IT remains the simple tact in the corporate world; as in government — to get things done, one should be familiar with as much information as necessary. Vice President Leni Robredo’s real problem is not the inaccessible information that she seeks but the open demolition that she has endured since day one of her acceptance of her designation as co-chairperson of the ICAD.
Initially, Malacanang has assured her of its full support and called on government agencies aligned with the drug campaign to cooperate with her. The President now says he does not trust Robredo but will not fire her. Favoring partisanship from the docile drug agency heads more than her undisguised zeal, he then calls her “a scatterbrain.”
To many of us, Robredo exhibits a rare work ethic by hitting the ground running and hurdling man-made obstacles to redirect principally a national police effort plagued by huge criticisms by rights groups here and abroad. The disclosure of the genuine facts and figures on the number of casualties and the disputed legitimacy of police and PDEA operations will certainly be withheld by Malacanang.
Salvador Panelo’s statements on Robredo “possibly treading on dangerous grounds” drips with a shameless denial of her bewildering but gratifying role that now bedevils the brutal foes of the lowly and defenseless victims of the drug war. He promptly alludes to the “limits of the law” which he claims the President has ensured that his officials follow in the “performance of their functions.”
Thousands of witnesses’ accounts to EJKs which had been dispensed with through the orchestrated complicity of the Internal Affairs Service and the Advocate General’s Office of the PNP and the PDEA, as well, will comprise the palpable truth of brutality and murder. Indeed, it pains Robredo that most of the agencies under ICAD bristle at her earnestness and uprightness as she tries to unearth what have qualified — quite irregularly and disputably — to be classified information.
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Panelo has invented the phrase “the green of health” to explain what seems to be the deteriorating condition of the nation’s Chief Executive. The doctors’ strict orders for the President to go on leave have been ignored, allowing his body to slide further, along with his emotional and mental functions. The Constitution commands any sitting President to make public his medical state but only if he is stricken with a serious illness and, as a consequence for him to step down. His physical incapacitation will make way for the Vice President to take over the government and, there is nothing more horrific to Panelo, to the Cabinet members and all the Duterte allies.
Malacanang continues to brush aside deepening concerns over the President’s health, refusing to release any official medical certification on how bad it has been. At his age, the President admits suffering from various diseases due to old age and certainly most elderlies’ condition become irreversible simply because a disease or two have turned serious after complications have set in. Certainly, some had been caused by the heavy and damaging stress and pressure of his office.
In some ways he has brought it upon himself by repeatedly nurturing his toxic emotions unleashed against his critics and the opposition. As we know, physical ailments do manifest not entirely independent of the mind and of the soul. Our countrymen owe President Duterte that much to pray for him and for his health and safety.
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As Christmas fast approaches, our people’s poverty is again amplified by the endless displays of charity to the poor and the sick. The Bible says, Jesus “became poor for us to be rich” but nowhere in the lavish celebration of our Lord’s birth can we find that message invoked to help us end our social and financial problems. Only the wealthy seem to relish the other Biblical truth that “it is better to give than to receive” while the poor seem exempt from it.
In his book, Biblical Keys to Financial Prosperity, Rev. Kenneth Hagin, a major advocate of Christian revival through the Holy Spirit, says that “poverty is a curse.” He writes “if you want to walk in the perfect will of God and experience His richest and best for your life, you’ve got to do the perfect will of God, and that requires honoring and obeying God and His Word in the Bible.”
