Max and Prejudice

I found this article a few days ago by Max Soliven, printed on Philippine Star. I’m aghast at the prejudice. I’m even more aghast that anyone would publicly espouse these kinds of views in this day and age. I too, live in Greenhills, but unlike Mr. Soliven, I DON’T mind giving Muslims a prayer room within the Ortigas Shopping Complex. If we don’t do something to stop the prejudice, these people will end up even more marginalized and even more violent.

You be the judge:

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BY THE WAY By Max V. Soliven
The Philippine Star 10/04/2004

The residents of three Greenhills villages as well as those of 30 condominium high-rises in the surrounding areas of San Juan, Mandaluyong and Quezon City have already registered an angry protest against the plan, suddenly announced on Friday the 13th, last August – completely without consultation or notice given to the surrounding districts – that the Ortigas & Company was building a P8 million Muslim “mosque” right in the Greenhills shopping center.

The secret plan was apparently hatched by Rex Drilon III, the brusque, autocratic general manager of the Ortigas & Co., Ltd., who’s been running the Greenhills shopping center like his personal fiefdown for almost four years. In typical fashion, this bozo Drilon – who, by the way, struts around as an Opus Dei – just announced he was installing this air-conditioned Islamic center, which he tried to disguise as a “mere prayer room”, in the three-storey new mall cum parking building he is rushing to complete, over the creek which his company “covered” and on which they are constructing a so-called Promenade mall.

When the article appeared in the Manila Bulletin (13 August), complete with pictures and photographs, under the glaring headline “ORTIGAS BUILDS P8-M MOSQUE IN GREENHILLS” it hit the residents of the area, who are 99 percent Catholics and other Christian denominations, like a ton of bricks.

Drilon and his confederates even, it seems, acted in stealth. The Barangay Captain, Pablo David, at a dinner given by one of his own neighbors in North Greenhills, was fulminating against perilously inserting a Muslim “prayer center” or Mosque in the midst of the shopping center – where the sort of Quiapo “Golden Mosque” violent types might be attracted – but it turns out, when two San Juan councillors questioned the approval by the City Engineer’s office, David himself had signed the “permit” for the project. The Barangay officials are now stammering that they thought it was only an application for a parking building, and didn’t see the Muslim “prayer room” inserted in the small print!

This writer was in Indonesia, meeting with retired General and former Interior Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), who’s now been elected Indonesia’s next President – to be inaugurated, once the official “count” is complete, on October 20. (I have to thank our friend, Mr. Aini Chalid of Sindophil Inc. Manila, who it can now be revealed, was the one who helped arrange contact with General SBY in Jakarta. Incidentally, Aini Chalid has been asked by SBY to join his Cabinet which is currently being organized by the President-elect.)

In short, I didn’t know a thing about this guy Drilon’s fast-break on his pet project, the Muslim mosque, until I read about it with horror in The Straits Times on my arrival from Indonesia in Singapore for a meeting with my old friend, Yip Seng Cheong, editor-in-chief of that influential newspaper and the Singapore Press Holdings Ltd.

A mosque right in the heart of the Greenhills shopping center? What a shocking development!

The Greenhills associations, condominium associations, and San Juan, Mandaluyong and Quezon City groups are meeting today for the third time. They are readying protest streamers, placards, as well as mobilizing batteries of lawyers to file cases and injunctions. They may march to “fortress Rex Drilon” in his eyrie in the Ortigas Building across the avenue from Meralco.

San Juan Mayor J.V. Ejercito has been petitioned by the Federation of Greenhills Associations of San Juan to STOP the construction and opening of the mosque, whether it’s called a “prayer room” or “prayer center” or whatever euphemism.

The Ortigases have also been petitioned. On the other hand, even “Paqui” Ortigas III, son of the late Don Paquito Ortigas, has been saying that Drilon simply went ahead after mentioning it, rather off-handedly, and telling them that he would submit a proposal. Before they knew it, Paqui told Atty. Don Alviar, president of the North Greenhills Association (NGA), Drilon had already announced the Islamic prayer center as a done deal.

Are the Ortigases for the “mosque”? They better speak out loud and clear. Don’t they own most of the shopping center – even if Drilon replaced Don Rafael “Rafa” Ortigas as General Manager of the Ortigas & Company Ltd. Partnership about four years ago? Are Rafa’s and Paqui’s group “together” or what? Since their name is on the company’s label, the Ortigas family must take responsibility for the imposition of that “mosque” and the blight it will cause on what they used, for years, to preen themselves as a world-class development.

The residents are thinking, if court action and all else fails, of a complete boycott of everything connected with the Greenhills shopping mall.

I think that Mr. Warner Manning, president of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) which owns and operates UNIMART and controls more than 30 percent of the Greenhills Shopping area, should also beware, since Drilon boasts of his friendship and full support. Is this P8-million Muslim “prayer center” being backed by the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank?

Mr. Manning might do well to take a close second look at this dangerous and baleful idea.

