Nakalangoy Ka Na Ba sa Dagat nang Basura ? Hinde Pa ! College Graduate na Ako Noong 1970 Nang Magsimula ang Dagat nang Basura
One of the false claims of Agent Orange to have swam through the sea of garbarge in Pasig River in his childhood. This was again confirmed by his wife, supposed to be a honorable member of the lower house, in a television interview by Karen Davila (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pVXNowfQWo).
The following historical facts proves the fallacy of his claim. Hindi pa siya nakaligo sa ‘dagat nang basura’ dahil college graduate na siya noong magsimulang maging ‘dagat nang basura’ ang Pasig River. Up to his teens in 1962, Pasig River was still clean and still being used for bathing and laundry.
‘Early life and education (Agent Orange)
Manuel Bamba Villar, Jr. was born on December 13, 1949 in tondo, an impoverished and densely populated district of Manila.[1] He was the second of the nine children of his parents.[2] His father, Manuel Montalban Villar, Sr., was a government employee from Cabatuan, Iloilo, and his mother Curita Bamba was a seafood vendor from Orani, Bataan.[1] The family lived in a small rented apartment in a run down slum area, and later transferred to a house in San Rafael Village.[3]
As a child, Villar attended Holy Child Catholic School (1949+7 = 1956, Grade I +7 = 1963), a private Catholic school in Tondo.[4] He also assisted his mother in selling shrimp and fish at the Divisoria Public Market in order to help earn the money to support his siblings and himself to school.[1] He finished his high school education (1963+4 = 1967) at the Mapúa Institute of Technology in Intramuros.[4] He attended the University of the Philippines – Diliman and earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1970.[4] He returned to the same school to earn his master’s degree in business administration in 1973.[4] He later characterized himself as being impatient with formal schooling, and eager to start working and go into business.[5] ‘
— Excerpts from Wikipedia, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manny_Villar)
‘ Pollution increase (Pasig River)
After World War II, massive population growth, infrastructure construction, and the dispersal of economic activities to Manila’s suburbs left the river abandoned. The banks of the river attracted informal settlers and remaining factories dumped their wastes into the river, making it effectively a huge sewer system.[3]
The increasing pollution in the river was first noticed in the 1930s when it was observed that fish migration from Laguna de Bay diminished. People ceased using the river’s water for laundry in the 1960s and ferry transport declined. By the 1970s, the river started to give offensive smells and in the 1980s, fishing in the river became nonviable. Pasig River was considered biologically dead in the 1990s.[3] ‘
Excerpts from Wikipedia, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasig_River)
Meanwhile, an Asian Development Bank study reveals that Pasig River was still clean from the 1950s till the 1960 and started (take note started, meaning was still clean till the late 1960s) to deteriorate in the 1970s (from the above excerpt, Agent Orange graduated from the University of the Philippines in 1970).
‘ Deterioration of the Pasig River became noticeable during the 1930s when fish migration from Laguna de Bay started to diminish. Between 1950 and 1960, people’s bathing and washing activities in the Pasig River obviously dropped. During this time, ferry boat transport also began to decline. By the 1970s, the river had begun to smell bad and, in the 1980s, all fishing activities stopped. ‘
Excerts from Urban Innovations: The Grand Canal of Pasig, Asian Development Bank (http://www.adb.org/Documents/Information/Urban-Innovations/Urban-Development/Grand-Canal-Pasig.asp)
Conclusion:
Therefore, Agent Orange was still a boy in the mid-1950s when Pasig River was still being used for washing ang bathing, was already a teenager in the early 1960s when the Pasig River is still being used for washing and bathing, although starting to decline, and finally, was already a college graduate when Pasig River started to develop into a ‘Dagat nang Basura’ in the 1970s, not during his childhood in the 1950s to the 1960s.
Lesson: You can fool some people, sometime, But you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Palaboy nang Sydney 