Wanted: Congressional leaders by example!

With less than eight days left it seems that Congress is now pressed to pass very important legislation, something that they should have done last year. But thanks to too much politicking, they are now in a last minute rush. No doubt, this is a very typical Filipino mentality. Call it our ugly side, yet no one in Congress dared to do something about it to change their attitude. I submit that when we were students, we crammed for our midterm or our final exams, but then this is exactly what Filipino students still do. What we need is Leadership by Example. Alas, we cannot use our members of Congress to be the examples of our youth.

As December 2009 was about to end, we had the twin sea disasters when the M/V Catalyn B collided with the M/V Anatalia vessel off Cavite. A couple of days later, the M/V Baleno 9 sunk off Verde Island between Batangas and Mindoro Island. Once more, this brought questions from an indignant Filipino people against the Maritime Industry Authority (Marina): How can we prevent sea disasters from happening? Prevention unfortunately is a word that Filipinos still has to recognize.

Just look at the state of preparedness of the Bureau of Fire Protection and Prevention (BFPP). You don’t have to be smart to know that they are ill-prepared to fight fires. We don’t have to look far because we know that the firefighting equipment of our own Cebu Fire Department is old and decrepit. I’m sure that they are not even computerized.

More than a decade ago when we were in Japan with Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, we visited a Fire Station. We saw that the men manning that fire station wasn’t prepared only for fighting fires, they had various levels of red alerts. Top amongst them is a tsunami followed by an earthquake, typhoons and finally fires and miscellaneous happenings that need their help.

On the prevention side, they showed us computerized building plans of their district, which can instantly be printed and how they have gone into the various exercise in combating fires in a particular building, even down to traffic control in order to ensure that their firetrucks can pass through a crowded street. This is what our Fire Department ought to do when they are not fighting fires, instead of playing chess. They have even mapped out escape routes in case a fire engulfs the entire district including helicopter evacuation landings and shelters for the victims. We can only sigh in disgust that we can’t even be half what the Japanese are!

Yet this same Congress comes out to pad an additional P30 billion into their budget, for what? Two things that this nation needed from this Congress is the return of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) back into the school curriculum. If they can’t do it now, it means by the opening of school next June, ROTC still won’t be required in College.

Then there’s the necessity of having a law to investigate Air, Sea and other huge disasters through an agency dubbed the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) something that this nation needed a long time ago. Since we have no similar laws, all Congress needs to do is copy the laws that created the NTSB in the United States so that finally, whenever there’s a maritime disaster, it would no longer be investigated by the Maritime Industry Authority (Marina) or the Coast Guard, two agencies that regulate shipping in this country which should also be investigated.

With elections coming very soon, congressmen will be coming to your neighborhood seeking your votes. Unfortunately our voters cannot seem to ask their Congressman what he or she can do to prevent fires in their respective barangays. Now is the time to remind our political leaders to be leaders by example and think more of the needs of the Filipino people rather than stuffing their own pockets using funds from their respective Pork Barrel.

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Last Sunday, The Philippine Star featured a front-page story titled, “RP Population to Reach 94 Million” which was taken as a cue by those promoting the so-called Reproductive Health (RH) Bill to once more push for this offensive legislation. Indeed, the old stereotype thinking of modern economist is less population results in good economy. But this theory is now being debunked in many areas in Europe.

Last April, Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) addressed the 30th National Conference of Employers at the Manila Hotel. Her message was crystal clear, that a large population was a boon to the economy. China is the best example of this. Alas, our economist cannot strike at the very culprit of our poverty - unbridled corruption by political families!

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