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Monday, May 26, 2008

OPEN NOTEBOOK
By Random Jottings

Heroically manning the
ramparts at Intramuros

 
A FUNNY thing happened to Bambi Harper on her way to being appointed head of the Intramuros Administration (IA), a revered institution which for much of the past decade had been an alarming case study in the abject mess that ensues when the nation’s historical legacy is placed in the hands of someone with absolutely no sense of history.

At an informal reception last December in Malacañang Palace, President Gloria Arroyo strolled over to Harper and inquired how she was getting on in the new job. After taking her customary (and famed) double-take whenever taken by surprise, she sheepishly asked the President “What job?”

“At Intramuros,” responded the President quizzically, at which stage Harper remembered that almost a year earlier she had been sounded out by a Palace insider about taking on the job as administrator of the IA—to which suggestion she had given her guarded nod.

“Not been appointed yet,” explained Harper to the President at which point the President’s face took on her legendary look of exasperation when faced with bureaucratic bumbling as she pointed out that she had “signed the appointment papers months ago.”

It turned out that Harper’s appointment papers had (conveniently?) got lost in the paper maze that is the Palace bureaucracy, which under every passing administration somehow gets infiltrated with operatives bearing their own hidden agendas.

President Arroyo ordered one of her staff standing by to prepare a new set off appointment papers pronto rather than go on a long time wasting paper chase to look for the original set. The paper work was prepared in a matter of weeks (which by Palace standards is pretty fast) and in March this year Harper finally took up her presidential appointment.

Within one month into her job at the IA, and going about it with her usual no-nonsense style, Harper was given the first signs that she had entered a den of iniquity: she started receiving death threats.

Her jocular response to her worried staff was for the ancient cannons that were gathering dust in an IA bodega to be re-commissioned and installed on the walls of Intramuros because they were under attack!

Since then, and mindful that her tenure is co-terminus with that of the President, Harper has been tirelessly going about trying to breathe life into an institution that (no thanks to scandalous mismanagement) has in recent times been relegated to the cultural ICU and sadly left there to wither and die.

Acting on the firm belief that her brief is not to teach history but to preserve it, Harper is embarking on an ambitious project to gather the priceless—in both monetary and historical terms—array of ecclesiastical artifacts in the IA collection (an exceedingly fine legacy of the IA tenure of Dr. Jimmy Laya that now sits neglected in a warehouse) and exhibit them in a new high-tech museum much like such glimpses of its past are displayed in the major capitals of the world.

“We have to make Filipinos proud of their heritage by displaying these artifacts,” enthuses Harper. “Besides, these items belong to the Filipino people and they need to know about it. Such a museum—for which I am going to have to beg or steal P400 million which is the estimated cost—will provide an intrinsic link between Intramuros and Filipinos, and even visitors to the Philippines.”

Another Harper project involves trying to make Intramuros people friendly with mixed use facilities, including even shops. “If I even need an aspirin for a headache I have to go outside the walls to get it,” she laments. And, believe us, she has more than her fair share of headaches at Intramuros!

But a headache that is developing into a migraine for Harper is the 10,000 strong community of squatters who are proving to be the latter day invaders of Intramuros.

“The problem is the squatters are turning out to be too much of an intimidating presence for us to be able to attract investors. But, of course, they can’t just be evicted because they are made up of almost 2000 families who for so long have made their homes there. An acceptable solution has to be found by the government to relocate them,” insists Harper.

She adds: “There is also a 40,000 strong community of students within the walls of Intramuros, and it is a matter of record that the squatter problem impacts negatively on the lives of the students, and does not always provide the best climate for healthy academic life.

“So it is up to the government to urgently face up to this problem and balance its responsibility to the students and also the squatters.”

rjottings@yahoo.com