Consul General Aragon: No one to blame for Manila misery, but global warming
Regarding Yuko Takei's quote of the Malaya editorial touching on La Gloria's extravagance in New York and her excessive junkets with planeloads of entourage in tow as a result of which the government's calamity and contingency funds are emptied just to sustain her indecent vanity, Pedestrian Observer is accurate in characterizing Mikey Arroyo's heroics in defense of mommy dearest as sanctimonious and making too much ado about his pakitang tao – supposedly feeding the desperately hungry flood victims with soda each.
'Yan ang mga napapala natin sa mga hudas ng bayan, ninakaw lahat ang laman ng kaban-publiko dahil sa sariling kasibaan. I suggest that we include in the blame our other bloated and shameless elected officials who kowtow to the dictates and wishes of GMA as well as those who participate in raiding public coffers through secret disbursements, pork barrel allocations, needless travels overseas, etc., etc.
While this should not have been the time to be assigning blames, still the grossness of the sins committed against the people they've sworn to serve and protect simply beg to be addressed. Because of their collective abuses and wanton disregard especially to the less fortunate, we are now in an unimaginable situation wherein the government is unable to launch immediate and systematic rescue efforts. Thus we are confronted with people shivering in rooftops; men and women wading neck-deep in dirty flood water and even doing acrobatics on electric cables just to stay dry; hungry mobs fighting for meager food distributed, if any; and such other heart-rending scenes. And all this supposed leader of our banana republic did is come up with a publicity stunt -- opening the gates of Malacanang. And, yes, there's that instant, shameless calling for international assistance.
Such unprincipled actuation's may have been telegraphed to the country's official representatives abroad. For example, I attended a fund-raising event Wednesday evening held by various community organizations at the consulate general in Los Angeles. After Pete Cruz and other community personalities called attention to the fact that government agencies concerned are obviously derelict in their responses -- even the various arms of the armed forces, Cruz said, have not provided their six-by-sixes, water vehicles, helicopters, etc. to assist the flood victims immediately -- Gloria's alter-ego in this part, Consul General Mary Jo A. Bernardo-Aragon, cautioned against finger-pointing stating instead that the calamity is a wake-up call for all of us, that there's already some kind of disaster preparedness bill in congress, that we all are to blame for causing global warming. Following Aragon's line of justification, the robber barons who by their profligacy and unscrupulous ways steal clean the people's treasury including even the money reserved for this kind of calamities are not to blame because, in the first place, this kind of calamities is caused by our own carbon emissions that cause global warming. Neat alibi, huh?
'Yan ang mga napapala natin sa mga hudas ng bayan, ninakaw lahat ang laman ng kaban-publiko dahil sa sariling kasibaan. I suggest that we include in the blame our other bloated and shameless elected officials who kowtow to the dictates and wishes of GMA as well as those who participate in raiding public coffers through secret disbursements, pork barrel allocations, needless travels overseas, etc., etc.
While this should not have been the time to be assigning blames, still the grossness of the sins committed against the people they've sworn to serve and protect simply beg to be addressed. Because of their collective abuses and wanton disregard especially to the less fortunate, we are now in an unimaginable situation wherein the government is unable to launch immediate and systematic rescue efforts. Thus we are confronted with people shivering in rooftops; men and women wading neck-deep in dirty flood water and even doing acrobatics on electric cables just to stay dry; hungry mobs fighting for meager food distributed, if any; and such other heart-rending scenes. And all this supposed leader of our banana republic did is come up with a publicity stunt -- opening the gates of Malacanang. And, yes, there's that instant, shameless calling for international assistance.
Such unprincipled actuation's may have been telegraphed to the country's official representatives abroad. For example, I attended a fund-raising event Wednesday evening held by various community organizations at the consulate general in Los Angeles. After Pete Cruz and other community personalities called attention to the fact that government agencies concerned are obviously derelict in their responses -- even the various arms of the armed forces, Cruz said, have not provided their six-by-sixes, water vehicles, helicopters, etc. to assist the flood victims immediately -- Gloria's alter-ego in this part, Consul General Mary Jo A. Bernardo-Aragon, cautioned against finger-pointing stating instead that the calamity is a wake-up call for all of us, that there's already some kind of disaster preparedness bill in congress, that we all are to blame for causing global warming. Following Aragon's line of justification, the robber barons who by their profligacy and unscrupulous ways steal clean the people's treasury including even the money reserved for this kind of calamities are not to blame because, in the first place, this kind of calamities is caused by our own carbon emissions that cause global warming. Neat alibi, huh?
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Dionesio C. Grava - Part-time community journalist based in Los Angeles and editorial writer at Forum Asia. 
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