If truly President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino gave the nation the reforms that truly mattered, he should have been the first to abolish the hated Pork Barrel, which in my book is one of the root causes of corruption in this country. The Pork Barrel is the principal reason why politicians run in an elective position that pays an average of only P30,000 a month, yet they spend millions of pesos just to get themselves elected into office. There is no logic in this, but then again, who ever said that politicians practiced logic?
Call it inevitable that last Monday when Navotas Rep. Tobias Tiangco testified for the defense in the resumption of the Senate Impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, he talked about a scheme hatched by the majority party allegedly “to intimidate or exert undue influence” on members of the House to support the filing of the impeachment complaint against CJ Corona. Our political history has now been written that 188 such members of Congress signed this historic impeachment complaint without reading the articles of impeachment… and Rep. Tiangco validated what the public already knew from the other members of Congress and many other sources… that there were no questions to be entertained.
Clearly, the yellow minions of P-Noy drew the yellow line and declared that those who would take the side for the impeachment would be in the good graces of P-Noy and those who refuse to sign would be considered as his enemies. When the news reports of Rep. Tiangco’s refusal to sign came into light, I wrote an article saluting him… for if I was a member of Congress and even if I belonged to the ruling LP Party, I would certainly ask questions if there were any doubts in my mind. Rep. Tiangco’s testimony is our proof that what has happened in the Legislature… at least those supposedly honorable men and women in the Lower House have become nothing but the “rubber stamp” of P-Noy. Do we need anymore proofs?
It is for this very reason why I’m against the impeachment of CJ Corona because no President should be allowed to wield so much power where the three pillars of democracy will be under one man’s control. Of course I qualify this statement that… it the Prosecution can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that CJ Corona is guilty of the trash and rubbish thrown at his person, then let lightning and thunder hit him.
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Will gasoline prices break the record P60-plus per liter like what happened in 2008? A few more increases in the next few weeks and it’s just a matter of time when the gasoline pump prices hit the roof once again. Today the average pump price of gasoline is pegged at P57.75 per liter, while diesel prices are at P48.10 per liter average. Back in 2008 gas prices hit the roof at P60.46 per liter. With Western nations no longer buying oil from Iran, my bets are… oil prices will even break the previous record in 2008.
This means that the Aquino regime must cough up some kind of plan to help those Filipinos who really need a break… like reducing the Value Added Tax (VAT). If P-Noy doesn’t know, high fuel prices hit hard on the fishing industry. I know this because a few months back, I went fishing in northeastern side of Bohol and I talked with the fisherman and his little boy. When I asked the fisherman what he knew about the on-going impeachment in the Senate that has grabbed national consciousness, he merely replied, “Our lives depend on low fuel prices. The impeachment won’t bring fuel prices down.”
As far as mass transportation is concerned, we have yet to see what reforms the P-Noy regime has in store for our jeepneys and bus drivers who are suffering from high fuel prices. Of course until now no one in the government — from President Marcos down to P-Noy — has solved the problem wherein jeepney or bus fares rise and fall just like fuel prices. This is why it is hard for the government to increase transport fares because they don’t go down when fuel prices go down.
We’ve written the solution to this problem a lot of times a long time ago, but no one cared to listen, neither the Land Transportation Franchising Regulatory Board (LTFRB) nor the Land Transportation Office (LTO). I’m not about to write this again because the people behind the Aquino regime boasts a lot that they have the solutions to our nation’s problems.
But look at the Aquino regime, they’re stuck in that quagmire called Senate impeachment trial, when there are a million things in this nation that needs fixing. What kind of catastrophe is P-Noy waiting for that would jolt him to the reality that we have bigger problems than just getting rid of CJ Corona? P-Noy’s slogan “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” has become nothing but a fallacy… where dreamers do not even dare tread.
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For email responses to this article, write to vsbobita@mo-pzcom.com or vsbobita@gmail.com. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.