New developments

August ended with the announcement of the appointments of former DOTC Mar Roxas as DILG Secretary and Cavite Representative Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya as DOTC Secretary.

Of interest, both new appointees are descendants of former Philippine Presidents. Both have the confidence of PNoy. Both are from the Liberal Party.

Beyond that, PNoy and the two newly appointed officials promise to continue to walk the “tuwid na daan”. New DILG Mar Roxas will start his term in the shadow of Sec. Jesse Robredo, big shoes or big tsinelas to fill in.

Time will show how new DILG Secretary Mar Roxas will perform. Recognizing he can never be like Sec. Jesse, Roxas promises to do his best. New DOTC Secretary Abaya also made a similar promise, even as he also said he is not Mar Roxas.

Expect stones to be thrown at PNoy for these appointments, the biggest perhaps the charge that the appointments of two Liberal Party members are clearly political. All 3 promise that the interest of the nation and our people will come first, over and above the interest of their political party.

Let us wait and see.

In the Supreme Court, the first female and the youngest Chief Justice, Maria Lourdes Sereno, has also been appointed.

Again, critics did not wait to hurl their stones of protest and distrust vs. CJ Sereno. Unmindful or perhaps ready to face challenges, Sereno proceeded to immediately release her SALN, a first among the CJs in this country. To their credit, all other SC Justices followed. CJ Sereno also refused to give interviews and reorganized the divisions within the Supreme Court.

Expect more new developments ahead not only in the SC but in the DILG and in the DOTC.

Closer to home, Oslob’s whalesharks, hopefully, can look forward to more effective management and protection after the campaign not to feed them successfully reached the DENR which subsequently immediately ordered the regional DENR to take immediate action to protect the butandings. 

Thank you to all those who helped with this campaign. We hope that a win-win situation can be reached where the protection of the whalesharks as well as the sustainable livelihood of the fisherfolks in Oslob are both assured. Vigilance, however, is still a must so that the protection of both sea creatures and the community residents continue.

To lessen and more effectively manage waste, especially to avoid the clogging of water outlets that have caused so much flooding in various parts of the country and to avoid the harmful effects of waste on people’s health, Quezon City, like Cebu City, has joined the other LGUs in implementing stricter policies vs. plastic use. People in the past managed to live without plastics. Surely, alternatives to harmful plastics can immediately be suggested. Less plastic use will certainly go a long way in making communities cleaner and safer, especially when the heavy rains and floods come. Can we look forward to cleaner rivers too in the near future?

September has just started but Cebu City Councilors Nida Cabrera and Alvin Dizon have added to their already very busy schedule the planning of a workshop that will address the disaster resiliency level of Cebu City, all the way to the community, sitio level. Proposed to be conducted by September 17, the workshop goal aims to have a working system that will effectively move to mitigate and to avert major damages and losses that disasters bring.

The workshop hopes to determine who is doing what, where, and how (the WDWWH system) related to disaster management and resiliency. The workshop also aims to centralize the effective system of disaster management on the level of the city and to decentralize this working system as well all the way to the level of communities and sitio. The workshop hopes to see more people and communities empowered, individually and collectively, to protect themselves against any form of future disasters.

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