The new game in town

By Ermin Garcia Jr.

People have already grown tired and weary of the game “I have two disks” invented by Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye, and made popular by ex-Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano. There’s a new game in town, again, made popular by Malacañang Palace.

It’s called GMA Flip-flopper.

The game’s mechanics go this way: When GMA flips to exploit a popular situation to earn her brownie points, the people flop. If the people don’t flop, GMA wins!

When GMA flops on realizing that her intended populist move boomerangs, the people flip! If the people don’t flip, GMA wins!

Alas, it’s a game that only Malacañang obviously enjoys.

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A LEAKAGE, NOT A CHEATING ISSUE My heart continues to bleed for the young hopeful faces of the nurses who are now utterly lost and confused. They who are being made victims over and over with the flip-flopping of the Arroyo administration on how to handle this once well-baked warm potato, and now the proverbial hot potato.

The nurses don’t deserve the treatment. In fact, I can’t even fault the examinees who were given copies of the leaked questions. First of all, they didn’t ask for these, and they had no way of knowing that these were truly leaked questions until they were inside the exam rooms. Besides, am certain that all the examinees prayed hard that most if not all of the sample test questions given them while reviewing in review centers would actually be in the actual exams. In fact, give the reviewer any set of test questions with a claim that it’s likely the questions that will appear in the exams, expect her to gobble it up like ice cream. Nobody expected to cheat, they just wanted to pass honorably.

The real culprits are not the nurses (unless someone can point to a student who paid for the leaked questions) but the enterprising review centers. Initial investigation has shown that the set  of leaked questions was not sold to the reviewers but deliberately released to the reviewers who will be expected to give a testimonial after the passing the exams, meaning the review centers wanted to cash in on a reputation that guarantees passing. The reviewers were used, plain and simple.

This issue at hand is about the leak made possible by review centers and examiners, not the alleged cheating by the nurses.

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NO MORAL ASCENDANCY. Unfortunately for our new nurses, their dilemma stems from the lack or absence of moral ascendancy of the political leadership, over which they have little or nothing to do with. Their only shortcoming perhaps is they didn’t stand up to the biggest electoral cheating when it happened right before their eyes. 

Since the reaction of the people to the 2004 cheating was generally feeble, it was not surprising that Malacañang viewed the initial report on the leak in a cavalier fashion only wanting to see how the situation could be exploited to serve Mrs. Arroyo’s fledgling popularity.

A political leadership with moral ascendancy could have gone after the perpetrators with hammer and tong instantly with nary a chance for them to slip through. But this is not the case with the Arroyo government.

Mrs. Arroyo waffled initially making sure that the “cheating” scandal will not remind people of her own scandal during the elections. What could have been a small bush fire, became a forest fire all because the government had a different agenda.

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HEIGHT OF ARROGANCE. The insulting arrogance of the Lim administration was at its height when City Administrator Raffy Baraan, speaking for Mayor Benjie Lim, said “There’s no corruption in Dagupan!”

Owing to space constraints, I will let our editorial this week speak for this corner on the insensitivity, hypocrisy and blatant lies of the Lim administration.

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/punchline/)