No term limits? Well.. it depends!

For tonight's presentation on Straight from the Sky, we bring you another exclusive interview, virtually the first time that this story is aired on television... about the now ongoing Values and Leadership Training seminar for Policemen at the Philippine National Police Regional Training Center in Gaas, Balamban.

For so long, the Filipino people have been disappointed by the number of scalawags and bad eggs that have made the headlines of our news media thanks to ill-disciplined, corrupt and arrogant policemen, who use their authority and power to gain something for themselves and in the end, they have failed in their duty to protect the citizenry who pays their salaries from our tax money. But in fairness to the PNP, those scalawags or bad eggs are but a small minority in the PNP force. Unfortunately, they are the ones who get into the headline news. But as we in the media have too often been accused, we often do not feature the good news in favor of the bad news.

Well, our show tonight is about the good news happening with the PNP and Straight from the Sky goes on location to Gaas, Balamban, right in the heart of the Island of Cebu, which we Cebuanos know is in the heart of the Philippines to bring you what the PNP is doing to rid themselves of their bad image and create a new one. If this program is supported by the entire community, the PNP's image will soon become a forgotten part of PNP history.

Tonight we have with us, Gen. Samson Tucay, Director of the PNP's National Training Institute. With him is Maj. Rex Urbano, head of the Values and Leadership Seminar in Gaas, Fr. Carmelo Diola, vice-chairman of Barug Pilipino, Ms. Marlinda Angbetic Tan, Barug Pilipino Working Group and they are joined by the PNP men who graduated from this month-long course last Saturday, PO3 Paul Inferido, Police Environmental Desk Officer, PO1 Edward Keith Barrameda, SPO1 Joseph Dinawanao and PO3 Medel Silo Gacho.

Let me point out that the graduates that we are interviewing are not necessarily scalawags or bad eggs... they are taken from all over Region 7 to take this course prepared by Gen. Samson, who coincidentally is a member of the Bukas Loob sa Diyos. Indeed as we've always said, the transformation of the PNP begins with accepting Jesus as our savior and that is what you will see in our show tonight on SkyCable's channel 15 at 8:00 p.m.

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Talking about corruption, Transparency International has come up with a "Global Corruption Barometer 2005" survey and revealed that political parties are the most corrupt, not just in this country but in many countries as well. But never mind the other countries; let us just concentrate on our own political parties. While we didn't see any local surveys on the corruption of political parties, we can't say that we do not agree with this assessment... after all, if our politicians are corrupt, for sure the political parties are not far behind!

For sure, many political parties in this country use or should I say, misuse the name of the poor in vain, like the Partido ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) whose titular leader, the deposed president Joseph "Erap" Estrada got himself embarrassingly jailed on a plunder charge. Perhaps the most painful reality that Transparency International's report is true, it is that Erap is now the highest government official jailed for corruption charges!

Again, all this boils down to a poorly educated population, rendered poorer by the corruption of politicians worsen by corruption in the Department of Education. What is distressing to note is that, the poor people who are manipulated by politicians or their political parties don't even know that they are being used! Perhaps we ought to ban political parties from using the name of the poor in the official names of their parties because we know too well that they really don't care for the poor people.

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Still on the subject of politics, the Consultative Commission (ConCom) is proposing the idea of lifting term limits for politicians. Frankly speaking, if we limit or put a cap on the terms of politicians, we are actually limiting the rights of the electorate or voters to freely choose their politicians. So we should do away with term limits right? Well, it all depends!

My thoughts on this subject are, if our electoral process can be made fail-safe, foolproof or totally honest, then I go for the lifting of term limits. But as it is, in it's present state, the Commission on Elections cannot assure the electorate that they can conduct a fair and honest elections. That means; those well-entrenched politicians are out to manipulate the results of the elections... making the public believe that they have been elected or re-elected because of their popularity. What is important is for the true will of the Filipino people to come out of the results of the elections, not the will of the politicians. If we can do this, then I'm for term limits!

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