Look… who’s sorry now?

With the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) done by President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III through his Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad declared all but unconstitutional by the Supreme Court (SC), so many stories pertaining to the DAP have emerged, and one such story made me recall that sometime at end of February 2012, at the height of the Impeachment trial of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona, the defense team led by Atty. Jose Roy III held a presscon wherein he revealed or alleged in a presscon that the Senator-Judges were being offered P100 million to convict then SC Chief Justice Renato Corona.

No doubt that explosive report incensed the Senator-Judges that by the first week of March 2012, all the Senator-Judges met and Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile (JPE) said, “This court must assert its dignity and honor in this proceeding. We are going to think about the penalty commensurate to the degree of what is considered to be an accusation against the members of this court.” JPE’s considered this accusation as serious as it suggested that the Senator-Judges were bribed to gain a conviction.

In that presscon, Atty. Roy was heard saying that the panel received information from a source that Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa was calling up Senators and dangling P100-million to defy the Supreme Court decision against opening of the dollar accounts allegedly owned by CJ Corona. The Senator-Judges then suggested that they file a contempt charge against the defense lawyer.

To thwart any contempt charge, Atty. Roy issued this apology “My apology and the apology of the defense. We stand by our actions. I accept your judgment and I thank you for sparing defense counsel. Be that as it may, it is my privilege to serve the penalty…I honor judgment of the court.”

However in the light of new revelations and with the DAP already declared unconstitutional plus the fact that Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile is now behind…err not bars, but in hospital arrest, perhaps we ought to revisit that incident and hope that JPE could shed light on that controversy so we could find out whether the allegations of Atty. Jose Roy were true or not? This is one way for JPE and his cohorts in the Senate to make amends to the Filipino people more so that the DAP disbursement already reveals telltale signs of bribery from the very top. So who’s sorry now? Certainly not Atty. Roy!

At this point, these Senators no longer have anything to hide from the Filipino people and if JPE or the other two Senators, Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla would come up with affidavits and admit to the public that they were bribed by the Aquino administration to gain the conviction of CJ Corona…it would certainly be an explosive revelation and proof of the corruption by the President. Now I need to check with Atty. Roy how he feels about the whole damn thing. Abangan!

* * *

Last Tuesday, I attended the public consultation on the proposed use of Filipino in teaching the General Education courses and the addition of Filipino as a core course at the Parklane Hotel. That consultation was for the Visayas Group of Regions VI, VII & VIII and it was very well attended. At the podium was Dr. Ma. Cristina Padolina, CHED Technical Panel for General Education, Dr. Amelia Biglete, Director IV Office of Programs and Standards Development, Dr. Freddie Bernal of CHED Region VII and Dr. Isagani Cruz, who also writes a column for the Philippine STAR and a CHED consultant.

This CHED consultation is a series being held all over the country. They had two previous consultations in Luzon and the one for the Visayas was held last Tuesday and on July 10 the last one will be held in Davao City. Forgive me my suspicions, I just hope that these consultations weren’t for show… and that the whole thing was already a done deal.

Anyway, the CHED consultation was done in Cebu, the heartland of the Visayas, which is a non-Tagalog speaking region and therefore many here find it offensive that we are taught a “foreign” language called Filipino, which is in truth 99.9% taken from the Tagalog language. Cebuano children usually ask… why aren’t they being taught in the language they were born? Well, this is being addressed today by the K to  12. But for higher education? Come now, didn’t the Constitution guarantee academic freedom for higher education?

I told the panel that teaching the Tagalog language in college isn’t going to land those graduates a job. The biggest jobs available in the job market today are jobs in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Centers in Manila and in Cebu and whether CHED likes it or not, graduates who are proficient in the English are the ones in demand these days. And no matter how you brag that you topped your Tagalog class, it won’t land you a job!

* * *

Email: [email protected] or [email protected]