Santa Banana, as if the implementing rules and regulations of the Anti-Distracted Driving Law were not enough, now authorities also want to ban religious objects on dashboards! This includes rosaries dangling from the rear-view mirror.
I can understand the need to regulate the use of cell phones while driving. Calling and texting may really distract drivers. But it is difficult to understand why the use of navigational applications like Waze is also banned!
Still, the prohibition on religious items takes the cake. The country is at least 80 percent Catholic.
If you take a bus or jeepney, inevitably you see the driver touching the rosary and you then know he puts his driving in the hands of God. This is comforting to passengers.
I think the law must be suspended until rules and regulations are clarified or made sensible.
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Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Ma. Sison admitted that the negotiators based in Utrecht in The Netherlands do not have control over the movements of he New People’s Army in the Philippines.
If this is so, why is the Philippine government even talking to these negotiators?
Sison said that the leaders of the communist movement in the Philippines were the ones giving orders to the NDF negotiating panel and their armed wing, the NPA, since the latter are principals of the NDF negotiating panel.
He added that should forces in the Philippines decide to disengage from the peace negotiations, there is nothing that the NDF negotiating panel can do.
A younger generation of cadres recently took over the CPP’s central committee when it disclosed that it held its second party congress last October, more than 48 hours after the rebel group’s founding.
That could explain why despite the peace talks, the NPA continues its atrocities in the countryside.
If all these are happening, what use are the peace talks, my gulay?
This is why I believe that talking peace with the communists is an exercise in futility.
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There have been many reactions to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s supposed threat to go to war with the Philippines over oil drilling in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.
There are those who say that the Philippines must file a protest before the United Nations because of the threat of war. There are those who do not agree.
I believe we should just let things be. China’s threat was just a reaction to President Duterte’s comment in the wake of domestic criticism that the President seems weak and too friendly to China.
We can’t afford to go to war with China. We cannot expect the United States to help us despite an existing mutual defense treaty.
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There is one innocuous agency whose function must be explained. This is the Climate Change Commission whose commissioners enjoy the rank of undersecretary.
Aside from attending international climate change conventions abroad and getting paid for it, what else can the commission do to make climate change bearable in the Philippines.
Yes, we need to be informed about climate change. But what else does the CCC do?
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Malacañang should consider separating the environment functions of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources from its other role of protecting and overseeing the country’s natural resources.
I have always considered these two contradictory.
This was brought to fore when Regina Lopez headed the agency. She was passionate and zealous about protecting the environment, and she did it at the expense of the extractive industry of mining.