NEIGHBORS APPEAL TO MORAN, ET AL TO TELL THE TRUTH

The neighbors of Mamamayan Ayaw sa Aerial Spraying president Cecilia Moran in Barangay Dacudao, Calinan yesterday expressed shock and dismay that some priests in Manila have fallen for her emotional outburst against Davao's banana industry.

"Where is their (priests) sense of discernment?" asked Lilia Mosqueda of the Gagmay Kristohanong Katilingban (Small Christian Community) reacting to reports that Moran is on a six-month tour in the National Capital Region under the auspices of the National Task Force Against Aerial Spray many of whose members does not know anything about banana much less have seen a Cavendish banana plantation.

Moran and a certain Liezl Bacalso were reported to have talked to the parishioners during mass for the Feast of St. Ignatius at the Ateneo de Manila University last July 30, to the seminarians at the Ateneo School of Theology, to students of the Ateneo Law School at Rockwell in Makati and to socialites at the Nine-Mile Bar along Kalayaan Avenue in Quezon City.

"Their forum is a grossly one-sided affair and is a repudiation of Ateneo's time-honored tradition of being issue-confronting but dialogic and educative," said an Ateneo Law School student.

Banana grower Moises Torrentira, 60 of Subasta, Calinan called on Moran and Bacalzo to stop their tirades against banana growing and the aerial spraying of low-dose fungicide as they know deep in their Christian hearts that they are not telling the truth.

"They are totally disconnected from the barangay and reality" said Barangay Captain Romulo C. Tubal of Dacudao, Calinan. He said that they do not represent the majority sentiments of the people who are daily witnesses to the good agricultural practices of the industry and who have actual experience for the past 30 years of the effects of low-dose fungicide to their health and environment. "It is not harmful as it is milder than table salt, coffee or laundry soaps contrary to their claim that it is as strong as insecticides," he said.

Tubal said that they insist on using "pesticides" because Manila residents associate it with "insecticides" and therefore harmful when the truth of the matter is that what is being sprayed is low-dose fungicide.

Meanwhile, a member of a women's support group, Damayan, based in Ultrect, The Netherlands alleged that the charitable Dutch agencies funding the lobby against the Philippine banana industry might have no idea that their humanitarian aid have been misused to promote economic interests.

"If what we heard are true that Dutch-funded cause-oriented groups are into lobbying against Davao's banana industry then said industry is in trouble as, contrary to popular belief, they are a David facing a Goliath of well-funded networks," she said in an e-mail to Sulong Mindanao Foundation. She requested that her name be witheld at the moment.

She claimed that among the funding agency is one of the biggest in the European Union having a declared asset of a billion guilders and counts 370,000 institutional and individual donors in the Netherlands alone.