Greetings on the Philippine STAR's 25th anniversary

Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of The Philippine STAR, which also means exactly that next month I too will be celebrating my 25th year as a journalist. I joined The STAR when the Cebu Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Inc. (CCCI) formally invited the late Sir Max Soliven, publisher of the Philippine Daily Inquirer as our guest speaker. When he arrived in the airport I personally met him and he was carrying on his arms a new newspaper in blue and yellow colors, and announced to me that he had left the Inquirer, and was now publisher of a brand new newspaper, The Philippine STAR.

It was in that Chamber of Commerce speech that he formally introduced The Philippine STAR to the Cebuano businessmen. Then during dinner, he asked me to help him in Cebu, as he needed someone to be his Bureau Chief. The rest is history. He gave me my first media ID and my life changed from a simple businessman to one of being a journalist.

On this 25th year of The Philippine STAR, kudos to the management and staff led by Sir Miguel Belmonte and Isaac Belmonte for their professionalism and commitment embodied by their mother, the late Betty Go-Belmonte, found in the masthead of this newspaper . . . ”Truth Shall Prevail”. Because of this com-mitment, it gives credence to The STAR slogan, “The only paper you read from cover to cover”. Kudos to the men and women of The Philippine STAR! More power!

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President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) was dubbed as “Utak Wang-Wang” which expanded his first SONA where Wang-Wang was its piece de resistance. He pursued this theme in the hope that it would stop the culture of negativism and the culture of corruption that have prevailed in this country for many decades. He assures every Filipino that “No one will be left behind.” The speech lasted for 53 minutes and was interrupted by applause at least on my count for 45 times.

One of his first targets are those self employed professionals, doctors, lawyers who pay the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) virtually nothing, because he knows that many of them earn a lot more money than what they pay for in taxes. However the President did not give any details or plans, whether he would revamp the BIR or come up with a new system of taxation, which is one of the reforms that we expected under his watch.

One positive note that the President pointed out was the housing for the police and military where he literally gave a PowerPoint presentation on their monthly expenses. On this note, one can say that the Aquino administration is moving forward, especially when he clearly stated that the housing program would include the policemen in the Visayas and Mindanao.

Another positive note was his thanking his eminence Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales for having a dialogue with Malacañang and the election of Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma to the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), which he believes would improve the cooperation between the church and state. That P-Noy did not urge Congress to push for the Reproductive Health Bill was in my book very encouraging. Perhaps the pro-life groups have made a dent in this very hotly debated issue.

I especially liked what the President mentioned that we Filipinos ought to show our gratitude to the nurse who is working here at home for a few pesos rather than earning dollars abroad… that we should stop and thank the policeman in the intersection working in the rain without a raincoat. I fully agree with the President on this.

The President also announced the appointment of retired Supreme Court Justice Conchita Carpio Morales as the new Ombudsman. Now whether the Ombudsman will only go after former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo or whether she would truly be independent minded and even file cases against the appointees of P-Noy remains to be seen.

However there were inconsistencies in the Aquino policy. Here he was proudly declaring that the Coast Guard would be getting the Hamilton Class cutter to modernize our Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), yet we know too well that this vessel is around 40 years old already. I would have wanted P-Noy to declare that he would build a new navy from our own shipyards rather than accept old and used US Coast Guard vessels, after all the Philippines is now the 4th largest producer of ships in the world.

On the other hand, the President mentioned that we might soon be having a monorail system, one invented by a Filipino. To be honest, I don’t know of any mass transit system invented by a Filipino except the venerable jeepneys. I agree that we should stop corruption or stop all that negativism, but P-Noy should stop smoking as his coughing interrupted his SONA twice.

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