El Niño phenomenon: The silent calamity

Our prayers have been answered and the rains have finally come last week and yesterday it also rained here. It's a good thing. However, while the rains have started to fall, it doesn't change the situation prevailing in our countryside, notably with our farmers whose scorched farms are far from the creeks or rivers (many of these creeks have dried up because of the El Niño phenomenon). As what happened in the past three months with zero rain, it wrought havoc to many farms. This meant that most farmers in Cebu have gone hungry, as they have no food to eat. This is a calamity that unfortunately our political leaders have failed to see.

Last Saturday, we rode our bikes to the Molave Farms of Mr. Pacquito Unchuan in Barili and we saw for ourselves that this once lush green farm had turned to brown and as we rode through the towns of Aloguinsan, Pinamungahan, Toledo City and Balamban you will notice that while countryside had turned to brown. So yesterday, this was reported to our group, the Sons of David by Mr. Unchuan and we came up with money to purchase sacks of rice for our needy farmers. Alas, this is but a drop in the bucket!

Mr. Unchuan pointed out that this type of calamity where the crops of our farmers die due to the heat is something that doesn't trigger concern from the majority of our people, unlike typhoon or earthquake which we can all see the damage. The drought is a silent calamity and we ought to respond to the needs of our farmers with the same fervor and concern we Cebuanos have when there is a natural disaster. So we'd like to make an appeal to the kind hearted souls to help feed our farmers who lack food like rice or corn so that while the rains have come, they would have the energy to replant those lost produce and return back to normal life.

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I just want to add or clarify my statement that I wrote in my column yesterday when I declared that we should not allow shortcuts to our justice system. What this country direly needs is speedy justice as compared to our present snail's paced justice system, which has been denied to the Filipino people in the last 30-years since the EDSA Revolt. Mind you, people who have lost confidence in our snail's paced justice system have resorted to the ultimate shortcut in our justice system, hiring guns-for-hire to eliminate their opponents rather than face them in a lengthy court trial.

But if our policemen act as judge, jury, and executioner, it would bring an ugly reputation for us in Cebu City that we are a country that no longer follows the rule of law. This is why I would like to advise incoming Mayor Tomas Osmeña to be extra careful in encouraging our police officers to be trigger-happy when dealing with our criminals. Sure, I fully agree that those criminals who roam around our streets and armed to the teeth and refuse to submit to authorities run the risk of getting involved in a shootout with our police officers. But we must avoid such scenarios at all cost.

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Over the weekend, netizens were busy reporting a potential rift between presumptive President Davao City Mayor Rodrigo "Digong" Duterte and his close friend and very early supporter in his campaign, Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, who publicly decried that he is being eased out of Duterte's inner circle. This led many pundits to conclude that Mayor Duterte was ungrateful to Pastor Quiboloy who loaned him his private jet and helicopter and for sure, lots of money for his presidential campaign.

This forced Mayor Duterte to call a presscon in his watering hole, After Dark Bar in Davao City, where he said, "Let me be very clear: my friendship with my friends ends where the interest of the country begins. I would as much as possible make you happy if you are my friend, but I will not allow anybody to color my decisions in government. From now on, it is always the interest of the people of the Republic of the Philippines that counts, period." Duterte added, "I am sorry. My loyalty to my friend ends, where my loyalty to my country begins!" I think Duterte made his position very clear.

In the same presscon, he lambasted the bishops of the Catholic Church, saying that it is "The most hypocritical institution" for issuing a pastoral letter a few days before the elections to dissuade Catholics from voting him into office. My friends within the Catholic hierarchy have asked me what I thought about this latest pronouncement of Mayor Duterte?

Frankly speaking, the Catholic Church or at least the bishops who issued that pastoral letter should have been prepared for the consequences, as Duterte is now the president-elect. That he would lambasts the bishops for trying to block him. But hey, if Duterte didn't even give Pastor Quiboloy any importance in his proposed cabinet, the Catholic Bishops should not complain because their pastoral letter backfired on them.

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