Below is the partial exchange of ideas I had with a fellow blogger, Wawam. The first entry is my reaction after watching the two videos posted above and lifted from Wawam’s blog, of Mar Roxas. In the first video, Mar Roxas, in a rally in Makati, innumerated the defects of this country and was caught shouting “putang Ina!” towards the end of his speech to express his disgust to the Arroyo administration. In the second video, he was saying “I am not sorry” in his speech in the Senate.

JP Anthony Cuñada said

January 28, 2009 @ 10:51 pm

Mar Roxas does not know what he is talking about. Any body can narrate the problems of this country much more can shout the “putang ina!” he did shout during the rally. But no body, especially Mar, has ever proposed a workable solution. Mar’s only solution to the very problems he narrated was his “putang ina!”.

I do not blame him for being so desperate. These are desperate times calling for desperate measures to catch attention and to win media mileage. But the true story remains that he has done nothing to alleviate the lives of at least a town he represented in Congress in his stint as a Congressman, and even now that he is a Senator. My town, Pilar in Capiz, an hour ride away from the City named after his family name, situated between mountains that produce sugar, rice, corn, fruits and other agricultural products, and the sea that bears fish of all kinds still has an eerie feeling of dryness, loneliness and hunger.

It is impossible that he does not know the corruption in that part of the country. That he has not done anything about it does not surprise but pisses me off. In him I smell the stench of a clogging drainage of a wet market.

wawam said

January 29, 2009 @ 9:52 am

perhaps we should look at what mar roxas’ role is as a senator in fighting corruption or the problems the country face. roxas is a senator, his mandate is to write laws.

there are government agencies like the dept of justice, the police, the NBI, the ombudsman who are responsible for stopping crime and punishing criminals.

there is also the president who is supposed to uphold the laws of the country.

if there are barangay-based or city-based problems, then there are the barangay officials, the mayor and the governor. roxas is not expected to solve these, instead it is the barangay, city, provincial and national leadership who are supposed to fix these.

JP Anthony Cuñada said

January 29, 2009 @ 11:52 pm

Thank you, wam, for your response. I have these for your consideration:

Actions prescribed by law or inherent in official functions are not always the most effective means of deterring a criminal act or acts detrimental to the welfare of the people. It is because of this observations that the Katarungang Pambaranggay Law was enacted. Parties must settle their differences before the baranggay level first before they can proceed to courts.

The baranggay officials, charged to help the conflicting parties, exert effort and influence for the parties to arrive at a common ground to avoid litigation that take up so much time and money and also add to the congestion of cases in court.

Writing laws is a Senator’s official mandate. But that is only half of his duties. As a member of one of the equal branches of our government, Senators may exercise their power judicially such as writing bills or extrajudicially by exerting their influence. Influence by itself is not a product of stature or position. It is earned by living a life worthy of respect and emulation.

A Senator’s way of life as a weapon to influence public officials is only one in his arsenal. His most potent weapon is the millions of pesos in tax payers’ money called pork barrel.

I agree with you, but only in part that “(R)oxas is not expected to solve (the problems of the local government), instead it is the baranggay, city, provincial and national leadership who are supposed to fix these”. Because he has all the power and the influence to make the problems go away.

The state of affairs of a community reflects the kind of leader that community has.

As a president, Mar Roxas will need more of his influence to make the necessary change for this country to prosper. So far, I have not seen that influence exercised to make changes even in a little town called Pilar, Capiz.

Permit me to post our discussion in my blog. Thank you.

wawam said

January 30, 2009 @ 9:12 am

to JP :

i think a big part of what is wrong in our national life is that there is no accountability on the actions or non-actions of our leaders. something more extreme to that, which is also true in our country, is that no small or big crimes or mistakes committed by government and elected officials are punished. that is more extreme but its related to accountability. we often get this : “it’s everyone else’s fault except mine”.

we think accountaibility is important not just for the purpose of assigning blame but more importantly for reform. change and improvement. correcting things wrong and improving things begin in knowing who among our leaders are doing their job and who are not. knowing these is the only way we can weed out those doing our communities and country harm.

in your capiz example – i think it’s important that the people of capiz understand the difficulties they are encountering in their daily lives is first and foremost a failure of local governance. they need to seek redress from the local officials or do not vote them again in the next election. capiz citizens must hold their local officials accountable for making their local lives a misery.

the budget, the plans, the responsibility and duty to make the local lives of citizens of capiz a good one is controled by the local officials, not senators.

