Cezar Quiambao: From STRADCOM’s CEO to Bayambang’s Anti-Poverty Czar

If Cezar Quiambao is not famous yet outside of his hometown of Bayambang, Pangasinan, he should be. Maybe part of the blame is his distaste for publicity.

If there is name recall at all, it's probably limited to his being associated with Pinoy Big Brother-Teen Edition star-turned-actress Niña Jose (as her husband), or at least as the current mayor of Bayambang.

But the few who are in the know are well aware of his own achievements, which are nothing short of historic, at least on the national stage.

Aside from being a successful businessman and philanthropist, consider the following:

In 2008, he automated the elections in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, preventing electoral fraud.

He was behind the computerization of the Land Transportation Office through his IT company, Stradcom, thus cutting red tape and eliminating notorious fixers associated with the government agency. 

He was also behind the digitization of the Land Registration Authority’s land title records, through his company, Land Registration Systems Inc. (LARES). His achievements in IT didn’t escape the attention of Computerworld, which honored him as one of the recipients of the 2008 Honors Laureates in Washington DC, USA.

Quiambao is also the pioneer of PPPs or public-private partnerships, particularly the Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) scheme between the government and private sector through the Metro Manila Skyway project – a groundbreaking project worth USD514M. He was also behind the STAR (Southern Tagalog Arterial Road) Tollway, again through the BOT scheme, a project immensely benefiting Calabarzon or the southern Tagalog provinces.

Because of these extraordinary feats, “the man of humble beginnings but with a great vision” – or in the words of former President Gloria-Macapagal-Arroyo, “the local boy who made good,” became the recipient of a Doctor of Humanities (Honoris Causa) degree from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines Graduate School and Open University during their Commencement Exercises in April 25, 2013. Not to be left behind was Pangasinan provincial government’s conferment of its prestigious ASNA Award for outstanding Pangasinenses like him.

In 2014, now as Dr. Cezar T. Quiambao, he financed Bayambang's attempt to snatch the world record for the longest barbecue grill from Turkey, with 8,000 pieces of fish grills that altogether are 8 kilometers long.

This is on top of other big-ticket projects abroad in which he has been a partner, namely the Guam Regional Medical City, a USD219M tertiary hospital, the Second Vivekananda Bridge Tollway in India, which was worth $145M, and another tollway project in Vietnam.

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Who is Cezar Terrado Quiambao?

It was on November 17, 1948 when Cezar Terrado Quiambao was born in the town of Bayambang. As the second child of small-scale business folk Simplicio Quiambao of Guagua, Pampanga and Veronica Terrado of Bayambang, Cezar first dreamed of a better life when he was just a pupil at Bayambang Central School. He carried this dream until he finished secondary education at Bayambang National High School (BNHS) and when he left for Manila in 1969 to take up Business Administration, with a major in Accountancy, at the University of the East and even beyond that, when he took up Strategic Economic Program at the University of Asia and the Pacific. In college, he experienced being a working student. At one time, he also became a messenger and a jeepney driver.

When he found an opportunity to work abroad, in Indonesia, it was a big leap for Cezar in fulfilling his childhood dream. There, he worked for 20 years, and through patience and diligence, his slow rise to the top became steady. In 1977, he became Executive Vice-President of PT Green Timber Jaya, a leading timber company in Indonesia. It was in that country where he found a wife and started a family.

Later, back in Manila, he became the Chair and CEO of Strategic Alliance Development Corp., and the President and CEO of Stradcom Corp.

Upon retirement, he had over three decades of executive experience in various industrial activities, infrastructure and development projects, information technology applications, management knowhow and corporate planning, and banking, finance and investments.

It was in 1994 when Cezar decided to come back to his hometown for good. Armed with formidable knowledge and experience gained in Indonesia and having witnessed the kind of economic progress and development in the different countries he had visited in between, he initiated together with his batch-mates from BNHS Class of 1965 the program called “Baley Ko, Pawilen Ko, Aroen Ko, tan Tulungan Ko” (literally “My hometown – where I shall come back to, to love and to help”). The program was conceived because of Cezar’s dream which through time evolved into a dream not just for himself but also for his hometown.

