Today is D-Day for the island of Boracay
Today is D-Day for the famous Isle of Boracay where no less than Pres. Rodrigo "Digong" Duterte ordered its closure for at least six months due mainly to various violations of the National Building Code (NBC) and environmental laws that supposedly the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) should have protected. This is the first time in Philippine history that a huge tourist destination earning billions of pesos for the Philippine economy has been shut down for very valid reasons.
Since this issue came out in the national consciousness, what has happened to Boracay has become a beacon light for all other tourists destinations and attractions for possible violation of government laws, which has also pointed us to possible corruption as to why these hotels and resorts were able to secure government permits despite those violations. As I pointed out yesterday, many privately-owned beach houses fronting our seashores are also big violators of our DENR laws and this should be a wake up call for the DENR to double its efforts to make sure that all environmental laws are properly followed, regardless of who are the violators. I'm sure that many beachfront owners are rich and powerful … so let's be careful.
Meanwhile, I exhort the DENR with the support of the Cebu City Council to come up with a yearlong plan to recover the 3-meter easement on the Guadalupe River and the Lahug Creek. First is for all barangay officials to identify that homeowners who are violators of the 3-meter easement and write letters to each of them to vacate the 3-meter easement within a year and they won't be fined for doing so or for using government property without any rental for many decades.
But after a year, these violators do not voluntarily give up the 3-meter easement, they will be subject to high fines and government would have the right to destroy parts of their homes that violate the 3-meter easement. Now is the best time to make this happen because it is right smack within the election period of the barangay and SK elections. To facili-tate this plan, I suggest to the Cebu City Council to enact an ordinance creating a task force with the DENR to recover the 3-meter easement for the government.
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There is once more a resumption of the peace talks between the Philippine government and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), wherein this time Pres. Rodrigo "Digong" Duterte put a 60-day cap on this new proposal for peace. Frankly speaking, I doubt if we can achieve peace in just 60 days for as long as the ailing and elderly leaders of the CPP refuses to change their main objective to establish a communist state in this country.
The CPP has fought their struggle for more than 40-years and I don't think that they would settle their ideology in just 60 days. Meanwhile, I understand that the government peace panel has been holding back-channel negotiations with the National Democratic Front (NDF) together with Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, who serves as government peace panel chair in preparation for the formal resumption of peace negotiations. All I can say is, good luck to you guys. I'm not against the resumption of the peace talks because I believe in giving peace a chance.
One of the many major issues that need to be discussed on the peace table are the numerous crimes that many New People's Army (NPA) or NDF cadres committed in the name of the communist ideology. I just read in The Freeman news that a Cebuana student has been tagged by the military as member of the NPA after her journal was recovered in last week's encounter in San Carlos City, Negros Occidental.
In that report, Brigadier General Eliezer Losañes, commanding officer of the 303rd Infantry Brigade assigned in Negros Island, confirmed the recovery of the journal, which allegedly belonged to a 26-year-old former B.S. Mathematics student of the University of the Philippines in Cebu, hailing from Minglanilla. The Freeman withheld the name of the alleged student because she claimed to have been sexually assaulted by her comrades. This is the way of life of being an NPA where their comrades take liberty in sexually abusing their female members. This is why we should warn parents to make sure their children are not infected by the communist ideology least their children get into the wrong hands.
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