Obama's message to Africa is also for us!

It was the first time that the 1st US Black President, Pres. Barack Obama made a visit to Africa as President of the richest and most powerful nation on this planet. His message to his fellow sub-Saharan Africans in Ghana is a simple but frank message that I would like to believe is not meant only for the Africans, but also for 3rd world nations like ours. Here’s a portion of his message to Africa. 

“Development depends upon good governance. That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long. That is the change that can unlock Africa’s potential. And that is a responsibility that can only be met by Africans. Repression takes many forms, and too many nations are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty. No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or police can be bought off by drug traffickers.”

That message might just as well be applicable for us in the Philippines. By the end of this month, Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) is scheduled to meet US Pres. Obama as the first ASEAN leader to visit the new US President. It makes me wonder what Pres. Obama would be telling Pres. Arroyo. If he so wishes, he might as well do a rehash of his African speech as it also points a finger at the Philippines.

I don’t know how many times I have written this, but the problem really with us Filipinos is that, we don’t fix our problems, even if we have already analyzed it to the point of getting analysis paralysis. We’ve got great minds who have already decided what direction the Philippines should take in order for us to move forward. Unfortunately, we get sidetracked by the very people who swore an oath to serve our people, but in the end, they have only enriched themselves while in office.

A case in point are the members of Congress, (this includes the Senate) the majority of whom are already in Millionaires Row. If we got their Statements of Assets and Liabilities (SALs) prior to their becoming an elect official, you can bet that a great majority of them didn’t even have money to be proud of. So the lesson to learn comes from Pres. Barack Obama: “No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves.”

One problem that we, the people, cannot fix is the problem we have with Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, whose office established the Office of the Ombudsman in the Visayas. For what? To collect data? Cebu’s Ombudsman Virginia Santiago have already collected many evidence strong enough to file graft cases in our courts, yet all cases of corruption have to pass through a very narrow door and only Ms. Gutierrez has the key. This is the clearest proof that a centralized form of government is not working for the interest of our people. I have confidence in Virginia Santiago to file all the graft cases that she investigated here.

This is why we’ve been asking for Charter Changes for more than 20 years now. Alas, even Cebuanos who want to embrace a Federal System do not even know how to sell this form of governance out of their own ignorance. It is for this reason why Congress is trying to sell us a Parliamentary form of government in order to take away from the Filipino voter their God-given right to vote for the leader of our nation.

If we went to a Parliamentary system of governance without that vital shift to a Federal System, it would cement the current centralized form of government and worsen our already precarious situation and not solve our problems. Just look at what’s happening in Thailand or Taiwan and you’ll get a picture of that Parliamentary system, which isn’t right for us.

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Last Saturday afternoon, we huffed over Pier One in the Port of Cebu to grace the blessing of the Cokaliong Shipping Lines’ “M/V Filipinas Ozamis” which has been dubbed as the “Youngest Vessel” in the Philippine Domestic Shipping Industry. Just when we thought that the Domestic Shipping Industry was in the doldrums due to high cost of bunker fuel and competition from the budget airline industry, our good friend, Chester Cokaliong adds a new vessel to his fleet of Roll-on-Roll-off (Ro-Ro) vessels.

While this vessel is a good 10 years old, in the context of the Philippine Shipping industry, this is practically brand new compared to the vessels plying our archipelago which are mostly 20-years old when it was launched into service here. I was with Maritime Industry Authority (Marina) Chairman Elena Bautista (she used to be with the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board) when we inspected the vessel, especially its engine room. It was so clean, you could sleep in there. It also had a separate air-conditioned control room for the engineers inside the engine room. This is due to Chester Cokaliongs’ penchant for clean vessels. Congratulations Chester!

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