Category Archive for: komentaryo

komentaryo

PNoy and that legal card

this was published in The Manila Times on October 17 2013. on October 30 2013, PNoy went on live television to defend the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) by saying that it’s all legal. this piece was entitled “Legal.” 

The spin is clear, and for once the PNoy government and its allies are right. All of this is legal.

Right now, as I write this on Tuesday morning, Senator Franklin Drilon is on television. “What crime did we commit?” he asks with regards the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). The inquiry he says should be: “Was it <the fund> used properly?”

The premise of course is the notion that corruption is only about the improper use of public funds. To Drilon, there is nothing wrong or corrupt about the process that the DAP went through, because unlike the pork barrel scam, which involves an entity like a (fake) non-government organization, the fund for DAP went through the correct and legal process. He can account for every single cent, Senator Drilon says. (more…)

komentaryo

people before buildings

In the aftermath of the October 15 earthquake that wreaked over Bohol and Cebu, with many Catholic Churches reduced to rubble, Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal has said that we must find “faith in the midst of ruins.”

I say we take stock.

And we ask questions. Say, why is it that the Catholic Church did not put out money to reinforce its churches? They can’t say there wasn’t / isn’t any money to do it, knowing as we all do that the Pinoy Catholic Church ain’t paying any taxes. What we now know is that our Catholic Church was having masses and religious celebrations in unsafe structures, putting lives of its followers at risk.  (more…)

komentaryo

miracles

I helped out with the August 26 Million People March, with the September 11 EDSA TAYO, with Pork Day the 13th and Rock and Rage Against Pork on September 13. It was all a matter of knowing that extra hands would be useful, and while for the August 26 MPM it was clear that one person who was part of the meetings to organize the event was going on a totally different tangent, the rest of us were united in the call to Scrap ALL Pork. A call that has not changed across the other rallies I’ve helped out in; a call that has been carried by other rallies I wasn’t part of (the September 19 No Remittance Day and the September 21 rally in Luneta) all the way to the October 4 MPM@Ayala. (more…)

komentaryo

freeze

If there’s anything that fascinates about PDAF or pork barrel, and now the Development Acceleration Program (DAP) fund, it’s how much money this country actually has. No, correction: it’s how much money government has.

I’ve said this before, and I say it again: it is fantastic that we are talking about the National Budget, that we are being forced to scrutinize these numbers, that we are looking at the state of nation vis a vis the amount of money that’s unaccounted for by government and our politicians. (more…)

komentaryo

faith

The task, to me at least, seems simple enough. We want to continue the fight against pork barrel. We find it in our hearts to come together, no matter our politics, our religious beliefs, our social class.

The latter of course, as it turns out, is the worst division there is, mostly because it is not something we like—or know— to talk about. Anyone who even had her eyes wide open at the August 26 rally would know that the class distinction of that gathering was about as stark as the white that the middle and upper classes decided to wear. And it was fantastic of course, to see this social class come out of their homes and spend a holiday in a park all the way in Manila with family and friends. (more…)