WRONG WAY TO EPAL —This board member does not run out of gimmicks in his district just to gain mileage.

During the campaign, he placed giant tarpaulins right in the middle of fishponds.

After the campaign, he again posted his life-size tarpaulins enough to cover a business establishment, thanking the people for re-electing him. Well, that’s fine, every winner does it anyway, with outright disregard of the ban on streamers announcing politicians’ names in ongoing constructions/ projects.

Then, last week, I saw his tarpaulins again, about five meters long, hung in an ongoing construction site near a Catholic church in his district with marking “Oplan Balik Eskwela 2016” and below is his name in blazing red color.

What a way to welcome students back to school! Wow! Of course, that could give the impression as the brains behind the Balik Eskwela program. Har har har! Not very, very funny!

Instead of resorting to such tricks, you can do humanity a big favor if you instead use your money to buy school supplies for poor kids.

Or, if you prefer to be the talk of your district, show your worth as legislator by engaging in intelligent deliberations in the provincial board where you ought to work.— Tita Roces

 

EMBARRASSING CLAIM –Outgoing Gov. Amado Espino Jr. pooh-poohed the boast of a ranking Department of Agriculture official who claimed that under this administration the long queues for cheaper rice disappeared from 2010 to 2016 unlike in the past.

The governor, who is a farmer himself having model farms in his native Bautista town and in Bugallon, had a quick retort. What stopped the “pilas” from forming during the last six years was the abundance of imported rice from Vietnam, Thailand and China.

There were even shiploads of rice being smuggled into the country by people or groups that used import permits granted to non-existent farmer cooperatives or cooperatives that had no financial capability to import.

This is the problem with the DA of the outgoing administration. They relied heavily on imported rice to feed our population forgetting that what matters more is for local farmers to produce more so that the country can at least reduce rice importation to the barest minimum.

No wonder, the Philippines became the number one rice importing country over the last three years, based on the report of this same official which is regrettable.

The DA under Secretary Proceso Alcala targeted rice sufficiency but obviously this was not realized.

We are hoping that under the leadership of our very good friend Manny Piñol, DA will be in better hands than under Alcala and will spur more agricultural production instead of relying heavily on imported products.

Manny, a former three-term governor and a journalist who used to work on a graveyard shift in our batch, is a farmer who knows farming from A to Z. If the farmers need help it must come from someone who belongs to them, who tilled the soil, planted crops in his farm using organic fertilizer. – Leonardo Micua

(For your comments and reactions, please email to: punch.sunday@gmail.com)

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