You cannot serve two masters at the same time. Many are called, few are chosen. With these lines, I ask, “What did Fr. Ed now Gov. Ed Panlilio hope to achieve when he ran for Governor?”

I think he was confused about a lot of things. First he must have thought that being a priest is also like being a governor. Or that he could bring his priestly duties to his new job. Fact is, that is ideal but highly improbable.

Simple lang po. Pag ikaw po ay pari, lumalapit ang tao sa yo para magkumpisal ng kasalanan. They have acknowledged their wrongdoings and are asking for forgiveness and penance. Mabait na sila. They are also not afraid to confess to a priest kasi di naman sila nito ipapahamak o isusumbong dahil may vow of confidence ang confession, di po ba?

But in a governorship, di ganun ang mga tao. Gagawa pa lang sila ng kasalan. Masama pa sila. At sigurado di sila aamin sa governor kung gagawa o gumawa na sila ng kasalanan. It is very naive to think people are angels and saints all the time.

So see, there are a big chunk of difference there is that what is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander here. Ang approach ng pari ay iba sa approach ng isang public official. Ang sitwasyon ng simbahan ay iba sa sitwasyon ng kapitolyo o munisipyo. Kaya nga siguro, pag pari, pari at pag public official, public official. Di pwdeng double personality. May conflict of interest kaagad. Many will be bound to be frustrated.

As for the calling, may I ask. Did Fr. Ed heard the wrong calling when he answered the call to become a priest because what he really wanted to be pala ay maging public official. Or he heard wrong when he thought he had a calling to be a public official. He can’t be right in both cases. Ok lang naman ang maging pari o maging governor but you can’t be both and certainly you can’t expect people to see you as both.

I think Fr/Gov Ed is confused and the whole situation confuses people around him.

Reader’s Comment by goldenrule

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By Erika Tapalla
INQUIRER.net

“I’m a lesbian,” Jane says, “but not by choice.”

Hidden under the name Jane, this senior Miriam College student admits to liking girls. Unlike many of the closet homosexuals, she’s come out to everyone, except her family.

Standing five foot two with silky shoulder-length hair, she epitomized the physicality of a heterosexual female. She even had ladylike manners during the interview, sitting primly cross-legged with her hands on her knee.

“There was a stage in my life where I wore my brother’s clothes and cut my hair like a boy but that’s over,” Jane describes, “People only looked.”

Psychiatrist Gina Mohnani, specializing in abnormal psychology and children’s special needs, claim that being a predominantly Catholic country with strict religious and moral codes, people will always look simply because it is unnatural.

“In today’s society, we are already in fact being very accepting to homosexuality,” Mohnani asserts, “If you look closely to the socialites and celebrities in the newspapers and magazines, they are always with a gay guy. In the malls, lesbians walk holding hands all the time. People look, but that’s all.”

How a particular sexual orientation develops in any individual has remained a question marked in the field of science.

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THIS concerns the recent column of Mr. Honesto General titled, “GSIS law on foreign investments” (PDI,10/08/08). I really have no idea why the GSIS general manager Winston Garcia has declared that the GSIS investments under the Global Investment Program (GIP) “was earning 5 percent,” which is contrary to what the GSIS said a year ago that the said investment was supposed to have a guaranteed earnings of at least 8 percent?

Is the GSIS hiding something from its millions of active members, most of whom are having difficulty applying for loans with the pension fund agency? And if ever loans are granted to them, most often computations are questionable and beyond the understanding of ordinary government employees whose mathematical skills are not at par with those of the magicians at the GSIS loans processing department.

What seems to be mystery right now is the way in which the GSIS is tinkering with its members’ money?

The difference between 5 and 8 percent should be misconstrued as something that should be accounted for. The GSIS management should explain this in a public hearing which maybe called by Congress to shed light on the details of the said offshore investments. Otherwise, the difference should be another case of “finding a needle in the hay.”

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THIS is with regards to the article about the complaint on the BBC TV comedy program that portrayed a Filipina with racist tone. Filipinos whine and complain quickly when one of their kind is made fun of especially when made by foreigners. They will quickly paint it as racist.

