by admin | Jun 10, 2016 | Editorial
Presidential Communications and Operations Office chief Herminio Coloma recently made an astounding assertion.
In the national news dailies maintained by commercial media whom President-elect Rodrigo Duterte finally chastised for making a mockery of journalism, Coloma jumped on the opportunity to credit-grab.
True to the task assigned to him, communications experts expect Coloma to be the loudspeaker and exact epitome of the president, even in the waning days of the presidency.
On the successive raids and anti drug operations, Duterte has nothing to do with it, Coloma asserted.
Certainly, the raids and operations interestingly happen within the dying days of the administration of President Aquino.
But obviously, something is worth the nose-pinching here.
One, while the Coloma assertion is, in some sense, correct, something doesn’t make full sense here.
Seemingly, Coloma is saying the Aquino Administration was really capable of starting intense anti drug operations but yet it did not. Along this drift, we can tie the loose end and find a dangerous assumption: the recent connection with the DOJ’s Delima and the pictures of the president spending loose time at the country’s meth labs at Bilibid is beyond media hype.
A recent picture of the President, Sec Delima at the Bilibid tells more than Coloma’s lame attempt to save face for the administration. If indeed the
Duterte election did not cause the cowering of police and anti drug operatives, then somebody ordered them not to act against drugs then.
Indeed, if the clear and expressed Duterte warnings spiced with curses and unsubstantiated gory deaths credited to him, then how does Coloma account for clear surrender of drug personalities to police authorities for fear of liquidations.
So, Coloma is also claiming it is the Administration of PNoy doing the summary executions of drug personalities too?
by admin | May 6, 2016 | Editorial
Those who claim they play decent chess are a bounty. They are a dime for a dozen.
Those who do not claim however are few. And they are to be feared.
By their sweet disguise, they have successfully let down their foes’ guards enough to orchestrate a gambit and ultimately ruling the boards with a checkmate.
In the most recent developments in the upcoming polls, the man whom, many self-proclaimed political pundits tag as uncouth in language, immoral in ways and unstatesman in manner played a gambit.
It was a gamble he was sure could expose the weakness in the opponents’ defenses. And when it did, we expect him now enjoying the spoils like what every successful businessman would do. He did not.
While he could be sipping margaritas in a resort in Samal after he successfully cornered his Trillions; he stayed low.
Kill time was at hand and at the sign of a tilt, the bishops, the horses and the rooks moved in for the kill.
Just as the key pieces jumped in for the kill, Duterte’s daring move also exposed where the fire was coming.
And from there, the people saw the snipers from their high perch, and then, just like every sad telenovela, the viewers took the attack like it is for them.
So, instead of putting the man down, the attack enthroned him even farther, nearly doubling in the lead against his closest rival.
His move was a classic overkill of the pretentious in us.
While continually raving high in surveys, presidential front runner candidate Rodrigo Duterte fed fodder to the already dried brains of his opponents enough to burn them and their rabid supporters.
At least, this man who is rousing a hornets nest by his unpopular pronouncements, is supposed to be treated as trash in a game where every candidate desperately paints ultra clean image of self.
The fact is, he leaves everyone with self projected clean image like trash, despised and fittingly disposed. And we wonder why.
A known fiscal who picks a job representing the state in stamping out criminals, presidential survey front-runner Rodrigo Duterte, may have brought the fight out of the courts by throwing his hat late into the presidential fray.
Maybe the desperation in the way the courts work in this country did it for him and that augers well for electors with asphyxiated hope for change in the way things are running.
What is certain however is, in a city that’s has seen so much of the loony status quo of crimes and optional punishment, the fiscal used the harsh hand of the law to beat out a system that straightened out the bent system, at least in Davao.
The usual “if you can’t beat them, join them” seemingly works not for the man whose decision to transform Davao into exhibit number one in good governance is damning evidence.
Over allegations of using extra judicial killings, the alarmists including those who claim to be morally upright members of the Catholic Church howled.
Seeing this as a potential take down move, the opportunistic candidates all to eager to collect on the Duterte spoils joined in the barking bout.
Too bad for them, the gambit worked by exposing even the media oligarchs of their wrecked and tarnished stances of bias and whatever-it-is-called but objectivity.
So what do we have?
A guy who would not pass for a saint, not one ordinarily fancied as a political animal that oligarchs can tame.
He is one brilliant chess player who can exact a checkmate from the worst situation and force a stalemate from an attack.
In a country immersed in a tangle like this, it’s not a saint or an animal we need.
Picking him is a risk, and risking gets us somewhere.
by admin | May 3, 2016 | Editorial
It would be a week from now and the people’s singular chance to write what they want for the country happens.
And in the last days of the campaign, expect the heat to escalate, because right now, we have not seen the toilet bowl flung as yet.
At least, the past few days have been so revealing.
In no way will a desperation move to dislodge the presidential front runner be a job of a hao Hsiao, as can be seen by the blatant use of exactly the same tactics which this government used on its perceived enemies.
Take this for example.
