Playing with Fire
Hey Benjie! Hi Hitler!
By Gonzalo Duque
MANY are asking us about evaluation of Pnoy’s SONA. We said we could only rate it from an educator’s lens.
We grade it “incomplete.” No grade. Next year na lang. So it’s not “pass,” nor “fail.”
Wa grade.
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We at the Pangasinan Press Club and Pangasinan educators circle were lucky and pleased to be the host of an international journalist, Ms. Kim Kierans of Halifax, Canada last Tuesday.
Ms. Kim, who is a top official (is she vice president, Ging?) of the Kingston College in Halifax, teaches journalism at the Ateneo School of Journalism. It’s a great honor to have her around. In her huddles with Pangasinan journalists and educators, we got the impression that like most of us, she has been given the misleading label about community journalism as some kind of second-class media practitioners. Well, not in all senses, mind you, especially if you get your news from the Sunday Punch… ahem… ahem… .
This our paper has won awards and honors in prestigious editorial evaluations nationwide. Care has been observed by the Punch in evaluating and writing the news and its articles, all guided by the Journalist’s Code of Ethics. If you ask the guys manning the stands like Danny, who has acquitted himself as the competitor of Marigold in selling newspapers at his corner beside the Red Ribbon, beside the old Vicar building, they’d readily tell you, without batting an eyelash that it’s the Punch that readers look for.
And so we were confident in exchanging views with Ms. Kim who finds the Philippine media more exciting than their newspaper fare in Canada. Ours, she says, are gutsy, with news articles oozing with action, conflict, fight, and Filipino newsmen are brave and courageous. Journalism in Canada is tame, she laments.
Regarding the common view that the community press is inferior to the national press, Ms. Kim says it shouldn’t be so because the national pick up the news from the local. They do it too in Canada. We have lots of it here, too. What makes her sad, she says, is that there are many Filipino newsmen who are getting killed, and that they are not getting justice. There lies the problem.
But we should take her view of Philippine journalism as part of its metamorphosis into becoming a modern one. It will take time, but with the internet upon us, we are fast catching up with the latest in the west.
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As you, dear readers, must have observed, this columnist has a love-hate affair with Mayor Benjie Lim. But in all modesty we wish to say that we are merely playing our role as a columnist, pointing out his inconsistencies when we see one or two, and praising him when it was proper to do so. It’s part of the territory. You see, Benjie and this columnist practically grew up together, sharing our goodest days in the Jaycees; we had our ups and downs in real politics. Benjie, too, has had his wins and loses, too.
In some past elections, we campaigned for him, his wife Celia and even his son, Councilor Brian. We gave him our full support when he was president of the Philippine Jaycees. Hep, agmo ibabagan manboboy tayo ha. We are merely building a premise to show that we have been fair with him? How about him? Sorry, but his is wanting. Lately, we’ve crossed paths again on the issue of his severe imposition of business tax on private schools. We made our point clear in our talk with the Sangguniang Panlungsod which we wish to thank for its support for the private schools. Does Mayor Lim realize that he is violating the law plain and simple if he insists on collecting business tax from the private schools?
It’s been doing so since 2006. A handsome guy with high intellect, former Councilor Michael Fernandez, beloved husband of lady Councilor Maybeline Fernandez, recalled to us that Mayor Lim’s tax collection has no legal leg to stand on because no ordinance has been passed by the Sanggunian. Michael, who was then ways and means chairman, said the Sanggunian held a public hearing on the codification of tax ordinances in that year in which many sectors were invited. He stressed: no invitation was extended to the private schools because there was probably no intention to collect taxes from them.
But here come the mayor’s taxmen swooping down on our offices with the air of Adolf Hitler. Where is your sense of fairness, mayor? Where is your alleged savvy as public service leader? We hate to say this, but one of these days, you might receive a subpoena on a case filed by President Macky Samson of the University of Luzon.
As for us, your former friend, we shall be guided by the Jaycee tenet, “our is a government of laws and not of men.”
Watch out!
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