Roll or rollback?

The President's National Security Adviser, Norberto Gonzales, was quoted as saying that "heads will roll" in the revamp of cabinet members that is forthcoming. Perhaps what he means is a rollback of the same heads that used to be there, because so far, the President has reappointed a dozen of those cabinet officials who have not even been confirmed yet by the Commission on Appointments. Now that we know some of the reasons why presidential appointees do not get confirmed by the CA, we hope the "repeaters" will have a better chance. But Gonzales should look for another word and not call this a "revamp".

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Somebody who has not been appointed or reappointed but who is obviously very happy is retired general Arturo Palparan. This was the guy who used to be known as "The Butcher" and on whom disappearances of rightists and leftists as well as activists had been blamed. However, the Court of Appeals has dismissed the case filed against him by the wife of a man who had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. In its decision the Appellate Court said the evidences against Palparan were all hearsay, and forthwith, dropped the charges. Well, this clears Palparan for his political plans. It had been reported before that he had wanted to run for Congress, but probably desisted because of the existence of the charges.

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While many are hailing the appointment of Gilbert Teodoro, former congressman from Tarlac, they are apprehensive over the decision of the President to let NSA's Norberto Gonzales head the Department of National Defense in an interim position before Teodoro assumes office on August 3. Human rights groups are particularly concerned since the NSA head has not been very sympathetic to their causes, to say the least. I also wonder what the members of the Senate think about giving so much power to this man, who once gave them the run-around when they wanted to question him, even landing in a hospital for several days.

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Meanwhile, we don't know if we can call this an improvement, but the 2007 Global Corruption Report of Transparency international has ranked the Philippines the Eighth most corrupt country in the world, after being Ninth last year. Maybe that is better than the Asian report where RP is the most corrupt, but this one comes from studies by international monitors. Finland and New Zealand are vying for the least corrupt title, and Singapore is the third least corrupt. Interestingly, this year's survey on corruption by the TI focused mostly on the judiciary. At least we know that there are moves to cleanse the judicial system here now. We have been seeing reports of judges being sacked penalized for acts that could be considered corrupt. Let's hope Chief Justice Reynato Puno keeps up with his campaign against corrupt and incompetent judges.

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At the Bacolod Public Plaza where the inaugural rites for the newly elected and re-elected officials of the city were held yesterday, I was happy to note that the new set of councilors is composed of men and women of varying ages, several of them young and some already senior citizens, with some experience in public service. With such a motley group, I think we can expect a sharing of experience as well as the infusion of young ideas. I also noted that, no matter which generation they belonged to, at yesterday's ceremonies, they all seemed eager to get up and go. Which should be comforting to the people of Bacolod City

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I noticed, however, that only three or four of them joined in the singing of the Philippine National Anthem. Does this mean they do not know the lyrics yet? Councilor Nap Cordova, who is of pre-war vintage and whose school generation did not yet sing the Tagalog version, could be seen singing fervently, but most of the younger ones and, yes, even the guest speaker, Speaker Bong Revilla, just stood there as if they were just listening to a choir. And speaking of choirs, the USLS Chorale undoubtedly impressed the crowd with their renditions, but sad to say, they, too, did not sing the anthem as it should be, brisk, and with a martial air, because that was the way its composer, and even General Emilio Aguinaldo who had commissioned its composition, had specified Oh well.

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Anyway, people were not disappointed in the young senator, he is even more good-looking than in his pictures or his TV shows. I heard some people ask why he looks so mestizo when his father looks very Pinoy. I told them, we haven't seen yet his 80 or so other brothers and sisters, so we can't tell which ones took after their prolific father. As expected, the senator was mobbed by fans who wanted to have their photos taken with him. Including us, of course.*

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