Speak out: Catholic vote

IS THERE a “Catholic vote”? It is said there are Catholic votes, but there are of two kinds: one based on Vatican I and the other on Vatican II. Vatican I is viewed as emphasizing the conscience of the institutional Church over the conscience of the individual. Vatican II is viewed as emphasizing the conscience of the individual over the conscience of the institutional Church. Further emphasis is made on the division of the Catholics into two groups: those on the side of conservative Vatican I and those on the side of liberal Vatican II.

Sun.star essay: Don’t sell that vote

I WAS in high school when I learned about votes being sold during election time, especially in the towns. Some years after, I asked the old family houseboy (whom my uncle called “old boy”) if he sold his vote. He said he did back in his hometown. “I kept my word,” he said. “I voted for whom I was paid for to vote.”

So, was that correct in the matter of conscience?

Mercado: The barrel’s bottom

ELECTIONS are just around bend. Do we Cebuanos see the bottom of the scandal barrel finally?

Rep. Tomas Osmeña unveiled what he claims is a psychiatrist’s report, written for a court, on annulment of his political rival’s marriage. In July 2000, Regional Trial Court Branch 22 ruled on a petition for declaration of nullity of marriage against Mayor Mike Rama filed by Araceli Francisco.

Cabaero: ‘Whack the vote-buyer’

WITH a rolled newspaper.

Political dynasties. Illegal campaign materials. Hidden wealth. Muckraking. These were the issues that marked the election campaign since it started two to three months ago. As the election period nears voting day, May 13, one issue often talked about is that of vote-buying or the attempts to sway the people into voting for a candidate in exchange for money.

Lim: Shut up

ONE time, my sister attended a wedding as one of the wedding sponsors. While making small talk with other sponsors, one of the sponsors asked her, “So, how many grandchildren do you have?” My sister’s ego was crushed. Her daughter was still in grade school then.

Just recently, the same sister went shopping in the mall. While browsing through the items in the store, one effusive saleslady offered her some matching headbands. The saleslady eagerly pitched, “Here, you can have matching headbands with your grandchildren.”

Velez: My favored senatorial bet

IN choosing who to vote for in the Senate this May 13, voters should consider Makabayan's Teddy Casiño as the real alternative to traditional politicians.

Casiño may not top popularity surveys. He may not have catchy jingles or celebrity endorsers. You may also never see him dance to the Gangnam song. But these only show that Teddy is not in the mold of traditional politicians but is rather among a new breed of public servants focused on bringing the politics of change.

Tabada: Twin Peaks meets Iron Man

FROM tit to teat.

THAT about summarizes my cycle, from the adolescent wonder of discovering that a once-flat-as-a-board chest has become not just a fount but a volcano of sensations, to motherhood’s gushes of sustenance, connectedness and power, to this premenopausal reminder that this organ once known only by monosyllabic nicknames (“tits,” “boobs,” “front”) does have a polysyllabic moniker (“mammary glands”) that captures better these twin peaks of unforeseeable moods.

Editorial: Bungled investigation

THE decision of Metro Gaisano-Colon security guard Margie Gaser to recant her earlier statement about the death of Mario Alfie Ducayag inside the said establishment last month has further placed the police in an awkward position.

Libre: Tragic death

ON April 22, Leah Gayo, a licensed teacher in the Philippines, was in the delivery room in one of the hospitals in Auckland, New Zealand.

She was expecting a normal delivery, and her husband Norman, a former pastry chef of Shangri-la Mactan, was looking forward to seeing her wife and the baby later in the day. But that wasn’t how things turned out.

Wenceslao: Risa’s rise, what Ka Teddy needs

TWO people have so far asked me to help them prepare a list of candidates that they would vote for the Senate on May 13. I told them to first write my two favorite senatorial bets, Makabayan’s Teddy Casiño and Akbayan’s Risa Hontiveros, with the remaining ten candidates to be listed in the coming days. Ka Teddy and Risa first, I repeated.

Nalzaro: No big deal

THE ugly face of politics has surfaced as the campaign period goes into the homestretch. In Cebu City, Mayor Michael Rama and south district Rep. Tomas Osmeña are in a close fight for the post of mayor.

Barrita: No 12-0 for Kris

PRESIDENTIAL sister and celebrity Kris Aquino will actively endorse five Team PNoy candidates in the final stretch of the May 13 senatorial race, the Team PNoy camp said.

They are reelectionist senators Chiz Escudero and Alan Peter Cayetano, former Akbayan congresswoman Risa Hontiveros, Grace Poe-Llamanzares and Kris’s first cousin Bam Aquino.

Carvajal: Catholic vote

THERE are Catholics and there are Catholics. After baptism, Catholics actually differ in beliefs, rituals and engagements with the world, lately in ways that would have been considered heretical by a bygone era.

Seares: Media and bogus or tampered poll surveys

THE Fair Election Act banned publication of election survey results 15 days and seven days before national and local elections to avoid “trending” and the so-called bandwagon effect. Authors of Republic Act 9006 imposed the ban under its section 5.4.

The Supreme Court, however, struck down the provision as unconstitutional, saying it would violate press freedom. The SC ruled on May 5, 2001, just nine days before election day in that year.

Editorial: Yellow submarine

YELLOW Submarine” is a Beatles hit song written by lead singer Paul McCartney but voiced by the band’s drummer Ringo Starr.

