Tag: December 19, 2008

RECENTLY, my younger brother had been thinking about the “hypocrisy” of Christmas. He had grown cynical of how people seem to instantly change their behavior for the better only during the Yuletide season. They buy each other gifts, go to Simbang Gabi, write resolutions for the New Year they rarely accomplish in the long run, and so on.

IF ANYTHING, the year 2008 has proven that one’s race or color is not an insurmountable factor anymore, with the election of the first black president in the history of America.

WILL the infamous Santa finally come now to town donned with his baggy cherry-colored garbs and sack of yearned-for gifts? With no intention to spoil the dreams of romantics out there, I answer, of course not. But is there any chance that he will? Perhaps.

“Here is your final lesson - do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence. God said, ‘Vengeance is mine’.

(“I don’t believe in God.”)

“It doesn’t matter. He believes in you.”

— Abbe Faria talking to Edmond Dantes, The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

***

CHRISTMAS affords everyone in the intensifying debate over the Reproductive Health Bill No. 5043 not only a respite, but also a moment to reflect over the value and meaning of life–given that Christmas marks the birth of humanity’s greatest hope, Jesus Christ.

UNIVERSITY Rector Fr. Rolando V. de la Rosa, O.P. has lamented the erosion of correct conscience amid today’s fashion of invoking freedom of choice and freedom of conscience to justify self-interest and individualism.

Delivering this year’s Jose Rizal Lecture of the Philippine Center of the International PEN (Poets and Playwrights, Essayists and Novelists) at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, De la Rosa warned that the loss of conscience has resulted in moral confusion and, in the case of government, corruption and buck-passing. (Read text of lecture)

Referring to the “fertilizer scandal” hearings in the Senate where former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn Bolante is being grilled for disbursing more than P700 million during the 2004 election to non-agriculture legislative districts, the Rector said “the main actor... keeps saying: ‘My conscience is clean.’” He added that those pushing for constitutional change to perpetuate themselves in power “also claim that they are doing that ‘in conscience.’” Ditto with supporters and opponents of House Bill 5043, the Reproductive Health Care Bill.

The word conscience, has, perhaps, never been as popular as it is today in the Philippines. On newspapers, radio, and television, people mouth it as though it were synonymous with integrity, honesty, and credibility. Protagonists on both sides of the recent impeachment issue in Congress had invoked their consciences as they justified their votes. The main actor in the ongoing show in the Senate entitled “Fertilizer Scam” keeps saying: “My conscience is clean”. Those who are pushing for a Con-Ass to amend the constitution also claim that they are doing that “in conscience”.

A CHRISTMAS in exile.

This was how Thomasian whistleblower Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada sees his Christmas this year, nine months after emerging as star witness in the botched $329-billion National Broadband Network (NBN) deal between the government and Chinese firm ZTE.

Still under the care of the La Salle Brothers in Greenhills, San Juan, Lozada said he and his family may have to eat their noche buena in a “sanctuary with security personnel.”

THOMASIAN whistleblower Rodolfo Noel “Jun” Lozada has denied Internet rumors that he had a number of business deals with UST and received millions of kickbacks from overpriced computers installed in the University as well as the construction of the multi-deck carpark.

“No. (I) never had any deal with UST,” Lozada told the Varsitarian.

MORE Filipino high school students from the Middle East are taking the University of Santo Tomas Entrance Test (Ustet) underscoring the University’s “good public image” among Filipinos outside the country, the director of the Office for Admissions (OFAD) said.

UST began administering entrance exams abroad in 2004, and since then the number of examinees and testing centers have increased significantly, said OFAD Director Mecheline Zonia Manalastas.