Think about it
Expensive politics
By Jun Velasco
THERE you have it, gentlemen and ladies, Manny Villar’s survey ratings have soared because he has outspent all his presidential rivals in political advertising and propaganda by a billion pesos.
Which reminds us of many patriotic and talented Filipinos who don’t get a chance to serve due to lack of funds.
In the next three months when the election campaign period would have wound up, we will know if the character of our politics, which gets intoxicated by the smell of cash, will change.
We have been crying for political reforms like the end of money politics. This should be a most auspicious time, and May 10, 2010 should be a day of reckoning.
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How come the Comelec had the temerity to issue election campaign rules that it cannot enforce?
Is it a psychological mechanism to prepare the country to anarchy?
Take the common posters area rule. Nobody is following it. Are we saying Filipinos are at liberty to violate our election laws?
Chairman Melo and his commissioners are not idiots. But they behave like one.
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Senatoriable Joey de Venecia III made a very disturbing warning, which says that in the light of the uncertainty of the automated elections, it might be best to discard it once and for all and revert to the old, conventional manual practice.
However we look at it, the poll automation is an experiment. It has never been tried on nationwide scale. With the May l0 polls just around the corner, we might be making a dangerous leap into the unknown.
We’ve been advised to observe a basic rule in ensuring a safe jump, “if in doubt, don’t.”
We know how circumspect Joey is. A pioneer of broadband technology in the country, he must have factored in intelligence and expert knowledge about the poll automation before he sought to scuttle it. .
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Former Dagupan City association of barangay captains president Alfred Dawana requested us to assure Mayor Al Fernandez that he still holds him in the highest esteem.
He says the reason why he appears to be against Mayor Al is because he is on the forefront of the campaign against illegal fish pens. He insists that his crusade against illegal fish pens should be construed as a help and support to the city.
Mayor Al, he says, should not begrudge him for doing him a good turn, fighting for what is legal, moral and beneficial to the city. And not anything else.
Dawana hosted lunch and merienda for a group of balikbayans and newsmen at his Sitio Tocok resort last week. We missed that event.
When balikbayan Jess Sabolboro asked him why there were many bamboo structures in the Lucao river, Dawana said they were a new method of catching fish.
“But the operators of some of those structures are not paying tax to the city government. I have taken up the cudgels for the city by exposing these illegal fish pen operators,” he said.
“And so, I ask, am I not l00-percent pro Al Fernandez?”
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