Transformations.

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Conrado de Quiros

THE PRESIDENTIAL Commission on Good Government and the coconut farmers have a point. If Danding Cojuangco wants to put out ads to boost his presidential bid, he should do so with his own money, not with theirs. That is to say, he should not use San Miguel Corp. money, which is not his. The government and the coconut farmers have a 47 percent claim to it. It's SMC that's currently paying for the ad where Cojuangco explains why he is changing the name of La Tondena Corp., a subsidiary of SMC, to Ginebra San Miguel Corp.

I wish the PCGG and the coconut farmers well in their demand for an accounting, but my own beef with the ad goes beyond Cojuangco's use of public and corporate money to push a personal agenda. It has to do with the ad itself. The first time I saw it, during a break in the PBA semifinals, I was astounded by its cheekiness. It wasn't that Cojuangco was campaigning this early, though one could, and should, remonstrate with that too. It was the subliminal message the ad was beaming.

In the ad, Cojuangco explains in wonderful Tagalog how Ginebra, the most popular gin in the country, turned from something that used to be hawked in obscure sidewalks to the respectable commodity it is now. And how the Filipino came to embrace it as his own, the product, like a true friend, keeping him company and giving him cheer over the years. That is the reason SMC decided to change the name of the company producing it to Ginebra San Miguel Corp, to toast its success.

Beneath the surface, the ad suggests two things.

First is that the story of Ginebra is the story of the Filipino himself. That is not such a bad idea, even if, unlike his favorite drink, the Filipino did not turn from living a seedy existence to living a respectable one. He lives seedily to this day, not least if he is a coconut farmer, who has to make do with gin when he cannot produce lambanog. But if the success of the Ginebra basketball team is anything to go by (it continues to draw a tremendous following notwithstanding that Robert Jaworski has left it and it doesn't win games; talk of walang iwanan!), Filipinos do identify with the product in ways that go beyond brand loyalty. They imagine it to be a distillation (pun liberally intended) of their life, with all its macho impurities. The notion of a "Barangay Ginebra" is by no means wispy. Ginebra is more than a gin, it is a community.