Kalabasa awards

Section 4, Article 7 of the 1987 Constitution states: "The President shall not be eligible for any reelection." The word "any" should be clear enough to anyone elected to the presidency and who has since retired or been ousted.

Either some people have trouble comprehending the word, or don’t take the trouble to read their own Constitution. Among the kalabasa awardees – those who made our lives miserable in the previous year – are former presidents and their followers who still dream of returning to power in 2004. The suspicion is that they were behind the scandals that rocked the nation last year, all of which have ended nowhere. And the suspicion is that the scandals and rumor-mongering, which expend so much national energy, will continue well into the next presidential campaign. When will we end our navel-gazing and notice that a fast-changing world is leaving us behind?

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With so many things going wrong, it’s getting harder to pick any particular agency, official, group or individual for the kalabasa awards (again, with apologies to the pumpkin). There are simply too many possible awardees. Politicians are right down there in the pumpkin patch with lawyers. If you ask President Arroyo, she’ll surely recommend journalists, for doing our best to contribute to rumor-mongering and destabilization. Industrialist Raul Concepcion will agree with her 100 percent.

President GMA will also recommend the political opposition, although the faces in the opposition may look painfully familiar to her these days. The final months of 2001 saw a number of her former allies leaving her and joining in the chorus of whines and jeers.

Another awardee is the military for its failure to catch Abu Sabaya, Khadaffy Janjalani and their gang. Next target: total annihilation of the Abu Sayyaf in three months! With US military "advisers" nearly reaching company-size in Mindanao, maybe we’ll finally hear some good news soon.

And of course we can’t overlook the police, the National Bureau of Investigation and the Intelligence Services of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and their entertaining witnesses and suspects, particularly Angelo Mawanay and Philip Medel. Let’s have more of such circuses this year – they keep us distracted from economic hardships.

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All the agencies involved in mismanaging traffic deserve awards. Motorists, brace yourselves for Monday, when work resumes on those 50 or so excavations all over Metro Manila that were covered with metal sheets during the holidays.

I will always remember the traffic light at the corner of Roxas Boulevard and MIA Road in Parañaque. Busted for three months, that stop light was a constant reminder of the mess we’re in. For want of a good quality light bulb, motorists had to endure monstrous traffic jams from that intersection all the way to Vito Cruz in Manila. The Department of Public Works and Highways and the Metro Manila Development Authority refused to take responsibility for the stop light. It’s been working the past few days. Wonder when it will conk out again?

Cops and traffic aides disappear at 9 p.m., when traffic is unusually heavy because it’s the time the trucks start coming out. Buses make the traffic worse, leaving only a lane for other vehicles to pass. Why don’t cops discipline bus drivers? Why do you think they’re called kotong cops?

President GMA, when caught in heavy traffic on EDSA, said she didn’t mind because she was able to talk with Cabinet members on her cell phone. There’s a special award waiting for you, Mrs. President.

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A special award also goes to the DPWH, whose head seems more interested in dishing out favors to politicians instead of improving our roads.

From i, magazine of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, I read that Gregorio Vigilar, in his final days as DPWH chief last year, issued an order that kept fly-by-night contractors from bidding for DPWH projects.

Shortly after Simeon Datumanong took over, however, congressmen complained that contractors in their districts could not get into the national registry or could not win public works contracts. Some congressmen hinted Datumanong could face a hard time before the Commission on Appointments, the magazine reported.

So Datumanong amended Vigilar’s order in August, allowing even companies without valid contractors’ registration certificates to bid for public works projects costing up to P15 million, according to i. The contractors are screened by DPWH district engineers.

If the road network in Metro Manila is a patchwork of ruts, uneven paving and unfinished excavations, with road diggings conducted indiscriminately, causing monstrous traffic jams, blame those fly-by-night contractors and their patrons in the DPWH. May your tribe decrease this year.