Think about it
We are in a ‘state of war’
By Jun Velasco
“No day is without its innocent hope.” — (John) Ruskin
OVER lunch at the spanking Fortune (Hong Kong) restaurant across the Dagupan City hall, a nephew of National Artist Vicente Manansala told us it probably would take more than a herculean effort to defeat President Aquino’s government.
Manansala’s nephew may not be in the same art mode, but Jose Manansala’s political views have the creative punch of his late uncle.
As director for Valenzuela Mayor Win Gatchalian’s plan to run for senator, Joe believes that it would be politically disastrous at this time to hitch a wagon that’s not in tune with Noynoy’s bandwagon. “P-Noy still enjoys massive popular support,” Joe points out.
He belittles P-Noy’s much recycled KKK pitfalls against the tremendous goodwill built by his much praised fight against corruption. Filipinos, who have been bludgeoned by corruption of the past administration, are still with P-Noy, Joe observes.
Joe, a familiar name in the First Quarter Storm before Bung Ferdinand’s imposition of Martial Law, is rooting for youthful Sherwin Gatchalian who at 37 is “a symbol of hope in this country.”
Win has transformed Valenzuela in Bulacan into a modern metropolis in less than l0 years!
Take his common sense dengue drive, Joe says, which is captioned “tapik kalapit, salat lagnat” to show what Win has between his ears.
The trick is to simply give a neighbor school mate a pat and feel his body temperature, and if he has a fever, bring him pronto to the health center.
Win has great business acumen, too, he says. Win pulled the city’s P900 million in 2004 to P2.1 billion in 2009 — a whooping jump by any standard, and built clusters of modern buildings that have made Valenzuela a modern city.
Win’s central thrust is in education, Joe says, which bans packing a classroom with more than 50 students. He has built 2,000 modern classrooms since 2004. Watch for this young man!
* * *
Whoever said that the Dengue calamity is worse than Ondoy and Pepeng combined was not joking.
No, not exactly, we’d rather compare our anti dengue fight with fighting a world war!
Those daily TV news footages showing dengue patients already lining the corridors of medical centers, hospitals, public and private clinics and literally crying for blood and medicines, and unceasing reports of fatalities especially the young everyday everywhere in the country should alert everyone to lend a hand.
No, it’s not only the young that who casually contract the virus. It has knocked down and killed well known and wealthy individuals. Our neighbor columnist Gonzalo Duque almost died from a mosquito bite. A couple of years back, we were planning a Rotary TV program to fight dengue at UNTV, but the program host of Kaagapay, Dr. Saguin, a former Rotary club president, died ironically from the virus.
The dengue outbreak phenomenon only too vividly shows the country’s abject poverty syndrome. You don’t hear anything like this in the developed countries, do you?
And so this brings us back to square one: Government should deal with the dengue outbreak like it was fighting a world war. Reports of deaths occur everyday, as if felled by machine guns.
It’s portentous that the dengue invasion has caught the nation by surprise. Again, it showed our lack of preparedness; we got caught with pants down
Dengue is much worse than the Sars a couple of years back because being undeveloped, the country is vulnerable to mosquitoes on all fronts. We are so defenseless.
Even if too late, let’s not lose our guard against dengue. The next lethal bite may be anyone of your next of kin, your neighbor — or you.
A proactive approach should factor in a new mindset, a change in attitude to hygiene and cleanliness in our surroundings in non-stop and round-the-clock fashion. We also need to cultivate our sense of alertness and presence of mind all the time even if it should rob us of our precious moments for leisure and other things.
We are in a state of war. And we have to win this war.
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