Indeed, the entire new shopping mall project may run into still more difficulty. The furor over the “mosque” has attracted the attention of Metro Manila Development Authority Chairman Bayani Fernando and the MMDA itself. According to law, the Ortigas group, it’s now being studied by the MMDA lawyers and experts, cannot simply cover up a creek then building a shopping mall over the creek even if it falls within the property boundaries of the company.

A creek is a waterway or runoff, or irrigation canal, and therefore, the MMDA notes, must be “beyond the commerce of man”. If the MMDA and city authorities crack down, the Ortigas company and HSBC might have to dismantle the entire structure they are now rushing to put up using pre-fab construction methods. Mind you, the “foundations” of that complex of new malls seem to be anchored right in the now-covered creek bed. What arrogance to have pushed through with the undertaking without properly “clearing” such matters.

Will there be a sequel to one of Jose Rizal’s two damning novels, The Reign of Greed?

* * *
I know, Cries of religious bigotry and trying to prevent “freedom of worship” will immediately arise from the usual bleating hearts and “liberal-minded” and “brother-brother” quarters.

But self-defense, self-interest and the desperate issue of peace in the neighborhood are at work here.

The so-called “Muslim population” of the Greenhills shopping area is not only a very tiny one, but an “imported” one. Those vendors and peddlers who operate and ply their trade there don’t live in the area. A few “live” in West Crame, but most of them come from Quiapo.

In truth, they were brought into the Greenhills complex by the Ortigases and, primarily, by manager Rex Drilon III.

Over the past few years, like they do when a small bunch of Muslim “traders” get started in one area, they swelled in numbers from 200 to 1,200 – and more are infiltrating in by the day. The increasing number of Muslims – mainly supposed to be Maranaos – were recruited by “exhibitors” so-called, like a group named Archer and another ITIPCO or something like that. Many of them sell jewellery, pearls, “scwarovsky” type jewellery and ornaments, all smuggled in without paying duties or taxes. Others sell “pirate” DVDs. The crowded tiangge is a huge hypermarket of smuggled-in fakes, from fake Louis Vuitton to other designer stuff, all counterfeit name brands, pirated watches, sneakers, clothes, etc. The Muslim vendors who are “legit” rent their areas from Ortigas & company at P35,000 or more per square meter monthly – others just cram the aisles without paying. It is a firetrap, since there are only two exits. How does the San Juan Fire Department let them get away with this? Wait for the next explosion or fire there. Then there will be a lot of funerals and much finger-pointing.

The Greenhills shopping center and Virra Mall have become so notorious as the center for smuggled fakes that busloads carrying international tourists go there to disgorge eager tourist-buyers of fake and counterfeit stuff – it will, if unchecked, eclipse Bangkok’s Patpong and the fake “brands” markets of Shanghai and Beijing’s diplomatic quarter. The aggressive Greenhills Muslim vendors are said to gross no less than P1 million per day.

Drilon testily claims that the Muslim “prayer area” or “mosque” is just a portion of the new parking building they are putting up across from Virra Mall. C’mon. It will be a magnet for the Muslims from the notorious “Golden Mosque” whose surroundings in Quiapo have become a No-Man’s-land where even Manila policemen hesitate to enter since it teems with armed Moros and has become a “safe zone” for drug smugglers, arms merchants, and an enclave from where street-crime predatore sally forth.

Remember the “terrorist” suspects they arrested there? They were defiantly raising their fists and shouting “Allah is Great” and the hell with you.

It was Imelda Romualdez Marcos, when she was Metro Manila Governor and Macoy’s First Lady, who insisted in defiance of the protests and chagrin of Quiapo residents on erecting that big Golden Mosque not far from that shrine of holy Catholic pilgrimage, the Quiapo Church where the miraculous Black Nazarene is enshrined. She was out to curry favor with the international Muslim world (remember, she was the one who spearheaded the Tripoli Agreement with Libya’s Col. Moammar Qaddafi) and, in part, do “penance” for the terrible Jabidah massacre on Corregidor which had outraged Filipino Muslims (who, by the way, never call themselves “Filipino” except in press release. We Christians are “the Filipinos” or “Tagalog infidels”, while they are Taosugs, Maranaos, Yakans, Samals, etc.)

What a mistake it was to artificially implant a Golden Mosque in the heart of one of Manila’s oldest Catholic communities extra-muros. The Golden Mosque denizens have been a belligerent headache ever since. Imelda also implanted an Islamic Center in Taguig, Rizal, complete with Mosque and Islamic learning institute. Look at Taguig today. Poor Mayor Freddie Tinga.

Recently, Barangay Maharlika Village was, once again, in the spotlight of crime and violence. Brother Christians and Brother Muslims living peacefully side by side, of course, remains the dream and the hope – but to date, here in Luzon, it has become a vanished hope and the dream a nightmare.

No one could say “no” to Imeldific and Dictator Marcos in those days. Today, in “freedom time”, we must say “no” while still we can.

