WHAT an amateurish program GMA hosted last Sunday. The moderators were obviously ill-prepared and under-rehearsed. That made me wonder why the questions weren’t just piled up on the table.
They kept reminding the candidates about the 90- and 60-second limit as though they were children needing to be constantly reminded of the rules. Then there was the distracting moveable background and fanfare music.
Couldn’t the countless advertisements have been played in one lump at the beginning, middle or end instead of being endlessly repeated (with all those insipidly glamorous mestiza heads peddling shampoos)?
The comic moment came when Rodrigo Duterte urged the moderators to extend the program for another hour. That left Soho and her partner Mike Enriquez flummoxed about what to say and do. They just kept the audience hanging and brought on another barrage of nauseating ads.
Would it be too much to ask for the next debates to be handled more professionally by better prepared, more credible moderators?--Isabel Escoda of Busay, Cebu City
Pacquiao’s slip
I could not help sharing a piece of my mind regrading the controversy besetting Rep. Manny Pacquiao. Since he is a politician, he should have attempted to please everyone in order to win as many votes as possible. As a Bible reader, being now a member of a newly found religion, he should have remembered the basic teachings of Jesus Christ” “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “The truth shall set you free.”
One cannot deny the reality that the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community is a strong force in our modern era. Manny has to accept the reality that some members of the LGBT community are also our neighbors. And they are now so many that their number of votes can make or break a political candidate.
When at present Manny is against same-sex marriage, it is high time that he should reconsider his position, especially because he is running for president in 2022. The right to the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed by the Constitution to all citizens. Just like any other citizen, members of the LGBT community have the right to choose their lifestyles in pursuit of their happiness.
There is no question that everyone on Earth wants to be happy. Manny surely wants happiness for himself. He has therefore to desire for the happiness of his LGBT neighbors. What you want for yourself you should also want for others. That’s the way of loving your neighbors as yourself; you should also want for others. If you want to be respected, you should also respect other people. And members of the LGBT community are people too.
Manny has not studied thoroughly the animal and human species. He should study sea horses and fish. Some animals have both male and female organs. There are humans, too, with the same uniqueness. Most of them are hiding, afraid to be branded as freaks. But the truth shall set you free. You should accept the truth and be free from all bad feelings and bad things.
Some members of the LGBT community are leading a life of pretense, hiding their real selves. Like J. Edgar Hoover who was in his lifetime the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States. He was a homosexual and hia partner, his deputy director, another male agent who was also a homosexual. Hoover frequently attacked homosexuals because he was pretending not to be one of them.
To enter into same-sex marriage by members of the LGBT community is a valid pursuit of happiness. Manny as a young politician has to learn from his mistakes. He has to learn from experience and must be extra-careful not to have a bad experience. He has to read and study more Biblical verses, especially from the Book of Sirach.
He would find there a verse that that says, “A slip of the tongue is worse than a slip on the pavement.”--Atty. Chito E. Germino of Paknaan, Mandaue City