Food is more important than video games!

As I was out in Manila for most of the week, I was a bit hungry for some important local news. Re-reading the local dailies, it turned out that the local news had a high national importance when reports came out that last Thursday, President Aquino literally “snubbed” the three-day National Convention of Hog and Chicken Growers at the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) in Mandaue City despite the fact that the President (or at least his Palace Rasputins) confirmed his attendance as attested to by Director Durian Tan of the Swine Development Council and treasurer of the National Federation of Hog Farmers.

If the President had a busy schedule… these hog and chicken growers would have understood the President’s absence. But apparently, they learned that P-Noy was in Cebu to attend the World Electronic Forum at the Mactan Island’s Shangri-La Resort & Spa. Hmmm, knowing the character of our “Boy” President, of course he could not resist gracing the World Electronic Forum firstly because it was the first time for the Philippines to host it and secondly… electronic gaming is in his heart… if not his thumbs!

Because of this Presidential snub, Gregorio San Diego, president of the United Broilers Raisers Association, has declared that they are joining the hogs industry in a weeklong pork holiday. Of course the Palace Rasputins are not scared easy by this threat as problems like these can be handled by the DTI. I hope they know that food is more important than games.

Come to think of it… aren’t we a bit sick and tired that under the Aquino regime… all we hear about are trouble, trouble and more trouble. We’ve got trouble with the Tourism industry from the Hongkong Tourist debacle and the Open Skies brouhaha, trouble with the military whose hands are tied against the growing Communist threat, trouble with the Catholic Church in his pushing for the RH Bill, trouble in the Spratlys and an even bigger P-Noy led trouble against the Judiciary… trouble with runaway prices of basic commodities and now a pork holiday? When will all this come to an end? How much more suffering can we Filipinos endure?

To be totally frank to you my readers… I don’t blame P-Noy for all the troubles he has caused this country. I blame those of you who voted the wrong man into the Office of the President. I have always batted for an immediate constitutional reform via a constitutional convention because our nation’s problems stem from having a wrong system of governance.

Way back in 1987 at the heels and the euphoria of the EDSA Revolt, President Cory Aquino had 49 men and women craft a new Constitution that brought this nation back to the bad old days of the rule of the oligarchy. Instead of pursuing a Constitution that should have federalized the Philippines in order to embrace our various cultural diversity and language, she chose to embrace the tenets of the Tagalogan Republic, which is why Tita Cory and now her son, P-Noy always speaks in Tagalog in all his speeches even if he comes to Cebu or Mindanao. Back then, Cebu Governor Emilio “Lito” Osmeña filed a case in court to stop this and won!

One glaring effect and defect of this present Constitution is the short three-year term of our elective officials, which means, we wallow in political division every three years. This is not to mention that stupidity in the Constitution that allows the recall of an elective official one-year after the elections. This is happening today in Danao City where two Durano brothers want to recall each other to the detriment of their constituents.

Finally, there is that other stupidity called the one six-year term for the President, instead of the traditional four-year term with one re-election in the previous constitutions.

We have said it here before and I say it again that six years is too short for a good Presidency, while it is just too long for a lousy Presidency. So gentlemen and ladies, we have four more years under the present Aquino Regime, so you better hunker down for a long and arduous sacrifice because of this grave defect in the Cory Constitution.

If I were to sum up all the problems that we are encountering today, especially about politics, perhaps you already forgot that while we have changed our constitution from the 1935 constitution to the 1973 Marcos constitution and now the 1987 constitution, we haven’t changed the Commission on Elections (Comelec), as if it was the best Comelec in the whole world!

But no one cared or dared change the Comelec, which in my book needs a total albeit constitutional overhaul. The Comelec is just like our present centralized form of government, led by a Chairman who like it or not is just as beholden to the appointing authority like all the other government agencies. I dare say let us reform the Comelec first, make it an independent Regional Body that cannot be controlled by one or a group of individuals like it is today. I will write my Comelec reforms in our column on Thursday.

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