It’s too early in the game but people are talking about possible candidates in the 2019 senatorial race.
Chiz Escudero, Greg Honasan, Loren Legarda, Koko Pimentel and Antonio Trillanes are graduating from the Senate in 2019 and will not be eligible for reelection.
Those who will surely run for reelection are Sonny Angara, Bam Aquino, Nancy Binay, JV Ejercito, Grace Poe and Cynthia Villar. Note that there are three women in this line-up: Binay, Poe and Villar.
At this point there is also talk about other female candidates who will run in 2019. They are former president and now Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Ilocos Norte Gov. Imee Marcos, former Environment Secretary Gina Lopez and Bataan Rep. Geraldine Roman, a transgender.
With all these names, the 2019 polls can rightly be called the “women’s race!”
Among these names, I am confident Arroyo and Marcos will win.
* * *
Going around Makati’s exclusive villages, one would think the affluent have nothing to do but scare people with their Halloween decorations.
Actually it’s a popular day in the US and Canada, when children wear costumes and go trick-or-treating. People carve jack’o lanterns out of pumpkins. Parties for children of the rich feature fortune telling, mock haunted houses and scary stories, and games. People decorate their homes and yards.
Halloween developed from an ancient pagan festival celebrated by the Celtic people over 2,000 years ago. This marked the end of summer and the beginning of winter.
In 700 and 800 AD, the Christian Church established a new holiday, All Saints’ Day.
But those who don costumes should be reminded about a warning by a priest that these practices could lead to possession.
The Catholic priest from San Fernando, Pampanga has warned against diabolical possession since he performed exorcism on two persons. One was wearing a black costume and one was possessed after ghost-hunting with friends in an abandoned hospital.
* * *
The recent appointment of Kabayan Party-list Rep. Harry Roque as presidential spokesperson, with a Cabinet rank, brings to fore the question—why was Ernesto Abella relieved?
Some Palace insiders sat that Abella, being a former pastor, advised President Duterte against uttering curse words. Mr. Duterte supposedly said “This is not a church!”
Roque is a human rights lawyer and constitutionalist. He would have a better understanding of the President’s frequent outbursts. But will he be a better spokesman than Abella?
I doubt that Roque would be able to explain away the extrajudicial killings in the so-called war on drugs. How can he reconcile these events with his human rights advocacy? Now we hear he wants to advise the President. How can he be adviser and spokesman at the same time?
Being spokesman for a president who likes to ramble is perhaps the most difficult job in the Cabinet. Didn’t spokespersons once tell us to use our creative imagination in deciphering the President’s words?
But we in the mainstream media are not out to use our imagination. We report facts, whatever Duterte says, whether he means them or not.
It’s a tough job because one has to lie and defend the indefensible.
* * *
There are ambitious plans to put up alternative international airports by both the private sector and government. We needs alternatives to Naia, indeed. The problem though is when these will come to pass.
San Miguel Corp. headed by Ramon Ang has obtained original proponent status from the government to construct an international airport with four runways covering 2,000 hectares in Bulacan towns near Manila Bay. When he was Philippine Airlines president, he proposed this airport but the government did not seem to care.
The government is still awaiting the proposal of All-Asia Resources and Reclamation Corp.—a consortium led by the retail giant Henry Sy Sr. and the Tieng family—to build a new international airport with the help of Japan International Cooperation Agency to reclaim 2,500 hectares of Sangley Point—this will be completed in 12 months.
These two proposals are both practical and doable. We may finally have that kind of international airports we can be comfortable with. The Department of Transportation seems to be headed in the right direction.