His dream started to become concrete quite literally when he had the muddy road from Barangay Tanolong going to Barangay Bical Norte paved with gravel and sand, after learning how the poor teachers in the area were having a hard time navigating it just to reach their school. After this project came a similar project benefiting a road in Mangabul.

He continued giving help in his own quiet way in the ensuing years. One of the most important of these is the renovation of the Public Plaza which, back then, had quite a reputation for its pervading stench – a great embarrassment to visitors.

He also had a hand in the establishment of the College of Information Technology in Pangasinan State University-Bayambang in 2000, and the number and quality of its graduates 19 years hence are quite evident.

In 2004, a most notable project was born: he founded the Kasama Kita sa Barangay Foundation with the help of Bayambang ex-Councilor Levin Uy in order to be of help to the out-of-school youth and the unemployed through trainings and seminars in TESDA-accredited courses and livelihood projects.

In his own way, Cezar was instrumental in the slow-but-sure rise of his beloved Bayambang, but real progress only came in 2012 when he put up his own mall in the heart of town. He called it Royal Mall, the first mall in Bayambang. This mall, together with Strategic Alliance Holdings Inc. (SAHI), LARES, and STRADCOM, all Cezar’s businesses whose headquarters he transferred from Manila to the third-class municipality perpetually referred to as “sleepy,” became a huge source of funds for the local government under other mayors due to the sheer amount of tax that they put into the coffers of the municipal treasury. The funds were so big that, if only utilized properly, would have made a great impact on the lives of ordinary Bayambangueños.

When Bayambang celebrated its 400th year of foundation as a town, Cezar played a big role. Using his savings, he donated P15M to the local coffers to help the town snatch the Guinness World Record for the longest barbeque on April 4, 2014 which a town in Turkey previously held. This feat put little-known Bayambang town on the world map, so to speak, if only in a small way.

It was a joy-filled and successful achievement in the history of the town, but it was also an eye-opener for Cezar with regard to the appalling political realities at the time, when he found out that the grills he had donated for the ‘Kalutan ed Dalan’ giant street-grilling event were sold to the townsfolk by those in authority.

With Cezar being a long-time patron to the town’s succession of politicians, this incident broke the camel’s back, so to speak. In the 2016 elections, he decided that he himself would throw his hat into the political ring to ensure a win against the incumbent leader who was seeking another post. Upon his assumption of office with his team of councilors led by Vice-Mayor Raul Sabangan, Bayambang’s socio-economic ascent became evident and unstoppable. Together with Team Quiambao-Sabangan, Cezar fought off corruption, criminality, and political dynasties, and together with his entire Local Government Unit of Bayambang family, continues to fight against poverty through a concrete plan called the Bayambang Poverty Reduction Plan 2018-2028.

Cezar’s childhood dream proved to be the same dream that would lift the living standards of his town-mates. That is why Cezar is doing and giving his all to ensure that every man, woman, child, farmer, teacher, and worker in his beloved town will have a good future to hope for.

He dreamed big, he worked hard, and now he has fulfilled his dream of giving back to Bayambangueños of every color and stripe, and on an unexpected level too as municipal mayor – that is who Cezar Terrado Quiambao was, is, and has become. And to think that he didn’t have to do it, for it was easier by far to settle in the creature comforts of the big city.

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New personal pet project: St. Vincent Ferrer Prayer Park

And now using his own money, through funds funneled from Kasama Kita sa Barangay Foundation and his companies, the local visionary with a taste for transformational leadership honed in the corporate world is gunning for another world record for his beloved hometown: the world's tallest supported bamboo sculpture. The 51-meter St. Vincent Ferrer Statue in Bayambang, Pangasinan is built in honor of the town's patron saint. Taller than the Christ the Redeemer in Sao Paolo, Brazil and the Statue of Liberty in New York City, USA, it is made of a steel frame and ‘engineered’ bamboo panels as cladding material.

