Editorial
Marking 58 years
THE first issue of your SUNDAY PUNCH was published on July 5, 1956.
Nobody would have known then that it would see the day continuing its avowed mission to this day, 57 years later… and still going strong, looking forward to its 58th year of service to Pangasinenses all over the globe.
Many feared, as most of the staff feared then, the killing of our founder-publisher-editor Ermin E. Garcia Sr. on May 20, 1966 by a Lingayen councilor signaled its death knell. It was not to be. The editors and staff were undeterred and vowed to keep the paper going for as long as possible, for as long as the resources would allow, for as long as the community will trust and embrace it as its own.
From then on to this day, we lived and breathed Socrates’ plain statement: No Man is to be Reverenced More than the Truth. And the rest is history.
To fully understand why The SUNDAY PUNCH is what it is today, we invite you to read what our founder’s vision for the newspaper and we hope you find your SUNDAY PUNCH today living it as it should.
Statement of Policy
AS a newsmagazine the SUNDAY PUNCH seeks to play a dual role; namely; as a medium of news information and as a forum of public opinion. The second prescinds from the first. In other words, it will stimulate public thinking on the basis on objective news reports.
At the outset we wish to make our position clear vis-a-vis politics, religion, and other spheres of controversial thought. The 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 or 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 virile journalism. It is not just a whimsy that we have adopted the Socratic philosophy: “No man is to be reverenced more that the truth.”
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Presidential gobbledygook
SEEMINGLY, President Aquino continues to self-destruct? Of late, he’s been committing one boo-boo after another.
His latest is questioning the Supreme Court decision declaring Mr. Aquino’s DAP (Disbursement Acceleration Program) unconstitutional. He even threatened to mount a Palace-Versus-High Court war if the justices would not reconsider in the face of Mr. Aquino’s move to file a motion for reconsideration. What has become of him? Has he forgotten the three basic pillars of the Constitution? One, the Congress enacts laws. Two, the Supreme Court interprets the laws. And three, the President implements the laws. Once the High Court has spoken, that’s it. The President can disagree, yes. But it ends there, period. For him to question the SC decision, doggedly even—almost close to berating all our 13 magistrates voting unanimously against him—is gobbledygook of manic proportions.
We hate to say this but if he doesn’t shape up, he might yet be shipped out before 2016. God forbid!
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