2012 wishes

NO matter what the doomsayers would have us believe about 2012 marking the end of the world or what simply the perennial naysayers would have us accept as the ‘same old, same old’, there is no reason to deny ourselves of the gift of hope as we welcome the New Year.

And so with hope, we make a wish-list here of what developments we would like to see in Pangasinan this year.

Waste management. There have been initial efforts last year for municipalities to come together and find options for joint garbage management systems. Compliance with the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000 is too long overdue. About time we saw some tangible results. If not, hope the Department of Environment and Natural Resources finally makes good on its warning to make LGU officials accountable for the non-compliance.

Disaster preparedness. We can pray to be spared from natural calamities but local government units, spearheaded by the well-organized Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council, must work doubly hard to ensure that the threat to life and property is kept as minimal as humanly possible.

Environmental protection. We have just witnessed in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan cities how bad the repercussions could be in our failure to protect, manage and rehabilitate nature from human abuse. There are tree-planting and river clean-up efforts around the province. Let’s step it up.

Transparency and political will. We don’t want a circus as we are seeing at the national level now. But we continue to dream of LGU officials who live out good governance and don’t sit back when they see their fellow public servants doing otherwise.

We say welcome to 2012 with cheer and great expectations.

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A crown of thorns

LET US start the New Year with words of kindness and not of harshness, with words that placate and not implicate.

Renato Corona, the embattled chief justice facing the solid specter of impeachment spearheaded no less by President Benigno Aquino III, has suffered enough.  Never in our history have we seen the highest court official of the land getting battered black and blue by his supposed co-equal in governance: executive and legislative.  On January 16, the Senate starts impeachment proceedings against him. Even as the first shot has yet to be fired, the odds seem already heavily stacked against Corona.  The public is as politicized as ever; they see – as we also see – a Corona wearing a crown of thorns the minute he steps into the Senate chamber.

He said he would fight his impeachment to the very end.  Good luck.  May God be with him in this his battle of a lifetime.

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