I heard presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo’s defense of President Duterte when the latter kissed a woman on the lips during his trip to Seoul. The woman, Bea Kim, is married to a Korean.
Santa Banana, did Panelo offer some twist to the President’s unbecoming act!
No malice, indeed. When I saw a video of the incident, my impulse was to laugh.
The question is, did the President have to do that, if only to make the audience laugh and cheer?
It may have been the fault of the woman when she puckered her lips to receive the President’s kiss. I think Mr. Duterte should have settle for a peck on the cheeks.
The question is not who is to blame. It is whether the President should have done it at all.
***
Christopher “Bong” Go, the President’s special assistant with a Cabinet rank, is really on the campaign trail, doing this or that for the impoverished poor and giving assistance to disaster victims.
Technically speaking Go cannot be blamed for campaigning prematurely. There is no violation of election law since he has not yet declared that he is running for the Senate, even as Malacañang is acting as though he is already running.
But isn’t the Palace using government resources through Secretary Martin Andanar’s office in making people aware that Go is Senate material?
***
If there is anything that should be looked into by Congress and the Office of the Ombudsman regarding conflict of interest, it should be the Commission on Audit’s findings that some lawyers in the Office of the Solicitor General, including Calida himself, received allowances exceeding 50 percent of their annual salaries. Some lawyers of Government-Owned and -Controlled Corporations also receive such excessive perks.
This is precisely what I wrote earlier. GOCCs enjoy a lot of privileges—travels, allowances, consultants. In contrast, some staff members of the OSG barely make ends meet because they make only P1,000 to P3,000.
State auditors said Calida got a total of P8.37 million in allowances last year. Calida is getting an annual salary of P1.827 million, so his allowances should not exceed P931,950.
His predecessor Florin Hilbay was also flagged for getting P4.66 million.
Talk about a “whiff” of corruption there!
***
At the moment only two figures from the opposition seem to be viable senatorial candidates—Senator Bam Aquino and former Quezon Rep. Erin Tañada.
***
In an effort to answer criticism against the President and the Department of Foreign Affairs not doing enough to counter China’s aggressive moves, Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano came out with the laughable statement that the Philippines has in fact protested 85 times. He said these came in the form of dialogues, conversations and other mens of communications.
The secretary is insulting our intelligence!
Formal protests are allowed by the United Nations. And yet our leaders are giving passive consent to what China is doing, including militarization in the South China Sea.
The bottom line is that the administration has given up our claimed territories.
***
The Philippines ranks third among Southeast Asian countries when it comes to plastic waste. This is not something we can crow about.
Are we a people unmindful of what we are doing?
For us who care about the environment, we can still make the Philippines a better place to live in.