Why, the militant Muslims have already built a mosque in the reclamation area fronting Baclaran Church, where there is that traditional Wednesday pilgrimage to Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

They have a big Mosque on Blue Beach in Dagupan, not far from the home of Speaker Jose de Venecia.

Have the Islamic groups – richly funded by petrodollars from the Middle East, much of the funding from Wahabbi-fundamentalist Saudi Arabia – a policy of “confronting” Catholic churches and centers here in Luzon?

Now they’re pushing aggressively into Greenhills, with the full love and cooperation of Rex Drilon and his ilk.

The police blotters of the San Juan police will illustrate how violent some of those “peaceful” Moro traders can be. From January to September alone this year there have been 81 – yep, eighty-one – incidents of physical violence – injuries, harassment and threats – including eight against personnel of the government’s Videogram Regulatory Board (VRB), who tried to confiscate the tons of “pirate” DVDs and computer counterfeit computer games being sold insolently and openly in Virra Mall and the Tiangge market.

When Edu Manzano led a VRB raiding team recently, he and his group were pelted by the irate Moro peddlers and vendors with hard objects and stones, and Edu in exasperation had to draw his gun. The peddlers shouted that they would get their “revenge” on Edu, and, they warned him, they would go after him without mercy!

Is this the sort of riff-raff and violent types anybody wants in his community? And they’re going to gift them with a “mosque” or “prayer room”, or a sanctuary where their Imams and “teachers” (like those of JI and the Abus) can set up a madrasa or religious school – like the Islamic pesantren in Indonesia’s East Java where Muslim clerics preach hatred of infidels – and thus inspired those terrible Bali bombings, and the bombings of the J.W. Marriott Hotel and the September 9 bombing of the Australian Embassy which killed nine Indonesians, wounded 188 more, and shattered the facades of seven buildings in the plush Kuningan district of Jakarta? I know because I was there.

* * *
When Senator Fred Lim learned of the Greenhills Shopping Mall “prayer room” or Mosque, he was livid. He recalled how he had to confront Muslim barricaders when he was Mayor of Manila when he had to eject 1,000 Moro squatters from the Golden Mosque area. The angry Muslims threatened that there would be “a flood of blood”.

Lim had replied: “You want to begin that blood bath now? Let’s get started then!” I’ll tell you all about it in tomorrow’s column.

Anyway, Mayor J.V. Ejercito, if confronted someday with that same Muslim defiance in the Greenhills Mosque Area, what would you do? Stop it before it becomes a big and painful cancerous growth in your belly.

The Muslim traders and vendors, if they obey our laws and behave themselves, are – like all Filipinos – entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of commerce. But a “mosque” or “Islamic prayer room” in the very heart of a Christian community makes no sense, especially when the Moros are transients, not residents.

Don’t invite discord – that’s the best, and safest policy.

* * *
Now, a peek into what makes this fellow Rex Drilon III tick.

In meetings with Ortigas company executives, it seems he cows them with a bit of name-dropping here and there. For example, he refers to Senate President Franklin Drilon as “my cousin”. I braced Frank Drilon, who’s my neighbor (we live on the same street) on this the other week. Frank made a face, grimaced, and shrugged: “You know how the old saying goes, Max, you can’t choose your relatives.”

When I first asked him about it, when we were seated together at the MOPC dinner more than a week ago, Frank Drilon expressed surprise about the Mosque or Islamic prayer room. (Or was he just feigning surprise? Anyway, he was not keen about the idea.)

Drilon also seems very malakas with Mr. Manning of the Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corp., which seems to exercise swing “control” of the Greenhills Shopping Center.

What’s Drilon’s background? In 1988, he had resigned as president of Philtranco Service Enterprises, Inc., a bus company which runs between Pasay City and the Bicol Region up to Central Visayas. He sold his home in Marymount (a cul-de-sac cluster of homes along Mangyan road in La Vista beside Miriam College and along Katipunan road, Q.C.) Probably converting the P5 million he received for the sale, he packed up and took his family to the United States. This was in 1989.

He bought and operated a printing press in the San Francisco “Bay Area” to qualify for a trader’s visa, but was apparently unsuccessful in this business. (Why had he gone off to the US? Some of his former neighbors say he allegedly got a black corona or “funeral wreath” – a form of death threat – but, of course, that’s hearsay. In any event, he left town).

He returned to the Philippines several years ago and joined Fuji Xerox, after that he moved on to Ayala Land and was assigned to Cebu City. He joined Ortigas about four years ago.

He has “ruled” the Greenhills Shopping center, ever since, with an iron hand. The daily joggers in the area remember that one of his first acts in the Unimart shopping center was to ban from the sidewalk near Unimart some small vendors who had for years earned a living selling suman, tamales, dried fish just on weekends from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. Roving squads of guards, on Drilon’s orders, pounced on these peddlers to confiscate their wares – until they went broke and stopped coming. The hardest hit were the poor folk who used to come from Salinas, Cavite, to sell their meager items of tinapa (dried fish).

Oh, well, They weren’t Muslim vendors.