Once more, bring back the ROTC to our schools

We have a rare and unique tv presentation for you tonight, it is called a “Pre-Marriage Encounter” which is dubbed a “Discovery Weekend.” I’m sure that with the so many charismatic organizations here in Cebu like the Bukas Loob sa Diyos (BLD), Oasis of Love or Couples for Christ, surely you must have come across people asking you to join a Marriage Encounter Seminar. Ten years ago, I joined BLD’s Marriage Encounter Seminar. It brought me to rethink my marriage, examining it from the beginning to the present and it helped me improve my marriage.

However, this Discovery Weekend is a special weekend only for engaged or betrothed couples that have exchanged commitment rings but haven’t yet taken their permanent vows. This is a very unique and wonderful opportunity for anxious couples that may have questions that they need to ask about their future life together. Unlike a marriage encounter where we often go up front to tell our classmates what went wrong or right with our marriage, in the Discovery Weekend, there will only be a heart-to-heart talk with the couple.

If you are parents whose children are about to tie the knot, I suggest that you invest in this short weekend for your children so that they would have a road map for a good and lasting marriage. The phrase “And they lived happily ever after” is only in Disney movies. Marriage is often hell. It is better for a budding young couple to realize the seriousness of marriage and back out now than break apart later, where the lives of their children would be scarred forever.

To talk about the Discovery Weekend, we have our good friends, Dr. George and Chorie Chan, Michael and Joyce Fernan, and John and Nadine Gonzales. So watch this very interesting show on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00pm. I hope that the parishes under the Cebu Archdiocese would watch this show so that they would accept the Discovery Weekend as a pre-cana. The Discovery Weekend is on March 608 at the Betania Retreat House.

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Last Thursday, I had the honor to interview on my show, Secretary of National Defense Gilbert Teodoro, Jr. which we shall air next Monday Feb. 23. One of the issues that both of us fully agree on is the return of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) which until now is still being deliberated in Congress in a bill filed by Rep. Eduardo Gullas. I told the Defense Secretary that my son Jesus Valeriano who is now on his second year at the University of San Carlos (USC) wanted to take up ROTC, after all generations of our family were ROTC graduates. Alas, USC and the other universities wasn’t offering it.

ROTC is the only subject in school that teaches our students love of country; defense of the motherland depends upon those who are willing to fight with their lives so that freedom will reign in our land. Thanks to the ROTC, the Japanese had a difficult time occupying the Philippine archipelago, as the ROTC graduates became the guerrillas who fought in hit-and-run tactics that baffled the enemy. My uncle Col. Manuel Segura was an ROTC graduate.

But like most things happening in this country, we never get to fix what’s wrong with us. Admittedly, ROTC in the old days was plagued by corruption. But instead of fixing the problem, our lawmakers removed the ROTC. Today, whenever we need warm bodies to help in disaster coordination, very few volunteers show up. But if we had the ROTC, that would never be a problem. Yes Virginia, ROTC is not just teaching our young men to use a rifle and do disciplinary marches; they’re most useful during disasters.

We’ve supported the plan for the return of the ROTC three years ago. June is fast approaching and we’re not getting closer to passing the Gullas law. Hence, Sec. Teodoro thought of doing a pilot program to hold ROTC in Camp Lapu-Lapu so that students from the different universities who are willing take the ROTC can take it there. All it needs is a memorandum of agreement between CentCom and the DepEd.

Sec. Teodoro who is also the chairman for the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) came to Cebu last Thursday for the formal turn-over ceremonies to the National Government by Interpol of the equipment they brought to Cebu City that was used in identifying the remaining bodies trapped inside the M/V Princess of the Stars that sunk during Typhoon “Frank” last June 21, 2008. The Interpol equipment are state-of-the-art equipment, like mobile morgues and refrigerated vans that the medico-legal team used to store the recovered bodies from the sunken vessel was given to Acting Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama by Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble at the Malacañang sa Sugbo last Thursday to be under the care of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).