To stop "jueteng", a marching order must originate from the President himself. P-noy must come out in fighting mood and order his PNP and DILG top brass to end the operation of jueteng all over the country. He must be the one who should lead in convincing the public that the days of jueteng lords are over. He must issue the marching order to make jueteng an illegal act that will send anyone involved, including the bookies or "kubradors", in jail.
If there is no marching order from the President, the police force and the DILG officials, including the mayors, congressmen, governors and other government officials, will get a dubious signal from Malacanang and will just continue to engage in jueteng operations. Now that President Aquino enjoys a high trust rating from Filipinos, it will not be difficult for him to get the cooperation of every Filipino to eradicate jueteng.
If President Aquino continues to display a lukewarm attitude on the government's jueteng drive for whatever reason, then the scourge of this illegal numbers game will spread and neutralize whatever headways the government has achieved in other sectors of society. Inaction and half-hearted attitude towards the drive to stop jueteng will bring disgrace in the Aquino governance and wll eventually derail his crusade against corruption and poverty.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Ways to End Poverty in the Philippines
The Philippines is one of the countries in Asia with the highest percentage of poor people. It is obvious that those countries, the Philippines included, are deeply saddled in a morass of bureaucratic corruption. Thus, there is sense in the strategy to remove corruption as a problem in government before launching programs to end poverty. But there is a drawback to this strategy. It slows down the momentum to serve the poor. Corruption meansures are on-going and it does take time to haul all corrupt officials and their accessories to court and mete out the necessary justice. Thus, it is incumbent for the government to get bolder and pour millions of pesos to poverty-ending tasks that aim to provide an opportunity for every Filipino to experience the basic amenities of life and get out of poverty, pure and simple. And what are ways to accomplish these?
The government should continue with its conditional dole-outs of money for its identified poor families, for this is a noble effort to reach out to the poor in society and let the public money benefit those people in the poverty line.
Also, the government can tap international financial institutions, including the United Nations, whose main work is to alleviate world poverty by pouring in millions of dollars to developing countries to improve the lot of their citizens. The Philippines is still a Third World country. It should get easy approval from international programs designed to help end the poverty curse. Poverty-ending projects like cooperatives, livestock and food production, handicraft production, food banks, rural road projects, and other small-scale projects can be started in villages and small towns all over the country with the help of these international agencies. The Philippines must accept that it is still a developing country after all these years due to corruption that is endemic in all levels of its bureaucracy and which has created a deep division between the haves and the have-nots in Philippine society. It should therefore continue to look to international agencies for help in terms of grants and loans to help the poor and bring them at par with the rich in enjoying even just the basic amenities of life.
Vital to these projects to end poverty should be the continued efforts of government agencies concerned to generate jobs for its jobless poor, provide a place and build simple shelters for its homeless poor, create more educational scholarships in high school and college levels for the children of poor parents who, without those free-schooling opportunities, will render them tied to a future of endless poverty.
The government should also ask its people to practice volunteerism and help its poor countrymen. It must assert that the success of government programs for the poor still rests with the full coperation of its citizens. It must encourage private institutions and agencies to re-focus their programs to help the poor and the homeless in society. It must reward individuals and groups who take extra effort to assist the needy citizens through tax incentives and financial assistance.
And a lot more projects for the poor are just waiting for the government to lay its helping hand on. And since a sincere and straightforward President is currently at the helm of power in the country, there should be a rosy future at last for its poor citizens.
The government should continue with its conditional dole-outs of money for its identified poor families, for this is a noble effort to reach out to the poor in society and let the public money benefit those people in the poverty line.
Also, the government can tap international financial institutions, including the United Nations, whose main work is to alleviate world poverty by pouring in millions of dollars to developing countries to improve the lot of their citizens. The Philippines is still a Third World country. It should get easy approval from international programs designed to help end the poverty curse. Poverty-ending projects like cooperatives, livestock and food production, handicraft production, food banks, rural road projects, and other small-scale projects can be started in villages and small towns all over the country with the help of these international agencies. The Philippines must accept that it is still a developing country after all these years due to corruption that is endemic in all levels of its bureaucracy and which has created a deep division between the haves and the have-nots in Philippine society. It should therefore continue to look to international agencies for help in terms of grants and loans to help the poor and bring them at par with the rich in enjoying even just the basic amenities of life.