An abstract design for the statue was decided upon by the main project proponents, the Quiambao couple. During the planning stage, the problem of the placement of the bamboo polygon-shaped panels on the abstract-design statue was solved by engaging the help of Puzzlebox 3D with its cutting-edge three-dimensional printing technology. The bamboo tiles used, of Moso or Mao variety, were imported all the way from China, and they had been treated in such a way that "they are stronger than steel," thus the term "engineered bamboo." The bamboo strips had to go through a long process of pest and decay prevention, carbonization, moisture balancing, strip milling, strand weaving, extreme pressure treatment, and finishing. The project manager, Architect Jerry Suratos, said the use of 3D design technology cut the work by three to five years.

With this statue, Bayambang is eyeing to clinch another title in the Guinness Book of World Records after breaking Turkey's record for the world’s longest barbeque grill in 2014. The statue will be the centerpiece of the soon-to-be-developed St. Vincent Ferrer Prayer Park (SVFPP), which is envisioned as a sprawling space where people can visit to gain peace of mind, where pilgrims from all over can pray, meditate and venerate the 'patron saint of builders,' St. Vincent Ferrer. Mistakenly dubbed by some mediapersons as an “amusement park,” SVFPP is really more of an unofficial shrine. (The Vatican is strict in conferring on churches the official title of “Shrine.”)

The contractor chosen for the project was Far East Industrial Supply & Company (FEISCO), whose one notable major project in its portfolio is Manila’s first Skyway. JQS Builders, together with RAA–Architects, Engineers & Consultancy Services, were the architectural/design team, with assistance from Palafox Associates to determine the best location.

Truth to tell, this project is just a child’s play to ‘CTQ’ – as his fond corporate moniker goes, considering his earlier projects. But this is meant to jumpstart his long-dreamt of new town center and new economic zone for his beloved hometown.

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Bayambang: Getting to know a town that produced a Cezar Quiambao

What kind of town would produce a Cezar Quiambao?

If we study its history, the clues are provided here and there. It is a kind of town where heroes would take refuge, the kind where a deputy general (Antonio Luna) would case and scope, there to perhaps brainstorm preliminary military tactics with his band of revolutionaries, and would eventually be declared by his superior (Emilio Aguinaldo) as the budding republic's 5th capital. Historian Jaime Veneracion speculates that Aguinaldo, Luna, et al. chose to stop by at Bayambang for it was a town friendly to the revolutionaries.

That is not surprising, for after all, it had a reputation for pocket rebellions, as per Rosario Mendoza Cortez’s account in her book, “Pangasinan: 1572-1800” (1974): first, as a “flashpoint of the first anti-Spanish revolt led by Andres Malong in October 1660” and that of “the second Pangasinan revolt in 1762-1764 led by Juan dela Cruz Palaris, a revolt surpassing all revolts in the history of Northern Luzon in terms of scope and duration.” Another account would say that this is the reason why almost no Spanish-era houses survived in the town because of the resultant burning and pillaging following these revolts.

While it is true that the town today is just another one of a series of insular, nondescript towns where travelers going north routinely pass by or briefly stop over, it has also attracted its fair share of enterprising businessmen in the colonial era (e.g. Smith Bell & Co., etc.)

It is largely a rustic town, a major producer of rice, corn, onion, and various delicacies made out of these. Formerly, it was also a major source of freshwater catch of all kinds, thanks to the 2,000-hectare Mangabul Lake, which unfortunately has been buried in lahar after Mt. Pinatubo erupted in June 15, 1991, but has left a legacy of buro-making, among other delicacies. The binasuan folk dance, which requires a delicate balancing act involving drinking glasses, is also reputed to have originated in Brgy. Sancagulis, this town.

