In search for Pax Obama!

I’m still bewildered as to why US President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize after only nine months in office. This decision caught the whole world unawares (in fairness to the US President, he too was caught by surprise). The Norwegian Nobel Committee went to great lengths to explain why Pres. Obama was their choice. They pointed to Pres. Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples, particularly his work to rid the world of nuclear weapons.” My take on this is, Pres. Obama got an “advance” Nobel Peace Prize!

In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, US Pres. Obama said that it was his “call to action” to work with other nations to solve the problems of the 21st century. Honestly speaking, people from all over the world are still looking for “PAX OBAMA” because the world is nowhere near at peace.

Perhaps this is the problem that we have in this world today. People are getting prestigious awards for something that hasn’t yet happened. Nobel officials admitted that their surprise pick was meant “to build momentum behind Pres. Obama’s initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism”. This is tantamount to admitting that Pres. Obama really hasn’t done anything yet, but that the award was only meant to “pressure” him to do more.

In my book, the Nobel Awards have slid down on its prestige because they have given awards to people for the exact same reasons that they gave to Pres. Obama yet, it has not resulted in any peace agreements. A case in point is the Nobel Peace Prize given 1994 to Yasser Arafat and shared with Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. This award was given for their sitting down and shaking hands with a plan to build a lasting peace between the Palestinians and Israel. Today, no one will ever think of having peace in that part of the world.

If there was a Nobel Peace Prize that was given to truly deserving men, it was the Nobel Peace Prize of 1978 that was given to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israel Prime Minister Menachem Begin because the two really hammered a peace treaty between the two warring nations that today is still being enforced. However, let’s give Pres. Obama the benefit of the doubt, that he is truly a man of peace and would doggedly pursue peace in the regions that never had any peace. Maybe he should start in Afghanistan where peace really has no meaning at all. 

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Just when we thought that the Philippines would have been spared from the natural disasters that have plagued many of our neighboring countries, now we are wallowing in our own misery. As expected, the blame game has already begun. Like it or not, people just can’t learn to blame themselves for clogging our rivers and esteros, or for building structures in areas that should be considered danger zones. It’s been two weeks since Tropical Storm “Ondoy” struck the National Capital Region, yet T. S. “Pepeng” that came after Ondoy’s path still ravaged most of Northern Luzon.

When are we going to accept the truism that whenever there are strong rains that pour down on us accompanied by strong winds, this is undoubtedly an Act of God. But when people do not heed the warnings to evacuate from those danger zones or keep on building along the banks of the rivers or esteros and they are swept away by the raging waters, it is no longer the fault of God. It is an act of man!

What we’ve seen in the newspapers that has happened in Benguet and Pangasinan could still happen to us if we do not get our acts together. Just drive up the Transcentral Highway and you will see that there are now many homes that have sprouted there, thanks to the accessibility of the Transcentral Highway. Why has the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) allowed this to happen? I still don’t know. I guess it is the exact same reason why the DENR allows the titling of properties even if they are under water. Corruption after all is an act of man!

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As if our country didn’t have enough troubles, then we got the news that 80-year-old Irish Catholic Missionary Fr. Michael Sinnott was abducted by unknown men in Pagadian City. This story will once more embarrass our government the way that the kidnapping of Fr. Giancarlo Bossi gave us a very bad international publicity in 2007. I’m sure that the kidnappers abducted him for ransom. Given that elections are already in the offing, the Arroyo government better solve this problem before the elections.

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