Peace in Cebu helped our tourism growth

We have a special treat for this Monday on Straight from the Sky in the person of the Secretary of National Defense Sec. Gilbert Teodoro Jr. He came to Cebu a couple of weeks ago and agreed to be on our tv show. I knew Sec. Teodoro when he was the Congressman of the 1st District of Tarlac. He emailed me in response to my column on my advocacy on preserving all spoken languages in the Philippines. He was the first person from Luzon who totally agreed with what we Cebuanos think about the Tagalog that’s being “forced” upon all Filipinos, yet DepEd doesn’t teach us our mother tongue.

When he became Secretary of National Defense, I finally met him in person when he accompanied Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo during one of her visits in Cebu. He actually approached our table to introduce himself to me. That was an act of a very humble man, who despite being the Defense Secretary would go out of his way to greet someone he knew. Since then, we have become very good friends and textmates. So before he came to Cebu he texted me that he would be here. I responded if he would honor me with an interview on our tv talkshow and he said he was so honored.

So tonight, allow me to introduce Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr., a man whose political party, the National People’s Coalition (NPC) is considering as one of their frontrunners for the 2010 Presidential elections. If this happens and if he wins, he will be the First Filipino President who graduated from the Harvard University in Boston. Watch this very interesting talk with Sec. Teodoro on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00pm tonight.

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Kudos to Cebu Governor Gwen F. Garcia and Police Regional Office-7 Director Ronald Roderos for getting a plaque of recognition from Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) as the Most Outstanding Regional Peace and Order Council for year 2008. This is no small feat, given the realities that Region 7 has Metro Cebu, where crime incidence is often high and a nagging insurgency problem in the hinterlands of Negros Oriental. But I wholeheartedly agree that the RPOC-7 was managed very well by Gov. Gwen and her partner in the PNP Gen. Roderos. It has contributed to the increase in the tourism industry especially in Cebu Province.

When Gov. Garcia took over as chair of the RPOC-7, she declared an all-out war against the Communist insurgency, which brought a howl to the organized allied front organizations supporting the communist insurgency. They declared that blood will flow like a river in the Province of Cebu. But then that was mere communist propaganda. The exact opposite has happened, peace has reigned in Cebu Province, which spread also to Bohol. We are indeed proud to have a hard working governor who looks not only after the interest of the Province of Cebu, but for the interest of Central Visayas as well.

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We can’t agree more with the findings of Malou Mangahas from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) who looked into that controversial World Bank (WB) Report that from US$30 to $45 million has been lost to “corruption” from the entire US$150 million from the WB funded National Road Improvement and Management Project-1 (NRIMP-1). This is coming from the WB report. But we know too well that millions, if not billions more are lost in many other infrastructure projects due to bid rigging or collusion in the bids.

If you studied all the roads here in Metro Cebu, perhaps you’d ask yourself how long have these roads been fixed or maintained, say, in the last five years? Many roads in Metro Cebu get heavily damaged due to our annual heavy rainfall and the series of typhoons that pass through almost every single month! This is why every now and then, our major thoroughfares gets potholes. Because of lack of funds for maintenance, these potholes grow into mud holes big enough for carabaos to wade. This is due to the fact that the majority of our roads are asphalted. To think, Cebu hosts the major cement factories in the country.

Ten years ago, I asked then Councilor Gabby Leyson to do a little experiment by cementing instead of asphalting Freedom St. along Peace Valley. That road virtually gets broken every year as it doubles as a river during heavy rains. Since that time Councilor Leyson had it cemented, the City of Cebu hasn’t spent a single centavo to maintain that road. Proof that if we only cemented most of our roads, it would be a huge savings for the government. It’s only logical to cement our major roads. But why can’t we do it?