Car plates for elite Filipino public servants?

The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics started with a great bang and ended with even a greater bang! The United States finished the games with an overall medal lead of 110 gold, silver and bronze medals, while China took second place with 100 medals. However China took most of the gold medals with a total of 51, dominating most Olympic Games, while the US bagged a total of 36 gold medals. As for us Filipinos, we can only say that we grabbed the title of having the most delegates in attendance to the games!

Shame on Philippine Sports because of political interference! If we don’t change our attitude on how we should train our athletes for the next Olympic Games in London four years from now, we might as well not send a delegation and save our money! Of course we can expect Philippine Olympic Committee Chair Jose “Peping” Cojuangco to come up with all the excuses he can find in the world; after all, he was a former congressman and our politicians are the best in giving excuses for our not winning anything in the last Olympic games!

So okay, we really didn’t do so bad; we did get half-a-gold medal in the 100 meter backstroke event. I’m referring to Ms. Natalie Coughlin of San Francisco, California who not only won the 100 meter backstroke event, she also won a silver medal in the 400 IM Relay a day before. Who is this Natalie Coughlin? She is actually half-Pinoy as her mother is a Filipina married to an American, though she was born in the USA.

My aunt, Mrs. Adelaida Segura of St. Louis Missouri sent me this report. When Natalie Coughlin was interviewed by a Canadian tv journalist after winning her gold medal, she half-jokingly said that her Filipino mother made her eat “rice and eggs” for breakfast even up to the present. You can check her out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Coughlin. She is an American citizen and competed for the USA. But if we grant her a dual citizenship, at least we can say that there was a Filipino who won a gold medal during the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics… half a Filipino. Someday we hope that we would have a 100% Pinoy winning an Olympic event for the Philippines!

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I fully agree with Senate Minority Leader Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. (PDP-Laban) that the government should recall all low-number protocol or courtesy car plates issued to high-ranking public officials except for the President, the Vice-President and the Ambassadors of foreign countries. To show that he was dead serious in this, he has asked Congress to pass a bill prohibiting the issuance of these low-number plates, while canceling those that were already issued. It’s about time we did this!

Sen. Pimentel has observed that “Many high-ranking government officials and middle-class bureaucrats today roam our streets like members of royalty in heavily tinted vehicles sporting low-numbered plates. They evoke a false impression that these favored few are exempted and insulated from the reach of traffic rules and regulations. Since they are public servants, they should set the example in observing road regulations that are followed by all.”

This is very true. Our political leaders have already forgotten that they are serving the public as their real title should be “Public Servants.” Unfortunately, the elected officials only become public servants during the elections, when they pray, ask, cajole, beg or even do a humiliating dance just to get your votes. But once they are in the House of Representatives, they quickly forgot who brought them there in the first place and strut about like royalty whose motto is, “What are we in power for”. Worse, these people think and believe that they are above the law like the law is only for the Filipino masses.

So until and unless this kind of elitism is removed from the face of this nation, we will always have separate classes of people in our society. The rich and the poor and the powerful. This is not much different with what they have in Communist countries like North Korea and in the People’s Republic of China or that unlamented Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) where there was the politburo separated from the rest of the people.

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Mass graves in Sudlon? I have heard of this story a long time ago during our Anti-Communist days. The recent report of those mass graves is clear proof that when the New People’s Army (NPA) were active and used the mountains of Cebu City as their base of operations, the members whom they suspected as “infiltrators” or government agents were executed on the spot in a kangaroo court. So now let’s ask the defenders of the NPA like Karapatan: Who will seek justice for the skeletons found in the Sudlon caves who were victims of human rights violations by the NPAs?