By Herbert Vego TO run or not to run? If there’s anything the rabid supporters of Vice President Leni Robredo are afraid of, it’s her not running – repeat, not running — for President in May 2022. They firmly believe that she is the only true and winnable opposition candidate who could bring back “sanity”
September 14, 2021
By Herbert Vego WHILE I was writing this yesterday, TV and radio newscasts were awash with news reports on the exiting tropical storm Jolina and the incoming typhoon Kiko. Today’s newspapers would update the devastation inflicted. Typhoons amid the lingering and deadly Covid-19 pandemic? What have we done to deserve these misfortunes? Some victims of these
September 10, 2021
By Herbert Vego AFTER one year and a half of service as the electricity-distribution utility in Iloilo City – having taken over Panay Electric Co. (PECO) — MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) has amazingly won the hearts not only of its captive consumers but also of residents of Pavia, Iloilo which is serviced
September 8, 2021
By Herbert Vego IN February this year, I questioned the proclivity of the Department of Health (DOH) to rattle off daily cases of Covid-19 infections and deaths. It was not a healthy way, I opined, of appeasing the public that had already been groaning over the alarming and depressing statistics. Couldn’t the government have done
September 6, 2021
By Herbert Vego FOR whatever it’s worth to readers, I am writing about unforgettable childhood experiences that have helped me survive adversities through the years. My earliest childhood memory takes me back to age three in the year 1953 in San Pedro, a barrio in San Jose, Antique. My youngest brother Walter, three months old,
September 3, 2021
By Herbert Vego TRADITIONAL politicians who pretend to care for the people to perpetuate themselves in power are said to be “Machiavellian,” their “goodness” stemming from selfish motives. This truism seems to be behind the announced decision of Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III and Senator Panfilo Lacson to run for vice-president and president, respectively, in 2022.
September 1, 2021
By Herbert Vego THAT quotation comes from a retired manager of the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) in Iloilo City, Winfred Elizalde, who has read my previous column on the destruction wrought by a backhoe on a 90-megawatt (MW) submarine cable of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) along the Bio-os River in Amlan,
August 30, 2021
By Herbert Vego IF you don’t know what TAMA stands for, you are not alone. Most Filipinos don’t know that it stands for the Traditional and Alternative Medicine Act, signed by then President Fidel Ramos in 1998. Originally proposed by the late Senator Juan Flavier as Senate Bill 1471, it created the Traditional Medicine Authority
August 27, 2021
By Herbert Vego TODAY, August 25, is a holiday in Iloilo City. We are celebrating its 84th anniversary as “charter city,” minus the traditional fanfare of yesteryears in deference to pandemic protocols. It is ironic, though, that we are on an uphill drive on the chosen theme: “Ilonggos Rising Amidst the Challenges of Time.” Businesses have
August 25, 2021
By Herbert Vego “QUICK passage seen in House for divorce bill,” says a front-page headline. Assuming that to be prophetic, we now have a reason to believe that divorce as an alternative mode for the dissolution of marriage in the Philippines will finally be legalized. Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, the principal author of the bill,
August 23, 2021
By Herbert Vego ON our radio program “Tribuna sang Banwa” on Aksyon Radyo last Sunday, I unburdened before Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas my observation about the laxity of Philhealth in responding to hospitalized Covid-19 patients, citing my own 12-day ordeal. “It shocked me to learn,” I told the mayor, “that I could not charge my anti-viral
August 20, 2021
By Herbert Vego “NO man is an island,” begins an immortal song so titled. “No man stands alone. Each man’s joy is joy to me. Each man’s grief is my own…” The idiom, as lifted from a 1642 sermon by English clergyman John Donne, holds that human beings do badly when isolated from others, and so need
August 18, 2021