Senate hearings: All thunder, no rain?

The minimum pay for wage earners in Central Visayas has been increased by 20 pesos. “Para ra ni pandesal kada buntag,” said a dockhand from Labangon.

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 “Don’t belittle the 20-peso wage hike,” said someone to a dismayed factory worker. “Lakaw sa tanang karsada tibuok adlaw makapunit ka ba og 20 pesos.”

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 Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago and Sen. Joker Arroyo agree that there is so much drama in the Senate hearings. “The inquiries do not amount to anything,” says Madame Miriam. An American Indian chief, whom I often quote here, put it this way: “All thunder, no rain!”

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 Madam Miriam blames the media, especially the tv networks, for the showy and pedantic behavior of the senators — or some of them anyway — during Senate hearings.

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 “They like to grandstand before the TV cam,” remarked one observer. One TF reader once suggested to ban any live TV coverage of the Senate hearings to get rid of the drama aimed at scoring pogi points.

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 Lithuania and the Philippines have at least two things in common: They’re both Catholic nations and basketball is jokingly referred to as their second religion.

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 Lithuania, a former member of the once powerful USSR, is very much smaller than PHL. It has a population of only three million, about the same as the day population of Cebu.

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 But Lithuania is a world basketball power. It has won several cage championship while PHL has none, despite our 95 million people most of whom are hardcourt devotees. The Agence France Presse said in a recent article that Lithuania is a small country but where basketball is concerned, it is a global giant.

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 Dictators, including and especially the most oppressive ones, are slowly falling from their perches. Dictators you’d never have thought would fall, have fallen with a loud thud. Didn’t former Sen. Ninoy Aquino tell us this before? He said no dictator has ever remained standing forever. He told Marcos this shortly before Macoy’s fall.