JP Anthony Cuñada said

January 30, 2009 @ 12:34 pm

Wam, thank you for your thoughts. I hear you.

Majority of the people in Pilar worry the least about politics. They have more immediate needs to meet, like food for the next meal, and next, and the next. But for sure, election is much awaited because during this time people do not need to toil in the fields or in the sea to earn money. All they need to be is a registered voter.

Majority of the voters live on the land they do not own. Under this situation, the freedom to choose who to vote comes at the price of the freedom to insert in the soil the columns of their house.

We understand that when the stomach is empty and the future is bleak we do not think about seeking redress and holding our local officials accountable for making our lives miserable.

To insist that the “difficulties (we) are encountering…is first and foremost a failure of local governance,” and that “the budget, the plans, the responsibility and duty to make the local lives of citizens of capiz a good one is controlled by the local officials, not senators” is a conclusion that denies the fact that by representing the whole country, he is representing the little town. What kind of a representative he is if he cannot effect change in the people he represents for?

Mar Roxas should realize that if he dreams of changing the whole country, he has to start with his little town.

Mar Roxas is too young to become the next president but he is old and capable enough to demonstrate the concrete change he dreams for this country. Then, I might even campaign for him.

wawam said

January 30, 2009 @ 9:03 pm

JP : the citizens of pilar of course have the right to feel that way about mar roxas and his “inaction” on their plight. i respect that sentiment and i sympathize with them. my wish is for them to soon find the help they deserve.

just to keep the discussion going: i am also a citizen of this country and i live in metro manila. mar roxas was also voted by those who live in metro manila. and just like pilar, there are problems in metro manila that roxas can help us with. we can argue that since metro manila is bigger, the political and economic center of the country, it deserves more help from roxas than pilar. metro manila also has a lot more voters than pilar.

why would pilar who has much less number of voters deserve mar roxas’ attention than metro manila?

JP Anthony Cuñada said

January 31, 2009 @ 1:38 pm

Wawam, thank for your sympathy. Thank you for recognizing the citizens of Pilar’s “right to feel that way about (M)ar (R)oxas and his ‘inaction’ on their plight”. That now you know there exist a place called Pilar in Capiz and that we are talking about it may not be the help they deserve and you wish that they soon find, but, to use Barack’s arrangement of words, this is where we start.

As I have said, people in Pilar have grown cynical. They have been abandoned for too long. Their voices are only now beginning to be heard again, especially by you, and hopefully by thousands of your readers too.

How dare you compare Pilar with Manila, Wawam. In terms of help, do I need to say who needs it more?

Besides, Mar Roxas has jumped from one position to another and championed the cause of those who have. Take the cheap medicine law as an example. Yes, it’s cheap. No question. But you can only say “cheap” in relation to something “expensive”. Tell me how does that categorization apply to someone who has no money, like most of Pilar’s citizens?

Of course, there are still beautiful things left in Pilar. There are the waterfalls that I myself need to visit, dive into and write about. There are the beaches. There are the delicious oysters. There are the fresh and cheap (compared to Manila, of course) fish in danger of extinction because of rampant illegal fishing.

Talking about fish, I noticed that very few people who live in cities, like Manila, love to eat fish. I understood why when I started to buy, cook and eat the fish sold here. Even old people who were advised by their physician to eat more fish refuse to heed. They must have a bad impression the first time they tried fish. If you are one of them, your life will change when you have tasted Pilar’s fresh fish.

For other things, you may read the “introduction” of my blog named after, who else but my town, Pilar, Capiz?

Here is the link to Wawam’s blog and the rest of her comment/s