Tonight’s special presentation on Straight from the Sky, we bring you the top officers of the Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) to answer our question, “What’s up with the MCWD these days?” That Cebu has a water problem is ever present in the consciousness of Cebuanos in the last two decades. Yet Cebu continues to grow by leaps and bounds despite this obvious handicap. Stranger still is the reality that housing villages or communities have sprouted in the Metro Cebu area, so where are these people getting their water needs?
With us tonight is MCWD’s top honcho, Chairman Juan Saul “Juancho” Montecillo, Vice-chairman Joy Augustus Young and Director Joel Yu. One main point of discussion is the controversial Carmen Water proposal by the Ayala Group. Somehow this plan has proven to be too costly, too far and too controversial. Our worse fear is that most of the lands near that water source have been bought by rich individuals who believed that the Carmen Water project would shower them with huge profits. Well, it seems that this project is already at a standstill simply because it’s just too expensive to bring to Cebu.
Watch this very interesting show tonight on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00 pm so we will have a clearer understanding about what’s going on with MCWD today.
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My favorite President, former Pres. Fidel V. Ramos was correct in asking Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) to make her future plans clear to the Filipino people. All this talk of turning Congress into a Constituent Assembly (con-ass) is a very desperate move because Congress doing this unilaterally did not happen without the blessings of Malacañang. This is aggravated by news releases that Pres. Arroyo had already made 17 visits to Pampanga this year alone. Why the sudden Presidential attention in Pampanga only puts fire in the smoldering smoke that Pres. Arroyo would seek a seat in Pampanga’s Congressional district.
Add the headline story last Saturday from The Philippine Star that blared, “Nograles: Parliament Shift after 2010 Polls” already gives you a road map to our shift to a Parliamentary form of government despite the obvious objections of many sectors in our society. I have said it here before that a shift to a Parliamentary System of governance is not suitable to Filipinos who despite our tag as Asia’s first Democracy, we are still politically immature. When we adopted the 1987 Constitution, we threw away the old and tried Two Party System of government and ended with a multitude of political parties that suited only their respective political leaders.
In a Parliamentary system, we only need to vote for our Congressman or Member of Parliament who in turn will be the ones voting for the Prime Minister. Hence, this shift to a Parliamentary form of governance will disenfranchise the Filipino voter from voting for the leader of our nation. If and when we allow this to happen, you can bet that Pres. Arroyo will run as Member of Parliament (MP) in Pampanga; the same is true with former Pres. Joseph “Erap” Estrada or former Pres. Fidel V. Ramos (FVR), who will then “lobby” or should I use the word “bribe” our MPs to put them as Prime Minister of the Philippines.
So the big question is, what happens if Gloria Arroyo is chosen to be the next Prime Minister? Will Erap and his minions accept it or will they take to the streets, just like what has happened very recently in Bangkok? In Japan, voters are already complaining that their MPs have been electing moribund leaders who no longer have any vision for a better nation. Alas, their constitution prohibits voters from voting directly their Prime Minister. No sir, a Parliamentary isn’t good for the Filipino people who want to vote their leaders, whether it’s the President or Prime Minister.
The real problem we are facing is House Speaker Prospero Nograles or former Speaker Jose de Venecia before him mistakenly believes that Filipino voters want a Parliamentary system. In truth, it is the politicians who want a Parliamentary System so that they can make more money when they take sides as to who would pay the highest to become the next Prime Minister. This is the whole truth about why we are being “corralled” or herded like cattle into a Parliamentary system of governance.
Just to prove to you that these politicians (almost all of them have become millionaires) do not really care to give us better governance, there is no talk about that shift to a Federal form of government, which would have transferred the vast powers of the President or Prime Minister to the various Federal States. What this country really needs is a new breed of politicians, someone who puts the needs of the country and its people ahead of his own. But the problem is, where can we find this person?
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Email: vsbobita@mozcom.com