The seeds of good are growing

Posted on June 8, 2007 - Filed Under General, Ed Panlilio, Election, poll fraud | Leave a Comment

PAMPANGA. Isabela. General Santos. Taysan town in Batangas. 

Remember these places because they are where the seeds of freshly found sanity have been planted in the last election. In these places, geographically set apart from each other, people still have their hearts and minds in the right place –i.e, in the good and the noble and the true. They were neither lured by gold, seduced neither by glitter (of celebrity status) nor intimidated by goons. 

In a landscape now reeking with deceit, greed and lies, it is always good to hear of people going for symbols of old-fashioned honesty and sincerity, bucking the odds and winning as in the election victories of Read more

Parents as schools' milking cows

Posted on June 4, 2007 - Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

CHUMI, my first apo, is entering kinder school this June. Her mama was telling me she’d been talking to her husband, Gilbert, who’s abroad in Florida and Gilbert had told her to just pay their little girl’s tuition fee at a local kinder school in cash.

“Wait till he hears it’s gonna cost P26,000 for a schoolyear,” my daughter said when she came home from the school where she inquired about the tuition and miscellaneous fee for Chumi’s schooling.

I was myself floored. Read more

Feeding on PNP silence

Posted on May 25, 2007 - Filed Under Review | Leave a Comment

UNTIL and unless the Philippine National Police is able to summon the resolve to put a period, not a coma,  on the celebrated murder of San Carlos City Mayor Julian Resuello, expect more of the conspiracy theories, however, ludicrous and unsubstantiated, to fill the air and exacerbate the tension in that central Pangasinan city.

Last week’s publication by a scandal sheet of the alleged involvement of ranking political clans to the mayor’s killing, notable only in its yawning absence of corroborative evidence but freely dripping with pure malice, should awaken the PNP leadership especially Police Regional Director Leopoldo Bataoil and provincial Director Isagani Nerez to the urgency of already “declassifying” whatever hard information they have and let the chips fall where these may. Name names and drop names, like now. Read more

Comelec chair's chutzpah

Posted on May 22, 2007 - Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

I HAVE voted. Saw some of my favorite candidates win and some of them lose. It would have been convenient to merely sit on  my easy chair and let all the intrigues, recriminations and doubts of the election season pass like so much temporary aberrations — but my gut tells me something’s very wrong.  And it’s got something, nay, everything to do with this man Benjamin Abalos, the guy who has a knack for keeping a straight face and wearing this little, fleeting smile while spewing out terminological inexactitudes to answer just about any criticism coming his Commission’s way.

If he doesn’t know it yet, Abalos is skating on thin, very thin, ice now. Read more

Back to chaos for Dagupan City?

Posted on May 18, 2007 - Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

DAGUPENOS woke up morning after the elections to realize the bizarre and stunningly immediate implication to general order and cleanliness in the city of the election loss of City Mayor Benjamin S. Lim to Speaker Jose C. de Venecia in their gigantic, take-no-prisoners battle for the fourth district congressional seat. 

Many city residents quickly observed chaotic traffic in the main thoroughfares as early as Tuesday afternoon, day after the May 14 polls, as public utility drivers merrily began ignoring traffic rules, especially on loading and non-loading areas, ignoring the few traffic enforcers of the Public Order and Safety Office (POSO) on the road. Some drivers were shouting insults at POSO men saying their boss (Lim) is no more and that they were again claiming supremacy over city roads. Read more

The pawprints are not of teachers; they're Comelec fieldmen's

Posted on May 16, 2007 - Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

I  HAVE always believed that all these election cheating particularly “dagdag-bawas’ or vote-shaving and switching of election results cannot be blamed on teachers, they who sacrifice a lot to keep the home fires of democracy burning in the countryside.

As the just-concluded elections last Monday showed, teachers are generally faithful to their sworn poll duties and responsibilities – as best exemplified by that lady schoolteacher in Batangas who was apparently burned to death, along with the schoolbuilding where the canvassing was going on, when she refused to be intimidated by some powerful candidates into doing their wishes.  Read more

PPRCV releases partial results in city races

Posted on May 15, 2007 - Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

THE Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) has released, as of 7 a.m. today, the first tabulations for the Dagupan City local election.

House Speaker Jose C. de Venecia is leading rival Mayor Benjamin S. Lim, 16,077-9,077 and is apparently leading his city ticket of former Immigration Commissioner Alipio Fernandez, Jr and mall magnate Belen Fernandez to victory. Read more

JdV winning in Pangasinan's 4th district

Posted on May 14, 2007 - Filed Under General, Review | Leave a Comment

EARLY returns at around 7 p.m. tonight shows House Speaker Jose C. de Venecia on the way to winning his last term as congressman of Pangasinan's fourth district over the ne'er- say-die Dagupan Mayor Benjamin S. Lim.  

Lim’s spirited and apparently well-marketed fight against the veteran legislator has caught the attention of many political dopesters both in the local and national scene. Not a few columnists in national newspapers and magazines have given him great odds to beat JdV and score an upset win.But this is not to be, from many indications. Read more

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