The development equation in former resources-rich areas such as Casiguran, Aurora, that have to transition into modern economies is simple as simple can be, nothing complex about it. The state, taking the lead, should invest and build an economic anchor. And the level of investment should be one big life-changer.

So, for a former logging town such as Casiguran, a beautiful but depressed spot off the Pacific, the government’s efforts to develop an economic zone makes perfect economic sense. Even if the full reaping of awards will come only later in the long haul—from the commissioning of the Zone to its full operationalization—still the investment makes perfect sense. And never mind he brickbats in the initial stages of development. The grandest economic structures, history tells us, had to be demonized for decades – until the day we realized their life-changing role in the overall national economy.

To put things in context, let us look at two former US military facilities in the country. For decades, Clark and Subic had been demonized as bastions of imperialism that had to be razed to the ground. For decades, they had been declared by protesters as irritants of the most obnoxious kind. Now, we are grateful for the facilities the American troops left behind.

The condemned and much-maligned structures of the old are now thriving centers of economic dynamism.

The Apeco, the economic zone that government investment is building in Casiguran, is now suffering from vilification of the most venomous kind, the demonization led, by, of all people, priests and bishops sworn to Christian charity. They have raised essentially three issues: land deals are involved in the Apeco, there are insinuations of corruption, and the project is inflicting harm on the farmers and indigenous people supposedly driven off the Apeco site. And the investment would be a huge waste of government funds.

They have figures and data to prove their claim, presented in an elaborate manner. The presentations and the charts remind right-thinking people of Paul Ryan’s charts and spreadsheets. Ryan, the losing vice-presidential candidate in the US November election, used elaborately-prepared charts and figures to prove his claim that the government had been running amuck with useless investments. Ryan, a devout Catholic, wanted a stop to government investments, even if these were to change the lives of people and communities. State investments, said, Ryan, had been a huge waste of public funds. State investments had been tainted by corruption.

Ryan wanted drastic cuts to everything, even the most basic entitlement programs. On the poor, Ryan said, “let them be.”

The policy brutality of Ryan, who has been called a “ policy charlatan” by real economists, is in full display in the elaborate presentations of the frailes of Casiguran. They have asked President Aquino to cut the funding for the Apeco. On the poor, the indigenous people, who, on the long run, would be the prime beneficiaries of Apeco, the frailes had this to say: “Let them be.”

Let them live in the 18th century. They are better off with the lights out. The Apeco will just disrupt their Dickensian lives. If not Dickensian lives, lives in Man with the Hoe economic architecture.

The Apeco-centered debates on development has not even touched on the merits. Because the tendency of the media is to take the easy route of good versus evil, which is not even the bone of contention. Facts and economic sense, a consideration of development paradigms are out. Sadly, the narrative that has prevailed on the Apeco issue is this: the cynicism and Stalinist rigidity of the frailes wrapped in piety. Of course, all of these do not require sense, logic, empirics and hard analytics. Just throw some rabble-rousing and it is done.

Sadly, the family that has been a part of Aurora for centuries, whose lives have been intertwined with the fate of Aurora for generations, has been at the receiving end of the frailes’ vilification.

The Angara family, which has been pushing for the Apeco, was part of the six families that survived the tsunami that wiped out the entire township of Baler, the Aurora capital, in the 1700. From scratch, the six families built the township, and their efforts largely created what is now modern-day Aurora. They have been there for centuries.

The claims that the Angara family has been pushing for Apeco to aggrandize the family have been based on very little or zero fact-checking. Senator Ed Angara, the main proponent, has been a prodigious legislator. He wrote, or co-wrote, the three most important social legislation of this generation : Free High School, Senior Citizens Act, the PhilHealth Law. There are very few frontier social legislations without the mark of Senator Angara.

He moved for the creation of congressional commissions to look, in-depth into the problems of Philippine education, agriculture and state of science and technology. His record is about two things : pioneering social legislation and economic legislation.

If you just look at his record objectively, you will know that sooner or later, he will write something like a law creating the Apeco.

But in the Apeco debate, facts are useless. On the poverty of the Eastern Seaboard, Casiguran included, the priests and the bishops have a medieval cure. Let the poor people be. Let the lumads be. Don’t let the 21st century in.

Don’t intrude to change their impoverished and hopeless lives.. Don’t let the lights in.

But I don’t think the Angaras, the survivor of super tsunami in the 1700, a family whose hopes and dreams have been with Aurora for centuries, would terrified by cynicism wrapped in piety no matter how vicious.

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