First and foremost, congratulations to Filipino gymnast Carlos ‘Caloy’ Yulo for bagging two golds in the 2024 Paris Olympics. A whole lot of goodies await this superb gymnast on his return home. This is an honor for the country.
Second, this rant. My esteemed friend, former Ambassador and Presidential Spokesman Rigoberto ‘Bobi’ Tiglao recently posted on Facebook these words: “Marcos was definitely a cocaine user, a close friend’s ex-partner reveals – Rigoberto Tiglao”
I don’t know about you, but this is what I can say on the matter: “For the sake of argument, “was a cocaine user is a butanding of a difference from “is a cocaine user.” Maybe he was. I don’t know. Do you know? We all have our private sins of the past. You do, I do. We all do.
But what BBM’s critics like you keep saying is that he is a cocaine user (currently) while he is President. Big diff! Thank you for making this issue clear.”
This came about from a recent interview of Cathy Binag, a former girlfriend of banana king Antonio ‘Tony Boy’ Floirendo. Tony Boy is a friend, and I know him to be a generous man to a point that people would take advantage of him – perhaps including an ex.
But of course Cathy Binag is a willing participant to the grand conspiracy to topple a sitting president, even as she gets revenge from a 10-year relationship which turned sour because of her greed.
While I did have several drinking sessions with Tony Boy and his friends, never have I encountered what she claimed was a snorting session, or something to that effect.
Yes, the booze and the laughter were overflowing, but the drugs were absent. So now they’re after the close friends of the President. I am certain they won’t stop here and next would be his immediate family like they haven’t started already.
Now, each time an “eyewitness” claims that God is on his or her side, this is the trigger towards further fabrication of stories.
For how can God be on one side and not on the other? God is for the truth and he definitely would never side with peddlers of fakery. But what entertainment to listen to and watch a willing tool of the Duterte political group.
As for Claire Contreras aka Maharlika, she will soon be very busy appearing in court after PCSO General Manager Mel Robles sued her for defamation and invasion of privacy charges.
Robles has hired the legal services of Johnny Depp lawyer Camille Vasquez, a top litigator from the US.
If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?
If you want to have a good laugh, watch the committee hearings in the House of Representatives and in the Senate.
Our legislators should read (again) the book Robert’s Rules of Order which is really the bible of parliamentary bodies in western countries after which our legislative body is patterned after.
Mind you, there are so many pitfalls and traps in legislative debates. Something that the likes of Bato dela Rosa and Robin Padilla would always succumb to.
If one is not fully prepared, it would be best to just maintain discreet silence, like one Senator in the past who, after going through his sixth year without even taking the floor, was asked questions during press conferences and interviews, to which he always replied: “No comment.”
It is important that one gets a good research staff and a competent speechwriter. Never take the floor without preparation because it would mean certain embarrassment, unless you can plead with your colleagues not to subject you to stiff interpellations, which is unlikely.
-o0o
Recently, Vice President Sara Duterte came out with an arrogant statement that went like this: “We Filipinos deserve more than what we are hearing and seeing from the government right now. We Filipinos deserve better. We Filipinos should be the best.”
This, after she claimed that the government failed miserably in their “flood-control master plan” despite the threat of numerous typhoons each year.
She also criticized the lack of a health care system in the country that would alleviate the medical expenses of the people.
But wait, here is a timely response on that, and I quote the following: “We do not deserve a vice-president who escaped ton Germany to watch a Taylor Swift concert while Manila was heavily-flooded; we do not deserve a vice-president who endorsed her father’s only solution to fix Metro Manila’s flooding which was to pour billions into the Manila Bay dolomite sand project; we do not deserve an absentee vice-president who, instead of urgently aiding calamity victims and offering constructive solutions used the misery of her fellowmen as an opportunity to compose lies, blame others, and hide her father’s failures;
We do not deserve a vice-president who acted as cheerleader for her father’s bloody drug war which claimed the lives of innocent Filipinos; we do not deserve a pro-China vice-president who not only refused to condemn Beijing for encroaching on our territories, assaulting our soldiers, harassing our fishermen, but treacherously encourages such acts;
We do not deserve a vice-president who acts not as a leader of a nation but as an apostle of Apollo Quiboloy, and an enabler of his crimes against women and children; we do not deserve a vice-president whose sense of entitlement leads her to aggressively demand, as if it were her royal birthright, to keep 400 personal bodyguards, whose salaries and equipment cost taxpayers half a billion pesos a year; we do not deserve a vice-president who failed miserably as education secretary, resulting in the worst failing test scores of our children in history;
We do not deserve a vice-president who threw tantrums when her request for millions in confidential funds was denied for lack of justification; and lastly, we do not deserve a vice-president whose office costs us hundreds of millions of pesos a year but when in times of crisis is missing in action.
Yes, Madame Vice-President, we do not deserve you. The Filipino people deserve better.”
-o0o-
Random Memorandum: Dugongs or “sea cows” are threatened by seagrass habitat loss or degradation because of coastal development or industrial activities that cause water pollution. If there is not enough seagrass to eat then the dugong does not breed normally.
This makes the conservation of their shallow water marine habitat very important. They also often become victims of bycatch, the accidental entanglement in fishing nets.
-o0o-
Factoid: When Jose Laurel was a teen, he was indicted for attempted murder after he almost killed a rival suitor of his girlfriend. He argued his case and thereafter received an acquittal while studying and finishing a law degree.
(Leslie Bocobo is a former Special Assistant to the Secretary at the Office of the Press Secretary, Malacañang, and a former Public Affairs Director of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources)
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