By Alma Anonas-Carpio
For the Philippines Graphic's Aug. 17 issue

Angry chants from protesters rent the air in front of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) on August 7, as several Filipino artists from the theater, visual arts, music and literature chanted slogans one would expect of activists, not artists: “Huwad na award ni Gloria, sa ‘yo na, sa ‘yo na!” and “Artista ng bayan ngayon ay lumalaban!”

The plaint of these artists is that the conferment of this year’s National Artist honors was an insult to the nation because two of the awardees, massacre movie and komiks author Magno Jose Carlo Caparas and NCCA Executive Director Cecille Guidote Alvarez, were added to the list of national artists without passing the stringent, two-year vetting process by the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and NCCA.

Neither Caparas nor Alvarez were on the final list of 2009 National Artist nominees sent to President Arroyo. Alvarez admitted as much in an interview with the Philippines Graphic during the Aug. 7 rally, though she said President Arroyo “has the prerogative to name her choices as well, under Executive Order 236.”

One name on the final 2009 list was dropped, Dr. Ramon Santos, who was nominated for his contributions to Philippine music. A new category was created for Caparas, who is to be named National Artist for Visual Arts and Film – a category seems to merge two existing categories, Visual Arts and Cinema.

Questions abound over the insertions in the list of the country’s finest artists. The most frequently asked question, in conjunction with these names, is “why?” and it is a valid question. The next questions dealt with the process for selecting who would be given these top honors, which are conferred only once in three years.

The National Artist awards and the provisions for funding these awards and selecting the honorees were created in 1973 by then President Ferdinand Marcos through Presidential Decree 208. To quote Marcos: “The arts and letters are truly reflective of the national genius, in the manner that they are given expression by artists who can retrieve, for the nation, what is true and what is beautiful in Philippine culture.”

Marcos made it government policy “to grant special privileges to National Artists, in recognition of their contributions to the cultural heritage of the country, as well as in encouragement of a spirit of excellence in the arts and letters.”

Under PD 208, the selection of the country’s National Artists fell under the sole purview of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). PD 208 has since undergone several changes through the executive orders issued by Marcos’ successors.

The executive orders and one Republic Act that effectively amended PD 208 and formalized the process of National Artist selection were issued by former Presidents Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos and the incumbent, President Arroyo.

Republic Act 7356 issued by Mrs. Aquino in 1992 created the NCCA. With the creation of the NCCA, the process for the selection of National Artists changed as well, as the selection and screening of National Artist nominees would now go through the expert panels of two cultural agencies before being sent to the President. Besides that, Mrs. Aquino left the nomination, screening and selection of National Artists up to the CCP and NCCA.

Section 11 of RA 7356 states clearly that “during his/her term as member of the Commission, a Commissioner shall not be eligible for any grant or such other financial aid from the Commission as an individual,” the argument put forward by former NCCA Executive Director Virgilio Almario, who only accepted his National Artist award after his tenure with the NCCA had ended “out of delicadeza.”

In her interview with the Graphic, Alvarez vehemently said “I am not Virgilio Almario. He was a Marcos ally. I fought the Marocs regime. Why will I now make him my example?” Having said that, Alvarez changed her tack, mellowing her tone and adding: “Our circumstances are different. While I was not on the (National Artist nominee) list sent to Malacañang, I was nominated by another artists’ body and the President exercised her prerogative in naming me a National Artist. I do not see why I should insult the President by not accepting the honor.”

Another amendment to PD 208 is former President Fidel Ramos’ Executive Order 131, which sets guidelines and accords military honors for National Artists upon their deaths, an EO that further defines the provision for state funerals for National Artists as set forth by Marcos in PD 208.

While it was Ramos who began the practice of adding National Artist categories to the existing honors for Visual Arts, Theater, Cinema and Music, Ramos made it a point to formalize his addition with another executive order. EO 451 was issued to create the category of National Artist for Historical Literature.

In this EO, Ramos writes by way of explanation that “excellence in the field of Historical Literature contributes to the artistic heritage of the Philippines and therefore deserves such recognition and acknowledgment of our government.”

Mrs. Arroyo made no issuances creating new categories for Pitoy Moreno (Fashion Design), or for the combination of two categories into one, as in Caparas’ citation. She is also the first president to strike a National Artist nominee off the list and she did so with no executive orders or other laws and pronouncements backing that move, either.

This is how the 2009 National Artist award came to be described as tainted with “dagdag-bawas (padding and shaving)” and the addenda to the list of National Artists came to be called DNA (dagdag national artists) and other, less tasteful, names.

The incumbent Chief Executive did write EO 236 in 2003, through which she established the Honors Code of the Philippines. The Honors Code in this EO was written “to create an order of precedence of honors conferred,” as well as put together a Committee on Honors, which adds a third layer of vetting added to the existing order of nomination, screening, confirmation and conferment of the National Artist Award.

The function of this committee, according to EO 236, is to “assist the President in evaluating nominations for recipients” of the National Artist awards and other presidential awards. It is composed of members of the Cabinet, with the Executive Secretary as chairman, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs as vice chairman and a list members that includes the head of the Presidential Management Staff, the Presidential Assistant for Historical Affairs, the Chief of Presidential Protocol and the DFA’s Chief of Protocol and State Visits.

This added layer of screening, it must be pointed out, is not composed of artists – the committee of peers through whose judgment the nominees must pass before being brought to the President’s level. The people who comprise the Committee on Honors are members of the President’s official family and are her closest in-Palace political advisers.

Presumably, this added layer was meant to strengthen presidential fiat should the president seek to add names to the list of Filipinos to be given the government’s highest honor for artists. The addition of Alvarez, Caparas and, to a lesser degree, Moreno, is the acid test of the presidential fiat Mrs. Arroyo wrote into the laws governing the selection of National Artists. Perhaps it is also tested by the removal of Dr. Santos from the same list.

The process for selecting the country’s National Artists is rigorous and takes two years to complete. Their bodies of artistic work in the field for which they are nominated must be put under intense scrutiny and any and all honors they may have brought home to the country, as well. Then the NCCA and the CCP send their recommendations to the Palace.

If the president seeks to name a National Artist who is not on the list of either cultural body, consultation with the officials of the NCCA and CCP are part of that process, according to CCP board of trustees chair Emily Abrera.

“We wish to clarify that we were never consulted about these final choices, nor have we been officially informed about them, to this day,” Abrera was quoted as saying in a report on the Aug. 7 protests carried last week by The Philippine Star.

All things considered, it is not surprising that the nation’s artists and her National Artists feel that the conferment of the National Artist awards upon Caparas and Alvarez smack of political maneuvering.

Film Academy of the Philippines executive director Leo Martinez noted in a statement carried by the academy’s website that: “Throughout the long and exacting selection process, Carlo Caparas was never ever mentioned as nominee, not for film and surely not for visual arts. All of a sudden, he is a National Artist and seemingly the most gifted of all for straddling two major art fields.”

Martinez adds that “there only seems to be one answer to this mystery. Between the Awards selection panels and us, the people, the list of awardees made a stop-over in Malacañang. Someone waved the magic wand and a name appeared, a person who never went through the incisive and deliberate scrutiny that the rest of the awardees were subjected to by the Awards organizers. I believe that this is an act of blatant accommodation.”

This precedent set by Mrs. Arroyo now begs the question of what will become of the National Artist awards, even as the Filipinos still alive who have been honored with the award in the past feel that the naming of Caparas and Alvarez to their ranks is an insult.