First, allow me to greet all our readers Kung Hei Fat Choi! Or a very Happy New Year and we hope that this Year of the Sheep will bring us better leaders rather that the sheepish ones that we have in Malacañang. We Filipinos ought to listen to what Pope Francis told the young people during the Youth Encounter…”To help build a better nation for yourselves.”
Next week, the Philippines will be observing the 29th anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution and it is time to bring you back to memory lane. Twenty-nine years ago the conjugal Marcos dictatorship was at the peak of its 14-year reign that curtailed many of our basic freedoms… one of them was the freedom of speech. It came to a point that the mainstream newspapers were no longer believable (remember the headline of one news daily a day after the late Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino’s funeral that a boy was hit by lightning?) which is why the so-called “Mosquito Press” like Mr & Ms and the Inquirer blew into the scene telling the truth to the Filipino people.
Well today, the Malacañang sycophants have put more money to the spin masters, trying to sow confusion to our people in what I would call a damage control to get the people’s mind away from the disaster of Mamasapano, Maguindanao where 44 elite Special Action Force (SAF) policemen died in a covert mission where the truth has yet to be uncovered.
If only someone told the truth, we could have already move forward rather than stay hanging on this issue. Didn’t they tell you that the truth shall set you free? Mind you, this is written in the masthead of The Philippine STAR because our founders, the late Max Soliven and Betty Go-Belmonte, wanted it emblazoned in front of your eyes.
What we know now is that 26 out of the 44 killed had bullet wounds in the head at close range. This is proof of the brutality of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and yet the Aquino regime is still pushing for the Bangsamoro Basic Law where a few thousand who are armed to the teeth would be granted P70 billion to create their own state?
Enter the so-called National Transformation Council (NTC) which is chaired by Cebu Archbishop Emeritus Ricardo Cardinal Vidal who read a formal statement asking the Aquino regime to step down because of questions of legitimacy in the 2010 and 2013 elections where the misuse by the Comelec of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) that proved to be so faulty, an Ateneo IT Prof. Alex Muga discovered the phenomenon called 60 percent for the Liberal Party candidates, 30 percent for UNA and 10 percent for independents.
All these issues are now in the Supreme Court for deliberations. Meanwhile, back to memory lane. EDSA 1 became a reality because of his eminence Jaime Cardinal Sin and a civil society angry at the Marcos regime, where if you recall, on Feb. 9, 1986 Comelec tabulators or programmers walked out of the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) because of massive cheating, thus it triggered the EDSA Revolt.
Twenty-nine years later, because no one investigated those in the Comelec who cheated, history is repeating itself. One of the core problems plaguing the Aquino regime is legitimacy because of the PCOS machines. Funny when Germany, France and Australia have shunned electronic voting, the Philippines continue in this misguided path. Politicians say that the ballot is sacred…. No one went into a true investigation of the PCOS machines, which is why this ghost continues to haunt our electoral system.
Meanwhile back to the NTC… come now who really is scared of a bunch of bishops, pastors or Imams led by a retired Cardinal calling for the transformation of our nation? Isn’t this what our nation needs today? Do I need to remind you that our biggest enemy is ourselves? If our nation is failing today, it is only because of the political elite that openly steals the kaban ng Bayan…and yet only three of them are in jail. Where are the rest?
Actually the NTC has been around for more than two years now, but last year, despite the media ignoring the NTC, they held the first NTC Assembly in Lipa City and hosted by Archbishop Ramon Argüelles on Aug. 27 and this was followed by the NTC Assembly in Cebu on Oct. 1 at the ALU Building and hosted by his eminence Ricardo Cardinal Vidal.
Then this was followed last Nov. 11 in Butuan City hosted by Arch. Pueblos de Dios and then last Dec. 3 it was held in Clark, Pampanga. Archbishop Emeritus Fernando Capalla hosted the NTC in Davao at the SMX in Davao City where more than 5,000 people showed up, many of them Muslims led Dr. Mashur Jundam, a retired UP professor on Islamic Studies who is the National Chairman of the MNLF.” Hence, the NTC is a nationwide organization that seeks true and honest reform and change in our system of governance. Now that the NTC is mainstream… media has finally taken notice. So let ask this question, are we afraid of transformation?
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Email: vsbobita@mo-pzcom.com or vsbobita@gmail.com