When I turned 90 last year, a strange thought came to mind. I thought it might be good to trace my roots to the province of Abra, particularly in Dolores town where I was born.
I asked my daughter to research on what Abra is now. To my dismay, the first thing she looked at were “places of interest.” The Internet’s answer? Zero.
My daughter went on to look for hotels we could stay in. The Internet said the “best three-star hotel” was in Bangued, the provincial capital. But a visitor wrote that the towels stank and the toilets did not flush in that hotel. Oh well.
Places to eat? My daughter only found two fast-food chains, a McDonald’s and a Jollibee.
Finally we decided to ditch the plan to go to Abra. It seems to me that time has forgotten the province, where partisan politics ruled the day and where violence occurred among the ruling families.
**
A friend once asked me if I believed in angels. I said I did. I cited two instances where I believed my guardian angel helped me.
First was when my wife was pregnant with our first child. It was our first Christmas together. I decided to take her to Luneta to see the Christmas lights. From our “accessoria” on California Street in Malate, Manila, we took a jeep to Luneta and walked to an area near the Quirino Grandstand.
Close to midnight, we wanted to go home for noche buena. But when I counted my money in my pocket, I realized we did not have enough. I prayed hard for a way to get home. Vehicles in the area were already leaving one by one.
Then came a middle-aged man who said to me: “I noticed that your wife has been sitting from one car bumper to another. Obviously you have no ride home.”
I told the man I had run out of money for a taxi. He asked where we lived and I told him our address. And then he said, “I have a jeep. I’ll take you home.”
To this day, my wife and I believe the man is an angel. Another instance was when I was living at Ecology Village years ago. I was still driving during those times.
It was my practice to turn around to park at my carport. I needed to enter a small space.
One day as I turned, as I had done numerous times before, I noticed a small bump. When I went to look at the bump, it turned out to be an infant child on a chair in front of my bumper. Then my neighbor’s help shouted that the infant was hit by my car.
Later, she admitted she was at fault for leaving the child at that place.
Had my guardian angel not intervened, I could have killed the child!
**
The Philippine press has often been accused of bias and prejudice in its reportage. President Duterte himself has accused mainstream media of distorting the truth when reporting the news.
The truth of the matter is that mainstream media have evolved in many ways. There is no such thing as objective reporting anymore.
Now, news stories read like opinion articles. Reporting has become so subjective. This is why the media are always accused of bias. Because of this, politicians always want the right to reply when they are reported to be involved in anomalies.
Of course journalists should also report the other side of the story, but the manner of reporting is a judgment call by the newspapers themselves. Otherwise, that would be interfering with freedom of the press.
If you ask me what I think of press freedom in the Duterte administration, I would say it is alive and well.
As a whole the Philippine press is still fair. Even if the headlines are almost always similar, it’s the editorials and the columns that make the press distinct and free.
That’s the reason I believe mainstream media will not die even with the popularity of social media.
However, bloggers are an entirely different thing. They do not have the same responsibility as we do. They have no duty to be fair and balanced. Bloggers cannot also be disciplined when they peddle fake news.
The problem now is that some officials appear to love bloggers just because they are supportive of the administration.
I call this prostitution of the press.
**
I always read letters to the editor. They are worth my while.
Take the case of one letter on the P3.5-billion Dengvaxia deal implemented by the BS Aquino administration close to the 2016 presidential elections.
The writer was Bartolome Fernandez Jr., retired senior commissioner of the Commission on Audit. He said that the purchase of the vaccine was “legally and constitutionally infirm.”
He claimed that the use of savings to fund Dengvaxia as committed by former Budget Secretary Florencio Abad was unauthorized in the General Appropriations Act. He said the law mandates that such savings “shall revert to the unappropriated surplus of the General Fund at the end of the fiscal year and shall thereafter be available for expenditure except by subsequent legislative enactment because of the constitutional injunction that ‘no money shall be paid out of the treasury except in pursuance of an appropriation made by law (Section 29, Article VI, 1987 Constitution).”
Thus, it is clear that Abad’s use of savings without legislative appropriation to purchase the vaccine is illegal.
For this, Abad has to be indicted – along with BS Aquino who negotiated the deal and former Health Secretary Janette Garin who implemented the vaccination program.
It was criminal because the World Health Organization had not yet certified the vaccine as safe. Now the health of 733,000 school children and adults are in danger.
**
Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque claims that the President’s war on drugs is so successful that crime rates nationwide are down.
Does not Roque watch the evening news?
I never thought I would see the day when Roque, a former human rights lawyer, would become a lapdog, a “super tuta” of Malacañang.