As far as the Valley Golf Club ?brawl? is concerned, it would seem that public opinion has shifted from support for the De la Paz family to the Pangandamans.

Businessman Delfin de la Paz should have allowed his daughter Bambee to be the family spokesperson. She gets across very well and she is able to get public sympathy.

The father, on the other hand, comes across too strong and his television appearance only serves to confirm the e-mails going around that he is notorious in Valley Golf for his arrogance.

But what had turned the tide, so to speak, against De la Paz are the findings of the Valley Golf and Country Club investigating committee that he instigated the fight based on the testimonies of witnesses including some caddies.

The findings have been making the e-mail rounds days before the Club announced its decision to expel the elder De la Paz and impose a two year suspension of Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman Sr.

Assailing the credibility of the caddies because they are only caddies would not help the De la Paz family in the battle for public opinion.

***

The breaking news last year about the discovery of the Ebola Reston virus in local swine had all the makings of a disaster for the multi-billion hog industry as well as a food crisis during the holiday season.

The name ?Ebola? alone evokes images of massive internal bleeding of victims as portrayed in the movies about the virulent African strain of the disease.

However, the potential health and food crisis was averted thanks largely to the quick and decisive actions of Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap. These steps effectively neutralized the threat from the re-emergence of this strain of the Ebola virus which first surfaced in the world in 1989 in the Ferlite monkey farm in Mt. Makiling in Calamba, Laguna.

Public panic rather than the dangers of Ebola Reston which has no known effect on humans was the biggest threat. Scared consumers could well avoid pork. This would have wrecked the hog industry. For one, drastically reduced demand would have forced hog raisers to hold on to their pigs longer than necessary and the pigs would have been literally eating the businessmen?s profits.

Yap and his people at the department could have chosen to keep the discovery of Ebola Reston in Philippine swine a secret as long as possible. But Yap knew that transparency is the best policy and he himself made the announcement.

That was a brilliant move which is referred to in the communications industry as a ?controlled explosion.? Instead of allowing enterprising reporters to discover the discovery of Ebola Reston in local swine, Yap himself made then announcement and at the same time assured the public that Ebola Reston was benign to humans and that measures were in place to prevent its further spread.

At the same time that he disclosed the discovery of Ebola Reston, Yap also announced that he had ordered the quarantine of the farms in Pangasinan and Bulacan where the virus was detected. He directed the Bureau of Animal Industry to monitor the movement of hogs and pork meat by setting up hog checkpoints. He instructed the National Meat Inspection Service to check for the presence of any contaminated pork in the market and slaughterhouses and to be strict in the issuance of health certification on animal shipments. As an extra precaution, Yap also ordered the temporary suspension of the country?s first-ever pork export to Singapore until such time that the Ebola Reston problem was fully resolved.

Affected hog raisers were fully cooperative with Yap. The key to the cooperation was the assurance made by the Agriculture Department that there would be full compensation for the affected hog raisers.

Yap ?s quick response to the potential crisis has earned him well-deserved recognition from local media as well as the international community.

Media recognition of Yap?s swift and timely action is typified by the comment made in a news report which said that the response of government authorities to the rediscovery of the Ebola Reston virus in hogs ?has, thus far, proved unassailable? and that the measures that the government had undertaken had ?succeeded in calming public fears? and has sent across the message that the government ?takes public health concerns very seriously.?

Dr. Soe Nyunt-U, the World Health Organization country representative in the Philippines, publicly acknowledged the Arroyo administration?s ?appropriate action? in dealing with the Ebola Reston risk.

Leaders of the livestock industry also expressed their appreciation of what the Agriculture Department had done to contain threats experienced by the sector last year. During the meeting Yap had with industry leaders from all over the country, Rene Eleria, president of the National Hog Federation Inc., said that the livestock sector ?recognizes that you [Yap] did well in terms of disease control this year and we hope that you will continue to enhance what you are doing in 2009.?

In a proactive move to fully resolve the Ebola Reston issue and to remove any potential problem to the export of pork from the Philippines, Yap invited international health organizations such as the WHO, Office International des Epizooties and the Food and Agriculture Organization to conduct a risk assessment on the presence of the Reston virus in the country in line with the government policy of transparency on this issue.

In response to the government?s invitation, an international team of human and animal experts arrived in the country to conduct an epidemiological study on the reemergence of the Ebola Reston virus in local swine.

Yap said the findings of the international experts would help the Philippines craft a national surveillance plan as well as diagnostics and disease prevention program addressed specifically to the Reston virus.

Yap, along with Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, welcomed the arrival of the experts saying that he was looking ?forward to a fruitful partnership between the DA-BAI and the international institutions represented by these experts in getting better understanding of this new strain of the Reston virus and then implementing measures to eradicate this infection for good.?