But in the face of this agrarian background, it is easy to forget that Bayambang is also an old university town, specifically a long-time training ground for generations of the country's best teachers. Pangasinan State University-Bayambang Campus used to be called Central Luzon Teachers' College and before that, Pangasinan Normal School, and this institution of learning pioneered a number of unsung 'laboratory experiments,' so to speak, in the field of education.  Founded in 1922, it put up the country’s first Child Study Center, the first pre-elementary school or kindergarten, and the first Opportunity Class for exceptional children. In 1953, it became the seat of the Philippines-UNESCO National Community Training Center (PUNCTC) where scholars from all over the Philippines and the world came together to learn about the realities in the town’s interior barangays as a kind of benchmarking activity in the field of nutrition. In 1962, it also became the venue of the First National Institute in Physical Education and Recreation in the Philippines.

It is only expected that PSU has a long list of educators who were and are experts in their rarefied fields. Today, PSU-Bayambang is the site of a Food Innovation Center that was put up in cooperation with the Department of Science and Technology. FIC is a place where food research is being done to find alternative means of taking advantage of local farmers’ bumper harvests. In fact, upon the prodding of Mayor Quiambao, Manila-based One Document Corporation headed by Jorge Yulo signed a Memorandum of Agreement with PSU on December 19, 2017 to establish a partnership for this purpose.

From the foregoing, it can be gleaned that even though nothing else much seems to happen on the surface, Bayambang makes some quiet but deep impact. Bayambang Central School, the town's public elementary school, is reported by one Manila Times news item as Pangasinan's oldest, having been established in maybe at least 1915. This reflects the fact that Bayambang is relatively an ancient town side by side most other towns in the country, tracing its founding to April 5, 1614, when an outpost called Malunguey of Binalatongan parish (in the present San Carlos City) became a visita, indicating a degree of independence and thus a distinct identity as a governed locality.

Bayambang apparently is also a bastion of Catholic faith. The people's devotion to their patron, St. Vincent Ferrer, is no less than remarkable. One can say it is a town of San Vicente Ferrer devotees. In the old parish church's Prayer Room can be found an authenticated relic of the saint, a reputed miracle worker. In the third year of 'Paskuhan sa Bayambang,' the country's biggest animated Christmas display according to no less than its maker, the Rosario family of Cubao COD's giant Christmas display fame (circa 1970s), the winged saint from Valencia, Spain (he was actually a Dominican priest), is credited for saving a nearby house on fire and for sparing the church itself from wartime bombs dropped by Japanese forces. There are, of course, an entire host of similar stories around town, and it begs for a book compilation.

One curiosity is the Bubon nen San Vicente, an ancient well along nearby M.H. del Pilar St. whose water runoff, locals believe, has healing properties. In a coffeetable book on the St. Vincent Ferrer Parish Church by local historian and former PSU dean, Dr. Clarita D.G. Jimenez, Subol na Pananisia, a woman named Marcelina Malicdem of Brgy. Tanolong says that her parents, in 1928, stumbled into a wooden image of St. Vincent Ferrer floating on a river there, and the image has proven to be miraculous to her family since then.

Another interesting side note: One Spanish priest who served the parish in the early 1700s, Fr. Lorenzo Fernandez Cosgaya de la Concepcion, wrote the first-ever Pangasinan-Spanish dictionary here, and the original copy is now found in a museum in London, which according to historical accounts, Jose Rizal must have perused while on his European 'sojourn.'

Bayambang, it must be noted further, used to have a large territory, and so its history won't be complete without noting that this includes the former barrio of Bautista (now a neighboring town), where the lyrics of the national anthem were written by Jose Palma, and the former barrio of Camiling (now a town in Tarlac), the home of Rizal's muse, Leonor Rivera, and former President of the United Nations General Assembly, Carlos P. Romulo. It is only logical that Bayambang is a town where Rizal often visited via the old Ferrocarril de Manila-Dagupan or on a horseback (he was a "most wanted" man back then) to court the elusive 'yes' of the love of his life, whether she was staying in Camiling or in Dagupan.

