Cyber critics: ‘Batangas-wood’ topples DPWH’s ‘The Inspectors’

MANILA, Philippines—Public officials nowadays should be careful of their actions and fear not only activists, incorruptible newspaper columnists and television-radio commentators. Here are the ultra-creative cyber critics—mostly anonymous—ready to crucify them with a little help from Photoshop.

Batangas Governor Vilma Santos-Recto, Vice Governor Mark Leviste II and the rest of the provincial board members are now hot targets in cyberspace after their proposed Hollywood-inspired erection of the word “BATANGAS” on one side of the world-famous Taal Volcano came out in the news.

A day after the photo and story appeared via INQUIRER.net and on the front page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, it gathered thousands of reactions, ranging from the vicious —“stupid idea,” “waste of government money,” “visual pollution”— to the most hilarious, “Being an active volcano, why not put DANGER ZONE,” “Batangas has many letters, why not just put VILMA or ATE VI”.  (A famous actress before she became a public servant, Gov. Santos-Recto was “Ate Vi” to her fans.)

In several blogs, websites and Facebook accounts, different versions of the Hollywood-inspired sign have been as viral as the death of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Among the witty entries is the famous line “Si Val na walang malay” (Val the innocent victim) from Gov. Santos-Recto’s hit movie in the late 1980s, “Saan Nagtatago Ang Pag-ibig?”

Vice Governor Leviste tried to answer the reactions of readers in the INQUIRER.net comments section, explaining that nothing is final yet and they were just gathering feedbacks from the public. He also wrote that it was he and the rest of the provincial board members who approved the proposal.

As of Friday early morning, the readers’ comments section of the first Inquirer news story had more than 51 pages with 500 entries and counting, had been “re-Tweeted” 4,450  times and was shared on Facebook more than 22,000 times.

This broke the record of the alleged “photoshopped” news release of three high-ranking officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways or what is now famously called “The Inspectors” posted at 9:37 pm, Thursday, September 29th, 2011, in the aftermath of Typhoon Pedring.  After three weeks on the Internet, the initial DPWH Inquirer story has been shared 14,000 times via Facebook.

Meanwhile, unless another group of government officials will come out soon with more “brilliant” projects, a barrage of delightful versions of “Batangaswood” are expected to come out in cyberspace in the following days.