I MUST confess that my wife and I did not visit our dead at Loyola Memorial Park in Marikina. Doing so on All Saints’ Day is not only an impossible task with traffic rerouting and gridlock leading to all cemeteries.
In fact, we have stopped observing All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day altogether. We visit our beloved dead one or two weeks after. After all, it’s not the date that matters. We pay our respects to our dead whenever we can. We always include them in our prayers.
All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day have become a farce. People just keep up with tradition to bond with friends and relatives. “Undas” has become irrelevant.
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The camp of Liberal Party/ administration candidate Mar Roxas describes the political resume of Senator Grace Poe as the leanest among the resume of all presidential candidates. I agree.
She brings nothing except the belief that she’s popular enough to be elected President. This only shows how misguided she is. Mere popularity is not a ticket to the presidency. One must have a well-funded grassroots machinery.
Poe, for her part, says that while she may have the least experience in public service among her competitors, she does not have excess baggage, either. She means that she does not have other problems to contend with.
She must believe that the disqualification cases she is facing and questions about her residency and citizenship are just a joke.
Think again, Grace. You have been caught lying about many things.
In fact, I would even say that she has the heaviest baggage among her competitors.
I cannot understand why Mrs. Mary Grace Poe Llamanzares is such in a hurry to be President. Deep in her hearts she should know she has many years to ripen as a politician.
She has had a brief stint as a movie censor, and as a senator. These are not enough.
I am told that it must have been my friend, glib-talking Senator Chiz Escudero, who convinced Mrs. Mary Grace Poe Llamanzares to run for President since he’d always be there as Vice President to guide her ways of governance. In other words, the neophyte would just be dependent on Chiz and her political adviser.
“Malaking disgracia,” if she gets disqualified from the race.
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I had thought that Mar Roxas, being an investment banker and part of the economic team of a two administrations, would be the top choice of businessmen.
Instead, Roxas now tells businessmen to continue with the Daang Matuwid. But what path is this?
The straight-path mantra has been exposed to be hypocritical, inept and insensitive.
I had thought that Mar would have learned his lesson by now. He not only showed his true character as a politician when at the height of the Typhoon Yolanda disaster, he wanted to take over Tacloban City and told Mayor Alfred Romualdez: “Remember you are a Romualdez and the President is an Aquino.”
Roxas also allowed himself to be treated like a doormat by the President during Oplan Exodus that led to the deaths of the 44 Special Action Force commandos. As the head of the Department of the Interior and Local Government at that time, Roxas was supposed to be in the loop. But he was kept out of it because Mr. Aquino made his BFF, then-suspended PNP Chief Alan Purisima, to call the shots.
Anybody with self-respect would have resigned. Roxas did not.
The people by now know what kind of person Mar is. He is perceived by many as elitist, unapproachable and a fake. Now, it’s much worse. He wants to follow like a robot the dictates of President Aquino.
But the straight path is actually the road to perdition.
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This is not a campaign pitch for Vice President Jejomar Binay. Still, I believe that his statement during a presidential candidates’ forum that the Aquino administration has effectively prevented the entry of foreign investments hit the spot.
Binay pointed out that this has been the cause of the failure to attain inclusive growth. We have not been able to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
Just look at Vietnam. It was devastated by war decades ago. But now it has opened its doors to foreign investments, and has in fact surpassed us. Even Myanmar is also competing with the Philippines since it opened its doors to foreign investments.
If you wonder why President Aquino and now his anointed Mar Roxas do not want to have the restrictive provisions of the 1987 Constitution amended, it’s because they want to protect the many conglomerates from competition from foreign investors. These conglomerates supported him during his campaign.
Binay, on the other hand, promises to put an end to all this vindictiveness.
This is what this country needs badly—healing of old political wounds.
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Senator Miriam Santiago, on the other hand, wants to pour money into infrastructure. Better said than done. Where will she get all the money to do it? If there is no inclusive economic growth, poverty will continue to exist.
In the meantime, I still would like to see the mental and health records of Miriam. As a Filipino, I would like to have a strong and healthy President to confront all our problems as a nation for the next six years.