Bong Go, the faithful special assistant to the President, is right: Why should we commemorate the siege of Marawi? It is a day of infamy which has caused so much trouble for the country. Lives were wasted, property destroyed, families displaced and their lives disrupted, the country’s image before the international community tarred. Recovery and rehabilitation has been expensive.
But the State must never relent in its fight against terrorism and all its manifestations in our body politic. This scourge upon civilization is something that must be dealt with, and severely.
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The fallen Cesar Montano may have been acting in good faith when he signed the contract awarding a “Buhay Carinderia” project to a certain Mary Lindbert International. Good faith which he apparently defines as acting upon the orders of “my boss,” then CEO of the Tourism Promotions Bureau Secretary Wanda Teo.
But surely good faith cannot be invoked when payments were made without any accomplishment on a project that has yet to take off. One cannot invoke “ignorance” of the law and administrative processes in the name of misplaced “good faith.”
I would grant that Montano pocketed nothing from the now-rightly trashed carinderia project, but that does not excuse him now from culpability.
Montano need not be told, a year and so many months after he was appointed to his public position, that “the boss” is defined as the Filipino people, not a particular official no matter how lofty the position may be.
Bad judgment cannot be considered good faith.
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Upon the other hand, good faith may neither be attributed to dismissed DoTr assistant secretary Mark Tolentino, who went on national television with cocky air invoking the “support” for him by presidential “relatives” in his self-defined role as the official-in-charge of the Mindanao railway project.
Already warned not to speak for the department by superior officers, he flaunted closeness to Davao personalities to defy his superiors in the department.
Such effrontery displayed on national television at that by someone so young and so ignorant despite being a lawyer deserved a quick come-uppance. He was thus dismissed outright, and not given the option of resignation.
Tolentino ran for mayor of Cabadbaran, the hometown of the President’s mother, in the 2016 elections. He lost even if he ran under then candidate Duterte’s flag. But the President’s smashing victory in Cabadbaran and all of Agusan del Norte cannot be attributed to anyone but the president himself, and the fact that Mindanao has long craved a national leader of its own.
Given that there is a constitutional ban against election losers from being appointed to government, he cooled his heels working in fellow Agusanon Ching Plaza’s transition team when she took over the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) from the eminently remembered Magsaysay Awardee Lilia de Lima.
There is a lesson the young Tolentino must learn as he licks his wounded ego: kayabangan never pays.
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Sister Patricia Fox is clearly using her deportation issue for political ends now. We felt sympathy for her when she was first leveled a deportation order by the BID, as she explained that she was just fulfilling her missionary duties in ministering to the poor and dispossessed and not engaging in political propaganda.
But she allowed herself to be used by the opposition, Left, Yellow, whatever else. She allowed herself to become their “poster lady” in their political machinations.
She should be reminded by her superiors in her religious order of her “vow of obedience,” even if it refers to secular authority. Stop playing upon the ordinary Filipino’s predilection to “awa,” Sister Patricia. Retire in your native Australia, or if you must, minister to the aborigines there who likewise deserve your ministrations.
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I write this column from Kota Kinabalu where I am in the company of fellow diplomats invited for a weekend “holiday” by Malaysia’s Taiwan resident representative, the elegant busy-body Adeline Leong and her husband Casey.
So near to us, and yet so far as well, Sabah is beautiful. I could only wax nostalgic that our southernmost islands, Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi should be getting as many tourists as this northern Borneo territory.
Sabah gets 3.5-million tourists from all over the world, while hardly any go to our southernmost islands due to the peace and order situation. And yet the attractions are about the same—clean waters, plenty of sun and sand, and of course, Mt. Kinabalu, one of Asia’s highest peaks.
Even peaceful Tawi-Tawi with its pristine waters and friendly people hardly gets any tourist, foreign or domestic, because of negative security perceptions.
Here in Kota Kinabalu, they have Shangri-la, Hyatt, Le Meridien, Marriott, Mercure, and soon Ascott, Crowne Plaza, and other international hotel brands.
Nakakapanghinayang.
And to think that this was once territory of the Sultanate of Sulu.