When then Supreme Court Justice Renato Corona awarded the P1.3 billion Hacienda Luisita to some 6,000 farmers, did we forget that bank documents just suddenly showed up.
Now, these documents seemed spurious, but nobody asked why and how somebody could just pick a bank account record and put it out.
Succeeding bank accounts which suddenly and interestingly opened by themselves to the public revealed Corona had allegedly $130 million dollars in foreign banks.
Not that it was entirely true, or Corona could have been romancing cold metal bars instead.
While CJ Corona got impeached, courtesy of the “honorables” who were given millions in fattened pork barrel, but no court has ever got him jailed for keeping a lifetime of savings.
Corona died a few days ago, confident he has finally rested his case.
Ergo, everything else has been a perception game tied to a P1.3 billion sugarcane plantation tilled by 6000 farmers, and a timed Malacanang controversy called the DAP.
Earlier, there was former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, whom the official residence along the Pasig River accused of plunder over the P366 million Philippine Charity Sweepstakes funds.
Other than the inconvenience of being detained at the Veterans Memorial medical Center and the pestering illness, the courts have yet to finally determine her culpability.
And then, when vice Presidential aspirant Bongbong Marcos surged high, all the administration forces and their allies had their cannons all shooting volleys at the former presidential son.
On these three cases, two have their specific peculiarities.
CJ Corona and now presidential run-away leader Rodrigo Duterte have suddenly become trial by publicity victims courtesy of illegally obtained documents, which, with expert scrutiny would reveal as fake.
Bank secrecy law was desecrated in both and in many other cases and pick on the Trillianes lie? When were you, born yesterday?
While patterns interestingly pop in CJ Corona and Duterte’s cases, the unmistakable link of an idiot whose demolition job operation is as flimsy as a bald head with not enough nutrients to support a hairis rather telling.
Too bad, the script they used in Bongbong Marcos, Gloria Arroyo, and CJ Corona have all been used, the uncanny semblance is unbelievable.
It tells rather that whosoever directs the demolition job against Duterte has run out of good scripts.
The problem of these run-down plots: when people start memorizing the lines, chances are, they all too know how they can all come up with a surprising end, the director can not do anything about.
by admin | Apr 14, 2016 | Editorial
President Benigno S Aquino is not just becoming a lameduck president. He has just shown to us that he is not just lame; he is also a duck.
The son of a president who took over after evicting a dictator, Aquino should have all the time needed to conveniently and permanently scuttle the dream of the Marcoses.
After all, in totality, he and his mother have a combined rule of nearly 12 years, and within that time succeeded in burning the house to scoot out the rats.
Then President Corazon Aquino, mother of this lame duck president, took the helm of power and enjoyed the push of the wind of change in her sails. It should have been that easy.
But when she immediately set her prow to go after the ousted leader and his family, including erasing what was left of their memory because of what she said is grave plunder of government, she only managed to tilt the Marcoses head.
At least, Cory Aquino, whom historians wanted to project as a saint, lightly pressured the judiciary to hand her the Marcoses’ head. But she could not do that even if she wielded all the power.
Not only was she a failure in mustering the government assets to force the Marcoses to return their alleged loot, she also failed in permanently shutting the door for their return to power.
Aquino’s cannons for the Marcoses spewed nothing but smoke grenades when the big guns could do sufficient damage. The smoke of vilification and demonization were shots fired across the Marcoses bow, it did stop one Marcos dead on his track.
And then like a deadly virus, the Marcoses developed a certain kind of immunity that even the harshest of the Aquino’s barrage using the Martial Law had no effect.
The campaign against the Marcoses however, did not stall the family’s cruise to return to power and expose the Aquino government’s hypocrisy.
Aside from Imelda, the wife of the strongman winning a seat of power, daughter Aimee and son Bongbong tauntingly managed to grab key seats in the Aquino government.
Now that Bongbong runs the risk of winning the country’s second highest seat, and racking in on this government’s inutility, the dirty campaign took the young Marcos’in stride.
But the bombardment soon sounded as laughable: either Pinoys found it a bore or took it as a parody against this government.
In the recent surveys, we saw how those opposed to Senator Bongbong are unleashing their deadly arsenal of hate campaign and bashing which borders the toilet kind.
Instead of burying the man’s dream for good, this government watered it instead, the seed of hate grew and grew in to pile heaps of support for the strongman’s son in survey approval ratings.
Why? What has happened?
When this government hoisted Martial Law and the worst of the Marcoses to fool the millennials, they did come with dirtier hands.
With a reign seen as more diabolical than the repressive Martial Law, with the horde of salivating cabinet more known for their characteristic ineptness supporting a three-day president, when the country is sailing into rough waters, there is the rub.
For the older generations, they still see the Marcos years as a country sacrificing to get the infrastructure that pitted the country among the best.
For a lame duck administration whose political endorsement is a kiss of death because all it could boast of, are accomplishments better remembered as monuments of stupidity, would one ever wonder why a vote for Marcos is better?
by admin | Mar 22, 2016 | Editorial
In this searing El Nino heat and the smoldering political stew that is obtaining in pre-poll Bohol, we see an oasis of good news.
