Who’s mendicant?

NOV. 4-10, 2010

GOOD WEEK ‘SYANO

It’s Christmastime now. Definitely after the All Souls’ Day we recently have. Pity the IP (indigenous pepol, the lumads) for they will be discriminated again. By December we expect they will come down from the Davao and Comval hills in droves and start passing their hats to beg for early Xmas gifts. Davao City Vice Mayor Digong Duterte has been having a good heart to them Xmas after Xmas- understanding them, providing them free food, medicines, health workers and barangay gyms to sleep but asking them to stay in the city only until Xmas day and go back to the hills before the New Year. They would be ferried by city-owned dump trucks in going back home. VM Digong will bade goodbye to them as the centavos-rich begging IP pepol wave back their hands to VM Digong with tearful eyes. Now it’s Sara’s turn to care the lumads, while VM Digong prepares his city’s no-discrimination code for the IP and Muslim peoples.

Now, are poor, no-money begging IP pepol mendicant? Compare them to the Room 17 Councilors who’re elected, salaried, and who asked/received P10,000-P20,000 in exchange for their votes. – Al Rosero

Filed under: DAVAO DEL NORTE PCL ELECTION, DAVAO LUMADS DURING CHRISTMAS, davao del norte councilors, DAVAO LUMADS DURING CHRISTMAS

The Halloween

Oct 28-nov 3, 2010

GOOD WEEK ‘SYANO

The halloween night is the Oct. 31 night, the eve of the All Saints Day (Nov. 1). It is most festive in the US. But in Mindanao provinces, it is the night of the eve of the All Souls Day (Nov. 2) that is most awaited by those who want to go merry out of the celebration of the day to remember our beloved departed.

The lady, who was duped by Kagawad Justiniano, said that she would be going to the halloween party in the known disco pub in the city. She would be bringing her real Justin Bieber-her new boyfriend who’ll be footing the bills. Because it’s a halloween, they would be simply bringing masks made  of karton, those sold by sari-sari stores fronting school gates. She already bought two masks the other day, but since it’s sembreak she ended up buying from one open tienda fronting the Pilot school, and look what she got?- mask of bampira for her and mask of frankeinsten for her new-found love Goryo, who turns out to be just one of the Room 17 Councilors. It was her BF Goryo who told her that indeed Konsehal Justiniano is a pedophile. – Al Rosero

Filed under: DAVAO DEL NORTE PCL ELECTION, davao del norte councilors

To protect one’s barong

aug 26-sept 1, 2010

EDITORIAL/COMMENTARY

The current controversy over the election of the Philippine Councilors League-Davao del Norte is challenging all the legislative halls in the province since the allegations cover councilors. The allegations on vote buying should be still addressed even if the new PCL president and Boardmember Janrey Gavina had already answered and denied the allegations to be untrue.

On next Monday Boardmember Alan Dujali of Panabo City is expected to tell in the forum of the province’s Sangguniang Panlalawigan about what he knows on the alleged vote-buying stigmatizing the concluded PCL election, We also wait for the ex-PCL president and Kapalong councilor Helario Caminero to shed light on what he knows also about the PCL elections where he lost by a margin of only two votes.

There’s a gravity on the vote-buying allegation than what it seems to give a mirage of being just a simple victory out from the ordinariness of our elections. For one, the integrity of the PCL as a councilors’ organization is under question. And more so, the integrity of councilors and of the councilor’s position is directly under question.

We are expecting there would be silence of the lambs and conspiratorial silence from among those allegedly bought councilors in the current brouhaha, ottherwise we expect those who simply voted out of their free will to stand now to safeguard integrity.

But just as these allegations cropped up and were answered, there would still be need to put these into formal rest by  way of hearings and probe first by an independent committee of the PCL itself, then by the blue ribbon committee of the provincial board if only the PCL as an institution can be protected from being tarnished.

Since the cropping up of the PCL vote-buying issue many have already been clamoring to put it in the blue ribbon commitee given that the issue is within the jurisdiction of the provincial board as the PCL provincial representative is part and parcel of of the provincial board in the first place.

When the issues and allegations are formally addressed, investigated and completely resolved, regardless of results, only then that the PCL members and councilors can rise above and take pride of being legislators and public servants, even while the people who voted them to their exalted positions now can say they really have cared for honesty and good values in government and have protected their barongs from being tarnished.

Those who care for more on their being councilors, we hope, can initiate a formal step to probe the allegations. Otherwise, if there would be none, the PCL and the councilors in the province are ever clouded with a suspicion that somebody among them have received and accepted bribe money which bought their votes.  – Cha Monforte

Filed under: DAVAO DEL NORTE PCL ELECTION, DAVAO DEL NORTE PCL ELECTION