Monday, August 30, 2021

Lost in translation - The Manila Times - Translation

LAST week, the controversial Manila Bay beach was in the news again after President Rodrigo "Come and sit on Daddy's lap" Duterte testily defended the project during another one of his late-night bull sessions.

The beach has been roundly criticized for its P389-million (and counting) price tag, an expense not unreasonably considered unnecessary in the midst of a pandemic, along with several environmental issues connected with the mine in Cebu that supplies the material as well as its unnatural introduction to the location fronting the Manila Baywalk. Duterte dismissed these concerns, opining the aesthetic improvement to the bay shore was reason enough to pursue the project.

Unfortunately, he could not help but undermine that otherwise viable point of view by putting it in the sort of skeevy terms his adolescent support base finds charming and the adult world finds cringe-inducing.

"Tingnan mo ngayon ang Boracay. Noon, maraming mga magagandang babae na naliligo. Noong pinaganda, mas lalong pinakamagandang babae sa buong mundo, nandiyan na. Ayaw mo pa 'yan? (Look at Boracay. Many beautiful women used to bathe [there]. After it [the Manila Bay shore] was rehabilitated, all of the most beautiful women in the world are now here. Don't you want that?)" he said.

"What is beautiful is beautiful. Period. Dolomite is beautiful to the eyes. Period," he added.

I would be willing to bet real money no one else would cite, "it will attract pretty girls" as a reason to install a beach in downtown Manila, and upon hearing or reading Randy Rod's comments, thousands of Filipino women reflexively crossed their arms over their chests and checked to make sure no one was standing behind them.

One of the most annoying things about Duterte is his penchant for reducing everything to absurdity; even if his comments aren't crude or creepy, he never fails to emphasize the lowest common denominator. It is seriously off-putting, because despite what Duterte apparently believes, only mentally defective people are enervated by being spoken down to. More importantly, however, it can warp the way issues are reported and discussed, because it preemptively deflects more substantial inquiry about government policy and actions.

The dolomite beach issue is a good example. Duterte's ultimately vacuous comment on the matter was the focus of most news reports following his latest midnight matinee, but the substance of what that comment was offered in response to, a self-congratulatory update on the ongoing Manila Bay rehabilitation program by Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu, was almost entirely missed. Apart from the Philippine News Agency, I could find only one media outlet that reported on Cimatu's short briefing to the president, and then it was seriously misinterpreted.

Cimatu highlighted the overall wonderfulness of the dolomite beach, as he would be expected to do as it was his department's blue-sky idea in the first place, but the main point of his briefing was the progress in reducing fecal coliform bacteria levels in the bay since the rehabilitation project began. The bay water's concentration of the bacteria, which is not the only pollutant the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) needs to be concerned about, but is probably the most serious health risk, has been reduced from several million parts per 100 milliliters to about 7,000. In the area of the dolomite beach, the concentration is down to about 140, close to the 100 parts per 100 milliliters considered safe for swimming.

The news story about Cimatu's comments drew a connection between "beach nourishment" and "cleaning the water," and attributed it to the DENR secretary. The implication was the crushed dolomite is somehow acting as a filter, removing the harmful bacteria and thus "nourishing" the bay.

My initial reaction was, "Ha, what an idiot. That's not at all what 'beach nourishment' means." Beach nourishment is the addition of sand (or fake sand, as the case may be) to a shoreline to create or maintain a beach. It has nothing to do with cleaning the water; if anything, it creates additional turbidity. Upon further review, however, it turns out Cimatu did not actually say the dolomite was cleaning the water, and in fact, didn't say anything that could be construed that way. The reduction in harmful bacteria, he explained, is attributable to the new treatment facilities to which the water from the Abad, Padre Faura, and Remedios outfalls is being diverted, as well as the overall cleanup effort ongoing elsewhere in the bay and its tributaries.

Thus, on one hand, the story was grossly misreported; but on the other, Duterte encouraged that by seizing on the least important aspect of Cimatu's report. Again, whether he did this because it amuses him to be a troll or because his management communication skills are actually a lot worse than most people assume is still an unanswered question. It would have cast the Manila Bay rehabilitation effort in a far more positive light if the largely unseen work that has had practical, substantial results had been highlighted instead.

And as for the polarizing dolomite beach? In a general sense, it is not a bad thing; the city has a critical lack of green and open spaces, and creating one as a purely aesthetic improvement is a worthy enough objective. The timing, cost and environmental impact from mining the dolomite in Cebu province are all debatable, but the job having been done, that ship has already sailed, so to speak; the serious question now is whether it would do more harm than good to stop maintaining it.

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Twitter: @benkritz

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