By Herbert Vego
LEGEND has it that in 64 A.D., while fire was ravaging 70 percent of the city of Rome, Roman emperor Neru was playing his fiddle 35 miles away in his Golden Palace. He didn’t care about his people losing lives and homes; hence, an ineffective leader in moments of crisis.
This nugget of world history reminds us of President Ferdinand “BBM” Marcos Jr., who has already flown out eight times abroad while we the people are suffering from inflation and creeping political destabilization.
Right now (Jan. 16-200, Marcos is in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum (WEF), where he intends to brag about his so-called “Maharlika Wealth Fund” aimed at attracting foreign investments to the Philippines with government equity kuno. With him is a coterie of 70 pampered public officials, businessmen and relatives.
My goodness, the proposed law creating this investment fund (House Bill 6608) has not yet passed the Senate amid public disapproval because of the country’s huge fiscal deficit (P1.1. trillion as of October 2022), debt stock (P13.64 trillion), inflation (8%), and poverty of the masses.
Marcos could not cite a reason why foreign investors would come to our country. In fact, in all his foreign trips, the “billions” he has brought home are nothing but good-for-nothing pledges.
There have been talks of an impending coup d’etat by the military and the police loyal to former President Rodrigo Duterte. This could be the reason why Marcos himself has recycled such “loyalists” into powerful positions, such as former DILG Secretary Eduardo Año taking over Clarita Carlos as the new National Security Adviser, Gen. Andres Centino returning as Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, replacing Lt. Gen. Bartolome Vicente Bacarro, and retired AFP chief Carlito Galvez sitting as Secretary of Defense. Watch out for more uniformed retirees coming back to life.
Thus, by his own subservience to his predecessor, Marcos has proven Duterte right when the latter labelled him “a weak leader”.
Is Marcos now being held hostage by you-know-whom? If so, then he could not violate whatever power sharing had been agreed upon prior to the May 9, 2022 presidential election where he was elected together with Vice President Sara Duterte.
You have probably heard of Marites peddling the rumor that “brokers” had manipulated the Comelec and Smartmatic to make the duo win against all odds. It is hard to believe how BBM could have scored 31 million votes against Aling Leni’s 15-m.
In contrast, one recalls that after BBM had run and lost to Leni Robredo for vice-president in 2016, he not only filed a failed protest before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal but also condemned Smartmatic for “cheating”.
Never mind today’s Supreme Court and Congress; they are also presumed spineless, having also descended from the “killing” regime that has edged out certain drug lords to accommodate even bigger ones with police protection.
Remember when, in the early years of the Duterte administration, former Albuera, Leyte mayor Rolando Espinosa, already languishing in jail, was unbelievably killed while allegedly trying to shoot it out with police officers led by Superintendent Marvin Marcos?
Remember when an alleged drug lord, then Ozamiz City Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog and 14 others, were also killed in a police raid at his own home?
By installing himself as concurrent secretary of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Marcos has also proven himself incapable of defending the Philippine peso against inflation. On the contrary, he appears to have abetted it by allowing unnecessary importation of rice, sugar and onion that has destabilized local farmers.
The unprecedented jump of the price of onion to P700 per kilo – only in the Philippines! — could not be attributed to real scarcity but to harvest-season hoarding by unscrupulous, profiteering traders. The world market could not even be cited as the inflation trigger, since our relatives abroad know the truth.
Based on 89 countries surveyed, the average retail price of onion is only US $2 per kilo, or around P110 in Philippine currency. It’s much lower in the United States at $0.81. Now you can imagine how local traders, especially smugglers, make a windfall by importing onions from the US.
-oOo-
MORE POWER’S INVOLVEMENT IN DINAGYANG FESTIVAL
MORE Power, as the energy distribution utility (DU) in Iloilo City, is leaving no stone unturned in assuring full cooperation with Mayor Jerry Treñas and the local government during the week’s celebration of the Dinagyang Festival, which will culminate with the tourist-studded tribal competition on Sunday.
The company, however, seeks the cooperation of city residents by way of safeguarding a safe environment during the festival. They want no repetition of previous accidents that led to power outages, such as a wind-blown-streamer striking a high-voltage line or a flying balloon brushing against a live wire.
In its almost three years of operation. MORE Power has upgraded and/or replaced facilities left behind by the previous DU. It has acquired two mobile substations to augment the capacity of the existing ones which are being replaced or rehabilitated.
It has replaced or installed 1,581 primary poles, 1,435 secondary poles, 3,959 cross arms, 34,385 electric meters and 42 automatic circuit reclosers, among others, in pursuit of modernization.
