Here is this group just coming out from the blue announcing that it is gathering some 13 thousand signatures to be attached to a petition it will submit to Malacanang. The petition demands that the administration stop all its activities aimed at changing the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution.
The group calls itself the Alliance for Peace, Justice and National Security (APJNS). It said in its contributed statement to the media that it is against allowing foreign global corporations to buy lands in the country and own up to 100 percent of the capital of businesses in the public service, education, and advertising sectors as it would not necessarily attract foreign investors. Rather, it believes that significantly reducing corruption or totally eliminating the same will.
We agree with the group on that although not totally. But what we do not conform, and perhaps majority of the Filipinos, is its demand that the country exits from the World Health Organization (WHO), a leading body of the United Nations (UN). The APJNS alleges that the WHO “was responsible in stoking fear and forcing people to submit to COVID 19 vaccination.”
It puts emphasis on its rejection of the amendments of the WHO charter specifically the one that empowers the world health body to declare the prevalence of a pandemic and “dictate what and how countries should respond to it which violates our sovereign rights as a nation.”
But let the public take note that the organization, per its released statement, claims to have as its members, representatives of various religious organizations. With only 13 thousand signatures aimed at being gathered, we assume that it is only having its coverage the whole of Davao City. And sadly it has not even identified what religious sect is in the lead and who the focal person is.
How then will its existence be validated and its credibility determined?
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We also have this other group calling itself Mindanao Railway Watchers regularly giving updates on the status of the government’s multi-billion peso project – the construction of the Mindanao Railway System.
Just as the hope for the implementation of the project gets even dimmer, the group has come out with a post in social media informing Mindanaoans that the local government of Carmen, Davao del Norte is now opening the bidding for consultancy in the acquisition of a relocation site in that municipality for those who will be affected by the railway construction.
Hopefully this is not one among the many fake news proliferating these days relative to implementation of government infrastructure projects just to window-dress certain areas of government service delivery where it is most wanting.
Of course we understand the difficulty of fast tracking project implementation especially when many private properties will be affected. The processes are too cumbersome that there are times that projects have to be abandoned because the bar the government sometimes faces are just too strong and expensive to confront.
Sometimes even those who have strong government connections and bureaucratic built-in processes are the ones adding to the impregnability of the opposition to certain projects.
And if the greed of some officials for money is to be added, all the more that projects are delayed to the maximum.
Say, look at the Davao City-Island Garden of Samal Connector Bridge. Its allocated budget is something like P23 billion. But another bridge with similar length and only slightly different in design – the one that spans Lanao del Norte and Misamis Occidental crossing the Pangil Bay – cost only P7 billion. Now the bridge construction is about complete. What a big difference in budget and in the length of time from conceptualization to implementation.
We can only hope that the legal battles now fought in the courts between the government and some landowners affected will be resolved in due time and the Samal-Davao bridge construction can go on full swing; or ordered to be totally scrapped so all anticipations will be put to rest.
