Boracay current. Welcome to Bora! The sun is shining, the wind is blowing, everything looks absolutely perfect for a weekend in an island paradise. You get off the plane at the Kalibo airport, wait for your baggage to come out, and wait, and wait...
The baggage carousel isn’t moving. Your wondering ends when someone shouts: “Brownout!” (That, of course, is Filipino English for a short power outage.) Everyone then makes a mad dash for the baggage carts, making the queues for cheap government rice seem like the most orderly queues in the world. Tourists grumble under their breath: “Some welcome.”
The power shortfall in the Visayas has again made itself felt, seeming to call out to government and the private sector to put up new power plants in the grid, please. Until more power capacity is put up in the Visayas, expect to start more of your Boracay getaways as nature intended: without electricity. A. Ho
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Makati dreaming. With third-term Mayor Jejomar Binay on the way out of his little kingdom in Makati City (and setting his sights on something bigger?), the mayor’s post of the country’s financial capital will be up for grabs come 2010.
This early, Binay has confirmed that he is ready to pass the torch on to his loyal vice mayor, Ernesto Mercado, whom he has described as “like my own brother.” The mayor has told reporters he is virtually 100-percent sure of supporting Mercado’s coming mayoralty bid.
But what about his son, Councilor Jejomar Erwin “Jun Jun” Binay, who is rumored to be being groomed for vice mayor?
The elder Binay played coy. “Puwede” [It’s possible] was all he would say when asked to confirm common speculations. As for his own political ambitions, Binay gave his usual answer: “No talk of that until 2010.” DJ Yap
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Miriam versus 100. She had been away for some time (mostly abroad to campaign for a seat on the International Court of Justice) but when Congress resumed sessions last Monday, Miriam Defensor-Santiago went right back into action—and promptly clashed with her colleagues. She even managed to take aim at herself.
She took the floor and impassionedly lectured against the proposed archipelagic baselines law and called congressmen “tarantado” for advocating it. [This choice term was invariably translated in news reports as “idiots,” but the translation loses the sense of panic, of a failure of nerve, she must have meant by it.] Lawmakers, she said, should leave such “highly technical” issues to experts.
Prior to the start of the debates next week, her Senate seatmate and fellow lawyer Francis Escudero confided his misgivings about the legal soundness of her recommendation that the Senate give its “conditional concurrence” to the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement.
“Chiz, you’re inventing the law,” Santiago was quoted as telling the 38-year-old Escudero, who had previously been given a similar brush-off during his interpellation of Santiago’s privilege speech on the “Hello, Garci” wiretapping issue.
Santiago also made known to reporters that she did not agree with Senate Minority FloorLeader Aquilino Pimentel’s idea for a Senate inquiry into the rice problem, which some say was the result of price manipulation.
She said the rice problem was not confined to the Philippines but was a global problem, so that would call for a “global inquiry in aid of United Nations legislation.”
“That would ensure that they will appear on CNN, BBC, and other international news networks. Whether they will appear to the world as respectable senators or as standup comics is problematic,” Santiago declared.
It turned out, however, that on April 8, two weeks before launching her latest broadside, she filed Senate Resolution 336 calling for a Senate inquiry “on the impending rice shortage in the country and the illegal activities of rice hoarders.”
Whew! To think she did all that quarreling in just one day. D. Pazzibugan
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Nightmare on High Street. Filipinos have a penchant for shopping, proven by the huge number of “tiangge” [flea markets] and bazaars that have proliferated all over the country. On the flipside, these stores—usually stalls not bigger than 1 meter x 1 meter—have promoted the spirit of entrepreneurship among Filipinos.
But when bazaar organizers start treating their concessionaires—mostly young startups—like dirt, the fun just goes out of shopping.
Last weekend’s Summer Lifestyle Bazaar at Fully Booked at the Bonifacio High Street commercial complex went from bad to worse for many bazaaristas when almost no shopper turned up for the event. The reason: The organizers apparently failed to inform the sellers that no promotional materials were distributed in and around High Street and the Serendra complex. In short, barely anyone knew about the bazaar.
Adding insult to injury, when the sellers complained about slow business, the organizers branded the concessionaires’ products “not saleable.” One of the organizers even called a concessionaire “a pain in the ass” (pardon their French) that other bazaar organizers should shun.
If all bazaar organizers were like them, “tiangge"-loving Filipinos may have to kiss their bazaar-hopping days goodbye. A. Ho
