Controversy
This led to controversy, however, when the nominating committee for the award, composed of representatives from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), revealed that Caparas and three other individuals that year had not originally been recommended by the committee for proclamation to the Order of National Artist, and had instead been proclaimed when Macapagal-Arroyo exercised her "presidential prerogative." A number of artists, including a number of previously proclaimed National Artists, protested. Protests specifically raised about the declaration of Caparas, and of NCCA executive director Cecilla Guidote-Alvarez, who as heads the NCAA secretariat that receives nominations for national artists, was supposed in the National Artist guidelines to be disqualified from being considered for the honor.
Complaints regarding Caparas' proclamation centered on the complaints that he did not illustrate the comic books he wrote and was therefore not qualified for the honor under visual arts, and the assertion of protesting artists that his work in the category of Film is supposedly "sub-par", being largely "pito-pito"("seven-seven") films rush-finished in seven days, and "massacre films" whose focus was sensational crimes.
National Artist for literature Bienvenido Lumbera who is chairman of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines and a member of the combined "final selection committee" of the NCAA and CCP, remarked that Caparas’ nomination was twice rejected by two NCAA panels:
" was first proposed as a nominee for literature, but the committee rejected him. He was again proposed as nominee for visual artist but the panel again turned him down."
Film Academy of the Philippines director general Leo Martinez noted that "He was obviously added by Malacañang." Caparas is known as a vocal supporter of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Petitions and blog posts on-line have also proliferated against Carlo Caparas in light of his controversial National Artist Recognition.
Lourd de Veyra, frontman for the band Radioactive Sago Project also satirized the controversial director, and compared the director's work to fecal matter in a blog post about a sign that said "Bawal Tumae Dito." "The movies of National Artist Carlo J. Caparas are a fine example of Philippine excremental cinema," Lourd remarked
Read more about this topic: Carlo J. Caparas, Proclamation As National Artist of The Philippines and Controversy
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)