Will congressional history repeat itself today?
At last 57-year-old Italian missionary Fr. Giancarlo Bossi, who was kidnapped last June 10 in Zamboanga Sibugay, was released last Thursday, weak and frail, but alive. Call it perfectly timed for the President’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) before the 14th Congress today. As the old saying goes, “All’s well that ends well.” Unfortunately, we really can’t say this in Fr. Bossi’s case because of the death of the 14 Marines.
Fr. Bossi’s kidnapping should be a lesson to all of us, especially to foreigners working in this country that they have to take extra security precautions when they are traveling particularly in known hotspots like Zamboanga del Sur because like in the case of Fr. Bossi, the Marines sent to look for him suffered 14 casualties in a firefight with the MILF.
What is now very clear is that these Marines entered a heavily defended MILF-controlled area and after they were ambushed, they were overcome by superior and intense firepower. I hope to hear from the SONA of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) her government’s determination to rid any armed groups from controlling a single square meter of Philippine government estate. We got rid of
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Today is the day when eager Cebuanos will find out whether history would repeat itself when a hundred years ago, the first Speaker of the Philippine National Assembly was Don Sergio Osmeña Sr. at a young age of 29. Since that time, no Cebuano has ever held such a high post. Today, the 14th Congress will decide hopefully through clear-cut democratic rules to have secret balloting in order to arrive at who should be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives. Will they retain Speaker Jose de Venecia for a fifth consecutive term or will this 14th Congress begin with real reforms and call for a change in the leadership by installing the only contender to the throne –
I’m sure that the first order of battle will be for the rules governing the election of the House Speaker. Since the 9th Congress, our congressmen have never known any Speaker, except Rep. Jose de Venecia. But with the entry of some 80 “neophyte” congressmen in the House, there is a very strong chance that Rep. Pabling Garcia would make history repeat itself.
While I have never been a fan of the 1987 Constitution, however, let me point out the spirit of having term limits for elected officials embodied in this Constitution… which is to prevent potential dictators from holding unbridled power, which has actually happened in Congress under the leadership of Smoking Joe de Venecia. Because of De Venecia’s vise-like grip of Congress, he can make demands from congressmen who vowed fealty to his dictatorship of Congress… like voting viva voce… so he would be able to know who voted against him so he could act accordingly.
While many in
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Last Friday night, we huffed over to the enchanting Abaca Boutique Resort & Restaurant, (owned by Jason Hyatt, though he admits he is not related to the Hyatt hotel chain), one of Cebu’s best kept secrets, for a fabulously delicious evening for the grand launch of the Nokia E90, the newest model in the Communicator series, hosted by Globe Platinum and Nokia. Invited to this event were Globe Telecom’s Platinum members and rabid Nokia users like me.
It was the first time I met the new Nokia country manager, William Hamilton-Whyte. On our table was Mrs. Nikka Singson-Abes, corporate communications manager of Nokia; Mrs. Regina Reyes-Lingan; Coco Domingo, honorary consul to
No launch of the E-90 would be complete without going through the chronology of Nokia’s Communicator line of mobile phones. It started with the Nokia 9000 model, which had fixed antenna and was huge, bulky and slow. Thankfully, this was the only Communicator that I didn’t have because it was not available in numbers in
My first Communicator was the Nokia 9200 with a folding antenna. The first one I saw was shown to me by no less by Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala (JAZA) when he came to
I recall that the first time I used it was the day that the great Pope John Paul II died and my editor Tony Paño sent me a text message if I wanted to change my column to pay tribute to the Pope. Tony clearly had a hunch that I had a prepared column in the event the Pope died. But then we were on a
No doubt the E90 is a handier handyphone loaded with lots of state-of-the-art features. Alas, the GPS system still doesn’t work in
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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” shown every Monday,
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