Category: mar roxas

Mar and Grace must speak out

… The two won a combined vote of 18.6 million compared to President Duterte’s 15.9 million (Santiago and Binay earned a paltry 6.7 million votes combined).

If Poe and Roxas speak out, Duterte may taunt them as losers. If he does, that’s all right, that’s his style. But having had a combined vote larger than Duterte’s, they’re in a position to call out the government to rein in the police.

We all – government supporters and dissenters – must work together to make sure the nation’s direction is righted before things deteriorate and all will be lost. We cannot afford to have another Marcosian nightmare that we had from 1965 to 1986.

This is not a call to arms, a coup d’etat, or another People Power uprising. Rather, this is a call for enlightenment, for discernment, for open-mindedness, and for unity.

Leandro DD Coronel

tricky times

medyo di ako makapaniwala na maaaring hindi si mar roxas ang i-annoint ni presidente aquino na kandidato ng liberal party sa 2016.  parang walang-utang-na-loob ang dating nito sa akin.  kahit pa sabihing mar had no choice but to put off his own plans of running for president given the clamor for noynoy in 2009 in the wake of cory’s demise.  because mar could have handled it differently, he could have resisted some, he could have tried to convince cory’s kids, and nation, na maigi kung mag-VP muna si noynoy, get into the groove, ika nga.

hindi naman kaila sa ating mga beterano sa bantay-pulitika na noynoy was kind of a non-performer in congress during his three terms in the lower house and half-term in the senate.  ang tsismis pa nga e kung hindi siya ipinangampanya ni cory at ni kris nuong 1998, 2001, 2004, at 2007 ay wala siyang panalo.

my favorite anecdote about his days in the lower house was told by no less than bff butch abad in some tv show after cory’s death but before he, noynoy, became a candidate for president.

say ni butch abad, a close friend of the family, nagkasabay sila ni noynoy sa house of reps (malamang nuong panahon ni gloria kung kailan usong uso ang televised debates and hearings).  kung minsan daw, tinatawagan siya ni cory, na nanonood pala, at itinatanong kung nasaan si noynoy, bakit wala si noynoy, and butch would daw say, baka ho natutulog pa.  or something to that effect.  of course such stories stopped the moment he decided to run.

bentang-benta kay noynoy noon, just as bentang-benta kay grace ngayon, ang notion na it’s now or never.  run while the clamor is insane.  but imagine if noynoy had run for VP muna and campaigned like hell for mar — tiyak, tumba pa rin si erap.  then he could have asked president mar for the mindanao portfolio, since napaka-dear-to-his-heart pala ang bangsamoro, and used the 6 years to quietly do his homework, due diligence ika nga.  what a powerpacked 2016 inaugural it could have been if he had surprised the nation with a report on his meetings with ALL factions in the autonomous region and he would be certifying as urgent his own draft proposal for a revitalized ARMM.

i know.  pipe dream.  water under the bridge.  right now, the question is, what is all this panliligaw kay grace poe all about?  is he seriously considering sidelining, instead of throwing all his support behind, mar roxas?  the more the prez keeps the nation hanging, the more i wonder if he might do a cory, who did not feel obliged to honor any promises made to doy laurel when he gave way to her and slid down to VP back in ’85-’86.

what intrigues me most though is that grace seems most receptive to the president’s advances — kilig to the bones? — even as she has started to echo the yellow army’s anti-binay sentiments.  what i really want to know is where she stands on chacha, especially proposed amendments to economic provisions.  or maybe we should be asking chiz.  argh.

anne curtis and the president

Posted by Boo Chanco on Facebook
3 Dec around 2:30 pm

showbiz must really be a tough dog eat dog world so that putting down a star gives hope to rivals they have a chance to take her place.  based on what i see on my FB newsfeed and on my twitter feed, they are still bashing anne curtis for her drunken behavior.  i think she deserves a break.  many of us have been drunk before and acted in ways we regretted in the light of day.  but how many have apologized the way ms curtis did?  as someone who has professional experience handling crisis situations for corporates, i think her instincts are right.  rather than being in denial and letting her own band of apologists fight it out, she apologized and said she did wrong.  that was more than we got from some people we know who clearly bungled the first few days after yolanda in leyte.  both p-noy and mar roxas were defensive and it took 8 days for the administration to somehow apologize and promise to do better courtesy of sonny coloma.  but we haven’t heard the president say sorry even once for the many blunders under his watch for which he must take responsibility.  just imagine how different things would have been for the administration if p-noy wasn’t too defensive on the number of dead and didn’t give that sarcastic remark to the local businessman complaining about the breakdown of peace and order.  how different things would have been if mar roxas didn’t argue with andrew stevens of cnn about the cadavers scattered in the streets as different cadavers every day rather than the same ones stevens claimed he had seen.  perhaps stardom has gotten into the head of anne curtis that led to that drunken behavior but when push came to shove she apologized.  that takes a lot of humility for someone who is up there as a celebrity.  can anyone imagine if the top guns in this government had an ounce of anne’s humility?

calling out mar roxas

former investigative journalist jp fenix shares his reflections post-yolanda and a friend’s urgent missive on retribution and political ambition.  it’s the first i’ve read na malinaw ang allegation of political considerations in relief ops.  say it isn’t so, mar roxas.

DAY 6 since Yolanda/ Haiyan
November 13, 2013

… I wake up to BBC’s report that “people have been increasingly abandoned” in Leyte. Switching to CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN… and the theme is much the same: Relief has been pouring in from all over the world, but they have been stuck and piling up in airport warehouses in Manila and Cebu.

In local TV and radio, the reports have cabinet secretaries like Dinky Soliman and Mar Roxas saying that they are still “studying how they will release relief goods.” Their concern is how action can be done in the most efficient and equitable way.

In the Palace, President Benigno S. Aquino III is still arguing with CNN’s Christian Amanpour over inaccurate casualty counts, and insists that they are still gathering data.

In the midst of it all I get this urgent email from my lawyer – a trusted friend. It has a document attached and it reads:

RETRIBUTION AND POLITICAL AMBITION – Deadly combination for Yolanda Victims

Read on…