Daang matuwid: A sheer hypocrisy!

Our readers know too well that since I come from a family that operates movie houses, film piracy is an important issue for me, after all, I was once the head of the Anti-Film Piracy group a decade ago during the time of the Videogram Regulatory Board (VRB), which has since been renamed Optical Media Board (OMB). The last OMB Chairman was a good friend of mine, actor Edu Manzano (who ran for Vice-President under Gibo Teodoro, Jr.) and he would always inform me of future raids against video pirates.

But when the Aquino Regime came into power, another actor headed the OMB, Ronnie Rickets, whom I never met. I have never heard him do any raids in Cebu City, which is why video piracy continues to flourish openly in many of our shopping centers.

Last week, Presidential Political Adviser Ronald Llamas was caught on camera in Circle C Mall in Quezon City by Dona Policar, associate editor of Bandera of the Inquirer group, purchasing P2,000 worth of pirated video films and this issue has since turned viral. After consulting with Mr. Llamas, Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, III proceeded to defend him, saying that he merely dropped in that store and furthermore saying that “video piracy was not a priority of the Aquino government.”

The Aquino propaganda machinery even went further to defend Llamas that buyers of pirated products are “not criminally liable” for purchasing illegally gotten pirated films. Even a priest Fr. Eliseo Mercado, a peace advocate from Mindanao who obviously doesn’t know the law, defended Llamas saying “If the originals are priced rightly and affordable, people will buy the originals. The poor have to be contented with clones and copies because they are within their reach.”

By saying that anti-piracy is anti-poor, this priest should be sanctioned by the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) for promoting dishonesty. This priest wants the prices of original videos pegged at P50 each. Where did he come up with that figure? Obviously, he doesn’t know that Hollywood film producers pay millions of dollars for their film productions. Perhaps Fr. Mercado ought to give us an idea of how much the Tagalog film industry should sell their locally made films which by the way also suffers from video piracy.

This just reminds me of the motto of the Brotherhood of Christian Businessmen and Professionals (BCBP) “Be honest even if the others are not.” Pray Fr. Eliseo Mercado that you are encouraging people to buy pirated products, which is considered as stealing and therefore a violation of the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt not Steal.” But apparently under this dispensation, small crimes don’t even result in any administrative sanctions, not even a reprimand. So in the end, that PNoy slogan about Daang Matuwid is nothing but sheer hypocrisy!

Meanwhile we read that report that Llamas has since apologized to Pres. PNoy for his indiscretion. If you ask me, he should apologize to the producers of the pirated video films that he bought in Circle C, but then it would mean exposing those alleged porno films that he got perhaps to show to his master Pres. PNoy, which is the reason why Pres. PNoy can’t fire him, lest he publicly declares that it was the President who asked him to get those pirated video films.

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I find it hard to believe that out of the 907 teachers that took the National Qualifying Exams for School Heads (NQESH) last Oct. 20, only 40 teachers in Central Visayas passed this test. This is broken into eight from Cebu Province and three from Cebu City, while the Province of Bohol even beat us with 19 who passed these exams. This report tells us volumes about the state of our educational system and if we follow simple logic as reported in those figures, then Cebuano students are better off studying in Bohol because their teachers are better!

If you ask me, this is just a glimpse of the state of our educational system today. Honestly, I thought we were already stuck in the bottom rung but apparently it is a new low for the Department of Education (DepEd). This brings us to the other issue where our students would have to pass Grade Seven, which means another year of tuition fees for our parents. Is this fair to the students and their parents?

If only we have highly qualified teachers who truly care about giving quality education to their students, then we would not have any need for Grade Seven. But forcing our students to undergo seventh grade is no guarantee that they would be graduating better students for college.

What DepEd ought to do is look very seriously where our students are experiencing difficulty and try to find solutions to solve the problem. A case in point is the DepEd’s forcing us to study Tagalog, which is not-so-cleverly-disguised as Pilipino. This subject undoubtedly brings down the national average of our students because even the Tagalog speaking students are having a difficulty in learning this language. So if Tagalogs are having problems on this subject, how much more for students like Cebuanos, Illonggos, Warays or Ilocanos who are not Tagalog speakers? It is time to look at this issue very seriously.

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