PERHAPS THE WEIRDEST thing on the news this week was Rodrigo Duterte’s promise to donate P1,000 to charity each time he threw a cuss word. In a tone of near-humility, Duterte told reporters how he visited the bishops of Davao who reprimanded him for his foul language and deficient values. Duterte said he accepted the
THE LTO TOLD US when we registered our car in February that we should pick up our new plates on May 26. That’s a 45-day wait for replacements we didn’t need and didn’t want. We had to shell out P450 for them anyway, plus another P50, supposedly for the sticker. What sticker? We don’t know,
I GAVE UP writing about the BBL, if anyone noticed, when the House and the Senate began debating it in their respective committees. I didn’t want to preempt Congress, and it seemed a waste of energy to speculate, especially in this heat. Perhaps I suffered from a “wanton excess of optimism,” but having been fed
If the executive and the government peace panel will not attend to these matters now causing much social anxiety, it is up to us poor Juans to sound the tocsin and keep it ringing. This is an issue that must be followed vigilantly, lest we lose any of our constitutional guarantees and privileges (not to mention our territory) by default.
It’s no fun listening to the news these days. Mostly I get a load of rehashed items on Mamasapano, BBL, MILF, BIFF, OPAPP, PNP, AFP, PNP vs. AFP and vice versa, and the tired controversies: will President BS Aquino III apologize or won’t he? (He didn’t.) Will Senator Antonio Trillanes stop intriguing or won’t he?
This is an aspiration poor boss Juan shares. And this is the torch he carries: that his employee Noynoy will somehow remember his mandate and find his path; that he will recover his wits before it is too late; that he will forget his dreams of prizes and posterity and instead attend to the plight of his bosses; and that he will recall he is President and lead!
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Elusive Peace
The “peace process” includes this very phase we are in right now and involves every Filipino, not just those from Mindanao. The negative reactions are part of it; this process did not end – should not end – with the drafting of the BBL and the current inflexible campaign for its acceptance. Does the OPAPP truly ask us to buy peace in the Bangsamoro at the price of discord in the rest of the country? Can it in conscience dismiss the fulminating tensions brought about by the BBL as mere “anti-peace” sentiments? This dangerously reduces the issue and pits Filipino against Filipino in a morass of mindless, impassioned name-calling: “anti-Muslim,” “terrorist,” “warmonger,” “enemy of peace.” This is hardly consensus-building.