TIM/Smartmatic row: Lessons must be learned

Our special presentation on tonight’s Straight from the Sky is a discussion on “The Road to a Better Education”. With school opening with the “as usual” problems that the Department of Education (DepEd) never seems to fix like lack of classrooms, lack of well-trained teachers and serious errors in textbooks, we are no longer surprised to hear that Philippine Education has fallen down to one of the worst in Asia. Thanks to the kind of politicians that “meddle” too much in our educational system, nothing seems to be working to improve the education of our youth, who are supposed to be the “Hope of the Fatherland” as what Dr. Jose Rizal once wrote about.

However, there is a group that calls itself the Coalition for Better Education (CBE) that aims to correct whatever deficiencies there are in our current educational system and their programs. With us tonight are Dr. Caridad Labe CBE President and Dr. Clara Falcone DepEd Education Supervisor who will show us the present potholed road to a better education and how they intend to smoothen this road for a better future for our youth. The bottom line is, our politicians in this country have not invested enough for a better education for our children, hence we cannot expect a better future unless we change course now. Watch this show on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00pm tonight.

* * *

As the old saying goes, “All’s well that ends well” when Total Information Management Corp. (TIM) apparently kissed and made up with its foreign partner Smartmatic, thus ending the great upheaval that would have befallen upon this country if we went back to manual counting. The “pre-wedding” jitters of the consortium brought the best and worst in Pinoys.

For instance, ‘Oplan August Moon’ suddenly surfaced purportedly designed to prolong the term of Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA). This has now been denounced by the intelligence community as nothing but a destabilization move. It was nothing but a mere PR job, which only shows how fragile is the Arroyo government that spin masters often get away with merely publishing stories that has no real basis.

At the height of this controversy, the Aboitiz family conglomerate was dragged into this mess by Sen. Chiz Escudero who questioned the Comelec’s awarding 2GO, an Aboitiz-owned forwarding company to ferry Comelec’s materials and supplies all over the country. That bidding was done fair and square and understandably so, because 2GO goes to places that few forwards can penetrate. Hence, Comelec awarded its needs to 2GO; politics has nothing to do with it! Just the same, in order to get their stories and faces on front page news, these politicians would falsely accuse anyone of any wrongdoing. This is how low our politicians have become.

Anyway, this shaky episode only proves that there are people out there who want to destabilize this nation in order to gain whatever political momentum they can get from it. Now that TIM and Smartmatic have ironed out their “pre-wedding jitters” they can now proceed with the wedding, meaning the formal signing of their contract with the Comelec. But just like any newlywed, they will experience problems all the way to Election Day. So if anything blows up between TIM and Smartmatic again, it won’t be a surprise anymore.

While we’re finished with the TIM-Smartmatic row, I always find lessons to learn from that embarrassing episode that hopefully would strengthen our government agencies. Whenever any government agency comes up with its terms of reference, they must now find ways to prevent this thing from happening again.

For instance, if two partners fail to sign a contract that would be awarded to them, then provisions must be made for penalties to both parties and that the second bidder should now be considered the winning bidder with some revisions to the contract, like the second bidder must maintain its higher bid price. It would be foolhardy for the government not to gain experience from what happened at the Comelec.

* * *

If there was any secret that finally leaked out from Malacañang, it is that Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) apparently had breast implants which were done in the past. That makes Pres. Arroyo just like any other girl dreaming of being well-endowed. And since Mother Nature wasn’t kind to her, she paid for breast augmentation, which today, many actresses or aspiring actresses often do. Of course, the opposition is having a heyday over this unexpected discovery, which for me is below-the-belt reaction. But like it or not, the President’s health is everyone’s concern, although I don’t think that she’s in any grave danger of getting sick. But all this information should be above board. After all, the President is no longer a private person as she belongs to all Filipinos, even those that loathe and hate her.