Masskara Festival in Bacolod and the corridors of Senate

October marks the celebration of the Masskara Festival in Bacolod City. This is an exquisitely colorful festivity that has become a month long celebration for the Bacoleños. Its celebration peaks on the third week with the popularly known and well attended street dancing and partying of natives with domestic and foreign tourists wearing delicately done masks and colorful dresses.

Masskara Festival is one of the most popular fiestas and tourist attractions in the Philippines. Although it compares with the Mardi Gras of the West, the Masskara Festival with all its intrinsic details and manner of celebration shows that it is a very Filipino fiesta in all its components. Like any other fiestas in the country, this celebration is highlighted with food festival on the streets, dancing day in and day out and a beauty pageant, not mentioning the thanksgiving masses celebrated in the churches all over the city.

In another city of the country a different Masskara Festival is celebrated year round; as members of this House wear different masks to hide their own personal interests and agenda behind their primary purpose in the House.

Terrorism is not a new thing for us, not even the anti-terrorism bill that is left shelved and dusty in the House of Senate. Just this week, our brothers in Mindanao were again victimized by a series of bombings. Added to this is the major threat that terrorism poses on our national security. But the legislation which will bolster national effort to fight terrorist plots is still kept hanging up to now.

The people in Senate with the power and intelligence they possess could easily pass the bill as President Arroyo urges. They raise arguments of anti-human rights provisions against the bill particularly on wire tapping and extended detentions. They worry about the possibility of abuse of the provisions, not seeming to realize the fact that it is in their power to "perfect" the provisions of the said bill by amending provisions against possible abuse. Endless hours are wasted in debate and arguments and this seems to have become the way of life in the Senate as well as in the House . Heated hours of debate and energy may as well be diverted to more concrete efforts to perfect the bill once and for all.

We are now faced with a worldwide threat of terrorism. With the emerging generation of new terrorists, it is indeed difficult to resolve a very complicated socio-political problem of terrorism. We need all the support we could get from the people, the legislators, the law enforcers and the Executive branch of government and even governments of other countries.

We seem to have forgotten that our country has become the breeding ground of terrorist plots because of loose security measures. In spite of the provisions of the Revised Penal Code which according to the Legislators are enough basis to resolve this national security threat, we the citizens are left vulnerable.