"The teachers, heroes like the country’s overseas foreign workers (OFWs), must be given their due right and recognition in light of the unreliable Smartmatic vote counting machines."
Teachers who serve as poll watchers and election supervisors are seeking an audience with the President to ask for ample pay hike. Several months ago, the teachers issued a statement that they are underpaid and under surveillance. The surveillance came on the heels of claims of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippine National Police that government enforcement arms were looking into the involvement of some teachers in the rising student protests against the Duterte government.
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers denied the allegation and pointed out rising militancy among students is a worldwide phenomenon happening not only in the Philippines. The teachers, nonetheless, did not indicate declining to serve in future poll duties.
The teachers, heroes like the country’s overseas foreign workers (OFWs), must be given their due right and recognition in light of the unreliable Smartmatic vote counting machines.
There is still time to set things right for the 2022 presidential polls if the Commission on Elections and Congress act now to amend the law mandating the counting of votes by automatic computerized system. Let us not be saddled by another President in the next six years who might be elected by computer glitches. The Filipino people deserve better.
On another related subject, we think there are too many party-list entries in the last elections. Many of them are not marginalized sectors but mere fronts for vested interests, including government fronts to ensure its supermajority control of the House. The House where an impeachment process is intiated will never get an impeachment anywhere with the number of House members stacked up against such a move. The Speaker of the House is another key player. Remember when then House Speaker Manny Villar banged the gavel to open the House session and forthwith stated that the impeachment case against then President Joseph Estrada “is hereby forwarded to the Senate.” The rest as they say, is history but that’s another story. The Estrada political dynasty has been politically wiped out in the recent May 13 midterm elections.
Good news, bad news
The El Niño season brought misery to water consumers when water taps went dry for weeks and hectares of agricultural land went dry, damaging crops. The bright side of El Niño is that a surplus of 2 million kilos of sweet mangoes were harvested by farmers for local consumption and the rest for export to Japan and Taiwan.
We hope the Department of Agriculture can also turn around our rice shortage and the rising prices consumers can no longer afford with the increasing prices of other basic commodities and also water and electricity rates, not to mention gasoline and other fuel products.
The government in a mindless statement said it prefers more commuters instead of motorists. Yeah, right. But it should know that more and more Filipinos are buying cars because the government has failed to provide commuters with an efficient public transport system. The Metro Rail Transit and the Light Rail Transit often break down, if not in a constant state of disrepair. The problem cannot be blamed on the Duterte administration alone. It goes all the way back to the Noynoy Aquino administration. Yet, the government is now going to undertake a more complicated public rail transport system underground. We can’t imagine the accompanying problems of leaking roof and flooded rail tracks with our inner city’s faulty water and sewage system. God help this benighted land and its hapless citizens.
In a move legislators claim would shore up the country’s defense preparedness, Congress propossed the revival of the Reserved Officers Training Course as requirement for senior high school students to graduate. But the Palace said the ROTC bill can wait for the incoming Congress to tackle the ROTC bill as there is no more time for the 17th Congress to handle it.
