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Opinion

When will the flooding of Metro Cebu end?

SHOOTING STRAIGHT - Bobit S. Avila - The Freeman

Typhoon "Mario" didn't even hit us in Metro Cebu, yet the rains brought a record flooding. People offloaded their photos of SM submerged in their Facebook accounts and we heard radio reports that flooding was everywhere. This could only mean one thing. That the Cebu City Council and Mayor Michael Rama must stop their bickering because we Cebuanos suffer from their indecisions or passing the buck on who's to blame for the flooding. Sure, you can blame God for bringing the rains. But the truth is, bad politics is causing it all. If they can't fix our floods, then come election time we ought to elect new leaders for the City of Cebu!

***

Vice Pres. Jejomar Binay was supposed to hold a presscon last Monday to explain his side of the corruption tag thrown against him with the allegedly overpriced Makati Office and Parking building. But he cancelled it at the last minute. He also failed to appear before the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee investigating these allegations and opted instead to fly to Cagayan Province purportedly to help the beleaguered victims of typhoon "Luis." There he was caught seen distributing t-shirts with Binay's name on it.

When asked about his giving away t-shirts, he merely retorted, "What's wrong with that? We came from far away to help these people. Is there anything wrong with it?" If this is how your future President talks on such issues, then nothing is sacred anymore. I have no doubt that Binay who has openly declared his intention to run for President was not there to help those poor beleaguered typhoon victims. He was there politicking!

Supposedly yesterday, VP Binay would do another presscon in the afternoon. But frankly speaking, I didn't care to wait to listen to him tell us nothing but crap! Do you expect VP Binay to do a public confession and say that he was sorry that he got kickbacks from his bagman and former friend, Vice Mayor Ernesto Mercado? No way Jose! VP Binay will lie, cajole, and say that he is innocent of the charges hurled against him. This brings us to the question of where is Justice here?

What do we do when the Vice President is caught in a corrupt deal when he was mayor of Makati? If we asked House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, he would not impeach the Vice President because that deal was done during his term as mayor of Makati. So where do we seek redress in the case of VP Binay? Are we going to wait for the 2016 Presidential elections? What if he won the Presidency, would that mean we cannot prosecute him in the next 6 years? What a national dilemma! I dare say that we prosecute the Vice President now so that when the whole truth comes out, he cannot even run for President anymore! So what will it be?

***

By now everyone knows that the Aquino Regime has become like a reverse of the Midas Touch, bungling almost anything and everything that it touches. A case in point is the Metro Rail Transit, which was one of the best light rail systems in this country, which was supposedly better than the first mass transit, the Light Rail Transit  built during the conjugal Marcos Regime.

But when the maintenance contract of the MRT ended in 2010, the Department of Transportation & Communications took over the management of the MRT from its private partners and look what happened when the MRT was ran by its former general manager Al Vitangcol, it gave the maintenance contract to an untested group that he was linked with. Soon, the MRT was riddled with maintenance problems and the long lines or queues of commuters swelled.

Well, last Tuesday the Philippine Star came up with a front page news that in the year 2015, the Philippine government would take over the MRT from its private owners. If you ask me, this is a situation where things will go from bad to worse! The facts are right there in front of us, that anything run by the government will never be run efficiently. It is for this very reason why the Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority was bided out to the GMR/Megawide consortium.

Of course things are different in Western countries or should I say in first world countries, where facilities run by the government are efficiently run and so much concern is given to the safety and comfort of passengers. The New York Metropolitan Authority is a case in point. It runs all the subways and trains of New York City, including its buses. But since they're a first world country, so much emphasis is given to passenger comfort and safety. But this kind of thinking doesn't exist in this country. But does anyone in the government care? The flooding of Cebu City is visible proof that our politicians really don't care! Time to make a change!

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vuukle comment

AL VITANGCOL

AQUINO REGIME

BINAY

CAGAYAN PROVINCE

CEBU CITY

CITY OF CEBU

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

HOUSE SPEAKER FELICIANO BELMONTE

JEJOMAR BINAY

VICE PRESIDENT

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