Charter reform, only way to survive

By Gerry Garcia

YOUSSEF “Chip Chip” Velasco, 21, youngest son of Journalist Jun Velasco and university Prof. Catherine Bernardo (Jun’s one and only wife), is now one of Malacañang’s Big Guns. A UP scholar and graduate in Public Administration, Chip Chip now works in the Presidential Management staff under the Office of the President.

Our only wish for Chippy, who has been doing remarkably well considering his young age, is for him to rid himself of his rather misleading first name “Joussef” which tends to ring a battered bell in the minds of peace-loving fellow-Pinoys.

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The Sunday Punch is, per se, 50 years old… although it seems we get a bigger kick out of reminiscing the nostalgic past years of the Pioneer Herald, its immediate precursor in 1957 dating back to its birth in 1944 right after the liberation  of Luzon.

The Herald, founded and edited by Ermin Garcia Sr., barely out of his teens when he obtained his Bachelor of Literature in journalism from the Ateneo de Manila, was then Luzon’s first community weekly after the war. Co-pioneers with Ermin then were the late Justice Porfy V. Sison and his wife, former Vice-Governor Nancy Q. Sison, including former Justice (now retired) Jorge Coquia.

Chief of reporters then was the late Joe Fermill, aided on the side by a younger brother of Porfy, whose name I can’t quite recall.

This writer, who had not yet started college, was the paper’s proof-reader, most of whose time was devoted to violin study under the late Antonio Espino, then a member of the Manila Symphony Orchestra under conductors Alexander Lippay and Viennese Herbert Zipper; and singing in the bass section of St. John’s mixed church choir under choir master Antonio Espino…  with Francisco “Paquito” Villamil playing the organ.

It was during the early years of the Punch when the late Bayardo Estrada came in to join the editorial staff. Manong “Bay”, as we  used to call him then, was a PNS correspondent who also had contributed a poem to a high school text  book Philippine  Prose and Poetry, besides a number of Editorials he wrote for the Punch, in addition to his regular/column.

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Off-hand personal survey of public reaction here to the current issue of Cha-Cha (charter amendment) tends to be more positive. Especially shorn of technical complications, Cha-Cha is better viewed by the man-in-the-streets as the one and only hope for the people to extricate themselves from the rut of Third Worldism and consequently join their already progressive neighbors in the Southeast Asian region.

As Speaker Joe de Venecia aptly puts it: the last session of the 13th Congress will be the “final chance to replace through charter reform, an inefficient and inflexible system that, by its weakness, breeds extremist plots to seize power.”

Added to this is the growing suspicion here that traditional politicians, rich businessmen and other groups have invested untold millions in the campaign against Cha-cha.

People against Cha-cha will do everything to keep their monopoly in mass media, public utilities and other industries.

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