Wednesday, April 04, 2007 Ledesma: Suddenly they are aware Mindanao exists By Jun Ledesma Sunbursts
ISN'T it detestable hearing senatorial candidates suddenly showing their concern for the plight of Mindanao? Suddenly they have solutions to our plight. Where were they all these years? Now that they need our votes they find fault in the present administration.
We can excuse the newcomers. But I personally cannot condone senators who are seeking a fresh mandate from Mindanawons. They ought to be seeking forgiveness for having totally abandoned us and remembering only Metro Manila and Luzon in time when they are securely ensconced in their office as senators.
I do not know who the SWS surveyed that gave Manny Villar, Mar Roxas and Ping Lacson a high acceptability rating. My educated guess is that they surveyed only Metro Manilans. How can Villar, for example rate that high in a region like Mindanao when hardly coms to Mindanao after being elected to the Senate in 2001? How will they be able to appreciate or evaluate the problems that beset Mindanao when they visit the region only during election time? How can they become so suddenly informed and knowledgeable of our problems when all the time they were just inside the comforts of their air-conditioned offices and swivel chairs oblivious of the iniquitous state that we had been wallowing in all these years? Isn't this an insult and despicable?
Surely, Villar is better off than the anemic leadership of Franklin Drilon and he has my vote for improving on the performance of his predecessor. But to pretend like he knows the problems of Mindanao when even when campaigning he breezes through the region like a will-o'-the-wisp, that would be the height of braggadocio and for that he lost my vote.
Alas, even Mindanawons who had stepped into the senate hall because we gave them our support easily forgot where they came from. Even those we adopted as our sons and daughters on their pledge that they will fight for our cause in the senate hall soon suffered from acute amnesia after winning. As far as my memory serves me, only the likes of Senators Salipada K. Pendatun, Alejandro Almendras and Manning Pelaez have truly served us to the core. The rest, and that is to include some members of the lower house, only remembers their constituents during election time. If you send to Muntinglupa the number of congressmen and senators from the provinces who have built mansions in plush subdivisions in Metro Manila there will not be enough room to accommodate them.
So enough with the ministrations and opiating promises and lectures of how to develop Mindanao. They should be ashamed of themselves for even when they receive millions of pesos in pork barrels I still have to hear a senator, including our own, spare Mindanao for half a kilometer of graveled road.
