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Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Ledesma: Celebration and caution
By Jun Ledesma
Sunbursts
"With these golden harvests our athletes have disproved the myth that Pinoys, because of the size and err--malnutrition, will never be champions."
IT'S a week of jubilation for the entire nation. We won the SEA games fair and square, the peso is buoyed up by unprecedented dollar remittances from our overseas Filipino workers that it has breached the P54 to the dollar mark.
But you cannot please everybody. Thailand Prime Minister Thaksin has griped in Thai media that the games judging have been rigged to favor Pinoys athletes. Truth is, there are no Pinoy judges in games where our contestants are participating. Here at home, the anti-Arroyo brat pack cannot praise our athletes without the snide remarks against the President. I am sure that the rabid political opposition are grinding their teeth over our victory in the games and cursing the Fates why it happened during the Arroyo administration or why the peso beats other currencies in the region. Why? They are even silent on the subdued but significant role that the first Gentleman Mike Arroyo played in providing adequate financial support and professional training for our athletes.
The FG who had been badly maligned and exiled because of alleged detrimental influence over the President have quietly firmed up commitments from private individuals and companies to adopt an athlete. His Foundation has contributed a lot to the overall efforts of honing our boys and girls to their ideal fighting and competing forms. And they performed with spectacular success. With these golden harvests our athletes have disproved the myth that Pinoys, because of their size and err--malnutrition, will never be champions. The fact is we can produce champions provided our athletes are given the proper training, support and nutrition.
But it is not only in the games that we excel. It is not true that Pinoy bureaucrats will not be able to resist temptation. The new Finance team that mans the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs under the leadership of Gary Teves is proving to the world that it can deliver what are expected. The revenue collections from these agencies are up just when critics and pessimists say that the bureau will not perform with the absence of Cesar Purisima. Now it's like good riddance to the Hyatt 10 head because Gary is the better man in the helm of Finance than the over-rated Cesar.
What's this? The Department of Health is ordering (or has it ordered already?) millions of mosquito nets to eradicate the pesky anopheles mosquitoes that cause malaria. This shows how department bureaucrats can be so nit-witted. These bright boys at the health department thought that people in malaria infested-places are just confined in their bedrooms they way some health worker idle in their offices.
Now, if you have health officials who think malaria can be eradicated by distributing mosquito nets, how can we be comfortable with the thought that this will be the same nit-witted officials who will be battling the dreaded bird flu virus if, God forbids, by tomorrow this will hit us. Well they ordered Tamiflu medicine alright but only after Unilab gallantly offered to manufacture a Tamiflu-like drug to be given to those who might be infected by the disease for free.
While we are still on this subject, I am reiterating our caution to those who have not yet known that there are places close to us, which are favorite stopover places of migratory birds. We have this swampy area in Carmen, Davao del Norte and the so-called vanishing island just off Babak in Samal where migratory birds were reported to roost. You may watch them from afar with binoculars if you are really that avid bird-watcher. For the young boys who love to hunt wild birds in these swampy areas, it is best that you just forgo hunting this season when the threat of avian flu has not been checked. Birds from China and Siberia, which have been identified as the carrier of the dreaded avian flu, escape winter at this time of the year and seek shelters in other Asian countries. In Indonesia, eight persons had been confirmed to die of the deadly viral strain. This was last week. Since we are along the path, there is always that possibility that those birds infected with avian flu may have made a stopover in Carmen and perched along side our native birds? Beware!
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (December 7, 2005 issue)
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