I LIKE best the last paragraph of your editorial especially the second sentence: “the need for vigilance continues…”
I always make it a point to read your editorial everyday when I come to work and that line hit me hardest. You inspire your readers.
I pray people like you will continue to be like you… doing their work with the highest integrity. Thank you.
– Archimedes Pormicelle, Caloocan (via e-mail)
June 2nd, 2007 at 2:31 am
I had to read the editorial referred to in the comment to understand what the writer is writing about.
The editorial was nice but I find the extrapolation of Defensor’s sentences as going too far. This is what I find disturbing in some editorials of this paper.
It is one thing to be critical but it is another to be overtly oppositionist hiding behind freedom of the press. Can this paper not show some semblance of fair play?
June 1st, 2007 at 11:04 pm
While you describe Defensor’s conceding defeat as a class act, I look at it differently. It was more of him saving face and salvaging whatever honor was left from his days as a student leader. He reportedly remains a player involving shenanigans in government housing projects. He abused his political position to act as “padrino� to a foreign-backed recruitment agency, to the prejudice of our nurses who were duped by said agency into believing that they were going to be directly-hired employees. Unfortunately a sad reality, the government promotes manpower export to keep our country economically afloat through OFW remittances. This is why we call our OFWs “mga bagong bayani ng bayan�. When some of these “new heroes� complained to the government about the misrepresentation committed by their recruiter, and about the abuse and discrimination they suffered from their recruiter’s principals, Defensor kowtowed to foreign interests and disregarded our OFW’s documented complaints. He intervened in the recruiter’s preventive suspension case, and later rationalized that if the recruiter’s license continued to be suspended, chances of other nurses being recruited by said agency to work in the US would be jeopardized. You think that was a class act? He would have shown true statesmanship had he declared: “Investigate Sentosa Recruitment Agency. Let us protect the rights of our overseas workers. Other nurses desiring to work in the US may apply with other recruitment agencies, pending the suspension and investigation of Sentosa�. But he did not. He lifted his finger and dialed POEA, putting pressure on the latter to lift Sentosa’s suspension order. Reports even had it that as a consequence of his political interference, Defensor received campaign funds for his senatorial ambitions from the foreign owners of the Filipino dummy recruitment agency. Call that a class act? His conceding defeat was the last straw he could grasp to salvage his sullied honor. I just hope the Senate (paging Senator Pimentel) conducts an investigation regarding this Sentosa imbroglio. Now that Defensor is no longer a Cabinet member, he can be subpoenaed without hiding under the skirt of PGMA’s prohibition. If and when Defensor tells the whole truth and owns to his political intervention, that would be the day I would agree: “A Class Act Indeed!�. But until then, his was just a loser’s pragmatic act of salvaging his honor (or what’s left of it).
June 1st, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Yeah, Me too! I thank you, for this blog, Because of this I have a place to go and get all my frustration out. Tea, Coffee anyone?
June 1st, 2007 at 7:36 pm
“And he was referring to the fact that there are operators, not even necessarily working at the behest of the administration, but rather, open to the highest bidder, trying to change the voting result. He knows it, because everybody knows it.”
The statement above was taken from from the article “A Class Act”, in which Defensor was characterized as a person who knows the flaws of Philippine election process- cheating on the highest degree. So then, Mr. Defensor how are you going to go from where you are to change this process, so when you decide to run for office again that our process is not that of what you describe? Change is good and change is now…or forever be doomed!
The other losing candidates
June 1st, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Politicians admiting defeat in this day and age, in this country which has known enmity, is a rarity. And it had to be coming from the former right hand of the President herself.
Hats off to Defensor!