Who's bastardizing the party list system?

Posted on April 1, 2007 - Filed Under |

FILIPINOS must thank lawyer and Pangalatok Raul Lambino (of Sigaw ng Bayan fame, remember?), now running as a party-list nominee of Banat and incumbent party-list Rep. Loretta Ann Rosales  a.k.a Etta Rosales of Akbayan for their enlightening tit-for tat on the supposed “colors” or “stripes” of the various party-list groups.

Not many Pinoys, for instance, know that the party list, Buhay  (Life) , has for its leader, Rene Velarde, the son of El Shaddai leader Mike V; or that CIBAC (Citizens Battle Against Corruption) is led by  Rep. Joel Villanueva, son of Jesus is Lord Movement evangelist Eddie V. And did anyone of you have an inkling (at least before Raul’s and Etta’s lively exchanges saw print) that a physician is behind an aggrupment of tricycle drivers called Biyaheng Pinoy (Filipino Trip) and that this doctor, hear this, is the elder brother of Comelec Chair Benjamin Abalos, Sr.!

Lambino and Rosales, if you’re not following the issues, are charging each other of bastardizing the party-list system. It’s a situation where probably both are guilty in the sense that one group rabidly opposes Arroyo administration programs while the other fully supports it and both would do everything in their power to multiply themselves.  After all, it’s what democracy is supposed to be all about.

It’s probably all coincidental (at least insofar as their preferences for national programs to support -or attack - is concerned,  but  like it or not, it puts either group right smack into a battle of contrasting advocacies, if not ideologies.

Not that one is wholly wrong and other is fully correct.

In this country after all, it’s open season for everything  and “bastardizing” (ah, such a quaint word to describe destruction) ranges from producing pirated VCDs to smuggling untaxed meat and other products to mispresenting oneself as a newsman (of the blackmailing kind) to, yes, murdering the King’s English in both written and spoken media.        

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