By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
Yesterday, I called the Letters Desk of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) to alert them I just sent a revised copy of the letter I emailed at dawn. I took the opportunity to ask if Senator Francis Pangilinan had already sent a reaction to my letter titled “Pangilinan cares more for dogs than farmers?” published by the paper on Christmas Day. The letter which was published in this space last week compared Pangilinan’s swift response to the death of 30 dogs due to improper transportation to his inaction and silence in the case of the costly delay of the Upper Chico River Irrigation System (UCRIS) rehabilitation project. The lady who took my call said that so far, they have not received any reaction from the senator.
That he had not yet responded on the third day after publication indicates to me that Pangilinan may let the issue pass because, based on my observation, high government officials who are savaged in letters to the editor in national newspapers do not waste time to respond.
All the national officials I tried to pick a fight with this year refused to give me the pleasure. National Telecommunications Commission Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba who was the subject of two unflattering letters in the Malaya (July 5 and 12, 2017), never referred to the letters nor showed he was affected by the letters during the meeting of representatives of Tabuk Internet users with the NTC commissioners and representatives of the telcos on July 27, 2017. But I suspect that my expose of the absurd 256 Kpbs Internet minimum speed of Globe where I stated that in approving it, the NTC had allowed the telco to continue fooling the public (“One for the books, an unthinkable absurdity,” November 21, 2017) was the reason the commission did not conduct the monthly Internet speed testing in the city in November and in December as agreed upon during the July meeting.
Perhaps the congressmen and senators specially Senator Paolo Benigno Aquino IV who was mentioned thought that my interpreting their failure to act on bills which hurt the telcos as terror of the telcos (“Blame lawmakers for lousy internet,” PDI, September 26, 2017) was not worth dignifying. So my intent is to press the attack in 2018 by pointing out that the bills detrimental to the interest of the telcos continue to gather dust in both chambers.
One official who I thought would not take the assault sitting down is Education Secretary Leonor Briones. In letter “Ignorant about teachers’ plight” (PDI 12/8/17), I excoriated her for not only failing to press President Duterte to fulfil his promise to increase the salaries of teachers seeing that he already made good similar promises to soldiers and policemen but is making excuses for further delay, generalizing that public school teachers are financial illiterates and for being abysmally clueless of the unavoidable personal expenses being incurred by teachers so they could carry out their official functions. The issues raised cry for immediate answers and solutions. My own assessment of the situation was validated by the flood of angry comments from teachers directed at Briones touched off by the letter in the Facebook pages of the DepEd Teachers’ Club and DepEd Teachers Lesson Plans.
I will attempt to somehow extract a response by sending a copy of the letter to Malacanang with the information that Briones is mum on the issues raised in the letter with a copy of the letter furnished to her. I will attach printouts of the comments of the teachers.
When I slammed Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri (“Fact checker fact checked,” Philippine Star, April 29, 2017) after he accused then DENR Secretary Gina Lopez of erroneous data but in so doing, committed inaccuracies and omissions himself, I knew he would keep quiet. That’s because there was no avenue of escape.
That was the exact situations of Globe in the matter of the 256 Kbps minimum Internet speed (“Globe mum on minimum speeds of its Internet plans,” Business Mirror, May 2, 2017) and of the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines and the OceanaGold when they brazenly lied that there are no mining operations in the 10 poorest provinces in the country (“Mining firms’ brazen attempt to fool the public,” Manila Times, April 19, 2017).
With a lot of time in my hand beginning in 2018, I aim to double my 11 letter output in 2017 henceforth. That would mean that roughly, one of every two pieces you will read in this space is published in a national paper. **
