If we are all aghast that cyber porn has caught on in our country (mind you, it is happening in many other parts of the world) it is due to the fact that it is the so-called "lesser evil" of the porn industry. As you already know, pornography is the devil's easiest temptation especially in this wired planet called Earth where naked women, and yes including men and gays, can be found in any website for free! Worse of all, it even comes into your email even if you don't want to see it. I do get my share of this from my junk mail with increasing regularity.
To combat this not exactly new scourge, one has to be ahead of this business and study the flow of money. This is why I fully concur with Cordova councilwoman Angeles Gairanod about their move to come up with an ordinance requiring money transfer companies to report suspicious transactions to the local government. In fact, Congress should take note of this because as we said earlier, the problem of cyber porn, while it has been happening in the town of Cordova, is also happening elsewhere.
Of course there is also the role of the Catholic Church together with our other churches like the Iglesia ni Cristo to stop this growing cancer in our society. Mind you, in our fight against human trafficking, we have come to know of certain mothers or parents who literally sell the flesh of their daughters in order to make ends meet.
Most of these parents, who have no morals to speak of, know that at a certain age, their daughters already have boyfriends and have sex. But having sex with a boyfriend doesn't help the family put food on the table. Hence, these parents sell off their daughters to the flesh industry. Again, this is a reality happening in many poor provinces and no one has lifted a finger to stop this problem.
As for cyber porn, a mother can argue that their daughters who show their bodies via video cameras have not been touched by any foreigner. So even if she is a virgin, she still remains a virgin because the whole shebang only happens on video and they are paid handsomely for doing this. But what will happen to that teenager when she grows up? Worse, her nude photos also get sold in cyber porn and someday that will haunt her life. So let us as a society band together to put a stop to this cancer of our society.
* * *
Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago revealed that our senators' take-home pay was P1.4 million a month! This is quite a revelation because our understanding, which we got from the Philippine Constitution of 1987, is that these elected officials should get no more than P35,000 a month. First of all, this is one provision that calls for an amendment to our constitution, where it should never mention any figures especially for salaries and wages of public officials whether elected or appointed. But it is there in the 1987 charter.
Perhaps it is time we asked ourselves how much is your take-home pay? If you are paid the minimum wage, chances are, you are getting at least P325 pesos per day…or roughly around P9,700 per month. Of course, I'm simplifying this. There are deductions like withholding taxes and what have you that should be reflected on your monthly salary. But no one in Cebu, except perhaps the richest Cebuano, gets a take-home pay of P1.4 million a month. So now is the time to ask: when did it all go wrong? More importantly, should we as a people allow these senators to get away with this?
I gathered that there is a general assembly of the Cebu Coalition at the function room of the Archbishop's Palace at 1 p.m. This is the group that was formed to fight the Pork Barrel. In one of their meetings, I expressed my thoughts that they were apparently stuck in this fight even if the Supreme Court had already ruled that the Priority Development Assistance Program, a.k.a. Pork Barrel, has been declared null and void. But apparently the group wanted to focus on the Pork Barrel issue, which only proves that they are not flexible.
There are many other issues out there that we need to fight for. One of them is what we in the Laity ought to do with the cyber porn problem, and yes, that coalition ought to make a statement against the salaries of our senators, which few Filipinos know. Then there's always that ever-present petty corruption happening in almost all the government agencies, which goes unreported because it is just too small for people to care to report.
At this point, I gathered that Congress will be prioritizing the amendment to the Constitution. But at this point, we no longer have any trust and confidence in this Congress. So we should also rally against Congress changing our constitution by themselves!
* * *
Email: vsbobita@gmail.com.