Think about it
Ping should do a Rizal
By Jun Velasco
BEING an admirer, we’d want Senator Ping Lacson do a Pepe Rizal. He should not have gone into hiding if he isn’t guilty at all.
Probably he knows too well the cloak-and-dagger environment, but we’re no longer in an administration that created Garcillano and yes, unfortunately, the Ampatuans!
We even have on authority that President P-Noy, Ping’s former buddy in the Senate, has a soft spot for him being a fighter for truth and reforms.
What we get in the media is only the surface of the truth, mostly churned out by media that don’t go to the bottom of things. If Ping shows up, he would resurrect his hero image and win public sympathy. Fact is, many have wondered why our hero who is rumored to be just be in the neighborhood is showing cold feet or utter distrust in the rule of law.
What made Jose Rizal a genuine national hero was his fearless spirit. He even faced death calmly.
Ditto with Ninoy Aquino. Who knows, Ping could be next. No, we’re not saying he’d get killed by his enemies. We are saying Ping would stand out like Rizal and Ninoy, if he comes out from his hiding place and face the music.
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Congratulations to former Councilor Jojo Guadiz who recently took his oath as Land Transportation Office regional director for the National Capital Region (Metro Manila).
We remember him as Mayor Benjie Lim’s staunchest ally to a point where he earned the ire of the mayor’s critics and detractors.
When he was a young boy, we tutored him to be a writer on the “directive” of his father, the late Judge and former Councilor Lory Guadiz, and beautiful mother, our former high school English teacher Reveriana Estrada – Guadiz. Brilliant, loyal to friends to a fault, and articulate, he made waves at the San Beda College as editor of the law college paper. For a time, he was at the DOTC law department, a post he got with the help of then Speaker Joe de Venecia Jr.
His appointment to the regional LTO-Metro Manila, therefore, is well deserved. Good luck, Jojo.
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Two community press events took place in Dagupan City and Davao City. Led by Allan Sison, president of the interim Federation of Provincial Press Clubs of the Philippines, the North-Central Luzon Media Summit in Lingayen town, coincided with a similar event at the Mandaya Hotel in Davao City led by former FPPC president Ben Diansay, now Mindanao- Sulu – Palawan Integrated Journalists Assn. president.
Principal guest at the Dagupan event was Johnny Dayang, the Sukarno of the provincial press, while Philippine Information Agency director general Joe Fabia spoke for three hours in the packed Mandaya Hotel convention hall.
Events like these are to give participants a refresher on the media’s role in society. You’d be awed by the sudden proliferation of press clubs in our midst causing raised eyebrows about media’s goals.
We suggest there’d be genuine efforts to redirect the media’s mindset to what it could do about the dearth of values and spur the community to economic and cultural development.
Perhaps, our politicians – instead of privately deploring the so-called “envelopmental press”- – could help by reminding them to work harder in reporting the news in a legitimate and heroic way. Alas, the late Ermin Garcia Sr., first FPPC president, tersely defined the role of a newsman to be truthful and honest at all times, hence, this paper’s motto, “No man is to be reverenced more than the truth.”
It’s not the number of press clubs that determine the health of community journalism hereabouts, but in what its members individually and collectively do to make their tribe respectable and credible and do excellent reportage. Good luck, comrades!
