“There ought to be a law that prohibits anyone from claiming credit for projects funded by public money!”
by Ducky Paredes
Rachel, age 21, wonders why all the lampposts in Parañaque have “JB” initials. She asks, “Are these owned by Mayor Jun Bernabe? Also, why are there a lot of pictures of Mayor Bernabe on all public billboards and notices?”
As far as Mayor Bernabe is concerned, Rachel and the other residents of Parañaque will have more things to watch out for. It seems their mayor has tapped the Metro Manila Development Authority for the job of cleaning up, dredging and rehabilitating the city’s river. I’m sure that the mayor will have the 11-kilometer river lined up with billboards bearing his picture and name, just so the residents will remember, come election day next year, who to thank for in relation to this project.
Actually, plastering their names and faces all over the place has been a normal practice among Filipino politicians. Makati Mayor Jojo Binay has his own stylized “JB” painted all over the city, on traffic island fences and on practically all properties of the city government. Quezon City has its own “SB” version, courtesy of Mayor Sonny Belmonte. Mayors Pewee Trinidad of Pasay City, Bobby Eusebio of Pasig, and Enrico Echeverri of Caloocan are not far behind.
The calendar provides politicians with so many excuses for their hateful habit of broadcasting their greetings, via tarpaulin posters or cloth streamers. In many instances, the expense is repetitive depending on the occasion and the time of the year. There’s Christmas season, Valentine’s Day, Graduation Day, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, All Saints’ Day, Thanksgiving Day and the numerous fiestas. There are also congratulatory messages for those who pass the bar and the board exams for accountants, nurses and engineers.
You’ll find these messages everywhere – even in cemeteries!
If there’s one politician who never resorrtedto such gimmicks, it is former Senator and former three-term Makati Congressman Agapito “Butz” Aquino, who was my high school classmate and whose political career I have followed closely.
From what law do local politicians derive this practice of acting as if government property was their own to bestow on the people? There ought to be a law that prohibits anyone from claiming credit for projects funded by public money!
On Butz Aquino, he is among those being considered by former President Estrada for inclusion in Erap’s senatorial ticket in next year’s elections. Based on his record, both as member of both the Senate and House of Representatives, Butz is one guy who should be returned to public office.
Butz has been away from the public limelight for some time now, preferring to attend to his personal and lifetime advocacy — cooperativism. He was chosen recently as chairman emeritus of the National Cooperative Movement and is concurrently the chairman of the Philippine Cooperative Center.
Butz Aquino is a doer, who also dreams big. He believes, for instance, that the country’s electric cooperatives could someday buy into Meralco. And that in the future, a banking cooperative could become the owners of the Land Bank of the Philippines.
Says Butz: “If the country’s electric cooperatives under the Cooperative Development Authority can start buying their own electric companies, well, one of these days, why don’t we try to buy the Manila Electric Company? It’s the same process. We can also put our resources together in a cooperative bank that can work with the Land Bank of the Philippines so that we can influence it to go into retail banking services using the cooperative banks. We can go into partnership with Land Bank, and if one of these days we are in a position to acquire it, why not? There is always that possibility.”
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We have some letters: “ If ever we amend the Constitution, this should not be done by the current congress, no way! We must be given the chance to elect our representative for that charter change.
“My Proposed Amendments 1. Abolish congress and the senate, instead a representative from each province will comprise our legislature. This way the government can save on pork barrel and their salaries. Channel the savings to education, infrastructure and health. 2. Elected officials, after finishing their 3rd term, must be disallowed from having their wife, children and relatives up to 3rd degree of consanguinity run for the same position which they will vacate. They will only be allowed to run after a term has been served by the elected official who is not related. This way corruption may be lessened, since the incumbent official will have not much motivation to steal money for the coming election to support a relative. — Fabian M. Java
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“Thanks a lot for your article on the terrible annotating of boxing events in the Philippines. My irritation with the annotation by media dilettantes, (i.e., most of these individuals are basketball sportscasters, not professional boxing annotators) began with the coverage of the first Pacquiao-Barrera fight and continues to this day.
“For most part, their annotation has not been about the fight itself but about gossip and trivia about the fighters. This very distracting and frustrating, especially when one has to fork out hard earned money to watch the boxing event in the privacy of one’s home. At one point during the last de la Hoya-Pacquiao fight, I left the living room and watched the internet streaming video which provided professional annotation by boxing sports professional media.
“We are a nation of dabblers. We confuse celebrity with expertise and by force of habit, if not out of sheer indolence, we go back to the same boring and incompetent people time and time again.
“The ideal annotation for a sporting event is like listening to a baseball game or a basketball game on radio, and there are still a lot of podcasts out there of recordings of sports events by the great radio sports annotators. A week ago, I listened to the radio annotation of Lou Gherig’s last game at the Yankee Stadium in those days when TV was in infancy and sports commentary was through print and radio. Classic. Eloquent. You close your eyes and you could see Gherig staring down the pitcher as he takes the mound to hit a home run.
“The ideal annotation of sports events should be like that. You close your eyes listening to the television and you can actually envision the sweat gushing out of the the boxer’s face as a left hook lands his chin. You hear the intensity of the crowd in the boxing arena, the clang of the bell. When the annotation is first rate, sometimes the television image becomes superfluous.
“Solar and the TV networks should give pay per view customers the option of choosing between the gibberish that parades as professional sports annotation and the professional boxing annotation by sports media men who eat and live boxing.” — Sonny Avila
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Locally, the Wille Hernandez radio annotations were classics, too.
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“I concur with your observation about the two Filipino commentators manner of annotating the Villoria-Solis match last Sunday. It was really pathetic. But, what irked me most was the way the singer sang the Lupang Hinirang at the start of the Donaire-Martinez fight. The singer must be charged in court for desecrating the national anthem.” — Manny Cruz
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Sorry. I never saw the national anthem part and thus can’t comment on that.
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hvp 04.23.09)
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