EDITORIAL

By July 23, 2018Editorial, News

Your Sunday PUNCH is 62 years old

OUR past 52 issues since July 2017 pointed to challenging times for Pangasinan.  In the middle of it all were the efforts of the Pangasinan police, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and the local governments to sustain the early gains of the war on drugs in the province.

In sum, our editors and staff did all to be true to the mission defined out by our late founder-editor Ermin Garcia Sr. in 1956 when he adopted the quote for Socrates – No man is to be reverenced more than the truth. He wrote:

At the outset we wish to make our position clear vis-à-vis politics, religion, and other spheres of controversial thought. This publication is politically independent in the sense that no politician or political group has been or will ever be allowed to be in a position to unduly influence its policies or color its news stories to its editorial columns. We shall often write on and about politicians. But never shall we write for any of them or in behalf of any partisan political cause.

“We shall not deprive any religious group of access to our pages, whether for information or for opinion. At the same time we shall not make a farce of the democratic principle by defying the fact that the country or this province – is, by majority count, Catholic.

That is our position. Now for the brand of journalism we intend to pursue – We reject the idea of a knight-in-shining-armor crusade. But where the truth is concerned, we shall be ruthlessly uncompromising. It may lose us friends or potential income, but all that must be written off as part of the calculated risks of honest and virile journalism. It is not just a whimsy that we have adopted the Socratic philosophy: “No man is to be reverenced more than the truth.”

 

Seize Sona

THE nation should stand still tomorrow (July 23) to give way to President Duterte’s third Sona (State of The Nation Address) since he assumed power in 2016.  It is not just in keeping with tradition but in obedience to obligation as well for every Filipino imbued with passion for love of country.  For, it is through the Sona that the President is given that golden opportunity to apprise us of the true state of the republic.  His 2016 Sona exposed the frightening drug menace nationwide.  Last year, the Sona centered on the gravity of global terrorist threat on our shores when Isis-backed Islamic rebels staged the foiled Marawi siege that claimed more than 3,000 Filipino lives, including nearly 900 soldiers.  What Mr. Duterte will report to us tomorrow, whether a happy one or not, we wait with bated breath.  Let’s be a good, law-abiding and God-fearing citizen:  Let’s listen to our President.  Tomorrow.

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