Let’s face the fact. Filipinos are also racist. When you portray Visayans in a funny way as to mock them, isn’t it racism? When you mimic their heavy accent when they try to communicate in Tagalog, isn’t it racism? At least they can speak Tagalog while you can’t speak their language which you call dialect. The truth is, you don’t even understand the difference between a language and a dialect.

One example, a dialect of pure Tagalog is Batangas people’s mother tongue. The thing is, racism is alive and rampant in the Philippines done against the other ethnic groups in the islands not only against the Visayans but also against the Muslim Filipinos.

Before you take the speck on other people’s eyes, clean your eyes of your own log. Talk against racism? Talk about racism first that is rampant in your own backyard.

Joe Duterte via Reader’s Comments

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THIS month of October we are celebrating Children’s Month. I find it very inconsistent though that the very same body which started all these rights-of-the-child thing, the United Nations, would be the very same body also that would spearhead something that violates one of the basic rights that have been ratified by governments and states of the world after a decade of consultations with various religions, cultures, societies, institutions, organizations, etc.

Then here in the Philippines, which is one of the states which ratified the Rights of the Child, our lawmakers are trying to pass a law which once again destroys the spirit of the Rights of the Child through a bill comfortably labeled as something for the sake of women.

This very fundamental right is the Right To Be Born. Maybe I see it in a very simplistic way but isn’t it ironic that the United Nations initiated this activity but then again they would disregard such a very important right (the very first right according to the Rights of the Child) and promote the use of contraceptives among its member-nations?

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IT challenges reflection that a lawyer, instead of a doctor, is the chief architect and single strong advocate of House Bill 5043 which actually consolidated into one, House Bills 17, 812, 2753 and 3920 in this 14th Congress. The simple idea of gender equality easily permits room for women proponents themselves, in either House or Senate, to be the mouthpiece as well as the voice behind such a now controversial bill that is met with so much opposition from not few traditional groups — not Rep. Edcel Lagman — unless otherwise no other proponent from the female species is available. Women issues are the exclusive domain of women, or so I thought?

Offhand, HB 5043 pretentiously placed reproductive health, responsible parenthood, and population development under its policy framework. Good. But let us be reminded that a single legislative measure such as HB 5043 that carries more than three subject matters is actually “violative” of “overloading.” Bottomline: that is the way professors of law teaching on “How a Bill becomes a Law” always teach us. Where will HB 5043 all transport us to? Such a would-be law that prohibits and in fact penalizes any healthcare service provider who refuses to perform medically safe reproductive health care services in the absence of spousal consent or authorization is revolting. What is this?

Boldly, the bill claims the policy is anchored on the rationale of sustainable development with a manageable population of healthy, educated and productive citizens. Truly, this carries some kind of racist bias against those otherwise unhealthy, uneducated, and unproductive in our realpolitik. Is this Hitler’s idea of a “super race?” What about China with approximately two billion in population that has managed equitably well without compromising its position as the next economic superpower? I say as anecdotal the sweet claim of a population management stratagem of a two-child policy. The proponent himself has more than two of his own, doesn’t he?

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IT is lamentable (to borrow the word of Senator Pangilinan) that Mon Tulfo would call Ermita and Atienza “decent men,” while branding Jun Lozada’s claims “exaggerated.”

Now we see why the country is in a lamentable state. We glorify those people who never manifested “decency” when the NBN-ZTE scandal was a hot item, while the person who risked everything is being crucified.

At least I’m basing what I’ve written here from their previous actions and not based on their personality. Let me remind Mon Tulfo that even family and friends of criminals say that those criminals are “mabait” and not capable of committing crimes.

Lamentable!

Robert C. Garcia, via reader’s blog comment

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By Soliman M. Santos, Jr.
Contributor

THE government has not only set aside the initialed but unsigned final draft of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP)-Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD); it has also dissolved the GRP Peace Panel which negotiated the MOA. With the way things are working in this country, this can only mean that they (the panel) must have done something good. I therefore wish to give them some tribute.

