Floro L. Mercene
WE have a Visiting Forces Agreement with America and a Visiting Fishermen’s Agreement with China. Both agreements need to be reviewed.
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Under the leadership of President Manny Villar, the Senate closed this year’s regular session with a record haul of 45 national and local bills on third and final reading.
It proves that the Senate is a responsive and productive chamber, contrary to claims by critics, says President Villar.
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Mr. Villar said the Senate focused its energies on measures that respond directly to the urgent needs of the people, especially those that suffered from disasters such as the eruption of Mayon Volcano, the strong typhoons and the oil spills in Guimaras.
Its long list of accomplishments is topbilled by the enactment of Republic Act No. 9358 which provided for a R46.4-billion supplemental budget for 2006 that augmented the urgent expenditures of the national government, particularly those that focus on delivery of basic social services.
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A rising star in Manila politics is Manny Lopez, sportsman and sports promoter of renown and son of former Mayor Mel Lopez. Manny, president of the Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines and secretary general of the Asian Boxing Federation, is being groomed to run for congressman in the 1st district of Tondo.
An economics graduate of UP and Ateneo, Manny is deeply involved, along with his father, in a program to develop amateur boxers to be pitted in international tournaments.
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At the Ciudad Fernandina forum at the Club Filipino last week, the manghuhula Danny Atienza told the media that journalist-broadcaster Erick San Juan should run for congressman because he will surely win.
Atienza reiterated the prediction at the radio program of Raffy Tulfo and Nina Taduran at RMN.
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A new drive for people’s initiative is being launched by the administration whose aim is to push for a unicameral legislature under a presidential system.
The new initiative is sidetracking Speaker De Venecia’s dream of a parliamentary form of government. We welcome this move with a big fat NO!
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Besides junking the parliamentary system, the new initiative will abolish the Senate to give way to a single legislative chamber. DILG Secretary Ronnie Puno is heading the campaign for the rehashed PI.
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Malacañang is moving heaven and earth to forestall the holding of elections in May.
They are afraid to face the debacle that awaits the administration candidates at the polls. It’s going to be murder!
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Jaime P. Valencia Jr., a longtime loyal assistant of Mayor Lito Atienza, has died and was buried Saturday at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. He was 65.
After retiring as a lieutenant colonel in the judge advocate’s office in the 1980s, Valencia joined the staff of Atienza when Lito was assemblyman. He remained with Lito when he became head of the National Housing Authority and eventually vice mayor.
Valencia was city general services officer at City Hall when he died.
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"Myself, Elsewhere," a new book by iconic writer and historian Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, will be launched at a merienda at Abe’s restaurant at the Serendra complex in Fort Bonifacio on Tuesday, January 16.
The book is the first volume of a three-part series, an autobiography and a memoir of old prewar Ermita.
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Chitang Nakpil has a record 80 years of practice in journalism and has published seven other books, among them "Women Enough," "A Question of Identity," "History Today," "Centennial Reader," and "Whatever."
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Myself, Elsewhere is not the usual compilation of published essays, but entirely new and original material written in a few months in 2006. It covers the period between 1922, the start of what Nick Joaquin called as Manila’s "most glittering decade," and 1945, the destruction of Manila.
The gentility of prewar Manila makes for dramatic contrast to the brutality of the battle that destroyed it.
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Critic Manuel Quezon III wrote: "It is authenticity that makes the book so powerful, her authentic affection for so alien a way of life as to seem impossible to present-day readers… This is a look back at the way people really lived, loved, even hated, with details no novelist could have invented."
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