Uneasy chairs

By Jun Velasco

THE seats of power in our troubled country are shaking due to the shameful issues of corruption and greed.

How our unlucky citizens would wiggle out of this corrupt stranglehold is anybody’s guess.  Pray that reason and good governance would soon reign for the sake of the innocent who all the while couldn’t understand the whys and wherefores of life in the islands.

For risking his life and the position of his father, youthful businessman Joey de Venecia III finds himself in a political quagmire he hardly knows anything about.

 Let’s hope Speaker Joe de Venecia, who is now the target of vicious propaganda and left-handed power play, will survive the massive attack on his person. But if we were him, it would be a rare honor to be toppled by evil manipulation, for he would fall in the arms of admiring citizens. 

Hope and pray for the best.

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A couple of months back, we were exchanging notes on the need to ban imported cement to protect the local industry, a campaign that must have delighted Congressman Mark Cojuangco.

Ernie Ordonez, former agriculture undersecretary and now chairman of Agriwatch, told us he is into an interesting campaign that should interest Pangasinenes: planting malunggay or “moringa, a program that the World Health Organization has been promoting for the last 20 years as a low cost health enhancer in poor countries around the world.

Ernie says the malunggay has been stealing the daylights of the Pharmaceutical industries because the moment the poor get to know that the nutritious tree can fill up all the vitamins we need, the vitamin businesses would collapse.

Let’s hope Ernie is just stressing a point, but he quotes Moringa Zinga, a US company that promotes and sells malunggay products in capsules.

Zinga says: “If you are a company selling hundreds of nutritional products, why would you sell a product that will wipe out all your other products? This is true for the pharmaceutical industries as well. These industries would rather that the general public remains ignorant about the Moringa leaves.”

Malunggay leaves can prevent 300 diseases, as they provide miraculous nutritional value. Gram for gram, moringa leaves contain four times the calcium and two times the protein in milk; seven times the Vitamin C in oranges, three times the potassium in bananas and four times the Vitamin A in carrots, according to Ernie.

Because of malunggay, we met thru Ernie Ordoñez, Dr. Florentino Solon, president of the Nutrition Center of the Philippines,  who  describes the malunggay as “the most  powerful and most wonderful” among the most known sources of vitamins.

If our LGUs are reading this, we suggest they mobilize their constituents to engage in malunggay planting. There’s big money out there. What’s more, there’s health, longevity, life in malunggay!

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NOTES: With the barangay elections around the corner, some barangay bets have reached our desk proposing to devote meaningful and devoted service. Topnotch Kagawad Angel Gumarang of Barangay Bonuan Gueset is one.  We hope he will make it in a five-corner race.  He is an indefatigable worker, honest and a faithful follower of former Vice Mayor Teddy Manaois. Joseph Peralta of Mayombo, PNR, son of former Barangay Kagawad Jose Peralta, is running on a platform of honest, clean and transparent public service. His dad used to handle the peace and order committee and made the barangay a model of peace and tranquility in the city.

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