Bayambang is the hometown of these other notable personalities: Atty. Geruncio Lacuesta, a former Manila mediaman who is considered today as “the father of Philippine cycling”; former University of the Philippines Vice-President for Public Affairs and now Commission on Higher Education Chairman, Dr. J. Prospero ‘Popoy’ E. de Vera, today a popular resource person on political matters and other topics in the trimedia; Sr. Mary John Mananzan, RGS, a world-renowned leader in religious, feminist, academic, and activist circles; and Christopher Q. Gozum, the director of Anacbanua, the first full-length film in the Pangasinan language which is an internationally acclaimed arthouse film about his native Pangasinan. Showbiz personalities Wendell Ramos and Donita Rose trace their lineage to the town’s Ramos clan. There are several other notables.

Cezar Quiambao's Bayambang is apparently a town where rabid patriots lived while breathing fervent Catholicism, and a rustic town where significant experimentation and pioneering feats are nonetheless attempted and made, creating silent ripples. In history's 20/20 hindsight, MCTQ is a logical and legitimate child of Bayambang.

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Cezar’s journey from CEO to ‘Czar’

These contributions, however, hardly translated to satisfactory economic gains that trickled down to the grassroots. What CTQ left in the ‘70s was the same Bayambang he saw when he came back in the ’90s. Lack of political will appeared to be a stumbling block, but more than that was the institutional structures that blocked progress.

That’s why among his 4-point strategy when he ran for public office in 2016 was to eradicate poverty, the other four being to get rid of criminality, to dismantle political dynasty, and to combat corruption.

One of the things he discovered is that the government has a lot of existing programs against poverty, each facing the enemy head-on in its own way, on various fronts and at different levels of governance (barangay, municipal, provincial, regional, national, international). But many of these projects, he noticed, are similar in nature, that if only they were properly coordinated, would result in bigger and more effective but streamlined projects. Getting rid of duplication or redundancy will also save the precious few resources at government’s disposal. Proper coordination, he believes, will bring about benefits of convergence and synergy among all LGU departments, national agencies, other offices/units, and the private sector in its various incarnations (NGOs, COs, and POs).

In August 28, 2017, National Heroes’ Day, he boldly declared a Rebolusyon Laban sa Kahirapan in front of the Dr. Jose Rizal’s statue at the Municipal Plaza. He expressed hopes that by 2028, the number of 4Ps members would be down to 0% from the current membership of 6,228 households (as of December 2018). Incidentally, it was also the date Martin Luther King of American delivered his historic speech, “I Have a Dream.” If his critics – and there is a rabid band of them – thought that this was mere posturing, they got it wrong, for this would be the biggest revolution in town since Malong and Palaris.

True enough, not long after that, with the concurrence of the Sangguniang Bayan, he wrote an Executive Order reassigning the Municipal Administrator, Atty. Rodelynn Rajini A. Sagarino, as Municipal Administrator on Anti-Poverty Concerns. Atty. Sagarino, in a previous life, as the fashionable expression goes, happened to work with the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) in Malacañang. She was the perfect person for the job.

Atty. Sagarino, a former beauty titlist, and a young, eloquent leader with a passion to serve, lost no time in executing Mayor Quiambao’s marching order. On December 16, 2017, with the Mayor’s blessing and NAPC’s able direction, she organized an Anti-Poverty Summit, to consult the basic sectors of society: women, youth and students, senior citizens, persons with disabilities, children, farmers, fisher folks, cooperatives, victims of disasters and calamities, informal settlers, workers in the informal sector, Non-Government Organizations/Civil Society Organizations, formal labor/migrant workers, and business. And this soon led to the creation of the Bayambang Poverty Reduction Plan (BPRP) 2018-2028, which serves as the bible – or war plan – of LGU Bayambang in its fight against poverty. This ten-year plan, the BPRP, was drawn up in consonance with the two local government plans mandated by the Local Government Code of 1991 (the Comprehensive Land Use Plan or CLUP and the Comprehensive Development Plan or CDP), the national plan called Ambisyon Natin 2040, and the international Millennium Development Goals. As far as Quiambao knows, BPRP is the only one of its kind in the country.