No, the lyrics of the song are not a description of images from hallucination induced by drug use. McCartney intended it to be a children’s song, with such innocent lines like the one about a sailor who “told us of his of his life, in the land of submarines.”

Roperos: Sweaty labor issues

The nation’s workers took to the streets the past few days and asked for fair and just compensation for their daily labor. Workers in Metro Cebu and Metro Manila staged rallies to gain attention for their demands.

Wenceslao: Pablo John up close

I DON'T personally know One Cebu gubernatorial bet Pablo John Garcia. When a fellow columnist who once worked at the Capitol asked me to compare “PJ” with Liberal Party (LP) gubernatorial bet Hilario Davide III, I was stumped. I told him that, from the statements he made when he was Capitol consultant and his answers to criticisms when he became third district congressman, he sounds much like suspended Gov. Gwen Garcia.

Malilong: Need to dispose smuggled rice

NONE of the eight consignees of the 600,000 sacks of rice smuggled from Vietnam can be found. Authorities suspect that the names are fictitious.

Of course, they are fictitious. And it doesn’t take rocket science to understand why. These people knew that they were committing a crime. Why should they give away their identities?

Seares: Risa’s shawl, RM’s Ser Chief

RISA Hontiveros, 13th placer in the 2010 Senate race and a Magic 12 outsider for several quarters in this campaign, has finally joined those who could win on May 13.

The Akbayan ex-congresswoman tied, 12th to 17th places, in the April 20-22 Pulse Asia survey with another Team PNoy contender, Ramon Magsaysay Jr.

Yap: About time

UNLESS someone translates this into Cebuano and bring it close to home, this column will make no difference. My good friend I’m sure is out there, wooing hundreds of voters in the mountain barangays of Pinamungajan town in the season’s final stretch.

This is his third time knocking on the doors of the town’s constituents. In the few times that we talked, I have yet to hear a hint of desperation. The guy has the determination of a bull, and the hopefulness of an eagle about to crush headlong into sunrise.

So: PJ in the house

HE’s not an exercise buff but he has lost 30 pounds since he began running, not marathons, but for governor. The poundage drop is one of the upsides of a rigorous campaign that has him going from one end of Cebu to the other in one day.

Seares: True colors: do PNoy, LP own yellow?

WHEN President Aquino decried use of yellow by rivals of Team PNoy/Liberal Party, he provoked UNA to ask if he and his political party own the color. "Do they have a patent to it?"

They don't and wouldn't be granted a patent if they asked. It's the logo or icon using colors and/or or catchwords, the intellectual creation, not one or more colors, that may be patented.

Malilong: Pro-lifers need to work harder

LATEST Pulse Asia survey has 17 senatorial candidates with a statistical chance of making it to the magic circle on May 13. They include six of the seven members of Bacolod Archbishop Vicente Navarra’s Team Patay, the local Roman Catholic Church’s Hall of Shame for politicians. The lone casualty was Bayan Muna’s Teddy Casiño.

Roperos: ‘Masiao’ economics

MASIAO is the vernacular name of the illegal numbers game spawned by jai alai, a sporting activity legally accepted nationwide.

Those who are engaged in “masiao” are skilled at playing the cat-and-mouse game with the local police, some of whom are adept at extorting “tongs” from the known local players.

Editorial: ‘Unhappy’ labor leaders

UNIONS and labor groups didn’t get anything from President Noynoy Aquino on Labor Day. “We were expecting something to hold on to, something to begin working on. But there was none,” Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) spokesman Alan Tanjusay said after the May 1 dialogue with the President in Malacañang.

Reports say that the labor leaders went out of that meeting “unhappy.” Unhappiness is caused by unmet expectations. Which means that when the labor leaders went to Malacañang, they must have expected too much from PNoy. Wrong thinking.

Espinosa: Respecting human rights

CANDIDATES have nine days left to campaign for the May 13 polls. Because of this, their posters are already found almost everywhere in blatant violation of election laws, rules and regulations.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is inutile. It cannot enforce election laws. Simply put, the Comelec is all bark and no bite. If election laws are enforced to the letter, most candidates would be disqualified.

Editorial: Mega challenge

MOST of the candidates who attended a recent series of forums organized by the Mega Cebu group pledged to work with other local governments, for the good of the metropolis.

Roperos: The nation’s poor

ONLY in the Philippines does it appear that the poor and impoverished many are given periodic opportunity to choose between getting a chance to become affluent or to continuously live in abject want. This is the people’s constitutional right to participate in the elections.

Wenceslao: Muddled probe on death of ‘shoplifter’

RELATIVES of Mario Alfie Ducayag, the shopper who was killed inside Metro Gaisano-Colon, roamed the vicinity of the Cebu City Prosecutors Office yesterday. This following Monday’s failed attempt by the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) to file a case against the store’s security camera operator, Jeffrey Aquino, allegedly the one who mauled Ducayag, without their consent.

Nalzaro: Complaint against PAL

A MONTH ago, I wrote about the experience that my friend, Jay Ruiz, and his family in Hong Kong went through with the Philippine Airlines (PAL). Ruiz and 16 members of his entourage spent their holy week vacation in Hong Kong. They bought tickets via PAL’s on-line ticketing using his credit card.