Telenovela

With all due respect to the late Department of Interior and Local Government Sec. Jesse Robredo, that opportunistic politicians, our governor counted, are now calling for his wife Leni to run for senator come 2013 is both an example of stupidity and the proof of our shallowness.

Is this because one of the Robredo daughters expressed her desire to someday become another 'Kris Aquino' so the headless crooks (or crocs) are now coaxing the mother to become another 'Cory?'

Well, we already have too many telenovela scripts with too much crying going. We don't need yet another one.

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The press in the Philippines is theoretically free and ideally unbiased. But we do know that several factors render press freedom a prisoner in the hands of the powerful, the abusive, the violent, and the rich. Thus, countless journalists shed blood and lives in the name of the profession they embraced.

We also know that in general, the inclination of the press is to the marginalized, the poor, the underprivileged, the underdog. It is this bias that often hurts the aggressor and it is this bias that coaxes them to utter the word 'unfair' to describe the press.

At the end of the day, freedom and biases aside, what is important is for people to understand the very function of the press. When and where some private parties do not have this understanding, the press also holds the right to refrain from explaining herself.

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A crying mother came to me and told me another sob story. And, yes you guessed that right, she is the bida.

This mother went to her sons' school, Tandang Sora Elementary School, and asked for a certification that will prove that her boys are regularly attending school from the principal. Apparently the principal had a bad morning, or she might have awakened on the wrong side of the bed. She rebuked the mother for going to her office just to ask for the certificate which is a requirement to continue receiving cash incentives from Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).

Having been told to ask for the dear certificate from her boys' advisers, the mother hurried to the teachers who then told her that it should be the principal who should give her the document. Anyway, each of the two advisers made a handwritten certificate and they told the mother to go back to the principal's office and have her sign what they've written.

And follow the teacher's instructions the mother did. She went back to the principal's office only to receive the volume two of her lashing that mothers like her have no shame and would only go to her office for her signature. She also ranted that mothers who are 4Ps beneficiaries can only get their incentive after obtaining her signature yet she who signs couldn't get a cent.

Flabbergasted, the mother was only able to muster that it wasn't her fault that she was picked to be a beneficiary of the government's social service program. She obtained the uber precious signature with free live declamation.

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The mother I am talking about isn't the first or the only 4Ps beneficiary I have encountered. I have been in the homes of some them and I attest to their poverty. Now, I lament that in their poverty, hopelessness, and helplessness they should be the receiving end of the discrimination that an educated principal should've known better not to utter.

Well, if the good principal wants to receive cash from 4Ps, what if she resigns as principal, go jobless, and apply to the CSWDO as a beneficiary?