By Lucille Sodipe, VERA Files CEBU City–Just like any brand of shampoo, diaper, energy drink or deodorant, candidates need to be properly ‘packaged’ to become…
Making life worth living.
ellen tordesillas Posts
With two more weeks to go before Election Day, candidates are moving heaven and earth to get that much coveted post.
Expect more black propaganda, vote buying, junkings and soul-selling. Senatorial candidates would be dealing individually with local politicians. The declaration of Albay Gov. Joey Salceda, head of the Liberal Party in Bicol, that he won’t be voting straight Team PNoy and include two candidates from the United Nationalist Alliance, will be replicated all over the country.
Salceda said that he will include UNA candidates JV Ejercito and Nancy Binay in his senatorial ticket.
Ejercito and Binay are only two of the UNA candidates in the Magic 12 in both Pulse Asia and SWS poll surveys, spoiling the exhortation of President Aquino for a straight Team PNoy victory.
Yesterday, April 28, marked the 6th year that farmer-activist Jonas Burgos disappeared.
The Burgos family observed the day with renewed hope after new information surfaced early this month which strengthen the accusation that the military was behind the abduction of Jonas.
The information, which apparently came from the files of the military, included a picture of Jonas looking dazed with a large bandana around his neck, which was probably used to blindfold him.
President Aquino is discrediting the report of his own government agency- National Statistical Coordination Board which says the much-vaunted impressive economic growth has not trickled down to the teeming poor in the country.
The NSDB official release said: “Poverty incidence among population was estimated at 27.9 percent during the first semester of 2012. Comparing this with the 2006 and 2009 first semester figures estimated at 28.8 percent and 28.6 percent, respectively, poverty remained unchanged as the computed differences are not statistically significant.”
In simpler terms, life for the Filipino poor has not improved in the past six years.
Manila Bulletin’s Deedee Siytangco asked about the senator’s family life- wife Arlene and children, Seth and Thea.
Not many in the audience know that Arlene belonged to the first batch of female graduates of the Philippine Military Academy in 1997. She has resigned from military service and is now teaching at the National University.
Charo Yu, a supporter of Trillanes who helped arrange the senator’s guesting at the weekly media lunch forum, had to retrieve a photo of the senator and his wife from her cellphone to show Bulong regulars. “She’s pretty,” Deedee commented of Arlene.
Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes told reporters last week that he will ask President Aquino to name him ambassador to a country in Eastern Europe once he leaves the election body.
“I will wait to see the President so that I can ask him … My plan was to ask him, ‘Could you give me an ambassadorship instead so that I can rest. It’s so tiring in the Comelec,’” he was quoted by media to have said.
Brillantes named countries that he was eyeing: “Romania, Slovakia, or Hungary … where no Filipinos go.”
Two things are very wrong with what Brillantes wants:
The White Paper titled, “The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces” was released as US State Secretary John Kerry completes his Asia visit (South Korea and Japan) re-affirming the “rebalancing” policy initiated by the Obama administration in its first term.
Under the rebalancing or “pivot” policy, the US shifts its military power and presence from the Middle East war zone to the Asia Pacific region.
Less-moneyed candidates are worried that they would be drowned by those with money to burn. Independent senatorial candidate Teddy Casiño said the SC’s ruling favors wealthy candidates or those backed by the ruling elite.
“Ginawang parang unli text, unli call.The problem is its steep cost,” he said. TV ad rates, depending on the time slot, would not go below P250,000 for a 30 second ad. A candidate would need some P30 million for the remaining four weeks of the campaign.
” It is disgusting that the SC has decided against the Comelec’s effort to rein in expensive campaigns which poor or cash-strapped candidates like me cannot afford,” Casiño lamented.
By Rex Robles,VERA Files
It was 1974 and I was taking up an advanced course in Mechanical Engineering at the US Navy Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. For our final exam in Oceanography, our professor simply called the twelve of us to his office one by one and asked us a few questions. I noticed a certain level of interest in the Philippines that I did not expect.
For instance, he showed me a satellite photograph of Manila Bay and asked me what I thought about a plan to build a highway along the Manila-Cavite coastline. I mumbled some comment on how the ecology in the area would be affected.
Then he showed me photographs of the entire Sulu Sea with what looked like ridgelines in the water running roughly parallel to Palawan. I was intrigued. My professor, who is based in New Zealand, told me they were a dozen or so swells that go northwest at certain times. At other times, they go the opposite way.
Once again, I’ve been given a lesson by the best teacher on earth – experience. And I’m sharing the lesson with others with the hope that you would be wiser and would know what to do in case what happened to me happened to you.
Last week, while checking in at Iloilo airport for the flight back to Manila, the mineral water in my bag spilled.The contents of my handbag all got wet, including my Blackberry phone.
It’s the same phone that I accidentally dropped in Southmall Supermarket December last year and was picked up by an honest janitor who returned it to me.