By Harvey Keh

AS I listened to the testimony of former Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-Joc” Bolante, I again realized how important it is for our country to elect the right President in the upcoming 2010 National Elections.

If you listened to Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s arguments, she stated that Bolante is such a powerful person given the fact that he is able to disburse almost one billion pesos of the alleged fertilizer funds to chosen local government units and congressmen.

Santiago even said that even she as a senator doesn’t have that same power as Bolante; thus, we begin to ask, who gave such power to Bolante? Who appointed a man like Bolante to his position? Of course, it’s none other than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo whose government never seems to run out of controversies, scams and allegations of graft and corruption. It’s been more than seven years since Arroyo took power in the 2001 People Power 2 Revolution. Since then her administration will be remembered not with helping uplift the lives of millions of very poor Filipinos but with the billions of pesos that have been allegedly used to enrich the pockets and promote the self-interests of a few.

With this in mind, many of my friends have asked where have we gone wrong? Why can’t we seem to elect right leaders to our country especially in the national level? Some of my friends who are volunteers of election watch groups, such as Namfrel and PPCRV have even told me that they are beginning to feel frustrated since it’s been more than 20 years when we started these groups.

I’d like to believe that the main problem isn’t so much because we have failed to educate our Filipino voters on who to vote for in our elections but rather we haven’t given Filipinos the right candidates to choose from.

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By Harvey Keh

For the past two weeks our group, Kaya Natin! A Movement for Genuine Change and Ethical Leadership released a stand supporting Pampanga Gov. Eddie Panlilio on the recall petition filed against him by his political opponents in Pampanga.

Since that time, several political leaders led by Vice-Governor Yeng Guiao and Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo have come out in media telling us to stay away from this issue since we are not from Pampanga.

In an interview over a national radio program wherein Vice-Governor Guiao and I were interviewed one after the other, Vice-Governor Guiao said that it is wrong for people outside Pampanga to meddle in issues such as this which should only concern the people of Pampanga.
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by Harvey S. Keh
Contributor

JUST a few weeks ago, I listened to a National Situationer report given by the Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan (SLB), the socio-political arm of the Jesuits here in the Philippines.

SLB is known to be one of the most credible institutions who can give an honest to goodness analysis of what is the real state of our country and in their report they emphasized the following:

a.) Yes, the country’s economy continues to grow and, in fact, we have one of the highest growth rates in Asia. However, despite the economic growth, more than 25 million Filipinos continue to languish in poverty.

b.) 62 percent of Filipinos actually die without even having the chance to be seen by a healthcare professional. To make things worse, medicine prices are 5 to 45 times higher here in our country compared to other countries in Asia like Thailand, Pakistan and India.

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UPDATE: Thanks to reader EdgarJ for pointing out in the Comments section that the list mistakenly showed Niel Tupas Sr. as being proclaimed mayor of Iloilo City, when he was actually proclaimed governor of Iloilo province. We’ve made the correction.

Also, in response to qiqo’s comment, we’ve posted the list below apart from the Word document.

HERE’S the revised Commission on Elections’ list of proclaimed local officials as of 12 noon, May 19.

Mandaluyong
Mayor — Benjamin Abalos Jr.
Vice Mayor — Renato Sta. Maria

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PEOPLE are so angry — and that’s what scares me about the elections. My mom always told me nothing good ever came out of anger. I don’t understand who came up with the opposition tagline “Plan Co Revolt,” but it certainly doesn’t bode well for the future if those angry oppositionists win most of the Senate seats up for grabs. We’ll have rallies everyday, no law will be passed in the Senate because they’d want to do endless investigations and privilege speeches, they’d invade the evening news with endless complaints. All the more that the Senate will be useless as an institution.

On May 14, let’s vote with sobriety and good sense. Let’s review the candidates’ records in legislation — if they passed good laws, or if they did zilch.