Cha-Cha is once more shot down by PNoy

I submit that I'm one of those journalists who've kept harping on our need to change our 1987 Constitution when I started my journalistic career because there are just too many defects in this charter that has caused our nation to stagnate… rather than move forward. Just a few days ago, no less than Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, Jr. and even Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago came up with statements about the need to change the charter and their willingness to dance the cha-cha.

One would think that when these reports came out… I would immediately pounce on this issue and support their moves. But we have already pointed out so many times before… that cha-cha could never happen if Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, III would not support it. I have already been burned on this issue several times in the past.

Once again I was right. When these stories of cha-cha came out, Malacañang immediately issued a statement that PNoy wasn't keen on changing the charter at this time. One can even say that the Malacañang did not even have to meet with the President on this issue and merely re-issued the President's former statements that he is not in favor of cha-cha.

For whatever it is worth… one of the very reasons why we need to change the charter was presented by Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago who must have read our columns on this… wherein she admitted that the Senate should be voted on a per region basis… unlike what is happening today, which is why only famous or the infamous are able to enter this very exclusive circle of the nation's political elite.

In fact, our fellow Philippine Star columnist wrote in his column and in his Facebook account, “We must deliver the message that the Senate is not a family business. We can't have a Senate whose members include a father, a son (Enrile and son Jack), two brothers (Jinggoy and JV) and a brother and a sister (Pia and Peter) and two sons succeeding their fathers (Angara and Pimentel). We surely have more talent in this country of 100 million to resort to such a shameless concentration of trapo genes in the political gene pool.”

We can only hope that the Filipino people are getting fed up with this system that promotes a vicious cycle of political self-aggrandizement and greed, which has caused the majority of the Filipino people into that vicious cycle of poverty. Only when we change our political system and introduce genuine political reforms can things truly change in this country.

Now about our poverty. It seems that the allies of the Aquino propaganda machinery, like the Social Weather Station (SWS) that usually comes up with a high rating for PNoy whenever he is in a bind, can no longer hide the truth… that according to their latest survey, some 10.9 million Filipinos or one in every two families consider themselves as “poor,” which is an increase from the last survey they collated.

At least 44 percent of households or some 8.9 million families admitted that they were “food poor”, which figure is up by as much as 35 percentage points from the 7.2 million families who were surveyed in the last SWS count. What does this tell you? Again… the buck stops in the desk of PNoy who was elected into the Office of the President with the slogan… “Kung Walang Korrupt… Walang Mahirap!” Logic dictates that if the number of poor families have risen by as high as 35 percent… it could only mean that corruption too must have risen.

This also means that the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program of the Aquino Regime has failed to arrest poverty in this country. Of course we have already written time and time again that the CCT program was doomed to fail as it only fed the poor families… and when the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) have given these monies for food, eventually the pangs of hunger return and this is why people consider their families as “food-poor”.

Once again, we repeat that old Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I don't know how many billions of taxpayer pesos were spent on feeding the poor. It reminds me of what the Marcos Dictatorship used to do, whenever then First Lady Imelda would breeze through her hometown in Tacloban City… where she constructed feeding centers. At one time, many of the poor suffered gastro pains because of spoiled food.

Once again, the solution to our poverty is not in giving more money to feed the poor… rather it is to find jobs for them… something that our politicians have failed miserably. This is due to the reality that the majority of our politicians come from rich families of their respected localities… and when they win their positions in government… they use the people's tax money purportedly for helping the poor to be used to fill up their own pockets.

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Email: vsbobita@gmail.com