There’s the Rub
Forward to the past
By Conrado de QuirosShortly before Election Day, UNA put to the front of people’s minds what has been at the back of them. The 2013 elections were just a prelude to the 2016 presidential election.
Shortly before Election Day, UNA put to the front of people’s minds what has been at the back of them. The 2013 elections were just a prelude to the 2016 presidential election.
THREE DAYS to Election Day. Are you prepared for it? Here are a few practical do’s and don’ts for voters:
Can it be that Jojo Binay has lost some clout with the public, falling in its esteem not so inconsequentially? So the SWS says, by all of eight points, from an “excellent” 70 to a “good” 62. Binay is disbelieving, saying he is perplexed by that finding. Not least because Pulse Asia says the opposite: He is going up and not down.
There’s no hard evidence to confirm it. But the growing perception is that at no other time in our nation’s political history have political families become more brazen in promoting their interests than in this year’s elections. One quickly notes this in the senatorial slates of the two dominant coalitions. The opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) slate is led by the children of the three key figures who formed the coalition, namely the son of former President Joseph Estrada, the daughter of Vice President Jejomar Binay, and the son of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile. The administration’s Team PNoy is not any different. Two-thirds of its 12 candidates belong to political families.
Of the 33 candidates for the Senate, only one has no achievements to speak of, no accomplishments to her name. Nancy Binay has not served in an elective or appointive office; she has not run a company or a nongovernment organization; and until very recently, she has not championed a public-oriented advocacy or taken a [...]
We wish to emphasize that Vice President Jejomar C. Binay is supporting exclusively the candidates of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) in the 2013 elections.
HARVEY KEH is the same partisan, self-righteous and self-proclaimed advocate of good governance who never misses the chance to hit Vice President Jejomar Binay, even if the facts are not on his side (Inquirer, 1/1/13).
Last weekend, the leaders of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) led by former President Joseph “Erap” Estrada and Vice President Jejomar Binay went all the way to Cebu to express support for embattled Gov. Gwen Garcia who is currently holed up in the provincial capitol. Garcia was recently suspended for six months by the Office of the President for grave abuse of authority in connection with a case filed in 2010 by the late Cebu Vice Gov. Gregorio Sanchez Jr. So far, Garcia has chosen not to respect this order and decided to spend the holidays inside her office at the capitol.
In her column published Sept. 29, 2012, Solita Monsod questioned the basis of the Sandiganbayan decision dismissing in 2011 the graft case against former Makati Mayor Elenita S. Binay, wife of Vice President Jejomar C. Binay.
Heidi Mendoza is an attack dog unleashed in a political demolition job against Vice President Jejomar Binay by his foes (apparently referring to Mar Roxas). Heidi has become obsessed with the Binays, or has a history of animosity toward them (because the Sandiganbayan dismissed a previous case against Dr. Elenita Binay which had been filed on the basis of Heidi’s findings). To top it all, she is projecting herself in the media as part of another campaign, this time for the confirmation of her appointment as a member of the Commission on Audit.
In his Sept. 8 column, Ramon Tulfo posited that Vice President Jejomar Binay need not feel alluded to when ABS-CBN journalist Korina Sanchez spoke, in one of her radio broadcasts, of “dark, small malignant spirits” who were interested in taking over the post of interior secretary.
Given the underlying and widely known circumstances—Binay, though certainly not a spirit, is truly dark and small; and he originally aspired (as no one else did) for the position vacated by Jesse Robredo and now given to Mar Roxas, Korina’s husband—I wonder whom else Tulfo had in mind as being alluded to by the lady broadcaster. I mean, with all honesty and candor, Tulfo should probably be a bit more honest, at least to himself, if not to others, in this particular issue. That said, my hopes run high that Tulfo, one of the few writers I revere, will forgive me for saying that.
Finally, someone high up in government has raised the alarm about the rise of on-the-job training (OJT) requirements as a cover for unpaid or underpaid labor. Vice President Jejomar Binay has rightly called our attention to a phenomenon that opens the door to the exploitation of Filipino students. Abroad, such internships have been called the modern-day form of slave labor.
