Awash with award ceremonies recently, Naga City is really a happy place for achievers; a maogmang lugar for the best in their fields of endeavor.

        Award-giving emulates the perceived best performance of individuals and entities that in an ideal case was a result of several years of long days and nights of honing one’s capabilities, like Manny Paquiao who turned President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo agog, making her declare anew the highest recognition she could think of.

        Actually, achievers like Pacquiao need no affirmation from anybody because it would be like declaring publicly the achievement of Bill Gates as the most dominant in the information technology today.

        What made Gates and Pacquiao achievers is that they are real winners in their own fields so that bestowing them recognition in another context is superfluous, unless they also possess other capabilities on top of other achievers in different fields.

        Awards are bestowed to just a few who made big difference that’s why it is selective and rigid and must follow a treadmill to come out with the cream of the crop, then served by award-giving body as icon of inspiration upon public announcement.

        What about when award-giving becomes as common as the numerous award-giving bodies in a place where everybody knows everybody? Are award recipients could even linger in the memories of ordinary folks even in a short while? Can award recipients serve as an inspiration even as in a span of a year or two new names of award recipients are coming up in the shortlist of award-giving bodies?

        Award-giving tradition can even take a bad turn like the recent National Artist Award bestowed to the late Fernando Poe Jr. wherein the gesture is viewed with political prejudice in all sides.

        And who can forget the brouhaha when Imelda Marcos was bestowed the Ulirang Ina Award that made the militants and Marcos foes spit on the ground.

        But at hindsight, who knows, she might even had in fact emulated what a socialite mother must be, dancing her night away as her kids frolic among the crowd of international personalities. Ulirang Ina Award definitely is about motherhood that relates to the inner beauty of a mother to rephrase Imelda. But that’s another story.

        Giving award to the best performers and achievers in a small city like Naga, in some ways, democratizes (to borrow the term of the NGOs) the right to give collective recognition akin to the right of free expression that before was confided to big institutions.

        The local award-giving bodies provide focused lens on local achievers that the wide-angled lens of big institutions may have missed or sidelined in terms of context.

        But there is a downside when so many local award-giving bodies exist within a small territory—it will make award ceremonies as common as the commencement rites every school year’s end.