The official who affects us more

Even before India’s “I Paid a Bribe” shame campaign, Filipinos have long been using hi-tech devices to expose grafters. Many a traffic aide has been caught on cell phone video extorting then aired on TV news; the Pasig shabu tiangge was unearthed using a hidden cam. Problem is, do authorities pay heed?

Like, posted on YouTube is the obvious overloading of a domestic passenger ship. Entitled “The Realities of Philippine Maritime Industries,” two video clips show passengers sleeping in corridors and in the mess hall because of double booking. The shipping line and the Coast Guard should not have allowed the vessel to sail, for safety reasons, and yet they did. The footages confirm the logo of the transport company. The vessel reportedly sailed on May 4-5, 2010, from Iloilo to Cagayan de Oro.

It was in the middle of summer, so fortunately the ship did not run into any storm at sea. Still, it was a criminal violation. Surely some of the passengers willingly would talk about the cheating, inconvenience and endangerment. Has the Coast Guard done anything about it?

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Unsurprisingly more of us vote for President than for barangay chief. Taken in by multimedia coverage of stirring campaigns, we feel the urge to be part of presidential political movements. By contrast, barangay polls are for us nothing more but boring neighborhood thingies. No less than three of every four of us turn out for presidential elections; 76 percent did last May in spite of long sweaty queues and lost registries in the first automated balloting. If past trends hold, only one in every two of us will go to the precincts on Monday. Most of our teenagers did not even list up for the simultaneous Sanggunian Kabataan voting.

Yet ironically it’s who runs our barangay that affects us more than who’s holding the Presidency. This is not to diminish the impact of the Malacañang occupant on our lives. Like, we nearly got stuck in 2007 with an overpriced but pointless $329-million national broadband network that the President endorsed. And we all now have cell phones because an earlier President broke up the telecoms monopoly in 1995. Still, the barangay head sways our day-to-day activities. Based on his scheduling of garbage pickup, for instance, we are able to plan our errands, like taking the kids to school or doing the marketing. Or depending on his stamina to lead night security patrols, we are able to sleep soundly. It’s the barangay chief who takes on our basic concerns: peace and order, community cleanliness and health, garbage composting and recycling, street lighting, sports tourneys, senior citizen affairs, links to city hall or the municipio, anti-drugs, anti-noise, fiesta details, mini-irrigation, calamity mitigation, sometimes even electricity and water connections, and alms and emergency loans.

If only for this reason, we must take seriously the duty to vote on Monday for our barangay councils.

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Now it’s Clark airport CEO Victor Jose Luciano’s turn to show up his feats versus his critics’. Beset by censure and lawsuits, he is recounting how he lured foreign airlines to the international airport in Pampanga. Foremost is South Korea’s Asiana, whose Incheon-Clark flights brought in thousands of tourists and businessmen from north Asia. Some visitors have taken up residence in surrounding cities; about 20,000 Koreans now live in Angeles and Subic.

Other airlines Luciano reportedly enticed are Tiger Airways from Singapore, Air Asia from Kuala Lumpur and Kota Kinabalu, and domestic carriers Cebu Pacific Airways, Spirit of Manila and Seair. Clark airport began to post 600,000 passengers a year. He had done it in 2004 as then-executive VP of Clark Development Corp., and aims to replicate it with Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese. A new entrant is Jin Air, the budget carrier subsidiary of giant Korean Air that will inaugurate its own Incheon-Clark flights next week. Luciano claims credit for the entry of Miascor-Gate Gourmet catering services, the SIA Engineering Maintenance-Repair-Overhaul, and the $2-billion Global Gateway Logistics City of Kuwait Gulf Link.

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Muslim leader and author Yusuf Ledesma reacts to Monday’s piece on land grabbing: “Faking of land titles and destruction of documents are very common. I was a victim of a scam in Tarlac City. My single title to nine hectares became about 60 titles. The land syndicate did it by first fabricating court orders inexistent in the dockets; it then subdivided the titles and sold most as residential lots. The Tarlac Register of Deeds now claims that Storm Ondoy destroyed the documents. It was the RD’s written reply after I wrote then-Land Registration Authority administrator Benedicto Ulep for papers of my case. Recently I filed with the court a case for falsification of public documents.”

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 “Many people find it easy to forgive on the level of words, but have yet to learn where forgiving really is — in the level of feeling.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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