Dracula revisited

“IT’S MORE GUNS IN THE PHILIPPINES!”

That’s what one guy posted on Facebook after news broke out that Race Car Driver Enzo Pastor was shot three times by assailants riding in Tandem in broad daylight. That was Friday the 13th last week, the same day two businessmen known to a wide circle of friends and associates were shot and killed in separate locations also in front of people. The shooters were calm and collected, clearly unafraid and not worried about the police or anyone challenging them. Those three dead men are not strangers or statistics. They are publicly known individuals with many friends and in the case of Pastor well known to many members of the media.

In past cases, people would surmise that the killing was probably business related, some relationship gone sour or road rage. But this week an angle that never used to pop up and has apparently begun to spread on the Internet is that one of the shootings was possibly a “Gang Initiation”! This should be a serious concern for law enforcers because fear and panic is beginning to take root among people. A few weeks ago two drug crazed men riding a motorcycle shot 7 people in what was called a “joy ride.” In America, anti gang cops call that a Drive by Turkey shoot, except here businessmen are the ones being shot not gang members!

Perhaps the President can now be convinced that the current crop of leaders in the Philippine National Police simply don’t have the leadership and command to insure peace and order or public safety in the country. Mr. President we have a crisis, a crisis of confidence and safety and we need real officers to do the job.

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Why do you need to drive a wooden stake through the heart of a Vampire? Why do you need to use a silver bullet or a silver arrow to kill a Werewolf? Same reason why we need the Supreme Court to decide with finality on the constitutionality of unconstitutionality of the Development Acceleration Program fund a.k.a. DAP so that it can never rise from the grave or Malacañang to suck taxpayers dry and be used as payoffs or to fund political dynasties.

If the Supreme Court decides that DAP fund is illegally acquired from savings of the national government it would not surprise me because Malacañang veterans have all said that the DAP fund was nothing more than government savings which has customarily been realigned or used without the appropriate law that is required. By law, all excess or saved funds should be returned to the General Appropriations fund, but has never been and has been used up by all administrations. The only thing scaring the administration is that if the Supreme Court declares the DAP fund unconstitutional it could become grounds for impeachment for PNoy. Maybe in a long shot but chances are, Butch Abad will be the bulls-eye of such a decision since the responsibility and decision was his. In fact it is Secretary Butch Abad who is being given the credit for christening or giving the name “Development Acceleration Program Fund.” The only consolation Abad can lean on if he gets targeted is that PNoy will surely offer to pardon him just as he was rumored to be willing to pardon Secretary De Lima if she had been charged and sentenced with contempt for not allowing Ex-President Arroyo to leave the country.

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Members of the House of Representatives who are concerned about the lack of schools in Metro Manila were apparently told that buying land in the Metropolis is already next to impossible because of exorbitant prices and because there are no more government lands available that can be used for schools. In response Congresswoman Kimi Cojuangco has repeated the call to decentralize Metro Manila calling on the national government to relocate vital industries and institutions outside Metro Manila. Many politicians and members of the academe have long proposed this idea but no one is biting. The reason is the government almost always uses the same formula it has for relocating squatters where they lump and dump them in some undeveloped place to fend for themselves just like in the TV series “Survivor.”

In reaction to the news item, two things came to mind. First there is still some sizeable, strategically located land within Metro Manila big enough to build not just schools but full pledge campuses or government state universities and colleges. If people in the education sector can’t see them, they are either blind or being politically correct! Congresswoman Cojuangco and associates should take their gold carts and drive around the following places: Villamor Air Base Golf course, the Camp Aguinaldo Golf course, The Veterans Hospital Golf Course and the Fort Bonifacio driving range/course. In Quezon City alone, there are huge swaths of land between EDSA – Quezon Boulevard and North Avenue hardly used by QC, the Ninoy Aquino Memorial Park, and the DENR. There is also the Quezon Memorial Circle that hardly honor or commemorates President Manuel Quezon but serves as a tiange, restaurant-turo turo chain of stalls.

The second point that needs to be addressed by coming up with a checklist and system is the establishment of State Universities / Colleges/ schools outside Metro Manila. If it’s going to be off metro, these institutions of learning must be complete like UP Diliman or Siliman University or UP Los Baños is. Not just class rooms but buildings that are typhoon proof, with dormitories, dedicated police force, infirmary or medical facility, a real road network and accessible to commercial needs of teachers and students.

As a family that is now spending 50 percent of our time in Lipa City, Batangas one major concern has been the absence of choice of colleges in the area. Besides La Salle Lipa, the rest are new public colleges while better known schools are in the Sta. Rosa to Calamba to Los Baños, Laguna area which is still a 30-minute daily drive one way. Yes many people want to migrate out of the Metropolis but unless the government and Congress makes the plan and the enabling law for City centers to have more State Universities, the Exodus will be slow and long.