National Language is evolving. Thus, I asked him that if it were evolving, then Visayan or Cebuano words ought to be incorporated in the coming National Language. The best example is the word for money, which is pera in Tagalog and kwarta in Cebuano. Today, many people use kwarta after all; the color or the name of your money is of no interest to the bank for as long as it is not fake money.

But there is a word that they don’t use in Pilipino or Tagalog — it is the word for husband which in Cebuano is bana. So I asked Dr. Abueva why not use the word "bana" because there’s no such word in Tagalog. Somehow, he couldn’t give me an answer to this query.

At this point, the UP Board of Regents must also rethink its language policy because it is no longer working in their favor… and accept the reality of what the Philippines truly is… that we’re nation of Cebuanos, Tagalogs, Ilonggos, Igorots, Mangyans, Manobos, Warays, Ilocanos, Pangalatoks, Bicolanos, etc., etc.

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During a special board meeting a couple of weeks ago, the Metro Pacific Corp. (MPC), which owns 97.6 percent of the now ailing Negros Navigation (Nenaco), announced the approval of Nenaco’s petition seeking a court order to rehabilitate its huge debt which, as it turned out, amounts to P2.5 billion! The announcement was signed by David Nugent, vice president of MPC.

Wait! Wasn’t this the shipping company that we wrote about earlier that just a little over a year ago posted a net profit of P67 million… despite the fact that it had incurred huge dry-docking debts with the Tsuneishi Heavy Industries Inc. (THI) based in Balamban, Cebu? It turns out that Nenaco owes THI not just P45 million, but more than P110 million. That should leave them with more than P 2 billion plus in debt! When we wrote about this mess, Nenaco claimed it was being "harassed" by the Aboitiz Transport System Corp. (ATSC). Well, to put the record straight, it is Aboitiz & Co., not ATSC, that owns 20 percent of THI and thus, Aboitiz is just a minority in THI.

Clearly, Nenaco tried to paint the wrong picture so as to confuse us about what’s really the problem. Well, the truth is Nenaco has incurred P110 million in dry-docking bills and it refuses to pay THI (and its other creditors as well), and yet it boasts a profit in the millions. Now, is that what you’d still call proper business ethics? No, sir! A friend of mine told me that this situation is like going to a restaurant and placing an order for food. After the customer consumes the food and is presented with the bill, he merely promises to pay his bill and walks out. When a case is filed against him for non-payment, he dilly-dallies. Finally, the restaurant owner garnishes or attaches his car with the help of the courts. Instead of paying up or talking nicely with the restaurant owner, he goes to his media friends and cries "harassment."

We ought to stop business officials from trying to portray their company as a successful one, but its debts are not reflected in its books and worse, it boasts even of a hefty profit in the millions. In the United States, this is exactly what happened in the Enron scandal where unscrupulous Enron officials virtually "massaged" financial records to make unsuspecting investors believe that they were buying stocks from a very profitable company.

What is worrisome is that Nenaco, a publicly listed company (the SEC has since stopped it from trading its shares) seems to be getting away with this nonsense and it looks like we are seeing a pattern here. If you didn’t know, Metro Pacific Corp. is the mother company of Nenaco, which is also on top of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) run by my old barkada, PLDT president and chief executive officer (CEO) and concurrently Smart Communications’ chief executive officer Napoleon Narazeno who also comes from Cebu, while THI is one of Cebu’s, if not the nation’s biggest shipbuilders.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talk show entitled, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.