Are You In Your PJs Yet?

Have you ever experienced being in your pajamas at 12 noon because you just woke up? And the sun has not shown its face yet, it is so dark.

I’ve been distracted by the news of VP Leni last night on Facebook. I was supposed to finish reading but I kept going back to FB. She was in Mindanao yesterday (turf of duterte) particularly in Cagayan de Oro with some volunteer nurses and doctors for her VACCINE EXPRESS project. Then she went to Bukidnoon to visit those farmers she helped when she was not yet in the political scene. Considering the lowest budget allotted to the Office of the Vice-President, volunteers and donors are donating non-stop. She has focused on the Covid-19 since last year – free rides to frontliners, accommodations, medical kits, PPEs, face masks etc. She is always the first to extend help to flood victims.

Yesterday was a sea of pink again with those caravans in several towns and provinces in support of Leni. There was this very touching scene of father and daughter biking with their bikes full of pink ribbons. How lovely, they were on the road too. In Cagayan de Oro, she met Mayor Moreno who came out in the open to support her. Mayor Moreno was a former unibanker where I used to work. He was the Vice-President and Legal Counsel of BPI Capital Corp., a subsidiary of Bank of the Phillipine Islands.

Praying hard for the win. If we’ll have an honest election, she will win.

I’ll always remember this ‘the last man standing is a woman”.

Now, back to reading.

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The Choices We Make

I cry for my beloved country.

My father used to say that “we carve our own destiny”. Back then, I didn’t understand the impact of those words. When you are young, you are too idealistic enough and sometimes you see the world in rose-tinted eyeglasses. You see the world the way you believe it ought to be seen, a happy place  where sometimes dreams have a little niche in your idealistic heart.  You grow up and things change and you begin to notice that the world is really not what it seems.

The die is cast.

Yesterday, my kids and I did our duty for the country and voted for  those candidates whose platforms of government we believe in and whose experience in the field of service to the Filipino people is unquestionable.   I can never be prouder seeing fellow Filipinos exercise their right to vote and choose the best.I salute COMELEC for a clean, quiet and peaceful elections. Things though will not always be to one’s desires. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose but what is important is to accept defeat graciously and move on.

We lost the presidency but our candidate for VP, Leni  is on top. I think there are only about 5% more votes not counted.  A newbie in the field of politics but not new to the grassroots where she worked pro bono for so many years. She knows the problems with the ordinary rural folks, the farmers and  the man on the street.

I have never been  this much involved in politics throughout the years. It’s just that, it was quite easy to support a man whose values, love of country and its people are the same things that you look for in a good candidate.  The last two weeks were quite emotional days for me even deliberately forgetting to visit WordPress. I can never forget the laughter, the tears (yes we cried too) and the intelligent exchanges of ideas and why we campaigned for the same presidential candidate.  I learned a lot in the process.

Change is easier said than done.

The choices we make in life are rooted in the same values that we believe in.  The path we take maybe full of knots that have to be untied one by one, the road maybe too rough for our liking but the journey has to be taken.  It may entail a gargantuan sacrifice, it may mean so much pain, it may involve lots of changes that we have to make on our own.

Those people who chose  the president-elect were clamoring for change, that instant change that we’ll get to see in three to six months (as he promised). I believe that real change starts within ourselves. Just yesterday, I accompanied my daughter Nissa back to the precinct so she could vote (Josef and I voted earlier at six am). I positioned myself away from the long line of voters and opened my tab to read. There was this guy who was about to throw his sandwich wrapper at the planter box I was sitting on. I looked at him without uttering a word  and he said sorry when he saw me at the same time pocketing his garbage. Here we are clamoring for change when even a simple thing like this we can’t even do properly. It’s a case of  as long as it it not in my backyard, then it’s okay.  I always wear face mask when I take a commute because even if there is a law (that is not even properly implemented) banning smoking in public, people never learn. If simple things like this are blatantly ignored, how can we even expect a positive change  in such a short time?

The outgoing administration has laid the foundation, I just hope we would not spend  the next six years ignoring the economic growth that we have earned the last six years.

I haven’t lost hope for my country  but I cry still.  I even cried harder when I heard  Mar Roxas concede, a man  of true character and strength. He said and I quote:

”For our country, we’ve had a peaceful, successful transfer of power. It is not about me. It is not about anyone. It is about how we love our country, and how we all do all that we can for her. She’s the only one.”

 

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When April Ends

Yeay, I have long neglected this blog, same with visiting the posts of those bloggers I follow here.  Eight blog posts for the month of April, make it nine including this one.  Though I haven’t been active here this month and even set aside my reading challenge, April is a good month. I’ve been actively campaigning the last few days  on Facebook. It’s my only way of helping Roxas and Robredo team win without taxing my health.  I have just posted  and shared this at The Silent Majority page and I was surprised of the more than 200 likes an hour after I posted it and tremendous response praying for me and my health.  I felt I really have an online family in their midst.  I was teary-eyed to see and read their comments. Allow me to share it with you too (it’s my last political blog  post maybe until election day which is  nine days from now).  The future of the Philippines is in our hands now.

