5 years later, we still have a student government

I don't know how many times we have already written in this corner that the student government under Pres. Benigno Aquino III has never learned anything in five years as an OJT (on-the-job-training) in Malacañang. It began with the kapalpakan at the Quirino Grandstand, when eight Hong Kong tourists died because they could not talk to a deranged police officer. Worse, PNoy refused to apologize to the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong and because of this, angered the People's Republic of China, which never happened under previous presidents.

Then during the impeachment trial of Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona, they rammed this case to the throats of Congress with nary a debate… and in the Senate, the pork barrel and the Disbursement Acceleration Program was used to obtain a conviction against CJ Corona on a case, which Sen. Jovito Salonga said could still have been remedied.

Then when super typhoon Yolanda struck the Visayas, this student government swooped down on Tacloban City and fired the Philippine National Police regional director for Region 8 Supt. Elmer Soria for telling the media what he thought would be the number of casualties and estimated it would reach more than ten thousand people. PNoy's first act was to fire Supt. Soria instead of attending to the typhoon victims. This only shows that he wanted nothing that would tarnish his image.

In the end, the Aquino Regime forced the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council  to stop counting the casualties and missing after it reached the figure of 8,000, so close to the estimate of Col. Soria. So if you checked Wikipedia, no one can truly say how many lives were lost due to super typhoon "Yolanda." But as I wrote before, PNoy would have to contend with the souls that were lost simply because his government did not look for them anymore. 

Then who would have expected that last Jan. 25th, that secret mission called Oplan Exodus would end up with the massacre of the 44 Special Action Force of the PNP in Mamasapano… worse when the flag draped bodies of the fallen 44 arrived in Villamor Airbase, the Commander-in-Chief refused to attend the arrival ceremonies opting to grace the opening of a Mitsubishi plant where he could have sent the DTI Secretary in his stead.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, we learned about that stupidity perpetrated by the Bureau of Customs which wanted to search all balikbayan boxes, which caused a worldwide howl by Overseas Foreign Workers. Last Monday Aug. 31st, this was the first time in PNoy's history that he blinked and used that Liberal Party event called "The Gathering of Friends" at the Cebu Coliseum that he had ordered the BOC not to implement its plans to open up balikbayan boxes. But the damage has been done because of their propensity to shoot themselves in the foot, the ratings of PNoy's chosen one, DILG Sec. Manuel "Mar" Roxas, has not move upwards.

Meanwhile, the Philippine Daily Inquirer featured the story that we wrote already in this corner about that time last Aug. 24th during the "Gathering of Friends" where students who joined and filled up the Cebu Coliseum were prevented from leaving the coliseum even if they told the Presidential Security Guards that they had an up and coming examination. Stupidity from the top is obviously contagious and trickles down to the PSG soldiers who cannot even think that barring the students from leaving would end up with the youth no longer believing in the Liberal Party.

As Atty. Augusto "Gus" Go told the media that the incident was "immoral" and he clearly distanced himself from that LP gathering, although we know that Gus Go is close to PNoy. All I can say is, "Shame on the members of the Liberal Party and as we said in our previous column, the LP has become the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan of yesteryears.

What is happening with the LP is one of the very reasons why I've always wanted a shift to a Parliamentary/Federal form of government because the present political set up is only good for our politicians, but not for the Filipino people who they claim that they serve. But now we know that there are 20 senators and 100 congressmen implicated in the Janet Lim Napoles scam, which until now has not been charged by the Department of Justice (DoJ) or the Office of the Ombudsman. Well, the news yesterday from the PDT is that the Ombudsman would finally be probing PNoy and Budget Sec. Abad… but is this for show? The Ombudsman can easily dilly-dally this until PNoy exits in the year 2016. 

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