For a remarkable drop in crime volume as against the skyrocketing crimes in other provinces in region 7, Bohol has been tagged by the regional police as the region’s safest.
We wish to tap the shoulders of our police officers for doing a splendid job.
Bringing Bohol’s crime volume by 8% in January and February is a testament of Col. Dennis Agustin’s leadership and motivational skills.
In times like this, we wish to recall the pre-Agustin time, when Bohol police stations reaped Region-wide accolades for lowered criminality. That was when every PPOC meeting had everyone grinning from ear to ear.
And while everyone was lazily lounging in easy swivels, oiling their guns and tending to their pot bellies, drugs silently crept to the threshold of Boholano homes.
Whether the reports coming out then were intended to deceive everyone or just plainly putting the police as intelligence as inept, we all know now the real score.
Of course, making a perfect impression of Bohol as a peaceful and safe place for business and leisure is a given, considering that the chief of police then was to bow out of service.
So while we heaped praises for the seemingly peaceful image that authorities painted over Bohol, and we handed all kinds of commendation to the officials, a different kind of rot was gnawing the very core of the society.
It was when Col Agustin took the helm when he, an anti-organized crime expert saw the tell-tale signs of a gangrene that was eating the flesh of the society, that he stirred a hornet’s nest.
Col Agustin exposed the well-entrenched network of drug industry in Bohol a few days after he came in.
The industry was so well hidden in plain sight that the police officer could not mention the root, certainly knowing he would be the first to be uprooted when he does.
Two years later and clearly after nearing his tour of duty deadline, we have this news.
All we pray is that this isn’t a repeat of the past.
For how indeed can we account for the crime decrease and the sudden formation of Capitol initiated Task Force Dagon when crime has indeed ebbed? Or when assassins bullets just weirdly find their way to drug personalities in dark streets or in their known dens?
Gov Edgar Chatto recently issued an executive order creating the Joint Task Force Dagon, to curb criminalities, drug abuse, and other threats and disturbances to peace and order, public safety and security. The news of Bohol being safest, is now rendered bland.
When we had this report of Bohol being safest, we were thinking otherwise.
When you have public officials going around the province in well-armed convoy of vehicles, when you have teeners caught making pension houses as base of shabu distribution and when you have mayors claiming their supporters are getting killed, is this that brand of peace that makes Bohol safest?
At this time when you have a police officer wielding his firearms and randomly chasing his fellow cops in a police station, the news came in at a moment so awkward.
by admin | Jan 6, 2016 | Editorial
The year ended and another year started with firecrackers exploding and pyrotechnics lighting up Bohol skies.
Firecracker exploding, pyrotechnics display and noise making has been a tradition which Filipinos borrowed and adopted as their own.
The tradition roots from the Chinese, who thought bad luck is as chicken as the dog which runs with its tails tucked every time an explosion happens.
For the bad luck that has hounded Chinese families during the previous year, scaring it off would mean good luck as the new year opens. Or so, they thought.
In fact, for some believers, exploding and lighting up pyrotechnics is not enough.
Like the Filipinos penchant for the back-up systems in everything, lighting firecrackers and pyrotechnics need to be accompanied by other attempts at bringing in good luck: the round fruits on the dining table for example, are just some of them.
In the Philippines, the use of firecrackers and pyrotechnics have always been seen as a free zone.
Everyone with the money to purchase some, can basically ignite them: the more people you scare the better.
Of course, this is not rooted from a belief that bad luck does come from people, although some would gladly ascribe the jinx to them.
So, when people start thinking exploding pairs with scaring people to death, in a country with regulations that are left un-imposed, firecracker makers craft the scariest of them all, so there’s Goodbye World or Goodbye Philippines for that matter.
And, next to that, expect people to get hurt. And so does making useless stumps from what was once arms and limbs are every New Year’s aftermath.
And from the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), Supt. Renato Marcial, made the rounds on TV and radio talk shows to pound home the proposal for a total ban on firecracker use by civilians on Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Indeed, it sounds radical, as this is always viewed as contrary to tradition.
For a once or twice a day revelry now proposed to be banned, the BFP might be too alarmist, so they say.
But then, the Department of Health’s latest bulletin says injuries relating to firecracker use, most of them occurring during the New Year countdown and the parties afterwards, have hit really alarming counts.
While this happens to be, according to the DOH, 57 percent lower than the five-year average for the same period in 2010-2014, the figure becomes threatening especially if one of them is your kid.
Traditionalists however insist that there is such a thing as responsible use of firecrackers.
This means that firecrackers use by private individuals, households and civilians is banned but let the professionals do the scaring.
Now that firecrackers are exploded even in limited, dangerous environments, expect injuries.
Not, however in a controlled environment or designated area where the risks are contained and rubbish easy to clear.
Davao has shown that it can be done. The next thing we need to do is copy what Davao has done.
That however can not work with the kind of leaders we have whose fire are just as a fleeting as a firecracker.
Would a rather different kind of fired leader come out?