I have long wanted to go out and campaign for RORO but since I have low immunity (I am a cancer survivor), I try to avoid crowds. This is actually my first time to be actively campaigning for a vice-presidential and a presidential candidate online. I posted some political blogs on my WordPress site since the first political debate was held. This morning, my daughter and her family came over to join us for lunch and they brought with them campaign materials for RORO. Yehey, I finally have my baller. We touched on politics (what else) and we are happy that all of us will be voting for Mar and Leni. I am concerned about the future of my four-year old grandson and the future of my kids and we just can’t ignore what is happening right now in our country. From the start, I have decided to vote for RORO. They are the epitome of good governance and I am sure they have nothing but a sincere desire to truly serve and help in making the Philippines something we could all be proud of.

A happy retired BPI unibanker here. I am proud to have worked in an institution with 165 years of banking leadership.

I am happy to see that I have finally reached more than 401,735 hits as of this writing. This is when blogging gives that kind of happiness  and sense of fulfillment.

April is about to end.  I am very optimistic that the rule of law and the choice of the majority will win.  Come what May (pun intended) I look forward to celebrating with the Filipino people when we finally cast our votes on May  09.  Maybe after  May 09, I could happily go back to reading again and enjoy reading blog entries here and hopefully add more posts.

I always smile every time I hear the song First of  May. It brings back memories. Happy first of May everyone.

 

 

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May The Best Woman Win

This is it.

If there is one thing that really clinched and sealed who I will be voting for Vice-President  come May 9, 2016, the first and only debate for Vice-Presidential  candidates sponsored by the Commission on Election, Business Mirror and CNN Philippines  did it. It was held at University of Santo Tomas (my alma mater) Quadricentennial Pavilion yesterday from 5pm to 8pm, a three-hour stay in front of the TV but it was all worth it. And this is way, way better than the first two Presidential debates sponsored by two local TV stations. Give it to CNN Philippines.

Five men and a lady.

Yes, five of them are senators and a lone  congresswoman from Bicol  – Sen.  Cayetano, Sen. Honasan, Sen.  Escudero, Sen.  Marcos, Sen. Trillanes and Cong. Leni Robredo.   I need not describe how they presented themselves to the public and how they courted voters to mark them on their ballots  next month. Some have the usual charm  but their words are without “meat” if you know what I mean.  Some are big in words backed by experience  but not everyone of them deserves to be vice-president.

Sen.  Cayetano – I like him as a Senator, the fighting-outspoken-and so in touch with issues senator  when there are Senate hearings but listening to him parrot his partner’s words (Duterte’s dream of eradicating crime after 3 to 6 months), I don’t know if he is in touch with what is happening around.  How would you eradicate crime in that short span when you’re just comparing it with just one place in the whole archipelago? And it makes me laugh when he said that they would step down if they can’t do it in 6 months.  Tell us how you’ll do it and I’ll probably believe you. Do you have concrete plans or you just have to count bodies in the street and say, “they are criminals and they deserve to die”.  Is that how it should be?

Sen. Honasan – the renegade soldier at the time when Cory Aquino was president. He was one of those coup plotters in the Aquino government. I don’t understand where he is coming from and I won’t even consider him. Issues on corruption which were frequently asked reminds me of his partner  VP Binay who is running for president.

Sen. Bongbong Marcos –  He is a Marcos, what more can I say. Those who don’t know history and how it was during the martial law years would admire or even vote for this guy. He was bombarded with questions about their hidden wealth, atrocities done during his father’s reign etc. He said he won’t apologize for something he didn’t do and he could not give back (meaning the money for martial law victims) something which he does not have.  It makes me puke just imagining another  Marcos in Malacañan. I remember the day they fled the country  last 1986, he was in full battle gear, ready to fight. Never again.

Sen. Escudero – he was one of the dullest speakers in the debate, next to Honasan.  I could not understand the way he talks. As we say in Tagalog “sobrang palabok” meaning, he has gone and travelled a thousand miles before he gets to the point  of what he is trying to say. He is so confident that he and his partner Grace Poe would be able to pull it off. No way baby.

Sen. Trillanes – this guy has promise but he has no political machinery to speak of. I think he is the most hard-working guy in the Senate. A brave soul who thinks that Binay is guilty of corruption and doesn’t deserve to be president of our country. He clearly know what he is talking about. I like him, maybe it is not yet time for him to run but he should  concentrate more on exposing anomalies in the government.

Cong. Leni Robredo – now we are speaking of someone who I think is the best among them all. She is a lawyer and wife to the former DILG Secretary Jessie Robredo who died in a plane crash a few years ago.   Over the years she gave her time and effort  to the poor.  If there is someone who can honestly say that she knows the pulse of the lowest rank in society, she is the one. She started virtually unknown to the public but she is slowly and surely getting to the top slot.  A very intelligent woman, can stand on her own even without mentioning the name of her late husband.  She commutes to and from Bicol just to be with her constituents.  You know, I have this dream of someday visiting  Bicol riding in a bus with her  and talking about not politics but about those people who she  freely shares  her  time with.  My opinion actually won’t do justice to what she has done.

May the best woman win, Cong. Leni. My family and I are voting for you. I think it’s time we deserve to have an honest Vice-President.

For the win!

 

 

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