junchipeco

It pains me and other pro-lifers thousands of whom voted for him, to see our President (a supposedly staunch Catholic like his mother Cory Aquino) breaking away from his faith and support contraceptives which will eventually lead the nation to abortion. In his first 100 days in office, gaps have been showing between his campaign promises and presidential actuations the most glaring of which is his campaign slogan "Pag Walang Corrupt, Walang Mahirap". If he truly believes in this slogan, then he should focus on eradicating corruption in order to mitigate poverty in the country, and not slowing down the population growth rate or reducing the number of Filipinos who have been creating wealth for the nation. And now his distorted logic is impliedly saying: "Pag konti ang Pinoy, konti ang mahirap". Sad, sad, sad. At the rate our President is going, our country is being led to the brink of moral decadence. We need to spend more time in prayer.

To say that I'm thrilled by the superb performance of our own UST choir that won it the #1 choir in the world, IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT. There's a mystique about Filipinos that makes them a unique race in the world, a certain quality that sets them apart. There is the power that produces a boxing icon, an exoticness that produces world beauty queens, a grace that makes for dancing champions, a voice that sends you on a lunar odyssey, a focus that produces bowling and billiard champions, and a brilliance that produces a chief justice in a foreign land. The list goes on and on. And there are hundreds of Filipinos working overseas, in front of computer terminals, in hospital operating rooms, in kitchens of 5 star restaurants, in rehabilitation and health care centers, in war ravaged countries, in the performing arts, in schools, in corporate offices, in ocean going vessels, who are acclaimed (albeit without fanfare) by the people who witness their dedication, courage, skills and perseverance and are inspired by them. NO OTHER NATION IN THE MODERN AGE CAN COME CLOSE!

We have all the right reasons to be PROUD! Ours is a country of champions, Filipinos who draw from their unfathomable and inexhaustible well of talents and spirit and bring them to surface for all the world to see. My prayer and wish is the day will come soon when all the qualities that make Filipinos the toast of the world will converge on a cluster of islands in the Pacific and South China sea called the Republic of the Philippines and make the country a CHAMPION in the community of nations. Please join me in my prayers.

Tony Meloto's soaring rhetoric brings up an image of an eagle majestic in flight but couldn't find a place to land. I've always been an incurable optimist and like any Filipino, I am hoping to see a leader who can make things right in our country. That leader still has to come. That leader is NOT Mr. Aquino. Elections do not make a leader. Integrity does. The apparent choice of 14 million Filipinos is without doubt an awesome and impressive feat, but it was a choice blinded by klieg light focuced on someone else. The father. The mother. Whose only claim to a place in history was putting an end to the sputtering Marcos regime but when given the privelege to govern, she ended up unwittingly building the cornerstones of a new (?) government that continues to impoverish the nation to this day. Trapos. Pork barrel Political Dynasties. Emasculated Land Reform. Mrs. Corazon Aquino ran a Hate Marcos campaign. Mr. Aquino III ran a Hate Arroyo campaign. A true leader runs a Love the Filipino campaign. Hate can not produce love. Like violence, hate begets more hate. The optimist in me compels me to hope he can change. That will require a miracle. He became a congressman and a senator also on the strength of his parents' aura. Nothing in him had changed. Will anybody please share my optimism?
And as for Mr. Tony Meloto's dazzling article, he said he "deliberately hid from sight in the last election and....... waited for winners to be proclaimed........" I will therefore no longer ask him where he was when we at Ang Kapatiran Party were looking for candidates to field in the elections. When morally upright and competent citizens can't take the risks of a political combat, we will then have to continue waiting for that day when the true leader comes along. The wait may be endless.

I'VE FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT. I'VE RUN A GOOD RACE. NO REGRETS BUT A SENSE OF VICTORY BECAUSE A SEED HAS BEEN PLANTED AND IT WILL GROW SOMEDAY. This may all sound a bit cliche and a silly attempt to console oneself after a "debacle". But that's exactly how I feel today after more than 50% of votes have been counted. I started my campaign on a high note of adventure probably not unlike that of Columbus in search of a new world, in my case a new world of politics that has the potential of liberating our country from the gridlock of poverty, corruption and ignorance. I have ventured into uncharted seas and made amazing discoveries, both good and bad. I've been affirmed in my belief that Filipinos are the most intelligent, resilient and patient in this planet but are still struggling to find the bond between good leadership and common good, to connect all the dots that make for a strong nation. Together with Ang Kapatiran Party, we have waged a campaign to help our constituents find those dots and to challenge them to step up and connect them. But alas, our message may have fallen on deaf ears or may not have reached a critical mass to start a momentum, or we may not have done a good enough job of convincing. Whatever is the reason, the electoral results showing a pittance of votes for JC and me compared to those cast for the traditional politicians strike me as a temporary setback.
Our defeat at the polls is the seed that falls to the ground. "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds...." (John 12:24). We have hoped to win but winning has never been our singular aim. The journey continues.