Vital to these projects to end poverty should be the continued efforts of government agencies concerned to generate jobs for its jobless poor, provide a place and build simple shelters for its homeless poor, create more educational scholarships in high school and college levels for the children of poor parents who, without those free-schooling opportunities, will render them tied to a future of endless poverty.
The government should also ask its people to practice volunteerism and help its poor countrymen. It must assert that the success of government programs for the poor still rests with the full coperation of its citizens. It must encourage private institutions and agencies to re-focus their programs to help the poor and the homeless in society. It must reward individuals and groups who take extra effort to assist the needy citizens through tax incentives and financial assistance.
And a lot more projects for the poor are just waiting for the government to lay its helping hand on. And since a sincere and straightforward President is currently at the helm of power in the country, there should be a rosy future at last for its poor citizens.
Monday, September 6, 2010
The Hostage-Taking Fiasco Shouldn't Cripple the Aquino Presidency
Granted that the hostage crisis of August 23 came to a disappointing end with the loss of eight lives. Granted that the Aquino government failed miserably in responding correctly to the crisis. But this tragic event should not cripple the work of the Aquino administration to save the country from corruption and extreme poverty. Critics of Aquino are crying for blood by asking the President to make the extreme sacrifice and ask those heads of agencies and offices responsible for the hostage fiasco to resign. Aquino already accepted responsibility. That should be enough.
President Aquino has a lot of tasks at hand that might be imperiled by this seeming propensity to search for sacrificial limbs to recover the prestige and honor of the country in the light of accusations from all over the world that there was negligence on the part of the Philippines in saving the hostage victims. It seems that the country and its leaders have focused their attention to do everything to appease the prying eyes and end the ridicule that Filipinos are now facing from foreigners due to the events of August 23 at the Quirino grandstand, where a dishonored police officer commandeered a tourist bus and killed some of its occupants when his impossible demands were not met. This should not be the case.
The response that the government has made so far should be enough to prove to the world that the Philippines is sincere in its acceptance of blame and it has been apologetic to the families of victims of the hostage-taking, as well as to the government of Hongkong province, on the actions that the hostage-taker Rolando Mendoza committed as well as on the lapses of the police force in responding to the crisis.
Otherwise, the Philippine government should now turn its sight on the crusade to haul corrupt officials, smugglers, and other bad elements before the hall of justice and make the money that will saved from this crusade benefit the Filipino people through infrastructure development, health benefits, educational reforms and poverty-ending projects. This crusade cannot suffer the ningas-cogon mentality that has felled many a good crusade by the government. Aquino has just less than six years to make good his promise to eliminate corruption as the cause of the impoverished conditions in the country. The events of August 23 should not derail or cripple the work and dedication of the Aquino administration to bring the needed blueprint of a clean government into full implementation. In addition, P-noy will need all the heads of his Cabinet to help him achieve this. He should therefore not listen to critics who are suggesting that there should be resignations from his government resulting from the hostasge crisis fiasco. Aquino should know better.
President Aquino has a lot of tasks at hand that might be imperiled by this seeming propensity to search for sacrificial limbs to recover the prestige and honor of the country in the light of accusations from all over the world that there was negligence on the part of the Philippines in saving the hostage victims. It seems that the country and its leaders have focused their attention to do everything to appease the prying eyes and end the ridicule that Filipinos are now facing from foreigners due to the events of August 23 at the Quirino grandstand, where a dishonored police officer commandeered a tourist bus and killed some of its occupants when his impossible demands were not met. This should not be the case.
The response that the government has made so far should be enough to prove to the world that the Philippines is sincere in its acceptance of blame and it has been apologetic to the families of victims of the hostage-taking, as well as to the government of Hongkong province, on the actions that the hostage-taker Rolando Mendoza committed as well as on the lapses of the police force in responding to the crisis.
Otherwise, the Philippine government should now turn its sight on the crusade to haul corrupt officials, smugglers, and other bad elements before the hall of justice and make the money that will saved from this crusade benefit the Filipino people through infrastructure development, health benefits, educational reforms and poverty-ending projects. This crusade cannot suffer the ningas-cogon mentality that has felled many a good crusade by the government. Aquino has just less than six years to make good his promise to eliminate corruption as the cause of the impoverished conditions in the country. The events of August 23 should not derail or cripple the work and dedication of the Aquino administration to bring the needed blueprint of a clean government into full implementation. In addition, P-noy will need all the heads of his Cabinet to help him achieve this. He should therefore not listen to critics who are suggesting that there should be resignations from his government resulting from the hostasge crisis fiasco. Aquino should know better.
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