“Perhaps, the better way would be to simply look at our national budget, set aside a sum for presidential trips – domestic and foreign – and have the President live within that budget.”
by Ducky Paredes
It may be taking the wrong tack (as the Senate seems poised to do) to look into whether the trips undertaken by the President are justified in terms of benefits for the country. This means that they will match her expense for the trip to the amount of investments or borrowings that her trip produced.
Is that what a presidential visit is all about – the money?
Apparently, this is also the way that Malacanang has looked at presidential excursions ever since. Every time that the President goes off on a trip, Malacanang pulls out everything it can find on the country to be visited and what agreements we have had with them. Then, even when these are already in effect, a ceremonial signing is scheduled when the President arrives in that country. I have always seen this as something that reduces our relations with other countries as purely mercenary.
This reminds me of our poor relations who would visit with my grandmother who judged the success of their visit with what and how much they would take home with them.
While this may be par for a fiscal-deficient nation, I cannot imagine that the President of the United States or the leaders of other independent nations being so obsessed with what they can bring home from having visited an ally.
Perhaps, the better way would be to simply look at our national budget, set aside a sum for presidential trips – domestic and foreign – and have the President live within that budget. To have her decide where she wants to go, how often and how much to spend on each excursion can only result in our having a “mahal na Pangulo” a very expensive President. How many times has she gone off to somewhere and the meeting having been pointless, she then goes off somewhere else just to show us back home that her trip was, after all, productive?
Clearly, most presidential sorties can be foregone with no deleterious effects on public service. In fact, I would prefer a President who prefers attending to the work in his office to gallivanting about the countryside to be the first one to use a new road, elevated u-turn or pedestrian walkway.
Why is that – being the first to use the road even important? It really makes more sense to use the road on day one rather than waiting for 30 days for when she has the time to be the first to use the new road, which could turn out to be day 30 or more.
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The Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) is being very unreasonable when it says that school officials should not suspend classes for their entire school in cases where the school has a confirmed Influenza A(H1N1) case.
“We shouldn’t panic. If we panic, then everyone else will panic,” said CHeD Chair Emmanuel Angeles.
As a parent, whose children are now all done with their schooling, I would have pulled them out at the first sign that a student had come down with a disease for which there is still apparently no known preventive vaccine and which could kill them.
It is only right for schools to take the extreme measure of closing itself down in order to prevent their students from getting hit by the pandemic. Apparently, we don’t even know how or where her virus infected the first fatality in Asia – a Filipina who works in the Philippine Congress.
(Is this a sign from above for the congressmen to go home and stop trying to put together a Con-Ass?)
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Julius Fortuna, former student leader, one-time communist cadre and rebel leader, fellow journalist and a dear friend passed away yesterday. According to his son who answered his cell phone, Julius had developed flu-like symptoms and had difficulty breathing. Taken to the hospital, he suffered a stroke.
Here is how Julius described himself on the Internet: ”I write a regular column in the Manila Times every Tuesday, focusing on politics and foreign affairs. Before this, covered the foreign affairs beat under the Globe and was associate editor of the Manila Chronicle. I host the media forum Kapihan sa Sulo hotel every Saturday.”
He was also among the officers of Plaridel, an organization of senior journalists and was on radio, part of a panel that included a senator and a congressman and several media personalities in “Karambola” over DWIZ.
Julius was a driven man; he cared about a lot of things and was passionate about the Philippines, concerned (like a lot of us) over where we are headed. Despite having made his mark as a journalist in Metro Manila. Julius remained a small-town boy. His heart was permanently in Romblon, which he would visit regularly and where he was, as the Alumni President, in the Board of Trustees of Romblon State College.
We always had a good exchange when we would meet. We had common friends and liked the same kind of people and even the same politicians. Of course, when he disagreed with anything, you would hear a brutally honest opinion which (as far as he was concerned) you could take or leave. What was important was that he had expressed his view with honesty.
I will miss Julius Fortuna. We had plans – about looking up old friends when we had the time and so on. What I learned from Julius was the importance of not letting go of old friends and acquaintances. Julius cared about just anyone that he met in this life.
Now that he is gone, I can only add: Thank you, Julius Fortuna, for having been a friend.
* * *
Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow.
Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.
~ Albert Camus
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hvp 06.23.09)
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