Imee radiates anger and hatred

By Herbert Vego

LOOKING closely at the video images of Senator and presidential sister Imee Marcos speaking at the Iglesia ni Cristo rally at Rizal Park on Monday evening, I shook my head wondering how she could have betrayed her younger brother, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.

It would be an understatement to say that she looked ugly; rather, she projected anger and hatred, not the “love” that moved her to ask her brother to go home and seek medical treatment for drug addiction.

She did not have to say that it would give way to Vice President Sara Duterte.  It is a “given” that it is the vice president who takes over the resigned, disabled or dead president.

In his first three years as President, has Marcos been behaving “bangag”?

How could Imee have stooped so low as to junk a brother in favor of the very person who had threatened to “kill” him?

Unbecoming of a senator, she has been behaving like a “yaya” tailing behind Sara wherever she goes.

I have heard people say, “Ano ang pinakain sa kanya ni VP Sara?”

By accusing the President, First Lady Liza and their congressman-son Sandro of drug addiction, she generated sympathy and empathy for them because she could not prove it.

Assuming Bongbong had been a drug user in his college days, so what?

That the police had reportedly killed 30,000 illegal drug users during the time of former President Rodrigo Duterte does not mean that drug addiction is a crime in the Philippines.

It’s drug trafficking that is a crime under Republic 9165, punishable by a penalty of life imprisonment to death, or a fine ranging from five hundred thousand pesos to ten million pesos.

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GRAFT AND CORRUPTION IN GOVERNMENT

WHY do the words “graft” and “corruption” go together as if it were a singular word in exposing the evils in government?

Graft, according to the dictionary, means the acquisition of money or any other material gain in dishonest or questionable ways. It is the exploitation of others for personal gain or advantage.

Corruption refers to dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people.

Therefore, there is graft and corruption in bribery, extortion, thievery, and nepotism, which are characterized by the subordination of public interest to private interest regardless of harm suffered by the people.

Is there graft and corruption in the government of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr?  Yes, according to Marcos himself in his State of the Nation (SONA).

To his credit, it was he who felt “disturbed” that that P100 billion, or 20 percent of the entire P545-billion budget for flood mitigation projects undertaken by the DPWH, was awarded to only 15 out of 2,409 accredited contractors.

And that is why we now have the Senate’s Blue Ribbon Committee and the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) breathing down their necks.

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NGCP ON YELLOW ALERT

THERE were reports of rotated power outages in the Visayas the other day and yesterday. As announced by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), the usual reason was the “forced outages” of unnamed power plants. This recurring problem, technically raising “yellow alert,” has been with us for a few months already.

The NGCP issues a yellow alert when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement.

Since the NGCP relies on power plants to generate electricity to be allocated to the distribution utilities, the latter are at its mercy.

Luzon and Mindanao are luckier; they don’t suffer from the same lack of power supply.

Alas, the distribution utilities like MORE Power in Iloilo City and the Iloilo Electric Cooperative are the usual “scapegoats” that the power consumers blame.

It is unfortunate that the distribution utilities are not allowed by law, the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 (EPIRA) to generate power on the pretext of preventing a single entity from controlling both the production and sale of electricity.