Each candidate for president is talking about development and change. From those big concepts, they will reveal that what they mean by development is infrastructure and investments, towards job creation and poverty alleviation.
None of them though are talking about the construction of roads and better public transport as connected to air pollution. None of them are talking about urban development as interwoven with reducing our carbon footprint.
I’m pretty sure Malacañang knows it, we all know it, and even the voting masses can see through it: that when the Palace uses public money to talk dirty about Mar Roxas’s political rivals, that in fact, it is doing the classic foot-in-mouth.
So when it says the next President must “lead by example,” one cannot help but ask: so what kind of example has this current administration been for all of us the past six years?
If they’ve been leading by example, what is it that we must emulate from them, and what kind of leadership is Roxas inheriting exactly when he says he’s continuing Matuwid Na Daan?
On November 18, Malacañang issued a non-apology to the public who had been inconvenienced during APEC 2015.
A non-apology worded as a thank you “for your patience and understanding over the inconvenience brought about by our enhanced security measures.” And then it spun the difficulty of the commute to work, the fact of absences and tardiness that will mean less wages, and said: “You have shown to the 10,000 delegates what Filipino hospitality means.”
If it’s to sacrifice our time, energy, earnings the past week – well, we were forced into that kind of hospitality. If it’s Manila streets emptied of people and vehicles, shops closed, turned into ghost towns – that does not speak of the Manila we know at all.
If it’s the display of culture as revealed by the final APEC Dinner Performance for Leaders – then please lang. Not in our name.
Because that was a monstrous failure, an ill-conceptualized variety show, that was far from displaying “the best” of Philippine culture. (more…)
Because for whatever reason the President and the Liberal Party have no shame in telling us all that they are trying very very hard to get Mar Roxas and Grace Poe to come together as one team for the 2016 Elections, it also seems imperative that we point out who’s the biggest free rider of all: Senator Chiz Escudero. (more…)
This is in response to Mr. Harvey Keh, who asked “Why blame President Noynoy Aquino?” An essay which begins by praising the Million People March of August 26 for having “a good turnout” and disses “several groups that are planning to hold another protest rally this coming September 11.”
Mr. Keh says he received “some messages” about this rally, which he is obviously critical of, especially since according to him “many of those who went to Luneta now have second thoughts of going since there are now rumors circulating that the planned rally in EDSA may suddenly be turned into an Anti-President Noynoy Aquino rally.”
Were Mr. Keh at the EDSA Tayo Facebook pages, he would find that there are about five individuals who are organizers of the event instead of “several groups,” just as there is no plan to “form a human chain.” He would also find that it has since revised its call (from protesting the rampant graft and corruption in the use of the pork barrel) to the abolition of all pork barrel, including PNoy’s, which is not unlike the call of the August 26 Million People March. (more…)