From the Anti-Poverty Summit sprouted a number of other summits, each focused on one particular major sector, addressing that sector’s peculiar needs. There was the Farmers’ Summit, Youth Summit, Cooperative Summit, Negosyante Summit…

Sagarino’s job was no doubt herculean, so she had to organize her own team of “warriors,” and so was born the Bayambang Poverty Reduction Action Team. It functioned like a new LGU department, but it really is a coordinative body patterned after an existing special body called Local Poverty Reduction Action Team, which is a DILG-mandated body. With BPRAT, the fight became urgent.

In crafting BPRP, a technical consultant was hired, but it was the different department heads and staff themselves who labored hard to outline their own programs, projects, and activities within the given timeframe. The process was mentally exhausting, as the enemy proved to be a multi-headed monster with a complicated character. It spared nothing, affecting young and old alike, men and women, professionals and blue collar workers, and especially certain interest groups like solo parents, victims of calamities and PWDs. Soon, BPRP evolved to have five major thrusts as per the result of the multi-sectoral consultation: Agricultural Modernization, Socio-Cultural Protection and Development, Economic and Infrastructure Development, Environmental Protection and Resiliency, and Good Governance.

One crucial element in the fight is the work rendered by the MSWDO and its so-called LGU Links and the DSWD’s Regional Office I team from La Union who are based in Bayambang, including its Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) Project Development Officers and the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) team (called Municipal Links). This is because DSWD is the lead agency in the grassroots as far as the government’s antipoverty drive is concerned, particularly in the area of Socio-Cultural Development and Protection. As frontliners, they have the hard data and they are the ones working face-to-face with the major target in situ. Their obviously backbreaking work in the farthest sitios and barangays requires the cooperation of any office or individual touched by the long arm of the anti-poverty drive.

But government funds are limited and it is here where Mayor CTQ’s role is pivotal because he happens to be a long-time “philanthropreneur.” He puts to good use his old companies’ CSR funds in livelihood-driven causes – or as one writer puts it, “community capacity-building and human capital development” – and this includes college scholarships, alternative education, skills training, drug rehabilitation program, and other various forms of aid to indigent groups.

Quiambao’s work as municipal mayor and antipoverty czar did not escape the attention of outside observers. In 2018, Superbrands International invited him to accept his nomination to become one the year’s Most Outstanding Mayor Awardees. Other awards from various levels followed including his administration’s thrice-in-a-row conferment of DILG’s Seal of Good Local Governance, but the most significant, as far as poverty alleviation is concerned, has to be DSWD’s PANATA GAPAS Award, which recognized LGU-Bayambang’s role in microenterprise development among the poor of the municipality through the convergence efforts of BPRAT. Among the DSWD-initiated microenterprises he supported through his foundation include goat-raising, rag-making, hat-making, agricultural supplies store, sari-sari store, food cart vending, piggery, carabao milking, broiler chicken-raising, etc. This is on top of assistance his foundation provided to trainees in security guard service, food processing, computer systems servicing, basic electronics, reflexology, cosmetology, housekeeping, among others, as well as assistance to drug reformists.  

This have all been made possible, of course, with the cooperation of the Vice-Mayor and the Sangguniang Bayan, the Office of the Chief of Staff, Punong Barangays and Barangay Councils, Department of Agriculture (DA) (including the Provincial Agriculture Office, DA Regional Office I, Municipal Agriculture Office, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, Philippine Carabao Center, Philippine Crop Insurance Corp., Pangasinan Agricultural Training Institute, and Tarlac Agricultural University), Cooperative Development Authority, Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Education including Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and Alternative Learning System (ALS), Department of Science and Technology, and the religious sector.

With the GAPAS Award, Bayambang bested four other LGUs in the country with equally notable work, namely Iloilo and Nueva Ecija provinces, Ormoc City in Leyte, and the municipality of Real, Quezon.

With all his accomplishments in life, it was just an icing on the cake for Quiambao but constitutes enough encouragement to continue on with his vision of Bayambang as a “smart city” where no one is so poor that he or she does not have the capacity to rise from it.