JDV’s not so new tack

By Jun Velasco

SKEPTICS are wasting their time continually speculating on the election of a new House Speaker other than the one who engineered Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s ascent to the Presidency.

Wasn’t Gloria Joe de V’s running mate in l998?

So there. But that’s not the story. Not anymore.

The speakership, if you ask, is now a settled issue. So let’s stop speculating. Just look at the Manila dailies’ headlines. JdV and GMA in goody-goody poses. Only the naive will miss the point.

The speakership is in the bag of Joe de V.

 What’s new, the new story, a head turner, if you will, is the revival of charter change. What??? Yes, charter change, constitutional reform, revision or amendment of the fundamental law of the land, yes, the  debates – to be revived  with  more cerebral power this time — not only with  emotions – are back. Blame or credit Joe de V for it.

Hep, don’t shoot, don’t knock it yet. Recall, please just try to recall that the measure was defeated by a mere one vote in the Supreme Court.

That’s it. Cha-cha is not yet kaput. The door is still wide open.

  We see in Joe de V’s landslide reelection in the district and House leadership a sign, a form of “graduation,” graduation from what? From whatever held him in his tracks. Trapo politics was one, pleasing everyone, now, he will pick from the pieces and fight to the finish.

In reopening Pandora’s Box on  cha-cha which the opposition maligned  as the  handiwork of Satan, Joe de V  was serving notice there would be  no more political games, because cha-cha is not entertainment, not a cousin of  tango or boogie woogie. It is a super-serious issue that underpins the survival of the nation. The time has come, Joe de V says, to fight for what is true, what is correct, what the country direly needs if it is to survive.

Ironically, those against cha-cha failed to hammer the last nail on the coffin of a discredited past because they were more preoccupied with Gloria’s fall, not the nation’s survival. They have equated Gloria with the whole caboodle of their political survival or disaster. They missed the point.

We now see a recharged Speaker who will say no to every blockade of the country’s advance.  JDV has nothing to prove anymore. His mandate is to help GMA steer the nation to what will give our countrymen a break from a lackadaisical government built by negative habits. It’s time to do what is correct, not what is expedient.

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The success of the party-list Abono is due largely to business leader Rosendo So. What most of you do not know is Sendong’s vast network including several towns in Mindanao.

Also, as overseer of the campaign machine that made Congressman Spines Espino governor, Sendong has shown that he is a good organizer. Was he not the man behind FPJ’s victory in Pangasinan in 2004? But Sendong is now an avid supporter of President Arroyo.  He is astute and yet sober.  He told us it’s not he who will sit in the House as Abono’s nominee, but Eskimo Estrella. “That’s not my line,” he said. His humility is a sure ticket to more and greater achievements in the near future.            

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    NOTES: Former Barangay Tapuac Captain Alfredo Dawana is worried that his beloved Tocok sitio in Brangay Lucao was invaded by fish kill, where thousands worth of fish such as tilapia, bangus, gourami, and shrimps died due to pollution. Alfred, for a  long time now,  has been asking government officials to come to Tocok’s rescue by dredging it and provide its more than 2,500 inhabitants a housing program.

Speaker Joe and Mayor Al, listen to the man’s plea. He gave you both 98 and 97 percent voting margin in the last elections. Alfred was a former Mayor Opring Manaois loyalist, but he campaigned for Joe de V and Al F and the entire Team Unity ticket like he was in the administration’s campaign task force.

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/think-about-it/)

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