By Herbert Vego
Many times, Vice-President Leni Robredo has said, “In the end, the truth will prevail.”
It reminds me of a more famous quotation, “In the end, China will win.”
Will she allow that? Hey, what’s the connection? There is, but meanwhile…
Robredo believes that truth has indeed prevailed with the decision of she of the Supreme Court (SC), acting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), unanimously junking Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos’ election protest against her over allegations of electoral fraud.
The Vice President beat Marcos by 263,473 votes in the 2016 vice presidential race.
The protest case, for which Marcos paid PHP60-million in PET fees, has ironically affirmed the legitimacy of Robredo as the second-highest official of the Philippines.
We don’t have to specify the manners that has made her an “antonym” of President Duterte who recently belittled her for being a woman and not good enough to be next President.
For this specific column, suffice it to say that she has never wished the Philippines to slide down a mere “province of China.”
“China’s encroachment on Philippine territories is the most serious external threat to our country since the Second World War,” Robredo once said in a speech before the faculty and students of the University of the Philippines College of Law.
Obviously, if she runs for President, she would count on the support of patriotic Filipinos who see China as a threat to Philippine sovereignty.
Incidentally, last Wednesday, the British news agency Reuters reported about another U.S. Navy warship, USS Russell, sailing by the South China Sea on the pretext of “freedom of navigation operation.” It was one of the initial moves of U.S. President Joe Biden to challenge Beijing’s territorial claims in the contested waters.
It would be logical to expect Uncle Joe to rally behind a “next President” who could revitalize US-Philippine relations.
Keeping South China Sea open to global navigation would be very beneficial for Philippine sovereignty. Should you think it’s tantamount to “foreign intervention,” let it be by American democracy, not Chinese communism.
MOST ILONGGOS DO NOT WANT ‘COVAX’
A SURVEY conducted by Aksyon Radyo-Iloilo, as of yesterday, showed that 71% of respondents in Iloilo City (as reported by Aljohn Torreta) do not want to be vaccinated with coronavirus vaccine. That is somehow surprising in the wake of massive media onslaughts on the “necessity” of vaccination to end the covid-19 contamination.
No less than Mayor Jerry Treñas had echoed similar persuasion in press conferences and live interviews.
In the City Proper with 2,059 respondents, for instance, 1,480 answered “no” against 579 “yes”.
In a conversation with anchorman and station manager John Paul Tia, reporter Francisco “Kikik” Enar enumerated several reasons behind the respondents’ resistance to the still unavailable vaccines. Some say they others, that they don’t believe in the preventive value of the new vaccine; or that it would be an experiment not worth risking for; or that they would “wait and see” its effect on the jabbed ones.
If I were a respondent, I would say no, too, based on statistical grounds. First, it is not true that Covid-19 is incurable. If it were, nobody would have recovered to tell their survival tale. In fact, the survival odds are in favor of the unvaccinated Covid patients. The latest statistics show that of the 553,424 confirmed Covid cases in the Philippines (population: 110 million) in the past 11 months, only 11,577 have died.
Certainly, the hospitals have done well in nursing Covid patients back to health. Why don’t they reveal their ways and means through the media?
Everybody seems Covid-positive unless proven otherwise through expensive swab tests, and would remain prone unless vaccinated. What, other than profit motive, is behind that assumption?
I lament the “pariah” image that the World Health Organization (WHO) has heaped on Covid victims and their relatives who are not even allowed to visit them in the hospitals, who are forced to have their dead cremated despite the WHO’s affirmation that the coronavirus may only be transmitted from one living person to another through respiratory droplets.
It is not my intention to influence others of different persuasion. I write from the standpoint of a 71-year-old senior who has recovered from asthma, emphysema and pneumonia sans vaccination.
FAREWELL, ART
I could hardly accept the news that a fellow Daily Guardian columnist, Arturo “Art” Jimenez, has passed away. But I remember that despite his advancing age, he was full of life and hope.
Art always made his inspirational presence felt during the Saturday meetings of the Brotherhood of Christian Businessmen and Professionals (BCBP).
Art was the only one among us journalists who was nicknamed “Dean” in deference to his past work as dean at Western Institute of Technology (WIT).
When talking to us, he would occasionally dwell on happy and memorable moments with fellow journalists like the late Danny Fajardo, Sammy Julian and Vicente “Danny Baby” Foz, who had died younger than he.
Art, may you find perpetual happiness together with them in God’s paradise.
