Skip to main content

Tito, Ralph, eyeing appointive posts; Mike, Tessie no longer interested

Of course, they would not. Do they want to lose? Ralph is running as Senator again, and might lose if he sticks too close to GMA. Tito will run as Mayor of QC. Good luck na lang. Mike is also running as Mayor of QC, with his dad or younger brother as Congressman. I am sure the whole Defensor family will lose this time. I will support Bolet Banal if and when he runs as Congressman of District 3, and I will support Herbert "Bistek" Bautista if and when he runs as Mayof of QC. Is it true that Congressman Defensor allegedly brought the barangay captains of District 3 and their families to Baguio last December? And they are now in Hong Kong for some sight-seeing? Who paid for these hot vacation? Ah, and all this, while the poor of Barangay Escopa come to me, asking for medicines.

***


Posted in MALAYA
BY WENDELL VIGILIA

FORMER senators Vicente Sotto III and Ralph Recto are eyeing positions in government after losing in the 2007 senatorial elections while former presidential chief of staff Michael Defensor and former senator Teresa Aquino-Oreta have already lost interest in accepting government portfolios.

Sotto, in a chat with reporters during the vin d'honneur in Malacañang Thursday night, said Defensor and Aquino are no longer keen on accepting appointments even if the one-year ban on accepting public positions for defeated candidates in the May 2007 polls has lapsed.

"Tutulong na lang daw siya," Sotto said of Defensor, adding that Oreta is also not keen on going back to public service.

But he said Recto is "definitely considering" holding a position.

The four were part of the senatorial line-up of the administration's Team Unity, which was beaten in the 2007 polls. Only three administration candidates won: Joker Arroyo, Edgardo Angara and Juan Miguel Zubiri.

Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said Defensor merely "laughed off" the prospect of holding a government position after his defeat.

Sotto, former campaign manager of opposition standard-bearer Fernando Poe Jr., said he is "inclined" to accept a position in the Dangerous Drugs Board "if only to have the law fully implemented."

He said President Arroyo intimated her desire to give positions to TU candidates in a meeting last year.

Sotto, principal author of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 (R.A. 9165), oversaw the creation of the DDB when he was still a senator in 2002. The DDB is presently led by Anselmo Avenido, former chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).

Sotto said he would zero-in on the rehabilitation of dependents because this "is already one-fourth of the fight."

"The day you stop buying (drugs) is the day you stop selling," he said, adding that enforcement is just one part of the fight against illegal drugs trafficking.

Sotto said government, which has only about four rehabilitation centers, should seriously monitor the operations of private clinics.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Five Poems by Danton Remoto

In the Graveyard Danton Remoto The walls round the graveyard Are ancient and cracked. The moss is too thick they look dark. The paint on my grandfather’s tomb Has the color of bone. Two yellow candles we lighted, Then we uttered our prayers. On my left, somebody’s skull Stares back at me: a black Nothingness in the eyes. The graveyard smells of dust Finer than the pore of one’s skin— Dust mixed with milk gone sour. We are about to depart When a black cat darts Across our path, quickly, With a rat still quivering In its mouth. * Immigration Border Crossing (From Sadao, Thailand to Bukit Changloon, Malaysia) Danton Remoto On their faces that betray No emotion You can read the unspoken Questions: Are you really A Filipino? Why is your skin Not the color of padi ? Your eyes, Why are they slanted Like the ones Who eat babi ? And your palms, Why are there no callouses Layered like th...

A mansion of many languages

BY DANTON REMOTO, abs-sbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak | 10/16/2008 1:00 AM REMOTE CONTROL In 1977, my mentor, the National Artist for Literature and Theater Rolando S. Tinio, said: “It is too simple-minded to suppose that enthusiasm for Filipino as lingua franca and national language of the country necessarily involves the elimination of English usage or training for it in schools. Proficiency in English provides us with all the advantages that champions of English say it does – access to the vast fund of culture expressed in it, mobility in various spheres of the international scene, especially those dominated by the English-speaking Americans, participation in a quality of modern life of which some features may be assimilated by us with great advantage. Linguistic nationalism does not imply cultural chauvinism. Nobody wants to go back to the mountains. The essential Filipino is not the center of an onion one gets at by peeling off layer after layer of vegetable skin. One’s experience with onio...

Taboan: Philippine Writers' Festival 2009

By John Iremil E. Teodoro, Contributor The Daily Tribune 02/26/2009 A happy and historical gathering of wordsmiths with phallocentric and Manila-centric overtones *** This is from my friend, the excellent poet and critic John Iremil Teodoro, who writes from the magical island of Panay. I wish I have his energy, his passion and his time to write. Writing needs necessary leisure. But this budding, bading politician has shifted his directions. On this day alone, I have to attend not one, not two, but three political meetings. And there goes that new poem out of the window. Sigh. *** According to Ricardo de Ungria, a poet of the first magnitude and the director of Taboan: The Philippine International Writers Festival 2009, “the original idea was for a simple get together of writers from all over the country who have been recipients, directly or indirectly, of grants and awards from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). What happened last Feb. 11 to 13 was far from being ...