We mean our column item yesterday about President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr., delaying the appointment of a full-fledged replacement to the just-retired Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Gen. Benjamin Acorda, Jr.
Yes, the President indeed designated an Officer-in-Charge (OIC) for the PNP in the person of Lt. Gen. Emmanuel Peralta. But the designated OIC could not have even taken a seat at his office on the day of his supposed assumption as he was good only for one day or perhaps a few hours. But General Acorda’s extended term was up to March 31. Thus, it puzzled us to the maximum thinking about the duration of Peralta’s designation as caretaker. After all, on Monday, April 1, the President formally appointed and installed as the new PNP chief Maj. Gen. Rommel Marbil.
The turn-over that we saw on television Monday morning was not that to the OIC but to the permanent chief.
We can only shake our head thinking of the frustration of General Peralta not being able to dispose probably even a single responsibility of an OIC and finding out his hope that as OIC he would have better chances than the others to get appointed was already erased.
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The Department of Education (DepEd) has declared suspension of classes in several parts of the country. This time it is not anymore the possibility of being stranded in heavy floods and non-stop rains. It is because in those places the prevailing temperature during the day is almost unbearable to both the students and teachers. The heat is too much and it is already affecting the physical conditions of people.
So DepEd is now allowing schools to shift back to the modular learning scheme if only to ensure that students can meet the required number of days that they are to be in school.
The move, no doubt, is a strategic one. Therefore, it is welcomed not only by the students and teachers but by the parents themselves as well. After all who would want to get sick and possibly undergo some medical interventions because of some illnesses developing in one’s body due to the extreme heat index.
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We do not know who is now head of the Foundation that is handling the annual celebration of the Araw ng Dabaw. But we could not help but ask because the celebration and the various activities attendant to it are funded both with private and government money.
Thus, it is the moral obligation of the Foundation to account to the public how much it generated from donations, advertising income and sponsorships, local government counterpart funds and the like.
It also has to account to the last penny the expenses incurred and how much has remained from the total amount generated including the excess funds from previous years.
We can remember when we were part of the silent manpower supporting a former co-chair of the celebration activities, all the receipts of cash and materials, expenses incurred and balances were audited and the final figures published in the local papers to show how transparent were the ones managing the Araw ng Dabaw commemoration.
In the succeeding Araw celebration we were not anymore aware of similar accounting of cash and material receipts for the activities. Is there no one interested to know what happens after each grandiose annual affair?
Or, is the city government too trusting to the ones overseeing the commemoration?
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