‘DTI, DTI, DTI, DTI. With our economy sputtering and millions without work, you even have time to worry about setting standards for adobo? Jeesas.’
A DEFEATED re-electionist believing he will be re-instated. An economics manager who chooses higher interest loans out of friendship. A Speaker who suggests violating the Constitution. A Trade Ministry that seeks to set standards for a dish when it should be doing everything to revive the economy.
It’s a crazy world, and it is a world full of crazies.
That Donald Trump still believes in his heart of hearts that some way, somehow the results of the elections of November 2020 can and will be reversed and he will once again find himself the occupant of the White House tells you volumes about the man. Like how poorly he understands the electoral process in America, including the principle of succession to the office. This was the man who, for four years, had his thumb on the nuclear button, the same one who was happy to embrace the likes of foreign despots while saying white nationalists were also good guys. This is the man for whom tens of millions of Americans voted, and before whom the once noble Republican Party now bends. This is the man who pledged to uphold the Constitution that is the basis for hundreds of others worldwide as an exemplar of democratic government — but who urged his followers to beat up media practitioners from news outlets that were practicing the freedoms that the very same Constitution was forged to protect.
A whopping 74.2 million Americans were happy to support this man.
America has no monopoly of crazies.
Social media is once again awash with throwback quotes from a former NEDA minister who defended taking out loans from China at rates 3,000% higher than what the Japanese were offering because, in his words, “we needed more friends.”
I had always thought highly of Ernesto Pernia, but RBI’s episode in his stint in the PRRD administration left me baffled and disappointed. Is this how an honorable man contorts himself to be able to justify doing something stupid? Imagine a corporate finance officer explaining to management that he took out loans with so much higher interest rates because the company needed more friends!
Of course, we all know that Secretary Pernia eventually left the administration ; but even the reasons he gave for leaving were as contorted as his defense of the Chinese loans.
From economist to contortionist.
Speaker Lord Allan Velasco, like every elected official, takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Or something to this effect. Yet Speaker Velasco saw nothing wrong in suggesting that PRRD just extend his term in office. As if the Constitution has not very clearly set the term of office for a President to be six years with no provision for re-election or even term extension. What gives? I can only surmise that the Speaker, like many politicians once “enthroned,” forgets that we live in a democracy, that in a democracy it is the will of the people that prevails, and that this will is enshrined in a Constitution. And because politicians forget that, what do they do? They suck up to the occupant of the “palace,” who is in truth and in fact just a temp, like many employees of SM. Albeit with a term ten times longer and, and this is crucial, with billions in intel funds within arm’s reach of desire.
Finally! DTI, DTI, DTI, DTI. With our economy sputtering and millions without work, you even have time to worry about setting standards for adobo? Jeesas. My mother (rest her soul) cooked the world’s best adobo — but even she wouldn’t insist on making her standards everyone else’s. She was humbler and wiser than that. Instead of meddling with the kitchens of 20 million households (that’s 100 million divided by 5) why don’t you just, say, revitalize the Technology Resource Center, or ensure that it will not take more than 12 hours for an entrepreneur to set up shop, or that consumers have a real, honest-to-goodness champion in you?
Better yet, why don’t you order all your trade attaches to bring home one smart new business idea per diplomatic post per year (or per half year even!) which you can then share with local entrepreneurs who may be able to develop better products from these ideas that are trending or may create new trends elsewhere?
You see, meddling with adobo is a slippery slope; where will you stop? Soon Cafe Adriatico’s Lola Ising’s adobo rice will be Lolo Ramon’s. Lechon ni Mang Tomas will become Lechon ni Mang Ramon. And even my favorite dessert, Claude’s Dream, will become Mon’s Dream.
Too many crazies in this crazy world. And we haven’t even talked about that Usec who, among his many notorious ideas, wanted individuals while driving all alone in their cars to be fully masked!
I hope there’s a vaccine for this type of looniness!
