THE surge of Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s poll ratings in almost all surveys, even getting ahead of restwhile frontrunner Mrs. Mary Grace Natividad Poe Llamanzares, comes as a surprise to me.
Despite his vulgarity, profanity and obscenity, people see in Duterte as the candidate who can stop crime and corruption as he did in Davao City.
People see Duterte as the opposite of the Aquino administration’s utter incompetence in dealing with criminality and corruption. They do not anymore care how he would do it. More than that, the survey results also reflect the breakdown of the people’s values and sense of morality.
This is why I feel sad to see where this country is coming to. People cheer Duterte on when he boasts of killing people and burning their bodies, when he says he has many women, and when he said he was sexually molested as a teenager by a Jesuit priest at the Ateneo de Davao.
Senator Koko Pimentel, who proclaimed Duterte as PDP-Laban candidate, and Duterte’s running mate Senator Alan Peter Cayetano, said that people see in Duterte the typical traits of a local politician who is admired and even revered.
Duterte is not somebody we can emulate. He is vulgar, profane and obscene. His methods shatter everything we were taught about family values, decent conduct and law and due process.
Thus, I ask again, where is our country headed when large segments of the population from all socio-economic classes go for Duterte as their knight in shining armor?
This is why I cry for our country.
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President Aquino confessed he is confused about the residency and citizenship issues against Mrs. Mary Grace Natividad Poe Llamanzares. Confused?
How can anybody who understands English and logic be confused? It is clear that Mrs. Llamanzares should be disqualified as a senator and more importantly, as a candidate for President.
The confusion speaks volumes about what kind of president we have.
It is clear that when Mrs. Llamanzares ran for the Senate, she fell short of the residency required of a senatorial candidate. She said under oath that she only had six years and six months residency in the Philippines when she filed her Certificate of Candidacy. She never corrected it. Obviously, at that time, she never though of running for the presidency.
Thus, when a petition was filed at the Comelec Second Division by lawyer Estrella Elemparo that Mrs. Llamanzares was short of the 10-year-residency requirement, the Comelec commissioners said that Mrs. Llamanzares misrepresented herself. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand this, Mr. President. Mrs. Llamanzares lied to the Comelec about her residency status.
As for the citizenship issue of Mrs. Llamanzares, the Comelec commissioners took the argument of three associate justices of the Supreme Court when they said that she was not natural born but a naturalized Filipino.
The three associate justices of the Supreme Court added that even granting that international laws were on the side of Mrs. Llamanzares, international law cannot prevail over the Constitution which states that to be natural born, parents should be Filipinos.
The three associate justices may have lost to the majority. Their dissenting opinions however are precise according to the Constitution. The disqualification case is legal and constitutional in nature. This is why I believe that the Supreme Court will eventually disqualify her.
Get it, Mr. President?
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When the Ombudsman filed charges against former MRT-3 general manager Al Vitangcol III and five others over the anomalous maintenance contract of the MRT system, people believed that the time of reckoning had come.
The surprise came when we learned that Transportation and Communications Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya was not included. It was Abaya who signed the contract. Logic and reason dictate that the person who signed the contract should also be liable.
The Ombudsman, however, said there was no probable cause to charge Abaya. Why? Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales must have been told by the President that Abaya is secretary-general of the Liberal Party and to charge him would endanger the candidacy of Liberal Party candidate Mar Roxas. How else can this be interpreted?
Now, Senator Poe, who is running for the presidency, is asking the same question. Why did not the Ombudsman include Abaya in the list of those charged for the anomalous contract? Is Morales now taking orders from Malacañang? Morales has to answer this question.
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Right after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila a few weeks ago, Malacañang promised to make an accounting of where the P10 billion went for the event.
Until now, there has been no report about any attempt by President Aquino to let the people know how the money was spent. I do not expect any answers soon.
After all, did we ever get to find out how the donations for “Yolanda” victims were spent?
The millions of pesos coursed through Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman have remain untouched in bank accounts. Now there are reports that hundreds of sacks of rotten rice meant for Yolanda survivors have been buried.
This is criminal negligence and Soliman is getting away with it.