 
I personally find all these trash talk from "top" presidential candidates regarding election overspending, vote buying and bribing so sickening that I want to puke.  It's an obvious case of the pot calling the kettle black. Christ calls it hypocrisy of the worst kind. ".....How can you say to your brother 'let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?......." (Matthew 7:4). It is disgusting to hear the "top" presidential contenders complaining about one candidate spending enormous amounts of money including alleged bribery when they themselves are already exceeding or about to exceed the legal limits on spending.  ENVY is the operative word.  Are these the kind of candidates any decent Filipino would vote for to lead the country?  And they talk about integrity and the need to change!!  No wonder Christ reserved His harshest language for hypocrites.

I think it would be good to remember the Marcos era if only to reinforce the supreme importance of the ideals and principles written in our Passport To a New Philippines. History is meaningless unless lessons are learned from it and applied to our times. But alas, we forget too easily and too quickly. Today, the country is still chasing some of those Marcos wealth (or whatever is left of it after the thievery perpetrated by post Marcos thieves disguised as anti-graft sleuths), and the source of that dirty wealth - the Marcos family - is still in our midst, roaming in our society apparently unremorseful and claiming innocence. And the irony of ironies, the matriarch and scions of that family have occupied high government positions and one is now running for a Senate seat under a Party headed by a presidential candidate who now has a clear shot at the Presidency if poll surveys are to be believed.

The question is: Is the country now free of the roots of evil that gave rise to the scandalous Marcos wealth accumulated over the years at the expense of poor Juan de la Cruz and the grand deception foisted on the suffering citizens to cover up the horrendous crime? If one should look at the tons of money being poured into the current campaigns of the "leading" presidentiables, is it unreasonable to assume that once elected (heaven forbid) any one of those aspirants will look back to the amount of campaign expenditures, treat them as investments and look forward to 6 years of profitable recovery?
Is this the democracy we want for the country, one that is nourished by money of the oligarchs, sustained by false promises, perpetuated by the gullible and vulnerable poor and held in fear by the mighty? The Marcos story has been re-told time and again in the last decades. True, there have been interesting twists and turns, some innovative makeovers here and there but essentially the same story. We Filipinos must "unlearn" ourselves. Unlearn our unseemly forgive and forget culture and learn the virtue of justice. Justice and compassion are compatible virtues. One needs the other to shine and one without the other lacks vitality. Unlearn our short memories and learn from past mistakes and errors in judgement. Unlearn our fatalistic "que sera, sera" and learn that our destiny as a nation is what we make of it and the process begins each time we choose our leaders. THE CHOICE IS OURS.

Solita Monson's dissertation on the C5 road expansion controversy involving presidential aspirant Manny Villar is yet another sad testament to how good governance has lost its meaning in the country, adulterated as it has been by traditional politicians. In all my public appearances as a candidate, I have always said that if Filipinos are really serious about seeing a prosperous and healthy Philippines governed by morally upright and God fearing leaders, they must begin the process by voting out politicians who have bastardized our systems of good government, and voting in new faces who in their private lives have demonstrated integrity and a genuine desire to serve the country. Short of doing this, it's pure insanity to expect different results from processes that keep repeating themselves. Let's hope and pray the Filipinos are listening.

People who get to know Ang Kapatiran Party can't help but agree with the values and principles the Party represents because I believe there is in every normal person an inherent desire to be good and upright and yearns to see it in others. The Party's political platforms are expressions of its desire to bring that goodness and uprightness to the political arena where it can achieve optimum results for the most number of people. The challenge to the Party's candidates is to deliver the message that the forces of evil in our society can be overcome only by the forces of morally upright men and women coming together and supporting candidates who share their values. Anything short of this will result in maintaining the status quo.

I have read Fr. James Reuter's article on "The Only Hope for the Philippines" a number of times and I must say I agree with him 100%. But what Fr. Reuter doesn't say is that prayers alone, unaccompanied by courageous and sincere efforts of patriotic Filipinos to rise up and confront the evils in Philippine society that perpetuate the climate of poverty and ignorance, will not result in any positive change. Obviously, a student who does not do his homework can not ask God to help him pass an examination. And this is precisely what is happening in the country. Filipinos are a prayerful people, probably the most prayerful in the world, but they are also very patient to a fault. They can take a lot of abuse from government before taking action. We saw this character trait in People Power 1 and 2. This patience has led them to accept inefficiency and corruption in government and to become cynical of any attempt by civic spirited Filipinos to institute change and to remind them of their power to redeem themselves through the electoral process. The vision and mission of Ang Kapatiran Party is to restore moral uprightness in government by bringing God to the center of politics, and applying the principles of good governance.
We urge our countrymen to join us in our cause and reverse the downhill trend in our country. Let us act now. Tomorrow may be too late.

There should be a coherent expose of the populist styles of trapos in their frenzied desire to grab votes, pandering to voters' dreams of free college education, free medicare, jobs, etc..., without articulating the wherewithals of how they will do it. And the survival instincts of the desperate poor drive them to believe those promises, hoping they could be true. But Ang Kapatiran Party folks know they can't be true because they were not meant to be true, and our challenge is to expose these dirty politics.
I've heard all of the Presidential aspirants speak, and to the best of my knowledge, with the singular exception of JC de los Reyes,they are all populists. It's just a question of degrees. And that is why AKP is so uniquely different. We will keep it that way.