EDSA: A commemoration not a celebration

After the Senators called for Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, III and Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Renato Corona to “exercise restraint” so that the Senate Impeachment proceedings won’t be disturbed, Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, III quickly responded to this call telling media “I think I am within my rights to express my opinion. I speak for a sizeable number of our people. That’s the essence of democracy. Contending ideas should be threshed out in a market place of ideas. To keep quiet about the whole thing is... I think wrong. Time to time I reserve my right to be able to say what I believe should be said to the people.”

Pardon me Mr. President if I don’t buy your line of thinking. Sure we are in a democracy and debating about many issues are our constitutional right. However, when you are in the midst of a court case, there are certain rules that we all must follow lest we be slapped with a case of sub judice. What PNoy is telling us is he doesn’t even respect the advice of our Senators. If he doesn’t even show any respect for the Judiciary, how can we expect him to show respect to the Legislative branch?

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Twenty-six years ago, I was not yet a journalist and my only ties with the media was my being a director of the Cebu Newspaper Worker’s Foundation (CENEWOF) because the Avila Family once ran a newspaper business before World War II called the Cebu Advertiser, which was bombed by the Americans when they came to liberate the country. But I was already actively involved in the United Nationalist Democratic Party (UNIDO), which was a coalition of opposition parties against the Marcos dictatorship.

UNIDO was the party that had Tita Cory Aquino as our guest presidential candidate when the titular head of UNIDO, Sen. Salvador “Doy” Laurel (who later became Tita Cory’s Vice-President), dropped his presidential ambitions to become UNIDO’s vice presidential candidate and gave way to Tita Cory and the rest, of course, is history. When the ailing Pres. Ferdinand Marcos left Malacañang in a huff for exile in Hawaii, the nation was filled with euphoria; we held instant street parties when the people suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It was a proud day to be a Filipino.

Twenty-six years later, the euphoria of EDSA had long vanished… and we are left with a nation stuck as a 3rd world country while the rest of our neighbors, especially in ASEAN, have overtaken us especially with regards to the economy. This week, while we commemorate (notice I didn’t use the word celebrate anymore) the 26 years of the EDSA Revolt, it is time for the Filipino people to do some kind of soul searching and seriously ask ourselves, “Where did we go wrong?” Perhaps a more poignant question is “Why can’t we Filipinos fix whatever is wrong with our country?” We shall give you more of our thoughts about the EDSA Revolt for the rest of the week.

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Last Thursday Feb. 9, we wrote an article about the controversy in Cebu’s Football association. It has become the talk of the town wherein the sanctions slapped by Cebu Football Association (CFA) would end up punishing the students of Springdale, especially at a time when football, is now growing in popularity, thanks to the Azkals. Well, here is a response to that article coming from CeeFa Springdale ([email protected]).

“I read your article last February 9 entitled “Football: When adults quarrel, kids suffer!” and got the impression that the blame on this latest over Springdale being banned from tournaments should be with CFA President Richard Montayre. To be fair, I think CFA only did its job in enforcing the tournament rules and information floating around against Montayre, such as that an arrest warrant is out against him, may just be an unsupported rumor to attack his person.

But I do agree that ultimately, it is the kids that stand to suffer from this mess. I also chanced to read John Pages’ column, which more or less along this line too, however the Thirsty Cup which they organized enforced the ban against the Springdal kids. I hope adults walk the talk. Talk is cheap!

Thanks to CeeFa Springdale for the response to that article. As of press time we have not gotten any response from CFA Pres. Richard Montayre. But I stand by my story when I mentioned the arrest warrant because I did get a copy of that warrant and after the article came out, I did get copies of the various court charges filed against his person. Please don’t get me wrong. My intention is not to embarrass Mr. Montayre, which is why we are not printing the official court records in our possession, but rather we would like the CFA to fix whatever is wrong with their rules where it is the students that bear the brunt of their sanctions. They should change this unfair ruling!

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Email: [email protected].