BCBC yesterday and today

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO
March L. Fianza

BAGUIO CITY --For a few hours on February 26, 2013, Baguio and Benguet were considerably peaceful. This was because the media trooped to the Philippine Information Agency office at Lualhati Barangay across The Mansion to vote for a new set of officers for the Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club, Inc. that is more popularly known as the BCBC.

Once in a while, the acronym is claimed to stand for “Baguio Characters Before Christ.” I heard this from the late PeppotIlagan and from City Hall apologist Ramon MondacsDacawi. No one can predict what could possibly happen to the BCBC after its elections as it is indeed an unpredictable animal. What with changing its coat for at least two or more times?

It was conceived as an association of Baguio-based news persons many years after World War II and called itself the Baguio Press Club. Proof of this is an invitation program to an induction ceremony at the old Baguio Auditorium. The induction program invitation with its pages that yellowed through time was given to me as a relic by then Courier editor Cecil Afable in 1997 when I was president of the media organization.

I cannot remember where I kept it but I remember some names that were printed in Auntie Cecil’s memento such as Silvestre Afable, Ben Rillera, Oseo Hamada, Sinai Hamada, Lucio Dixon and a few others.

The late Steve M. Hamada used to relate a story that before Martial Law was declared in 1972, the press club opened its arms to fellow newsmen belonging to radio outfits, hence, the formation of the BCBC. And before newspapers printed stories about presidents being impeached, the BCBC before Martial Law already impeached its president whose name we do not have to mention here, for dragging the press club into a shameful controversy about the allocation of home lots for members of the Baguio press.

The impeached president eventually formed a new press club with him being the perpetual president of a press organization that has less than 10 members. And for some reasons, the BCBC president’s impeachment that was initiated by club officer HilarionPawid forced the late Sid Chammag of The Bulletin to resign from the club. The BCBC at more than 60 has now become the oldest and biggest organization of media practitioners North of Luzon.

A few days after the BCBC election last week, I felt like I was put on the spot as a member of the BCBC Comelec when a few questions were raised regarding the conduct of the voting. I really did not mind it until presidential candidate EdongCarta told me that some guys were asking why the ballots had numbers on them that corresponded to the numbers across the voters’ names listed on a log book. I told him, that has been done in the past and the log book together with the ballots are kept by the Comelec.

The other question that was raised was why were the votes of some members who voted online were not included in the counting. While I knew that there were other reasons for that aside from the fact that the emailed votes did not re-appear online for technical reasons that were beyond the control of the Comelec,

I told the guys that anyway, the voting trend of most of the candidates did not change, meaning, they still won the elections, with or without the online votes. There were 140 ballots cast, 1 was disqualified from voting for not paying BCBC annual dues, one did not drop his ballot, there were four who dropped their ballots in advance because they had to meet their early appointments on the day, and there were two texted votes. The truth is, the BCBC election was more credible than the PCOS voting of the government.

Elections are held to uphold a democratic tradition and to allow a country or an organization to evolve into a better entity. Maybe, some sort of a “moral recovery” process. And so, with the elections over, I just wish the new set of officers rethink of the club’s situation and change whatever needs to be changed and fix whatever needs fixing.

Before the elections, the BCBC held a candidates’ forum to remind whoever won the elections that the club is “sick” and needs to be cured back to its healthy status. By the way, when will the officers of the jueteng press corps hold their elections? During the special Kapihan where the panel consisted of the BCBC candidates and past presidents, the topic about the issuance of a BCBC ID was again raised. BCBC past president Mondacs said he opposed the idea then, thinking that the ID might be used to solicit other things.

And so, I suggested that we can print at the back of the ID the statement that goes – “Please do not extend any assistance to the holder of this card. Thank you” or “any assistance extended to the holder of this card will NOT be honored.”

It was timely that as the BCBC members were familiarizing themselves with this year’s candidates in the special Kapihan, and were discussing about issuing IDs for journalists who already have press IDs issued by their outfits, I came across the article of Neal Cruz, a columnist of a national daily paper, and he talked about ID cards being flaunted by bogus newsmen.

Allow me to assume the personality of a senator and “plagiarize” what the columnist said in his article: “Be wary of people claiming they were sent by journalists. They may be impostors. No respectable journalist would do that. If they show you a press ID, ignore it. If it is a National Press Club ID, the more you should be wary. The NPC is not the respectable club it used to be. And the bigger the press ID, the bigger a fake the holder is. Legitimate journalists don’t even need press IDs.”

Part of his article said that the pseudo journalists eat free, drink free coffee and follow guest panelists in the restroom and “ask something for the boys.” I totally agree to everything Neal Cruz stated in his column. Actually, he described an experience that has already happened to the BCBC and continues to happen. But what makes BCBC sicker than ever is its involvement in money that is “missing.”

It is not actually missing because the club knows where it is, who got, whose term did it went missing and those involved do not seem to care to put it back where it rightly belongs. We are talking about P250,000 that was solicited from the DOLE for livelihood projects of the BCBC during the term of past president Liza Agoot. Congratulations to the new set of officers led by president-elect Rod Osis of Baguio SunStar, vice president Frank Cimatu of Baguio Chronicle and the rest of the officers.

They should exert efforts to recover the fund that was deposited by a scheming treasurer under his private account, maybe with the help of some officers at that time. In fact there are conversations going around that the amount may no longer be found because it was already shared among certain media personalities. Now do we really want to be a serious organization that helps its members in need or do we only want to be a social club? Only a social club? – marchfianza777@yahoo.com