PNoy's CCT program ain't no miracle!

Today, there will be a necrological mass for the late ABS-CBN anchor of the World Tonight, Angelo Castro, Jr. (ACJ). The death of Angelo Castro came on Maundy Thursday at St. Luke’s Hospital. He was surrounded by his family. Few people know that before I started my talk show “Straight from the Sky” in the year 2000, I went to Manila to ask for Angelo’s advice and he told me that you should talk as if the cameras were not around you. He also told me to use my own column to advertise my show, something that I was hesitant to do, but he insisted that I should do this and I obeyed him.

Angelo was a textmate of mine and during one motorcycle trip to Subic; he fetched me from the hotel to have drinks in his house. It was there that he told me that he practically envied me for being able to write or express my views through my columns and on my TV show. He then told me, “Look at me… I only read the news on TV!”

Angelo was sort of secretive of his illness. But he was away too long from the World Tonight that I wondered what happened to him and why he doesn’t answer my texts anymore. I met Tina Monzon Palma last year and she told me that Angelo was getting better. Then last December, I had the great opportunity to interview Angelo’s wife, June Keithly Castro, on my talk show and she told me that Angelo was getting better.

I didn’t realize then that June was also fighting cancer. Well, I spent my Holy Thursday and Friday praying for the soul of Angelo. With his passing, my mentor for my talk show is gone, just like my mentor for my columns, the late Sir Max Soliven, is also gone. Sir Max, by the way, was also instrumental in naming my show “Straight from the Sky.”

As the years pass by, we end up losing our old friends through some kind of illness. Sir Max died of pneumonia and I learned that the same thing happened to Angelo. May we request the pious reader to please pray for the repose of his soul.

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With the Holy Week behind us, let us remember that this coming Sunday is Divine Mercy Sunday, which was instituted by the late Great Pope John Paul II who canonized St. Faustina Kowalska of Poland. For those devotees of the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, today is the 5th Day of the Divine Mercy Novena where our Lord Jesus Christ requests for us to pray for our “separated” brethren or those who have left the Catholic Church. They really need those prayers. So make sure that you make your confession between now and Divine Mercy Sunday.

Meanwhile, I got a lot of negative comments on the Easter Message of Pres. Benigno “PNoy” Aquino, III through text messages. So I checked it out in the Internet and I found out that the President compared the resuscitation of the country’s economy and his fight against corruption to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. This only gives you an insight of the lack of spirituality either of the President’s ghostwriter or the President himself. After all, when he reads what was written for him, he must embrace it as his own.

PNoy said, “We have proven that the key to success is to follow the good example set by Jesus Christ—doing what is right, charity and being concerned with our fellowmen.” PNoy also used Jesus Christ’s example as his reason why as early as March, the Aquino Regime already registered its target of three million families in its conditional cash transfer (CCT) program. This is where the President’s comparison with Jesus totally differs.

By doing the miracle of the loaves and fish, Jesus fed 5,000 men, excluding the women and children. He must have fed 8,000 people when he did the miracle. The CCT of the Aquino Regime ain’t no miracle. It is simply giving away money to families direct from the taxes that we pay to the government! There is no miracle there and worse, after the money is spent (hopefully on food, not on Jueteng or the like), the three million families will still be hungry.

It is obvious to us that PNoy doesn’t believe in the old Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life.” It is for this reason why I am totally against the CCT for it only feeds people and makes them rely only on the government to provide their next meal.

In my book people should be given jobs, not food. But then, this is part of the hypocrisy of PNoy. His CCT is no different from what then Super Ma’am Imeldific used to do during the years of the Marcos dictatorship. I personally witnessed a feeding program in her hometown in Tacloban City and it certainly did not bring jobs to the jobless people there.

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