“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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Christmas Cheer

We are a people who never fail to rank high in global studies on the happiness index.

And during Christmas time, we Filipinos, the biggest Catholic population in Asia, are extra cheerful.

Our high tolerance level and penchant for humor even in the grimmest of situations shines through in this season of joy, giving, hope and togetherness.
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Managing a million

A million pesos may sound like loose change in the big political landscape but that is definitely big bucks at the barangay level.

Speaker Jose de Venecia’s one-million endowment to every barangay in his district, which will come from his  Priority Development Assistance Fund — more popularly and fittingly known as pork barrel, reeks of patronage politics but it is there, it has been offered and barangay officials might as well take full advantage of it.
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Being Billionaire

It must be stupefying for the people of Pangasinan, especially the poor, to learn that their province is a “billionaire” interms of its Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA).

And not just a billionaire, mind you, but the top billionaire in the entire country in those terms.

Truth is, it should not be all that surprising.

After all, the IRA, which is the share that local government units get from the national internal revenue tax collection, is largely based on the population level.
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