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September 28th, 2007 12:52 AM #51
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September 29th, 2007 11:42 AM #54
this says it all:
[SIZE=5] Uncivilized[/SIZE]
FIRST PERSON
By Alex Magno
Philstar.com
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Whatever Benjamin Abalos’ faults might be, he surely did not deserve the sort of uncivilized treatment he received at the Senate — especially in the hands of Aquilino Pimentel and Richard Gordon.
What happened in the Senate last Wednesday was an orgy, not a decent inquiry. The senators were at their most uncouth. They squabbled among themselves as they elbowed for TV face time. They were repetitive, seeking to hog the spotlight more than shed light on the issue. They virtually spat on their resource persons but called their guests arrogant if they dared be a little light-hearted. At every opportunity, the senators insulted each other.
This was not a chamber of statesmen. It was a pig sty.
Television coverage should have been rated R so that children are advised against watching it at the risk of imbibing the crude attitude of the senators and, at many instances, their plain illogic. One female senator takes the cake for perorating at length about nothing in particular.
I was not the only one disturbed by that orgy at the Senate. The whole of Thursday, people were calling in or texting radio programs complaining about the senators’ demeanor. A few foreign friends, diplomats and journalists, called me up asking an explanation about why our Senate is so.
I offered them several theories, or several facets of what could be a single theory to explain why this chamber could so easily lose its civility.
First, 5 senators are actively positioning for the 2010 presidential contest. Another 5 are considered potential vice-presidential bets. With so many seeking higher office, the Senate will likely have difficulty mustering a quorum when they all begin campaigning. From today to the next elections, expect these ambitious senators to exploit their seat at the Senate and use it as a vantage point to build name-recall.
Many of them will want to test what may now be called the Alan Cayetano () Gambit: make accusations without evidence, engineer hysterical confrontations, catch media attention, build name-recall and win the next elections. Although it degrades the quality of public discourse, it is apparently an effective way to win elective office.
Second, the issue at hand is thin and the senators have to compensate for that thinness by indulging in theatrics. They are hard-pressed to do that, given the intense media attention accorded the Senate hearing on the broadband.
The issue is thin because there is really no evidence. Joker Arroyo did point out sometime during the hearings that noting could be resolved in this forum. It is a circle in a spiral, a he-said, she-said situation with no one in possession of any hard evidence.
The plot of this so-called scandal is itself a puzzle. I wonder why none of the senators asked what should be the central logical flaw in the storyline of this so-called scandal: Why is it that the two instances when bribes were supposed to have been offered happened after the deal was perfected? What was the point of those astounding bribes if the basic architecture of this deal could no longer be altered?
None of the senators zeroes in on that logical flaw. I could understand why. Doing so would kill this controversy, force the circus to an early end and deny all the media-hogging senators their golden moment to win free TV face-time.
With no hard evidence, the senators were simply fishing, possibly for an earthshaking soundbite or a dazzling media angle. The wonder of last Wednesday’s session was that it could be made to stretch for over 11 hours with nothing determinable to deal with. Senators simply repeated questions, editorialized on end, hectored the resource persons and, yes, insulted each other.
They remind me of a particularly bad teacher I had in grade school who, with nothing to teach, picked something each day to be angry about and scolded us for hours. Day in and day out, we were terrified but not educated.
After several sessions, this Senate expedition into case of the broadband contract surely seems to be a mansion constructed on the shifting sands of innuendo and hearsay. It is a story without a satisfying conclusion. It is a scandal without a hinge to keep it in place.
After building so much public expectation about its outcomes and investing so much uneducated passion in the proceedings, the greatest fear of the senators is that this whole episode will end in a whimper. There will be no fireworks in the end and the audience will be left as confused as they were at the start.
The last hope for anything dramatic to come out of this orgy is whatever private conversation Romy Neri might have had with the President. For that, the senators harassed the poor nerd no end. They are threatening to punish Neri with contempt if he insists in what he calls a matter of executive privilege or what might simply be called the sanctity of private communication.
Even in this case, the senators might be building a trap for themselves, hauling up an anvil that will drop on their own heads. I suspect that even if Romy Neri blurts out the Truth he is keeping to himself as a matter of executive privilege, that Truth will be absolutely boring and inconsequential. It might be embarrassing; but inconsequential nonetheless.
The battle for that inconsequential Truth could go up the Supreme Court and, in the end, we will all look like fools. But no bigger fools than the senators might turn out to be.
Romy Neri is a dear friend. I know him well. He is absolutely incapable of getting enmeshed in a horrendous conspiracy. His talents lie in deep thought and honest talk.
There is so much Zen in him that I suspect he is capable of playing possum, keeping absolutely still and yet immovable, until the clowns around him, by their own frantic but directionless energy, unmask themselves to be such.
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September 29th, 2007 12:12 PM #55
I used to respect Dick before, a lot in fact, because of his dynamism. But lately he's becoming a real a$s. Swell-headed fool
Robin Williams said it perfectly in the movie "Patch Adams": "How can it be hard to become a dickhead...all you have to do is make sure that your head is a dick and it's attached to your neck!"
:hysterical:
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September 29th, 2007 02:31 PM #56
National Sports ng Senate mag imbestiga....imbes na ombudsman or NBA mag imbestiga ay ang senate gumagawa nito para lagi nakikita name nila sa news...bakit kaya hindi nila gawin trabaho nila na gum,awa nalang ng batas. sa 100 na nagawang batasa sa congress ay 5 lang nagagawa ng sentae. I wish ma-abolish na senate.
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October 2nd, 2007 02:24 AM #57from: http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquirer...ticle_id=91671
‘Tinimbang ka pa rin’
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer
Last updated 00:32am (Mla time) 10/01/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- I’ll give the best performance award in the Senate hearing last week to Mar Roxas. He didn’t just ask the right questions, he showed the right reaction to perfidy.
