Gibo and Lakas-Kampi’s Sputtering Bid
You sense the lack of foresight, or the lack of charismatic leaders, when a group looks lost and seems like it is scraping the bottom of the organizational barrel. Or why is the “well-oiled” machine of the administration coalition Lakas-Kampi, with Gilberto Teodoro astride it as presidential bet, sputtering in the choice of his running mate? Lakas-Kampi propagandists boast about the size of the coalition’s organization for the 2010 elections, with incumbent governors, mayors and congressman supposedly ensuring a victory for Teodoro. But when your top bet is at the bottom of the surveys and you could not find a decent running mate for him, the boast gets exposed a

Noynoy Tops SWS Poll
I have been waiting for the Social Weather Station (SWS) to conduct a survey on people’s preference for president in 2010, this after results of polls involving only limited areas were released last month. Would the result of an SWS survey validate Sen. Benigno Aquino III’s status as the top presidentiable? That was a question that caught my interest. Finally, SWS released yesterday the result of its “Third Quarter 2009” survey conducted from September 18-21, 2009 on 1,800 adult respondents nationwide. The poll, according to SWS website (www.sws.org.ph) was non-commissioned and “was done on SWS’ own initiative as a public service.” That should lessen susp

Gift of Screws
My Sunday was spent attending to my young son whose vomiting episodes forced us to bring him to the facility nearest our place, South General Hospital. I therefore didn’t have time to monitor the rage of typhoon Ondoy, which brought floods to Metro Manila, killing more than 200 people, displacing thousands of others and destroying properties.. President Arroyo called Ondoy a “once-in-a-lifetime typhoon” not because it carried strong winds but for the amount of rain that it poured on Metro Manila (a month’s worth of rain fell on the area in only 12 hours). Devastating storms like Ondoy tend to end up in some people’s minds as myth-like, remaining on their lips

Simala Shrine experience
I didn’t know about the Marian Shrine in Simala, Sibonga town until relatives of my wife Edizza asked both of us to go with them there. That was a couple of years ago, a few months before my mother-in-law was diagnosed with lung cancer. We went there Sunday morning and brought with us food for lunch. We used two vehicles for the trip. The shrine is in Upper Lindogon, a hilly area that can be reached using a gravel road that branched off from the national highway in Simala. You know you are near the shrine because of the people. Then you espy the cathedral-like structure on a hillside. The road does not reach the shrine, so you have to walk some 100 meters to reach it.

Website, Blogs and Decency
I don’t have much to say about the Cebu Press Freedom Week activity, except that I would have preferred one that is less celebratory and more inward-looking and honest. So I would rather tackle freedom in general and its twin, responsibility. We are in a period that is the exact reverse of the one after martial law was declared by Ferdinand Marcos on September 21, 2009. Today, freedom is in excess, especially with the advent of new technology like the internet. Blogs and ideas-sharing websites have proliferated, and the tendency for abuse is real. Professional journalists are guided by a code of ethics and standards that is virtually similar from one media