In the Harvard Negotiation Project’s now classic book “Getting to Yes: Negotiating an Agreement Without Giving In” by Roger Fisher and William Ury, the first of four main points of method here is to “Separate the People from the Problem.” One of the notes under this is that “Negotiators are people first.” In negotiations, one is dealing not with abstract representatives of the “other side” but with human beings. They have emotions, deeply held values, and different backgrounds and viewpoints. That’s why one basic rule in negotiations is “Be hard on issues but be soft with people.” And who are these people whom many in the Filipino Christian mainstream are being so hard with now?

The GRP Peace Panel Chairman was retired Gen. Rodolfo Garcia from San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan. When he retired from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in 2004, he was Vice Chief of Staff. His military service in Mindanao dates back to 1970, after graduating from the Philippine Military Academy (PMA). He was a platoon leader and later Executive Officer in the 26th Infantry Battalion, Philippine Army (PA), covering Lanao del Norte, North Cotabato and Zamboanga del Sur. He rose to become the Commander of the 6th Infantry Division, PA in Central Mindanao in 1999. His transition from man of war to man of peace was made in 2003 when, while still AFP Vice Chief of Staff, he concurrently becomes Chairman of the GRP ceasefire committee for the peace process with the MILF. After the military retirement, he joined the Office of the Presidential Adviser of the Peace Process (OPAPP) as an Undersecretary, was appointed a member of the GRP Peace Panel and later became its Vice-Chairman. He took over as Chairman only in July 2007 after the stint of Secretary Silvestre C. Afable, Jr. who oversaw most of the ancestral domain negotiations up to June 2007.
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally written by the author for his blog. We’re posting it with his permission.

By Doy Cinco

Nakakalungkot isipin na kung sino pa ang “nagsusulong, nagtutulak at nananawagan ng good governance, moralidad at responsible citizenship, krusada laban sa jueteng at kurakot” ay siya pa ngayon ang iniipit, pinapatanggal sa pwesto at kinakasuhan ng katiwalian at kabuktutan.

Ano ang layunin at bakit gustong patalsikin sa pwesto bilang gubernador si Among Ed? Ang recall petition ba’y interest ng nakararaming Kapampangan, para ba ito sa kaunlaran, good governance at para sa pagbabago? Dahil ba sa plataporma at prinsipyong ipinaglalabang political reform, pagwawaksi ng kabulukan ng pulitika, pagwaksi ng guns gold at goons at sistemang padri-padrino? Ano ang political agenda, ano ang ALTERNATIBA?

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Editor’s note: We love a good conversation. So starting this week, we will be highlighting readers’ comments we deem interesting and relevant to this blog. Readers must identify themselves and not use anonymous names to get higher chances of being picked out from the crowd. Also, best to say where you’re from and put a link to online articles you wish to comment on. Here’s one we picked for this week.

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I am so appalled at how the Inquirer editorial on September 7, 2008 can be so careless and wrong about its facts despite its vast network of reporters and contacts who can do even a cursory verification.

The Consortium on Electoral Reforms or CER is not composed of lawmakers from both Houses of Congress. It is purely a civil society network of electoral reform workers and it definitely cannot “railroad” the passage of a bill.

With all due respect, the tone of the editorial makes it look more like a hatchet job against groups that supports reform in our political party system, than one that would encourage debate on this important issue. Where did this piece come from? I understand that Inquirer has to take strong positions on important issues, and although I do not agree with all of them, they are generally well written and informative. This editorial is different.

All that Inquirer should have done was to talk to Mon Casiple, the CER Chair, who is anyway very visible in the media, to ask CER’s positions on the political party reform bill. Inquirer may disagree, but at least it would be an informed position.

The insinuation of malice and sinister motive on CER is a grave insult to its network members who have selfishly worked for electoral reforms for a number of years now. This is plain irresponsible journalism that must be rectified.

I have made it a daily habit to read the Inquirer and its editorials over that of the other papers. Now I am having second thoughts about your paper.

Luie Guia, via readers’ comment.

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