Rallying for good

Just as we are preparing to get this week’s print edition off the press, an extensive multi-sectoral rally is being prepared in Makati, thecentral business district in the capital. A parallel rally is underway here in Dagupan, the business center of the province, whose local government officials showed loyal support to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the previous week when she came for a visit.
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Truth be told

While  initiatives and actions - ranging from simple calls to prayer rallies to heated street  cries coming  from practically all sectors in society including from the ranks of the government û brewed in the capital last week in protest against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo over the now  extremely convoluted ZTE broadband deal, Pangasinan  welcomed  the country’s embattled  leader warmly.
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The local scene

While trouble brewed in the capital Metro Manila last week, all seemed pretty well around these parts.

The halls of the Senate echoed with questions and answers in a probe for such an elusive but obvious truth of how deep and brazen corruption is in government.  The corridors of the House of Representatives also buzzed with the bitter aftermath of the ouster of Rep. Jose de Venecia Jr. as Speaker and its repercussions to the political dynamics in the lower house. Meanwhile, festive and romantic music filled the Pangasinan air.

While an outcry for moral ascendancy plagued top and senior officials in national government, there was much to commend about our local officials hereabout.
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“Why only now?”

MondaY evening proved to be yet another dark, dark day in Philippine history.

Right at the House of Representatives, supposedly one the most important and honorable institutions in the country, the nation saw the face of Philippine politics at its ugliest.

Beyond the issue of whether or not our very own Rep. Jose de Venecia Jr., who has held the post as House Speaker the longest in history at five consecutive three-year terms, deserves to have finished his remaining two years in that office if only for the sake of seeming national stability, is the matter of how events led up to that day and how the proceedings went about.
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Alarming, indeed, but not surprising.

That the number of enrollees for fishery- and agriculture-related courses in universities, particularly state-owned academic institutions, has been on a steady downtrend should not come as a shock in view of the mounting uptrend in Filipinos wanting to find work overseas.

Human resources have become our nation’s biggest exports and they do bid well for keeping our economy afloat, what with their foreign currency remittances contribution almost 10% to the total gross national product, according to data from the Department of Labor and Employment.
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Under the gun

Has Pangasinan become a province under the gun?

Governor Amado Espino Jr. apparently thinks so, which is why he has imposed a ban across the province and ordered the police to make sure that his directive is implemented.

To demonstrate how serious he is about this matter, the governor, himself a former police officer who at one time served as chief of the Pangasinan force, has daringly pronounced that he will go as far as the frontlines to personally undertake inspections and carry out arrests if need be.
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Flights of fancy

Just as our local officials are scrambling for an international airport in the province, there came a hard slap on the country’s civil aviation industry, hitting both the national governing agency and the private sector.

The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has downgraded the Philippine’s aviation safety oversight rating to Category 2 from the previous and long-standing Category 1 status.
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Taxing the text

The estimate is about P42.2 billion every year.

That is what the national govern ment, based on calculations by the National Tax Research Center, projects to generate if every text message sent were taxed 50 centavos.

The substantial amount is not surprising. The Philippines, after all, has been tagged as the SMS (short  messaging system) capital of the world for being the country whose people send the most number of text messages everyday.
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A new synergy for our children’s future

The best news that the country received with guarded optimism for 2008 so far was the decision of President Gloria Arroyo to create the Presidential Task Force on Education (PTFE), specifically to draw up a “coherent master plan” for the improvement of education in the country.

For too long, public education sector on one hand, has been known for nothing more than the source of unabated corruption among its top officials and unmitigated exploitation of lowly-paid teachers, while the private sector, on the other hand, has been tagged as nothing but unscrupulous profiteering business establishments whose primary goal is to maximize its profits.
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Year of promises, promising year

Once again we say goodbye to another year.

It was not the best of years for the country nor the province in terms of leaps in economic development at the ground level despite the national government’s repeated boasting of stable and improving   indicators.

In fact, 2007, was one marred by political instability and fears over drastic admi-nistrative policies at the national level.
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