Happy New Year to everyone!

For our first ever special presentation on our talkshow Straight from the Sky we bring you Mr. Andrew Harrison, Chief Executive Officer of the GMR-Megawide consortium that gave us Terminal 2 that we inaugurated last June. Terminal 2 was eventually awarded Asia Pacific Medium Airport of the Year by the Capa 2018 Asia Aviation Awards for Excellence. Did you know that there is an 11-room hotel inside Terminal 2?

So please watch our maiden presentation tonight on SkyCable’s channel 53 at 8 p.m. with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel. We also have replays on MyTV’s channel 30 at 9 p.m. Monday and at 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday.

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This is the first day of 2019 and in the Catholic Church Calendar we are now celebrating the Year of the Youth! This is perfectly timed because it is really time for the Catholic Church to focus on the activities of our youth, many of whom want to be called millennials. There’s a lot for our youth to learn; after all, our national hero Dr. Jose Rizal said “the youth is the hope of the fatherland” which means the youth have a very important role in our history and we must work together to ensure that the Philippines 2019 develops into a better future than what my generation developed into!

So for the start of this column for 2019, allow me to begin with my personal wish list of what I would like to see happen not only in Cebu but for our entire nation as well. I can only hope that what I write in this column would somehow materialize, but if it does not then we will continue advocating it here. For instance, we wrote for 2017 that we will finally have a federal form of government, but that did not happen in that year or in 2018. So we will simply continue pushing for the approval of a federal form of government.

First on our list is our hope that 2019 will be the year that Filipinos finally learn how to save money and in the process become richer than they expect themselves to be. There’s a huge chance of Filipinos getting better lives because I learned from my media friends that most schools have increased enrollments because of free educational programs in government schools. As we all know, the way to end poverty is through education and if many children are now going to school, it gives them an opportunity to improve themselves and their families.

This coming May will be our midterm elections. It is hoped that our voters will chose new leaders who can push their respective agendas that the old political guard have rejected. We are sick and tired of old political parties that don’t help the citizens, and worse, even fight or block their projects. We must learn to shift to a new set of political leaders in the entire island of Cebu. Above all, we must tell those new political leaders that at the beginning of the new year that they must find doable solutions to our ageing problems that don’t seem to be solved or have been neglected by previous governments. Yes, I’m referring to our humongous traffic problems in Metro Cebu that Cebuanos continue to suffer on a daily basis.

As far as infrastructure is concerned, in Mactan I do not want to wait for three years when the third bridge is finished. All they need is a new flyover along the old bridge and that solves the problem. In Mandaue City, while DPWH is widening H. Cortes Avenue they still need a flyover at corner A.S. Fortuna Avenue, and another one in the Mandaue Highway, and flyovers going to UN Avenue, and a flyover in Plaridel Street because when these flyovers are installed it is the end of our suffering hours of traffic.

Finally in Cebu City, for the nth time we need that parallel road to Escario Street and I challenge the DPWH officials to come up with an alternative to solve this traffic mess. Then another flyover along M.J. Cuenco and Mango Avenue. If they cannot do it then let them resign and allow others who can do it take over their jobs!

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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected]. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.