Kingsley Lewis
28 Jan 2008

 

 

Several weeks ago Sunday Punch had a piece complaining about the number of public holidays in the Philippines.

Please follow this up with criticisms of:

• The announcement of new public holidays by politicians with little or no justification presumably because they think this wins popularity and exhibits their power when they can’t think of anything better to announce.
• The inconsiderate timing and very short notice given for new public holidays.

Here are 3 recent examples:

(a) President GMA quite recently proclaimed a special public holiday which was announced at 5am of the holiday, without any prior notice.

Many children went to school and workers went to work on that day but had to come back home. (Sorry, I can’t remember the date of this, but it was within the last two years).

(b) In early January 2008, the Pangasinan Provincial Board passed a resolution authored by Vice-Gov. Marlyn Primicias-Agabas making January 9th Pangasinan Veterans Day in memory of 1945 landings in the Gulf of Lingayan.

There is very little justification for this holiday because:

• There is already a public holiday when war heroes are remembered, namely National Heroes Day. Why do we need two such days in Pangasinan? 2008 is 63 years after the event. The need for a second day has not arisen before.
• Why is it called Veterans Day? There are very few veterans of World War II still alive – most survivors from the war have since died.
• Why focus the date on the landings in the Gulf of Lingayan. MacArthur had already returned to the Philippines in Leyte in 1944, and far more Pangasinan fighters died during the resistance at other dates.
• January 9th is an unfortunate date since it is only few days after school classes resume from the Christmas break. This year most children went back to school on January 7th but before they could settle down to a regular routine a public holiday was suddenly announced. Pangasinan politicians want this disruption to occur every year in the future.

In fact the new Pangasinan Veterans Day was announced only on the previous day, mindless of the disruption caused to everyone’s work and school plans for the next day. Why wasn’t there several months’ prior notice?

(c) On Friday afternoon January 25th Mangaldan Mayor Romero announced an unprecedented public holiday for Mangaldan called “St. Thomas Aquinas Feast” for Monday January 28th 2008.

Again there is little justification for this disruption to school and business in Mangaldan:

• St. Thomas Aquinas was born on January 28 1225, which was 783 years ago. He had no connection whatsoever with Mangaldan, though centuries later, for no obvious reason, he was adopted as the town’s patron saint.
• Mangaldan already has local public holiday for the municipality’s fiesta, which known as “St. Thomas Aquinas Fiesta”. This is in March. The new holiday is unconnected with the fiesta.

And as in the previous examples, the new holiday was announced with little prior notice. Many schoolchildren had left school on the Friday before schools were notified that there would be no classes on Monday Jan.28th.  Some school administrations were confused and only decided that there would be no classes as late as 8pm on the day before the holiday.

Why didn’t Mayor Romero announce the new holiday several months ago to avoid this confusion and disruption?

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