By Leonardo Micua

 

THE campaign period for candidates running for the local elections on May 9 finally kicked off last March 25. Under the law, local candidates have 45 days (except on Holy Thursday and Good Friday and on the eve of the elections) to campaign and argue their  programs of government before the electorate.

Many consider the local elections more exciting than the national elections since both the voters and the candidates are personally familiar with each other. Since they belong to the same communities, the fight between and among the candidates in the local elections is felt more strongly than the candidates in national elections.

I hope all the local candidates will abide by the peace covenant they signed three weeks ago with the Philippine National Police and the Commission on Elections to keep the peace and refrain from doing recriminations as well as resorting to mudslinging against each other.

But before the campaign period can begin, we heard the camp of former Mayor Belen Fernandez complain about the deliberate destruction of posters of some members of her green team in one barangay that could have only been done by the followers of Mayor Brian Lim.

Councilor Chito Samson, only one among those whose posters were defaced, suspected no one but the supporters of their opponent because Lim’s and his teammate’ posters in the area were spared from destruction.

It’s good that former Mayor Belen hasn’t put up any poster yet and waited till the start of the campaign period to do it, otherwise, these would have been torn too by the rooters of the other side.

Will the city and provincial election offices look into  this, por pabor lang?

*          *          *          *

The war in Ukraine between invading Russian soldiers and Ukrainian fighters defending their homeland is already on its fourth week yet we are not seeing peace in the horizon as Russian President Vladimir Putin is demanding no less the surrender of Ukraine and its president Volodomyr Zelensky. As expected, Ukrainians and their president are not going to surrender. 

Too many lives were already lost, precious blood spilled on both sides and armaments destroyed and wasted but the fighting still rages, plunging the world’s economy in turmoil.

That war has already impacted on us in the Philippines because the countries that  previously depended on Russia for its oil and gas are also now looking for oil in the Middle East.

The sad thing is, Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer, spurned appeals of the U.S. outright  to produce more oil in order to stabilize the price of the commodity worldwide.

In the Philippines, the prices of gasoline, diesel and petrol have hit the roof. Consequently, the prices of basic commodities started to shoot up, but salaries of workers remain the same.

The government recently dangled P200 ayuda per month to the country’s poor, which President raised to P500 as P200 can only buy four kilos of rice. But DBM warned the P500 ayuda can be sustained for only three to four months. . 

Many jeepney drivers, too, who can no longer afford to buy diesel are now bent on declaring a holiday because they can no longer earn anything after they buy diesel fuel and paying the “boundary” to the operator. The only thing that’s preventing most from not plying their routes totally is their need to feed their families even for just one meal per day.

We heard from a Punch colleague about one hard-pressed jeepney driver plying the southern route. The driver had the audacity to beg to his passengers to voluntarily pay P15 minimum fare just so he can buy few liters of diesel. There were those who readily paid the amount for  the sake of the poor driver and his family but no one forced the others to pay more. I hope the jeepney driver realizes that he is risking being fined if someone reports him to LTFRB or the police. 

*          *          *          *

The Dagupan Sanggunian may have already run out of time in passing the 2022 annual city budget. Seven councilors are already on the campaign trail seeking their respective re-elections.

I hope they all realize that if they cannot pass a new budget till March 31 this year, the city will be operating on a reenacted budget throughout the end of 2022. That will be the consequence of dilly-dallying of city in submitted the documents required by the SP.

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments