“As we strive to ensure sustainable development, we need to be reminded that not a single country has been lifted out of poverty as a result of development aid alone.”
by Ducky Paredes
Finally, we hear a voice of reason coming from House deputy majority leader and Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara who suggests that the police’s handling of the Failon case makes it apparent that the police “did not know what they were doing from the start.”
Angara, a lawyer, wonders why the police arrested members of Failon’s household help for obstruction of justice a day after it was revealed that they cleaned up the bathroom where Trinidad Arteche-Etong shot herself.
Says Rep. Angara: “They effected the arrest belatedly without any warrant of arrest and this shows that the police really have no idea what they were doing. If [the police] made the arrest shortly after the admission that they (Failon’s maids) sanitized the crime scene, the need for a warrant of arrest would not have been required.
“What’s worse is the behavior of arresting officers when they finally decided to make the arrest. Now they are in trouble for human rights violations.”
Clearly, besides everyone giving his opinion on everything that has happened in the Failon house, the greater concern ought to be how our Philippine National Police (PNP) conducts itself. Certainly, if something of this sort happens in your own household, you would not want the police treating you the way that they treated Ted Failon’s household. The PNP must be retrained from acting like the Kempetai, the Gestapo or the police of Idi Amin.
A retraining program for the PNP is in order. Then, maybe we can minimize the number of innocent bystanders killed by indiscriminate firings of our own policemen who have no inkling about what being a policeman is all about.
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Senate President Pro-tempore Jinggoy Estrada has advised Ethics Committee chairman Sen. Panfilo Lacson to inhibit himself from hearing his own complaint against former Senate President Manuel Villar on the alleged P200 million double insertion in the 2008 C-5 road extension project.
Estrada added that panel members perceived to be biased against the former Senate President should also inhibit. This could mean all of the Ehich Committee members who also have dreams of being elected President in 2010 – Mar Roxas, Loren Legarda and Vice Chairman Dick Gordon.
That makes a lot of sense but, of course, no one is listening to reason, All that these senators want to do is get a piece of Villar who is leading the surveys for awareness and popularity amongst presidentiables. Jinggoy joins Miriam Defensor-Santiago who had earlier advised Lacson to inhibit himself.
Santiago says that should the presidentiable panel members refuse to inhibit “then I shall vote in favor of changing them.”
How does one cure unethical conduct when the Ethics Committee itself
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Speaker Prospero Nograles is definitely innovative; one wonders however whether changes being proposed for the Constitution can be processed as though they were merely ordinary legislation. Is this even allowed?
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile says that the Senate will not have any problems with the Nograles initiative and will discuss whatever the Speaker sends him as proposed legislation that went through the congressional mill.
But, isn’t the whole point that constitutional changes are different from ordinary legislation and, in fact, there are provisions in the constitution itself that tell us how the Constitution may be changed? True, these provisions are impossible to do because this portion of the Constitution was poorly written but, like Supreme Court decisions based on fiction or scientific fallacies, lex duro sed lex. We can’t do anything about them.
Enrile gives s stock answer that actually cannot work: “If they will bring it here, we will take it up here and look at it. If it is a legislation, we are bound to consider it in the Senate… institutionally we are bound to consider measures that are sent to us here by the House.”
What this means is that the Cha-Cha train is not leaving the train station anytime soon.
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The report of the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) that some 150 drug cases have been filed across the country and 78 percent of remain unresolved shows how dismal has been our campaign against illegal drug use,
Of the 48 resolved cases, a total of 15 or 32 percent led to conviction, 14 or 30 percent acquittal, 13 or 27 percent were dismissed and the rest (6) or 11 percent ranked as provisional dismissal.
That is certainly slim pickings for the amount of drug use that is going on openly in a lot of high-end bars and restaurants where the children of the rich and famous congregate and in dingy dens where our poorer folks’ children go for their fixes. There are at least dozens of drug deals going on in any 24-hour period and we come up with a total of only 150 cases processed and only three out of ten successfully.
If we will rid this country of the scourge, we certainly have to do more. I am shocked at the In making the announcement the DDB was launching a three-day seminar in the Visayas on the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 for 150 judges, prosecutors, and law enforcers from the Visayas region.
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Koos Richelle, European Commission director general of the EuropeAid Cooperation Office, says: “Donorland is not Disneyland. Development aid alone can never be enough to change the quality of people’s lives,” even as he told our government that Europe’s aid to developing Asian states will not decline despite the global financial crisis
According to Richelle, sustainable development “has to be led by quality leadership and governance within individual countries.”
But, is anyone listening?
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ralph Recto notes the global economic crisis as a reason for our missing our goals on net employment rate, maternal mortality, and access to reproductive health care. Recto says that to meet the targets, the Philippines needs “increased and sustained” assistance from development partners through an increase in official development assistance (ODA) loans.
Says Richelle: “As we strive to ensure sustainable development, we need to be reminded that not a single country has been lifted out of poverty as a result of development aid alone.”
The key factor, he stressed, “has proved to be the quality of leadership and governance.”
Are Recto and Richelle talking on the same plane?
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hvp 04.22.09)
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