I too was bowled over by Romulo Neri’s testimony at the Senate, but not in the way he advertised it beforehand. His revelation about Benjamin Abalos trying to bribe him was of course eye-popping enough in itself. “Sec, may 200 ka dito” ranks up there with the most nefarious quotable quotes in this country, along with “So will I still win by one million?” and “What are we in power for?” I’m surprised nobody has yet made a T-shirt out of it.
Abalos of course denied it, but he never came close to showing why the Neda chief would put his life and career at risk by lying about something like that. Indeed, as Richard Gordon dredged up during his turn, Abalos has a nasty habit of getting into projects costing the taxpayer billions of pesos that end up being scrapped by the Supreme Court for being anomalous. Gordon did not call Abalos a liar and thief to his face, but he might as well have done so.
But eye-popping as that is, that was not what bowled me over in last week’s hearings. What did was Neri’s own reaction to his revelation.
Upon Roxas’ questioning, Neri said: One, there was no doubt in his mind Abalos tried to bribe him with P200 million. Two, he did not rebuke Abalos, etiquette dictating it as the Comelec chief was his host—the bureaucracy “has its own way of doing things.” Three, he was however bothered by Abalos’ overtures enough to report it to his (not our) President. Four, his President did nothing about it, and so the project went on and ended up in his lap. Five, he approved it anyway—he would not say if at the behest of his President or not on grounds of “executive privilege.” Six, he did so despite the actual offer of bribe to him and possible bribes to other officials because the ZTE project still seemed feasible, he figured the bribes would come from the “profit margin” expected from the project. Seven, the solution to all this is to openly bid out the project.
Roxas could only expostulate while groping for words that he was shocked by Neri’s blithe attitude toward wrongdoing. I share his sentiments completely. There and then, you see the vicious stupidities that have taken hold of this country.
At the very least, Neri’s argument reminds me of the one that says that even if GMA stole votes with Garci’s help, she “probably won anyway” and deserved to be President. It’s the same logic: Even though the ZTE project was weighed down by bribes, it was probably still feasible and deserved to push through. Can anything be more viciously stupid or nastily insane? You catch a student cheating in the final exams, you do not ask if he probably passed notwithstanding the cheating, you void his exam and expel him. You catch a President cheating in elections, you do not ask whether she probably won notwithstanding the cheating, you void the results and throw her in jail. You catch the proponents of a project offering bribes, you do not ask if the project remains feasible notwithstanding the bribes, you void the project and throw the bribers in jail.
Cheating in exams, stealing the vote and bribing an official are crimes in and of themselves and void whatever springs from them. Have we become a race of moral cretins we can no longer see that? Have we become a race of the damned we settle for salvaging what we can from what is wrong rather than demanding what is right? That is clearly what the Neda chief has become. That is clearly what his boss has, well, always been.
At the very most, there we go with that “let’s move on” attitude again, which has become the biggest bane of this country. What is Neri’s solution to the problem? It is to make everything disappear, including the fact that his boss did absolutely nothing after he reported a gross malefaction to her, and very probably did absolutely everything to make it prosper—which was why he had to approve the project anyway—by simply opening broadband to bidding. Do we recognize the pattern? Didn’t GMA’s people say exactly the same thing a couple of years ago, let’s forget that someone stole the presidency, tapos na ’yan, let’s move on, let’s just make sure it doesn’t happen again—by Charter Change?
As life, history and common sense show, there is only one way to stop a crime from happening again: That is by punishing the criminal. A bribe is a crime, whether it is 200 million pesos or two hundred centavos. Hell, it is a crime whether it is 200 centavos or 200 tansan, and whether the tansan carry the offer of “Free Coke” or not. You want to stop something like ZTE from happening again, punish the Comelec chief who offered the bribe, the President who condoned the bribe (for reasons that owe to owing the Comelec chief for past crimes), and the government officials who helped make the bribe prosper—including the Neda chief, while taking into account his (partial) efforts to make amends.
I am not inappreciative of what Neri has done, which is to reject Abalos’ bribe and go on to expose it. It is not every day we see someone spurning a fortune, which lives up to the Christian injunction that it does not profit a man if he gains P200 million but loses his soul. But that doesn’t make up for the things he has done (or not done) and said (or not said).
At one point in the hearings, Panfilo Lacson asked him if, by refusing to talk about what his boss wanted done with ZTE, Neri wasn’t missing a historic opportunity to show his true worth. Neri replied: “I will be the judge of that.”
What can I say? Nope, you won’t. The public will.
Tinimbang ka, ngunit kulang. You were judged and found—abject.
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April 23rd, 2009 05:26 PM #58[SIZE=3][SIZE=5]I hate MAR ROXAS[/SIZE]. I wish he won’t be the next president. I completed my CAP college Plan for my son and suddenly this damn [SIZE=5]Mar Roxas is Pulling CAP down[/SIZE]. That is supposed to be the future of my son and he is ruining it. On the other hand, I’m not sure but I guess he is just [SIZE=5]using Korina Sanchez[/SIZE] for his campaign. Few years back, everything was silent about Mar & Korina. Now, it’s back. Sorry to Ms. Korina Sanchez. I have nothing against her. I HATE MAR ROXAS. I voted for him before but now, I beg, [SIZE=5]Please don't vote for him if ever[/SIZE]...[/SIZE]
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April 23rd, 2009 06:03 PM #59
"anak itabi mo, ako na. sama-sama tayo, hindi ko kayo iiwan, lalaban tayo!" utot.
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April 23rd, 2009 06:34 PM #60
pag ngilay ngilayin. to ruminate over or to meditate on. and no boisterous noise or music,...
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